A Philosophy of Trouble

[osteophage]

If you’ve been around long enough, you have most certainly encountered some very bad outlooks on conflict. Some people out there like to stir up conflict recreationally for its own sake, aiming for outrage on purpose, while others turn up their noses at the idea of ever getting involved, casting nigh all disagreement through the lens of trickery and petulant antagonism. In response to the ubiquity of bad takes on the subject, I want to try and articulate something of my own philosophy: that only by distinguishing problems from trouble can you recognize the uses of trouble for problem-solving.

Crossposted to Pillowfort and Neocities. 

 

Two Detrimental Outlooks on Conflict

The outlook that provoked this essay is an outlook that conflates all trouble with problems. That outlook, in turn, is best understood in relation to its opposite extreme, which is why it’s worth addressing the two of them together. Both are flawed, but let’s start with the one that’s the most straightforwardly detrimental:

A bad faith approach to conflict encompasses what has been variously known as trolling, shitposting, and flame bait, which is to say, making insincere declarations that are deliberately wrongheaded or provocative, on purpose, in order to bait people into a fight. This mentality revels in discord for its own sake, taking a certain satisfaction in inciting anger. Some people do genuinely act like this, and so it makes sense to be on the lookout and conduct yourself accordingly. Don’t feed the trolls, as they say.

Unfortunately, some have taken the vigilance too far in the opposite direction. This is the mentality that swears off engagement with conflict as a waste of time, where everyone in any given dispute is figured as either a sucker or a troll. Within this perspective, you should aim to rise above it all, impassive, looking down on all those who bother, regarding any disturbance of the peace as itself a problem, a miscalculation, or a personal vice. See for instance The Internet of Beefs and You Will Never Win an Argument On the Internet. Articles like these might appeal to some readers through their vivid descriptions of something common and recognizable—the unproductive spat—but I’m not impressed with the conclusions they draw, talking as if the most mature reaction to trouble is necessarily to throw up your hands and walk away.

For all that this manner of conflict aversion and above-it-all posting might seem to stand for shrewd disengagement or even mild-mannered timidity, it is not necessarily so. In some cases, the disdain for others’ engagement and the unbelief in productive conflict can lead some individuals to the conclusion that there’s no point in engaging fairly, so you might as well go no-hold-barred with the sneering, the eyerolls, the insults, and the bad-faith belligerent sarcasm, all while these same people go patting themselves on the back for not getting involved. This isn’t any kind of sage cynicism; it’s a failure of self-awareness.

As an aside: My favorite part is when these folks tip their hand and reveal that they spend a lot of time on Twitter. If sites like Twitter are your primary frame of reference, and if you’ve been tearing your hair out for a lack of a moment’s peace, then frankly you’ve been trying to buy clothes at the soup store.

It’s possible to do better than that. Even granting that some (or even most) conflicts aren’t anything worthwhile, a person still needs some basis of discernment. There’s no blanket formula to these things, but if you ask me, I think a good place to start would be distinguishing problems from trouble.
 

Distinguishing Problems From Trouble

Distinguishing problems from trouble in some capacity, whether in those terms or by any other name, is necessary in order to make any kind of space for conflict to be productive. Productive conflict is real and possible, if not necessarily guaranteed. What is guaranteed, in the grand scheme of things, is that life will involve some problems. So here is one way of thinking about the two:

Problems are anything that warrants a solution. This is when something is wrong, someone is being harmed, or someone is at risk of an outcome they want to avoid. Problems are generally undesirable to those affected, but they can also become entrenched, accepted, and normalized, which means they do not necessarily go hand in hand with trouble.

Trouble is a disturbance in the usual way of things. You can see this in the word’s etymology: it comes from the Latin word turbidare—to make turbid, as in when you disturb a body of water and stir up the sediment within. On a strictly literal level, this is what it means to trouble the water.

Trouble comes in many forms, good and bad. It encompasses the creation of new problems as well as the act of revealing a problem that was already there. In that light, it should be easy to see how a categorical disdain for trouble can go hand in hand with an investment in concealing problems. This connection should illuminate why it is that suppressing trouble is not the same as eliminating problems, and in fact an overly hostile outlook on trouble can itself contribute to the number and severity of problems.

I call it the “you two cut it out” fallacy. Anyone who frequents social media forums will recognize the pattern. Aggressor attacks. Target tries to rise above and do nothing. No one intervenes. Aggressor ramps up attack. Target tries to rise above and do nothing. No one intervenes. Aggressor further ramps up attack. This can happen a dozen, fifty times, until finally, the target answers back. Then, and only then, a dozen voices immediately sound, crying “Fight! Fight! Look at those two idiots going at it!”

—David Graeber, “The Bully’s Pulpit,” 2015

To do better than that, we have to find ways to see the positive uses of trouble.
 

Seeing the Uses of Trouble

A better philosophy of trouble entails reserving some degree of respect for confronting a problem, even when that means going against the grain. Going against the grain isn’t always easy, and in fact it may be quite the headache (or worse) for everyone involved, and yet there are situations where it is the only way to make things better. If you can recognize as much, then you are seeing the potential for trouble to be worthwhile.
The notion of worthwhile trouble is one you may have seen articulated before in this classic quote:

I see that Mr. Bernard Shaw has again got into hot water, if indeed he can be said ever to get out of it. For my part, in a world so full of secrecies and corruption as this, I sympathise with the man who makes a row; making a row is certainly the essential prelude to making anything else. […] In short, I believe in getting into hot water. I think it keeps you clean.

—G. K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News, February 24, 1906

While I think this framing is too optimistic, in broad strokes there’s the kernel of something here worth chewing on. Even though making a fuss isn’t always warranted, we can respect that hot water can play a role in getting clean. What “getting clean” represents in this context is a matter of resolving problems, which calls for identifying those problems in the first place.

Identifying problems takes a degree of curiosity and a certain amount of nerve. Nerve isn’t something to uplift categorically, since we don’t want to encourage people into acting reckless, so any appreciation on that front should be balanced against an appreciation for discernment. Still, the ability to discern a problem calls for a willingness to look for problems in the first place, which is to say, a willingness to question and critically examine what you’ve been presented with.

A critical intelligence is one that doesn’t accept the society and culture around us as a given, and demands explanations for it. Sometimes, when we do that, we find that things that seemed “normal” are actually incompatible with basic principles of justice.

—Nathan J. Robinson, “Why We Must Criticize Our Culture,” 2023

The way I like to think about it is this: there’s certain kinds of work that can benefit from a bit of abrasion. If you’ve ever had to really scrub something down while doing the dishes, you know that the best tool for the job is sometimes a more abrasive surface. That’s what it takes, sometimes, to get the job done. That’s no reason to get foolish and start applying steel wool to the fine china, but its inapplicability in some contexts doesn’t mean it’s applicable in none.
 

An Invitation

As part of a discerning outlook on trouble, this is what I would ask of you: not to necessarily engage every debate that crosses your path, not to put yourself through the wringer for its own sake, not to cultivate callousness, but to cultivate a degree of willingness to entertain the possibility of worthwhile trouble. Consider what that means to you, and contemplate your own philosophy on when and how to engage. Or at the very least, consider something other than the categorical exhortations for us all to disengage as much as possible.

One last piece of etymology for the road, if you’ll bear with me. Did you know that the word “agitate” shares what is probably the same etymological root as “agriculture”? The prefix ag- means to drive, to draw out, to draw forth, to push, to move. That’s why the word “agitator” is also the name for the central part of a washing machine, the part that turns and creates motion: that’s the part that troubles the water.