Conscious Choice: Virtual Enlightenment

October 2008 | Life, the Universe and Everything

Virtual Enlightenment

By Juliet Eastland

A few months ago, I decided to join a listserv for media professionals. From what I could tell, the online conversation tended toward politics, history and arts-related topics, although with its explicit dedication to first-amendment and free speech issues, the group promised that no subject was off-limits. I was excited to join, and looking forward to some stimulating, even respectfully combative, discussions.

The discussions, I soon discovered, were often dominated by an opinionated self-proclaimed “thinker” I will call Valerie. Valerie subscribes to — and reads — 15 publications a day, in between opining for blogs, websites and publishers, which doesn’t leave much time for sleep, she acknowledges — only 3-4 hours a night — but she feels “so compelled” to counter the stupidity and ignorance of the general population, it’s worth it. A member of Mensa, she boasts (and I do mean boasts) several master’s degrees and an IQ of 130. No matter the topic — World War II, raku pottery, the great apes — she is the expert, while those who disagree with her are invariably ignorant, obtuse, or, as one lucky so-and-so was dubbed, a “devious absquatulator.” Worst, she is a racist and master projector, a Jew of eastern European heritage whose monstrous characterizations of the general non-Jewish “rabble” evoke anti-Semitic characterizations of Jews through the ages. Self-aware she is not.

She is, in other words, insufferable. And even though we have only met virtually, I have spent a ridiculous amount of very real emotional energy loathing everything about her. Other members of the listserv have responded to her rants, but with the exception of one other particularly outraged participant, they seem to view her as a necessary evil — maybe even a good, proof that the group is talking the talk when it comes to free speech. But what speech it is — and what ugliness it engenders on my end! Not five minutes into checking my email, I’m already bubbling over with non-Buddhist bile. Given that I will never change her mind, I simply desire vengeance, the chance to humiliate her and eviscerate her arguments in the same sneering, vicious spirit that they were posted. It’s not a good feeling.

I was considering removing my name from the listserv, until one post gave me pause. The group’s topics are usually not personal, but the discussion had somehow ended up on the subject of participants’ romantic partnerships. Valerie chimed in: with her exceptional intelligence, oy! how hard it’s been to find a partner who is up to intellectual par; those few men who can keep up with her academically have invariably been scared away by her sheer, earthy sensuality; even if she did meet someone, he’d have to be exceptional, because subscribing to 15 publications doesn’t leave much time for relationships. It was the first door she’d ever opened, online, into her private life. Rest assured, she told us, she’s had “many, many lovers.” And yet, here she is, “still waiting.”

My first thought was the rather uncharitable “well, no wonder.” But throughout the day, I kept coming back to the image of this ignorant, offensive and ultimately solitary woman, walled in by her own ugly intransigence. The thought of her cycling through lovers, waiting for the right one, evoked a dark period in my own life when I was hacking my way through a thicket of dysfunctional romances in search of rescue from my profound loneliness. I too, spent so many years “still waiting.” As for her logical “reasons” for her single state — well, who among us has not spent energy defending against rejection and presenting ourselves to others (and to ourselves) in the best possible light? For once, Valerie’s stunning lack of self-awareness didn’t translate into abusive projection. It was simply sad.

And so I found myself feeling the unthinkable: empathy. It was an astonishing feeling, as if the heavens had parted and I’d been let in on a secret, given a chance to feel more fully human than I had before. “Compassion for one’s enemies” — isn’t that the thing we’re always striving (in a non-striving way, of course) toward? Now, whenever I read her rants and start sinking into my own quagmire of vindictiveness, I try to summon up my better self. I don’t always make it out in one piece (just ask my husband, who has caught me yelling at my computer screen several times), nor do my efforts make her posts, or her personality, any less palatable. But I have to thank Valerie for reminding me to try — further proof that the world works in strange and mysterious ways.

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