“But doc, why do they hate ocean advocates?” Photo courtesy of Joe Ocean
Aristotle wrote that, “at his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.” The Greek philosopher was referring to people, perhaps maintaining the appearance of civility or logic at one moment, who abruptly morph into partial critics and sometimes violent opponents the next. Let’s just call these people haters. Now, before this article could quickly cascade into a diatribe over the unjust, those who are the lowest, most common abusers perceiving only one side of a concept, event, or story and then proceed to pass it along as doctrine before attempting to discern the other side, it’s best to just cut to the chase.
I began a personal project, approximately three months to the date of this writing, which I coined “Be Ocean.” My mission was simple. After spending a quarter of a century calling myself a surfer, I decided to give it more meaning and make a conscious effort to ask questions, seek answers, and more important, change. This epiphany came when I realized that I had taken from the ocean nearly my entire life; yet, I never once accepted the responsibility to determine on my own a way to somehow give back. I chose to embark with a clean slate, a Socratic “all I know is that I know nothing” approach. In other words, if I learned something new and posted it on Facebook or my blog, I would be highly amenable to other views, considering that they be logical and delivered in a civil manner.
One of my first endeavors was a daily extraction of garbage from my surf break. I began by posting pictures of the garbage I was finding and, within the first few weeks, I received a death threat. An individual, whom I since renamed “The Littering Strangler,” threatened not only to strangle me with my own garbage bag, he claimed he was also going to litter my beach with his personal trash. Before I could recommend that he litters first and then strangles me next, he erased his comment from my page and has not returned since. Contacting the local authorities and the Feds may have helped too.
Hmmm, that escalated quickly. I admit, it’s easy to take a threat like that and run loose with it, quickly spewing out adjectives and opinions about the person’s mental health or categorizing him into a generic, larger group of people called “psychos.” That route would only defeat the purpose of my mission and, in an ironic twist, make me unjust.
An attack of this magnitude did catch me a little off guard. Although, I wasn’t completely surprised. While reading articles across a wide range of water and ocean advocacy web sites and a variety of social media pages, I had started to see a pattern. My “Littering Strangler” example may be at the extreme end of opposition, but he wasn’t completely alone along the spectrum of fellow haters.
Of course, don’t take my word for it. Some Internet searches may lead you to discover a few of your own ocean advocacy hater gems. For instance, Jacques Cousteau is rated #4 on Alex Jones’ massively popular Infowars website’s list of global elitists with a “sick population control agenda.” A quick jump to Balloons Blow on Facebook, an educational page dedicated to the “issue of balloons as litter and their effects on wildlife and the environment,” will take you to comments from adults defending the “tradition” of helium balloon releases. Another search may lead you to a story from a gentleman whose Surfrider license plant was vandalized. And, my most recent favorite, when getting a CNN.com update on the super typhoon as it began its path of devastation across the Philippines, the comment feed started out like this:
“Time to get to the know the hardy Filipino people…unbelievably resilient, long suffering, good natured, uber friendly, loyal, ingenius, and a bunch of survivors. The indomitable human spirit at its finest.”
And then, a few dozen comments later, it transformed into this:
“The rise in ocean temps and super storms are directly related.”
“How many hurricanes in the Caribbean in the last 5 years? Go buy a chevy volt….Or just kill yourself.”
Without expecting it, I stumbled upon a consistent class of haters. My mission would be meaningless if I didn’t ask questions and seek answers. I needed a professional perspective. I required a patient person in tune with the human condition and relating to it in a neutral capacity. I needed a shrink.
A few phone calls later and Tina Montalvo, a practicing psychotherapist in West Palm Beach, agreed to be interviewed. We met at her office and, after briefing her on the topic and sharing some more examples of haters, I threw out some questions. Here are the highlights:
Joe: What causes people to be skeptics?
Tina: The first thing that comes to mind is that some people are oppositional. Sometimes, they act like children who will defy whatever is told to them.
Well, then why are children oppositional?
There are several reasons for that. Sometimes, it could be a biological thing, like the physiological makeup of the person…but, more often, it’s when children aren’t given choices. If the adult in their lives tries to ram something down their throat like, “you must go to bed right now,” a child might oppose that or defy that. They’ll be a lot more cooperative if they are given a choice…like, “would you like to go to bed now or in five minutes?” …Something silly like that, that’s one thing that comes to my mind.
What about the physiological?
That’s a little more unclear. There’s an idea that some kids…they may have a precursor to an anti-social personality, which is not somebody who doesn’t want to go to parties…when I say antisocial, I’m talking about a criminal kind of mind. So, you could say that there are seedlings of a criminal type of behavior. That’s the extreme of an antisocial personality. That could be part of the profile of a child like that. Does that make sense?
Definitely. I think your answer suggesting defiance makes me wonder that when people are shown examples, in the general case of our environment…things that are really messing up the ecosystem that we are collectively responsible for, I suppose you can infer that a person’s mind might make this leap to suggesting that they must stop what they are doing. And then, the next step is wondering what the choices are. It seems that the choices and alternatives are so extreme to the way we are living now…it might explain some of the harsh reactions. What about the borderline innocuous comments? Something like, “that’s a pretty photo…even though it’s photoshopped.”
That sounds like envy to me…perhaps a person who wants to undercut somebody who wants to make something beautiful…that could just be envy.
Sticking along those lines, can you become a habitual hater?
It implies that the person who is envious believes that what other people have is better than what they have or they are better than who they are…and that’s a sad state of affairs, that’s basically saying that one’s own worth isn’t great…it’s almost like a depressive symptom from my point of view. Some people are just difficult people. It could be a personality disorder. I don’t know if you know that the way we classify mental illness…there are some things like depression and anxiety that can be treated and then there are personality disorders that are considered to be more hard-wired…there’s controversy about that…like, why does a kid grow up to be a criminal if their family was upstanding?…It’s the hardest to treat… and sometimes the saddest.
Recently, I shared an article about a group from Australia and how they are removing thousands of cigarette butts off of Bondi Beach. Somebody responded to the story and wrote on my page, “chill out, you’ll live.” A couple of phrases and words came to mind…but, in psychological terms, what causes people to be complacent?
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, some people might believe that there are much bigger problems on the planet…like, “why should we worry about something like that?” It’s really hard to say. It might go back to negativity.
What enables a person to be a blatant hypocrite?
A person can be unconscious about some part of themselves. It might be a part of themselves and they’ll project it onto somebody else.
This is just my opinion, something I touched upon earlier…and I don’t want to influence your answer, but it seems that there is this fear, especially if we advocate for changes, that our luxuries, all those things we are used to or that we might be taking for granted, will be taken away from us. Do you recognize this type of fear in people?
I think that’s true for a lot of people. I really don’t like to say this but I think that a lot of people think that as long as “I got
mine,” then they aren’t really concerned about the consequences for other people or future generations. There are certainly people like that.
And just like that, my session with Tina had run out of time. I was glad that I came because I learned two valuable lessons. First, I definitely talk way too much during interviews. I omitted at least two-thirds of just my dialogue between the questions. Well, in my defense, it was a free session, so I took advantage and got mine. The second and more relevant thing I came to understand, the next time I read a hater’s comment, is that they are just sad, oppositional, envious children, scared of change and choices, possibly having an untreatable, physiological disorder which causes them to be hard-wired hypocrites in denial about their personal involvement and damage to the ecosystem which exacerbates their behavior as habitual assholes.
Thanks Aristotle, I do feel nobler now.
