By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

As I was saying, Somervillians are the people who I like most and have chosen to live with. Yet in these times, they call each other names more than other people that I know. 

There seem to be ever more conditions that legitimately evoke anger, but fewer clear opportunities to change them. Posts on the Somerville News’ website catalog these conditions.

Anger is a healthy response to mistreatment. Learning to focus that anger in a way that actually makes things better is an essential element in becoming a mature human being. Aristotle wrote that “anyone can become angry-that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way-that is not so easy.”

Name-calling provides us with two small satisfactions. The first is the opportunity to discharge some of the anger that we feel. Although name-calling is not a healthy expression of anger, it is healthier that expressing it with a Glock 21 and extra ammo clips.

Name-calling also gives us a small and illusory sense of power. It is the power to hurt those who have hurt us. The notion that naming something can give us power over it is as old as language itself, but it is not true.

Hurling insults is counter-productive to changing the conditions that anger us. Conditions like those described on our website are rarely the product of one individual. More often, they are the outcome of broad institutional forces.

From time to time, I am angered by the behavior of the mayor, or aldermen, or the Planning Board. I believe that it is right to criticize their harmful behavior, more effective to illuminate its broader context, but hurtful and stupid to attack the individuals. Their actions that I criticize usually result from rational calculations within the context of a dysfunctional political culture and institutions that they, as individuals, have little power to effect.

None of us, as an individual, has that kind of power. The conditions that we object to are recreated every day by all of us making the best choices that we can, from a limited set of alternatives provided by the institutions that we inhabit. The most powerful of these institutions are economic. Their seeming solidity and omnipotence obscure the reality that they are merely congealed patterns of behavior. If we all woke up tomorrow morning and made different choices, those choices would transform the institutions.

Of course, this does not happen spontaneously. Institutions change when those who animate them by simply living their lives reach broad agreement that (1) the institutions’ operations are harmful to their best interests, and (2) there are alternatives that are persuasive of their ability to do better for us.

All political, economic, and social institutions that we know benefit some people more than others. The most critical benefit is disproportionate power. The powerful will use every available means to persuade the majority that the institutions’ operations are good for them, and that there are no better alternatives.

Today, those means are pervasive and internalized. Like fish who don’t think much about water because it is their taken-for-granted universe, we swim in a deluge of information whose messages acknowledge no other reality. We are persuaded that our troubles are more the outcome of personal inadequacies than of systematic institutional operations.

We are more vulnerable to these messages because we are more isolated. More of us are working more hours. Many community institutions are gone that once allowed us to know each other, gradually establish trust, look at our troubles through each other’s eyes, gain an inkling that our troubles don’t all result from personal failings, and develop shared confidence that we might make changes.

I believe that when we listen to each other, we see each other’s humanity. When we are listened to, we gain confidence in the authenticity of our own experiences. When we look through each other’s eyes, we discover that what we share is more important than our differences. We gain multiple perspectives on shared problems. And we gain an opportunity to create the two conditions for institutional change.

Few things are as effective at making someone stop listening as insulting them. Doing so in a public forum hurts more than the victim’s feelings. It undermines mutual trust, discourages participation, keeps us separated, and deepens a sense of collective futility.

There is a lot to be justly angry about. Expressing it can be the first step toward making things better. But as Aristotle suggested, some expressions are more effective than others.

Offering evidence that supports your complaint helps legitimize your anger and calls attention to real conditions. Many people do not have the time or inclination to develop such evidence. But even simply stating why you are angry, in terms of your own personal experience, leaves the possibility of interaction. It allows others to see your humanity, take your complaint seriously, and maybe even offer supporting evidence of their own.

Could we have more of that and less name-calling?