Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn’t. —Friedrich Nietzsche
Every day seems to bring another demonstration of how fucked up the world is. Annoyed with it all? Here’s how to cope
Annoyed may be too mild a word for what many people are feeling today. Pissed off is more appropriate. We are angry, some to the point of full-on rage. Yet, annoyed is more encompassing, I think, so that’s the term I’ll use. I’m annoyed with life, with humanity, with governments, with systems that don’t work, and with people who don’t seem capable of an ounce of compassion.
This morning, everywhere I look I’m seeing news of the botched coup attempt in Turkey. The day before that was the tragedy in Nice. I’m almost afraid to look at my newsfeed or Twitter because I’m fairly certain that there will be another act of senseless stupidity coming today, Â or at the very least, by Monday. The world seems incapable of going more than three days without making an ass of itself. I’m annoyed with the whole mess.
Given that level of annoyance, I was intrigued when I found an article by CNN’s David G. Allen on “How To Stop Being Annoyed By Life.” Mr. Allen apparently has, or had, a tendency to be a bit of a hot head. I relate to that far too well. In the article, he offers ten tips for dealing with everyday annoyances. What he offers are good, sound, researched solutions. However, they’re directed toward personal matters. He doesn’t touch global events.
So, I want to play off that same research and consider how one might better deal with the major issues confronting us now.
Is It Really Important?
Some matters that leave me annoyed are those manufactured for political purposes. Hillary’s email. The President’s birth certificate. The tweets of a Supreme Court justice. There are far too many times when stories that deserve nothing more than to be page six filler end up becoming front page headlines. I get annoyed when someone, usually a Congressperson, keeps harping on an issue over and over and over when there’s no real substance to the very thing they’re debating.
But if an issue isn’t really important, then why do I bother getting all worked up and annoyed over it? Chill. We don’t have time to sweat  the small stuff. We have better things to do both with our time and our thoughts. Wasting energy on matters of insignificance is futile. There is no resolution to the alleged problem. The people talking about it will never be satisfied. Focus on what is important and try to not be distracted by all the noise.
Should It Be Ignored?
I use this anytime someone is behaving like a child on a national or global stage. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un falls into this category. Every once in a while, he feels like the world isn’t paying any attention to him. So, he fires a missile into the South China Sea. It sounds threatening on the surface, but after a while, we realize there’s no real substance to the threats. Â Kim Jong Un is annoyed, so he wants to annoy everyone else.
Ignore him, with caution. We do the same with our six-year-old when she pitches a fit over bedtime. We put her in her room and she yells and screams and calls us names until she wears herself out. We don’t respond. We listen, just in case she were to do anything dangerous, but unless she’s dismantling furniture we let it go. The same applies to the actions of many world leaders. In fact, had the media taken this approach at the beginning of the presidential race, we wouldn’t be looking at the ridiculous Republican ticket we now face. Some people just insist on being loud and noisy. As long as there’s no immediate danger, we do well when we just ignore the rants and walk away.
Can You Change The Situation?
This comes back to focusing on what is really important. Can I do something about racial disparity? Yes. So that topic is worth my time and dealing with the frustration. Can I do anything about the current situation in Turkey? Nope, not a damn thing. There’s no reason for me to be annoyed by that which I cannot change. Those matters are out of my hands.
One of the challenges that come with the world so connected by information is that we mistakenly think we have a stake in matters that really don’t involve us. We might show concern for innocent people trapped in an airport or aid workers pinned down in a firefight, but we have to accept the fact that we cannot solve all the world’s problems by ourselves. Sometimes we have to let people deal with their own problems and their own tragedies for themselves. If you cannot change the situation, it is not your burden to carry.
Do You Have All The Information?
Earlier this week, a number of people shared this article because of its enticing headline about Marijuana and alien DNA. The link came through my newsfeed at least a dozen times, usually with a comment such as, “This is really exciting,” or “Now we know why marijuana cures so many things.” If anyone bothered to actually click the link and read the article, however, they discovered that it had nothing to do with weed, or DNA, or NASA, or aliens. Instead, it was a study on just how often we share things without bothering to read the article.
We, as a generalized group of Internet users, get annoyed often by issues we simply did not bother to understand. We look at an over-sensationalized headline and form an opinion without bothering to get the facts. Then, as Nietzsche says in the quote above, we get annoyed when we later discover that our opinion was not only wrong but totally baseless. I find myself far less troubled by things when I bother to read the full story before opening my big mouth.
Be Part Of The Solution
We have little right to be annoyed at a situation we can change ourselves. We might not see that change overnight, but when we see a situation such as racial disparity or income inequality or gender discrimination, we do well to fight rather than just sit on our ass being annoyed. Don’t like the looks of the presidential election? Get the fuck out there and vote, encourage others to vote, take a neighbor to vote. Â If 30% more people voted this November than did in 2012, we would see overwhelming change.
Annoyed by discrimination? Be part of that solution. No, it’s not going to be easy. No one likes being called out on their shit and when you do they’re going to resists. But if you’re really annoyed, then you have to act and hold whomever’s feet to the fire until a solution is reached. Â Don’t back down, don’t give up.
I’m at an age where I have to watch what I let get to me. Being annoyed gets my blood pressure up. If I get all worked up over some piece of nonsense, I could have a heart attack and die. Is there anything worth that risk? Not much. Â We do better to control those emotions and keep ourselves in check. Address what’s important and leave the rest.
You’ll have  a better weekend if you do.
10 Things We Don’t Want In 2017
Think of this as the anti-list
There are plenty of things we could make lists about, and probably will over the next couple of weeks. One of the big ones, though, is the list of things we really don’t want to see in the next year. With everything we’ve been through this year, there’s not much we really want to carry over. In fact, we’re rather selective about anything new that might be coming along. We’re concerned about what might happen over the next 12 months.
The thing about the future, of course, is that it is what we make of it. No one has a lock on what might or might not happen. We can make the next year better if we put forth the effort.
Of course, I’m not sure I have any faith in people putting forth the effort. We don’t exactly have the best track record given the way we’ve behaved over the past 12 months. So, here’s our list of things that absolutely, positively, unquestionably, should not happen in 2017. And if any of them do happen, we’re going to publicly shame whoever is responsible.
The Bottom Five
10. Awkwardly flavored soda. Actually, we don’t need any new soda at all, but I’m sure someone at Coca-Cola or Pepsi will convince executives that they have a can’t miss proposition that scored really well with a test group that has never actually had soda before. The problem with new sodas now is that, having already explored most of the flavors that occur naturally, all that’s left are the mashups one gets by standing at the soda fountain mixing different flavors together in uncertain quantities. While popular among 14-year-old males, these strange mixes are really just bad ideas with mediocre marketing. No more.
9. Cookie mashups. What are we, two-year-olds trapped in a high chair? I swear, half the new snacks we’ve seen this year have to be the products of parents who were trapped at home with their toddler on a rainy Saturday. Oreos with Doritos? No thank you. Honey-dipped cheese sauce? Please, there’s a reason the kid didn’t actually eat that combination. What’s worse is that these new snack combinations are doomed to some of the worst marketing ideas we’ve ever seen. Honestly, Hershey’s, the Snack Patrol? Someone’s been watching too many late-night reruns. Try keeping things simple this next year.
8. Book sequels not written by the original author. I don’t envy book editors whose job it is to publish material that is going to be profitable before it is actually released. The number of great authors is limited and, for better or worse, a number of those who might have penned blockbuster novels are choosing to self-publish instead. There are a number of classic novels that, at least on some level, seem to demand a sequel that the original author never wrote. Once a writer is deceased, however, there are fewer ethical problems with hiring someone else to write the sequel for them. There’s just one problem with that: the sequels stink. In fact, quite often they stink when written by original authors.  Let’s just limit the sequels not part of the original literary plan, okay?
7. New social media sites. Nope, don’t need ’em. I don’t care how wonderful the idea seems. Social media has picked its dominant tools. Only Twitter has any chance of being replaced by a newcomer, and that’s only if it captures the fancy of the Great Orange President. New social media applications are dangerous. We sign up for them, find them to be the most boring things ever, and then promptly forget that we signed up for them, leaving the information in our half-finished profiles open to hackers. Making a bad situation worse is the fact that the hacks are so insignificant that they never get reported. As a result, we don’t know that our information has been hacked. So, let’s try going 12 months without signing up for anything new, okay? Give it a try.
6. New photography/art sites. Photographers and artists are so desperate to sell anything to anyone that they’ll jump on every new site that comes along without bothering to think whether there’s really any chance of one site working any better than another. There’s not. People don’t buy art online in significant enough volume for any site to actually boast any success. Of course, part of that could be due to the fact that the creative work being put on these sites isn’t commercially viable in the first place. Still, we really don’t need any more creative sites that do nothing more than waste our time with empty promises.
The Top Five
5. New terrorist organizations. Sorry, we have too many terrorist groups to keep track of already. I don’t give a fuck how niche your religious beliefs might be or how passionate one might be in their zealotry. Just stay home, keep your fucking opinions to yourself, and put up that bomb-making kit before someone gets hurt. Terrorists need to learn that we’re not going to give in because of violence and they’re not going to win any favor by trying to kill everyone on the planet who doesn’t agree with them. We’re tired of this shit. If you’re thinking of starting a new terrorist organization, just go fuck yourself and call it a day.
4. Attacks on civil rights. One of the most disgusting aspects of 2016 has been the severity with which civil rights have been attacked. This nonsense needs to stop right now and shouldn’t be carried over into the next year. If you’re a member of the KKK or any other white supremacy group then feel free to kill yourself. We promise to not mourn your passing. Hate is a blight on this world and you’re doing nothing but making the planet a less tolerable place to live. And don’t give me that shit about those who dislike hate groups being intolerable. Hate is a choice we can no longer accept. If you choose to hate, you need to not be present in the next year.
3. New reality programming. Reality TV has been nothing but disastrous, culminating this year in the election of a reality personality as president. Given that each new reality program inherently tries to do something more absurd than the shows before it, we simply cannot risk anything new over the next year. We aren’t likely to survive anything more ridiculous and dangerous than the Trump administration. This has to stop here. Please. For the sake of all humanity.
2. Celebrating people who have done nothing of value. This goes hand-in-hand with the reality programming, and for the same reason. Our national obsession with making celebrities of people simply because they’re rich has to stop. We don’t need any more Hadids or Jenners or Trumps. This stupid and nonsensical obsession damn-near destroyed democracy this past year and has placed us on the brink of complete destruction. It is time we started celebrating people who actually help society, people who know what it means to actually work rather than just bossing people around and firing them for stupid reasons. Leave this bad habit right here. No more.
1. Ignorance. Come on, we’re entering 2017. We have access to every bit of wisdom ever recorded and we can get that information at any time on our phones. So, why are we, collectively, so fucking stupid? We need to leave the stupidity behind and make a concerted effort to become a more intelligent and better-informed society over the next year. By doing so, we will inherently eliminate many of the problems that have cause 2016 to be such an incredibly horrible and distasteful year. We also would be taking a giant step toward ensuring that our species won’t be exterminated in the next hundred years or so. If we are going to survive, we have to put ignorance and all the problems it creates right here in 2016. There is no place for it in the future.
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