“James, thanks for the stick advice. That was very helpful.
“How do you deal with aggression? I understand that you have fighting skills, and your manipulative conversation tricks to manage encounters with unpleasant people. With me being a woman, I understand we are made of different stuff. But how do you deal with the corrosive internal affects of being in aggressive situations with negative people?
“This is something that I’ve only really been able to deal with through isolating myself. I could not imagine being able to stay level under the circumstance you seem to thrive in. I have to consider, however, in light of the deteriorating nature of our world, that I might find myself among crowds of negative people one day. How do you maintain your peace of mind with the people you are in contact with? Do you have any tips specific for a pink collar woman?
Mira
Mira, to put it bluntly, if you had a big bony fist and invasive genitalia this would be far easier to walk you through.
Women seek connectivity with those around them, which gives them the wrong type of sensitivity—which, to a fighter is like intelligence to the military—for dealing with external adversarial aggression. The type of aggression women thrive on and which is corrosive to the man’s peace of mind, is in-group bonding and bickering, once typified by home living dominated by females, and now typified by day care, school environments, and most workplace situations.
This is why women, in all traditional societies, stayed home, and men went out to hunt. To the extent that a man becomes acclimated to the in-group stresses of our collective home, school and work spaces, he will be less capable of handling the predatory out-group stresses I often write about.
Mira, the more you need acceptance, belonging, comfort, warmth, gratitude, the more vulnerable you will be out in the world of crime, and the more harried you will be in your workplace, particularly if you find yourself working with aggressive and negative persons who may have come from the world of crime and aggression. Indeed, the Baltimore City Council is working on—and may have passed—a bill that will make criminal background checks of prospective employees illegal. Imbedding criminals in the work force anonymously, when it happens, will go further towards cultivating the type of hostile world you seem concerned about facing one day.
Postmodern Social Stress Factors
The following will increase your stress.
-You are intelligent enough to perceive things that most people do not. Extensive unsuccessful boxing could go some way towards remedying this.
-You care about people in general and have a strong sense of humanity—prepare to suffer! That is why I am a live and let die kind of guy. I regard most humans as mindless animals undeserving of my time, let alone my care.
-You are a member of a group that does not have strong tribal markers, such as rituals, and priorities that go beyond the material concerns of making a buck. Someone who belongs to a biker gang will have more peace of mind than someone on a Wal-Mart shift. By this definition most workplace and all compulsory schooling environments are toxic to the human soul.
-Your identity is dependent on the approval of others. If you are a member of a tribal group and you are subject to group approval, you are in balance, have achieved a give and take with your group. However, if your identity—the seat of your peace of mind—hinges on the approval of others, and you are in a typical school or workplace environment, prepare to suffer. The strength of the tribe is that it cultivates the need for approval in stringent ways, and rewards that need. The workplace setting uses our tribal wiring against us, to reduce us to a cipher. In order to remain in balance in a workplace setting you must have your need for approval met outside of it, by your martial arts club, your book discussion group, etc.
Alienation as an Antidote
I have dealt with stress by voluntarily alienating myself through the disciplines of fighting and writing, which encompass the discipline of distancing oneself from society, and from others. I require solitude, and manufacture it in my mind and with my actions when it is not available.
I do often sympathize and empathize with others, but direct it into my writing, as I do with anger. I learned this through fight training. Instead of striking an insulting person, or even arguing with them, I would walk away. The next day they would be the heavy bag or the training post, or the barbell, or any training apparatus, even my shadow on the block wall of the gym.
I highly recommend adopting two arts: one physical, one cerebral and creative, as avenues for stress relief, and to recycle stress into something good or useful.
Spiritual disciplines help make space between you and the maddening noise of this unnatural world. When I have fought or sparred or trained I feel as if resurrected from a suffocating, incomplete death. While much of the interactive mechanics I use to manage aggression and its impact on my soul have more to do with writing than fighting, it is the physical art that offers up the transcendent experience. Many people may have the opposite orientation. Find out what your orientation is.
As for being a woman, I would suggest that, contrary to the wisdom of our late great philandering nuclear die-rolling president, J.F.K., who famously said, “No man is an island,” I heartily disagree. In my cracked mind the only man, and the only woman—the only human being worthy of the appellation that supposedly raises us above the status of a mere primate animal—capable of transcending the miserable condition prepared for us by our masters, is, and must be, an island.
Mira, your island might be “a fortress of solitude” or merely the spiritual equivalent of the grassy medium of a busy highway. Your island might not be my hairy haunted battle matrix—and may very possibly be a knitting chair—but it needs to have a shoreline, so you know when the water is rising.
I am unqualified to comment on woman-to-woman stress. As far as dealing with men, you have to learn how to spot the honorable ones at a glance. My best advice for lone women is to form a moral bond with honorable men, and not to get too manipulative about it, so that you will have someone to call on in a pinch, especially the kind of pinch Baltimore experienced this past April. In the meantime that skill of recognizing honorable men—which means they will respect you even though you are weaker than they—can be used to sift through the masculine rubble of our current male population while out and about in order to avoid the bad, associate with the good, and forget about all of the worthless steer meat in between.
"The more you need acceptance, belonging, comfort, warmth, gratitude, the more vulnerable you will be out in the world of crime, and the more harried you will be in your workplace, particularly if you find yourself working with aggressive and negative persons who may have come from the world of crime and aggression."
Boy you nailed it. I was in a little office of 4 women, Two White, one African, One Mex Mix. The other White woman (from Eastern Europe), just kept her nose to the grindstone. I did too but the "minority sisters" picked up on my neediness pretty quickly and used it to play games with my head. I left that job after 6 months.
I'm trying to learn to deal with these kinds of things in this messed up world. I need money!
That need for money is placed there by our society to keep us at the mercy of others.
It is much tougher to break that need for a woman on a few counts.
I wish you luck. In the meantime, take that Eastern European chick's lead. Even if you fake it, not seeming to care brings power when it comes to dealing with workplace aggression.
Any type of work, like landscaping or house cleaning, where you only have to take crap from the person that is also giving you the money, is better, has more balance.
I know dozens of people, right now, in your predicament. You can find the crease in the negativity matrix and slip through. It just takes time and diligence.
That last comment was mine James...thanks.
Thank you, Maureen.