Proverbs of Hell 21

This is the one-toon episode of my series on William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell” please see this post for context and a decoder ring offer. There are only two more days worth of proverbs left so if anyone has a suggestion for what to do next, feel free to comment. There is already more of whatever this is coming, but I’m always open to suggestions

As the air to a bird of the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.

I’m not going to talk about politics here, but I think if there was any proverb where I would, this is the one. There is a persistent, intuitive delusion most good people have that if you direct enough disapproval at someone they will stop doing the wrong thing. This is a very nice thought, and imagines a world filled with justice and morality. Unfortunately, it is a fantasy and often those who do contemptible things already know they are contemptible. They just have the same array of justifications and self interest that the rest of us employ to keep ourselves going, and theirs are strong enough to overcome even morality. They thrive in the gap between our expectations and reality, showing off as they skate past the gentle reminders and unsubtle punishments that would stop someone with an ounce of decency.

I know plenty of good people who hate everything about themselves, and still get up, repeat their lives, and go to work in the morning. Why should bad people somehow be more moral? Especially if that behavior is what has also made them the target of so much attention? It’s a classic case of the opposite of love being indifference not hate.

Developing the ability to see the contempt someone swims or flies in is a skill that doesn’t usually make one many friends or influential. However, it’s an essential part of self preservation for anyone who wants to live an attentive and moral life.

The crow wish’d every thing was black, the owl, that every thing was white.

Much like the above, we attract what we embody because we are attracted to it in turn. The crow’s life would be immeasurably improved if it lived in a world where everything had its same interests and needs. The owl would be able to harvest targets at leisure while remaining undetected. Sometimes reminding yourself that often people are seeking what they already feel inside can help soothe the “why would anyone do that” reaction that both malice and idiocy provokes.

Exuberance is Beauty.

There’s a word for when someone is excitedly talking about something they deeply enjoy. It’s relatively new in that way internet speak is: where the loose jumble of meanings and words reveals a lot more than the user may have intended. The word is “Infodump” and it’s used to describe when someone has been talking at length and depth but with that little “dump” included to show the speaker’s disapproval. Like a less gendered “mansplain,” this word turns a minor annoyance into a Social Sin, and designates it an undesirable trait or behavior in any right thinking individual. According to the word itself, the speaker is overwhelming the listener with unwanted communication that doesn’t even qualify as anything other than a tide of raw information. The listener has already checked out and designated the speaker’s love and enthusiasm as something to be endured rather than embraced.

Anyone who’s been the speaker in this situation knows exactly the feeling of watching the attention fade from someone’s eyes as they mentally check out (someone currently writing a novella length series about a two centuries old pamphlet may have experienced more than once.) The word itself has been growing more neutral as it gets popular and reclaimed, but the underlying distaste will take time to go away completely.

It’s obvious that I take the exact opposite position with Blake here. The exuberance itself carries with it a fierce beauty. Often it is the result of long and careful thought without an outlet, and sometimes it’s half baked theories and tin foil closets. The enthusiasm in itself can lend meaning and weight to something that may not have ever presented itself as important to the listener and that power should be respected. There is beauty in tigers and lions too, and often that fervor is just as dangerous, but I don’t want to pen all tigers and lions into conversationally acceptable cages either.

Especially in the times we live in, designating all excited conversations as kooky nonsense or the product of mental struggles is perilous and woefully tedious besides.

Music: