“Criticism Is Loud, Respect Is Quiet”

From a post on Daily Stoic headlined “Criticism Is Loud, Respect Is Quiet”:

It can be easy to think you’re going down the wrong path, that you’re making a huge mistake, that nobody gets it, that you’re the only one. The reason for this is simple: We hear a lot more from the people who disagree with us than the people who agree with us.

The writer Austin Kleon made this point recently. Those of us who are decent, who care about the impact of our actions, who are following the scientific data as it comes in and clarifies the bigger picture, are living quiet lives. We’re doing less, posting less, focusing on keeping our families and communities safe. It’s the people who are not doing these things—who are flying around, indifferent to the consequences of their actions, in denial of the reality of the situation—that we’re hearing and seeing things from.

Ironically, it’s their cognitive dissomance that also seems to make them aggressive, rude, disruptive. They’d rather you feel stupid than feel shame or awareness themselves—that’s why they’re so loud. They’re externalizing their own anxiety and fear and frustration onto the rest of us. They’re almost anti-Stoic in a way, focusing nearly exclusively on those things they cannot control.

All of which is to say: You have to get good at tuning all this out….