Trigger-Happy

Comedian Amy Schumer, who tri-hosted this year’s Oscars ceremony, helpfully informed us that she was “triggered and traumatized” by Will Smith’s slapping of Chris Rock. And just like that, “…triggered” appears as the first add-on suggestion that Google offers when I type “Amy Schumer” into a search field.

Ever receive a trigger warning at the front end of an article or lecture? I've only been subject to a smattering, but that's most likely because I'm several decades out of college, I don't steep myself in progressive culture, and the stuff I read is rarely the obsequious apologia or self-indulgent cultural scolding that is churned out by today's illiberal Left.

Schumer’s “me… Me… ME!” proclamation reminded me of a WSJ article I recently read that discussed research showing the ineffectiveness of trigger warnings - which recalled earlier such reports.

Moreso, it elicited some aphorisms by Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius:

Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed.

Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.

and

You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you'll find strength.

Long-time readers might recall this isn't the first time I've quoted him - we'd live happier lives if we embraced his ideas, even a little bit.

Therein are parallels with the world-view that Jordan Peterson has peddled with great success:

No one gets away with anything, ever, so take responsibility for your own life.

And to a social-media attitude I developed after many years of Internet arguing:

If you don't grant strangers the power to upset you with their words, they never will.

Why did the concept of the trigger warning emerge in the first place? How did our college students become so convinced that someone saying something they disagree with can cause emotional trauma? Who inculcated such a garbage notion in a generation of children?

The answer is, of course, cynical control-freaks. People so angry that we haven't put them in charge of everything, merely by dint of their greater intellect, that they have chosen to ruin people's lives by turning them into sniveling cringers rather than self-reliant and emotionally healthy citizens.

Post-apocalyptic fiction author G. Michael Hopf suggested that "good times create weak men." The good news is that each of us can choose if we want to be among the weak, who need trigger warnings, or among the not-weak, who know that some stranger's utterances cannot bother us unless we allow it to. Even personal insults need not be given weight. As Pierre Trudeau quipped when Richard Nixon called him an asshole,

I've been called worse things by better people.

In other words, consider the source.

You cannot control what others say. You can control how you react to what they say, and there's absolutely no reason to allow yourself to feel emotional pain from hearing someone say a word or phrase you've been told to fear.

So, don’t. Take charge of your reactions. Reject the premise that you need to be warned that something you’re about to read might be offensive. And, for all our sakes, stop demanding others adjust their words to soothe someone’s fragility.

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Peter.