I had a chat with a smart guy last night who thinks that we're beginning a global Depression what won't end. You might be right about Ms. Belger's tale of woe: at least it was confined to her apartment.

Watch The Good Earth on TCM sometime.

I was unaware that I had magic! :) Mostly, I get called argumentative.

I know you'll accuse me of being the little singing bird here, the Polyanna guy who thinks it's all rosy and nice, but I can't avoid mentioning that there is a good side to this. It may very well be that the intimacy here is pretend (how could it be any different? we don't even know each other's names...), and that we pretend omniscience in our Juvenal-like reactions to the mores of others--oh, how terribly wrong Ms Belger was! Or how wonderfully right--take you pick.

But this doesn't simply make ugly animals of all of us.

No, it doesn't. I agree. It makes a lot of things possible, not just virtual lynch mobs, and among the reasons for the virtual lynchings are a set of cultural attitudes about pain and misfortune that pre-date the internet considerably.

Sometimes I think we have replaced God with ourselves, almost to the point where we are considered to control things like earthquakes, hurricanes, viruses, genetics and other people's cars. As someone who lives with physical disability, I also have to live with people's assumption that I have somehow brought this on myself, or that I am so attached to it that I'm unwilling to cure myself. It's as if we no longer have any context in which we're permitted to cope with outrageous fortune. There's no such thing anymore as fortune, good or bad.

Anyway, as well as providing virtual trees and nooses, the internet also provides a place for dialogue with people we would otherwise never meet, and exposure to ways of thinking that are alien to us. I may have learned to skip MMM and Brightstar, but I also learned from their rants, albeit perhaps not what they've hoped I'd learn.

On the more positive side, conversations like the one I just had with Bigguns push me to articulate my thoughts more clearly than I might otherwise. I end up "talking" to people from all over the country as well as from different countries altogether. And I love my Facebook account because certain far-flung relatives are also on Facebook, and I can see what's going on in their lives.

But frankly, we tend to oversimplify the people we know in real life too--and reduce them to sets of simple oppositions (loser/winner, smart/stupid, empathic/indifferent, etc.). The medium here makes it much easier, of course, but it is not a new phenomenon.

No, it's not. Dividing things into categories is one of the ways in which we make sense of the world we live in. It has pitfalls, though, which is why I think it's so important that we pay attention to it.

In this case, it fascinated me how so many so-called Nice Guys seemed to glom onto a half-hearted actor and intermittently-employed surf bum who married wealth as a sort of icon of how greedy, golddigging women abuse good-hearted, innocent men. I guess I'm still asking how that happened. Was it simply because he was male? Because his wife, who appears to have been the primary support of the couple all along, was agonizing about money and marriage? Was it because her family was rich? Was it because to this day, women are presumed to have a kind of inadequate moral agency, an inability to act out of reason or learn from mistakes, making her thoughts ultimately more important than her actions?

I guess how we think and how we categorize interests me. I'm also wary of the possibility of becoming desensitized, and am still learning what is an isn't appropriate in an environment in which there are no real-time consequences for being a full-on bitch.

the 2 big deal-breakers of any marriage.

Take it from someone--alongside many, MANY other men AND women--who know the truth of that statement.

My wife and I have been married almost 32 years. I became disabled as a complication of surgery for a work injury, and my income went in half. One of my sons was so worried he put out a little box labeled "Poor Box," on the sidewalk until we found it. A girlfriend of my wife who had been married five times, told her to just dump me and find another man. She didn't and she refused to give me permission when I asked her permission to commit suicide, since my job had become my self image. This was about 20 years ago.

Because we stayed together and kept loving each other, and I stayed alive, I was there for her when she herself became occupationally disabled years later when after 30 year as an elementary art teacher (not able to bend over elementary student desks anymore, etc.) and had to take a disability retirement two years before being able to take regular retirement.

Among my four siblings and her four siblings, we have had by far the longest marriage and no divorce history. We both have observed one rule. Never say in anger what you could say a day later after thinking about it, and always be kind to each other no matter what other people are saying, doing or thinking. Marriage is just another stage of lifetime courtship. Intense, physical romance ages, but not love and kindness. Never do anything you wouldn't tell your spouse about.

Finally recognize each person needs some time to themselves. You can occasionally drag your spouse places they don't want to go, but only about to the extent you go with them to places you don't want to go. My wife enjoys Museum visits, and I like window shopping for electronics. So, we mostly, but not always do those things separately. When there is a special exhibit, my wife goes and spends hours at the museum, and then I come to walk through the exhibit. She lets me express my opinions about each item, which are usually I like it or I don't like it, but she needs time to note the brushwork, evaluate the color and perspective, etc. We reverse that role at electronics and office stores where I like to window shop to stay informed about new products. When she has to come with me to an electronics store, unless it is for something we both will use, she finds an unused PC and plays Free Cell or looks at appliances and DVD's.

Each marriage makes it own accommodations, and ideally comes up before marriage with a lifetime way to handle family finances. It is always wise to set aside some money for personal interests and purchases the other partner thinks are unnecessary or frivolous, so neither of you feels restricted. That simple step avoids a lot of arguing over money and purchases.

The lesson is that if you are loving and understanding when a spouse looks for work or becomes disabled, that spouse will be there for you in your own time of need. Always be kind to each other. That is even more important than romance or love. Ask anyone who is divorced if their ex-spouse was kind to them. Actions like infidelity are first and foremost not kind because you know your spouse will be hurt if they find out. Hurting a partner emotionally or physically is not kind.