philosophy to the rescue

Fred has found that ancient Greek philosophy is helpful in coping with a difficult situation that can't be solved.  My fondness for Patanjali is good for coping with PEOPLE whom I wish didn't exist.  ;-)  Civilization insists that I MAY NOT kill them, despite our ancestors' predilection for pushing the incurably-antisocial off the edge of the ice, so SOMETHING is needed to keep them from soiling our nests.

The 33rd sutra reads:

By sympathy with the happy, compassion for the sorrowful, delight in the holy, disregard of the unholy, the psychic nature moves to gracious peace.

When we are wrapped up in ourselves, shrouded with the cloak of our egotism, absorbed in our pains and bitter thoughts, we are not willing to disturb or strain our own sickly mood by giving kindly sympathy to the happy, thus doubling their joy, or by showing compassion for the sad, thus halving their sorrow. We refuse to find delight in holy things, and let the mind brood in sad pessimism on unholy things. All these evil psychic moods must be conquered by strong effort of will. This rending of the veils will reveal to us something of the grace and peace which are of the interior consciousness of the spiritual man.

Modern thought tells us that all that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good people to do nothing.  I'm sure that's true -- but it also causes a lot of stress when we are subjected to the constant stream of bad news that IS the modern world.  We join social media to try to increase contact with distant friends and relatives, and we get trapped into seeing examples of wickedness, greed and power-mania.  We "should" be doing something when we see all that's wrong, we think -- but there's so much of it we feel helpless.

I'm finding that the way to make internet communication work is to approach it with a hefty dose of Patanjali.  It works for the problem of trolls in the comment-sections of our favorite blogs, too.  There is no reasoning with them -- their joy is to stir up shit, though why they find that enjoyable is more than I can imagine.  They obviously want the attention and to show how clever they are (despite their mistaken impression of their own wittiness).  The best way to deal with them is to I-G-N-O-R-E, or to use the yogi's term, disregard them.

If nobody argues or engages, they'll go away eventually.  If they don't experience the joy of having the last word because their comments are deleted, they're bound to find that their attempts are in vain.  "Do not feed the trolls" should probably be the motto of all comment-sections, for the peace and happiness of writers AND readers.  That leaves plenty of room for sympathizing with the happy, displaying compassion for the suffering, and delighting in the "holy" -- the good, kind and up-beat people who ARE out there, despite the competing noise.