On Civilization and Its Discontented

I’ve been thinking a lot about the role that emotions (especially anger) plays in our lives and in the affairs of the world. As I watch the posturings of TV pundits or stumble across the shrill invectives from the radio talk show screeds, I am stunned at the flood of emotions pouring out of them and the corresponding rage and hysteria reflected in the faces and incoherent ramblings of their followers. Anger has a place in the panorama of our emotional lives, but I fear it’s only purpose these days is to rip apart the fabric of our society.

This morning I had a dream in which a woman was saying terrible things about me to other people. I felt an enormous, engulfing rage. I screamed at her, telling her she was evil. I even threatened to hit her “upside the head” with a folding chair. When I woke up, I wondered what that was all about. I opened my journal, wrote down the dream, and made a list of things I was angry about -- my mother’s Alzheimer’s, my ex-husband’s various slights, a job promotion I didn’t get, the tea partiers, to name a few.

Then I realized that I couldn’t say I was honestly “angry” about those things because anger is an emotion with distinct physical symptoms, and I was feeling none of those symptoms. For me anger feels like a hammer banging around inside my head, my chest feels as if something is squeezing my lungs, and my heart feels like a roaring tiger in a cage. My eyes sharpen with the proverbial daggers, and my voice cuts like a sword. Of course, these are only metaphors, approximations of what anger feels like, but everyone who has felt it knows that anger is something physical with visible manifestations. If someone were to say to you in a calm voice with a smile on her face, “I’m angry about what you did,” you’d laugh dismissively. That isn’t anger.

So if I’m not feeling any symptoms, I can’t honestly say I’m angry about something. I can say that I “get angry” about these things. But I’m not walking around feeling angry all the time. Anger is an emotion, a chemical reaction, that arises in certain situations. We can also bring it on by obsessing about those situations, nursing old slights, or fuming about the wrongs of the world.

Sometimes we use anger as a tool to get other people to behave a certain way. My ex-husband used to say (rather regularly I’m afraid): “That pisses me off.” The plosive “p” and spitting “s” of pisses effectively conveyed his interior physical state. I would try not to do things that would provoke that statement because his anger created unpleasant sensations within me of guilt and worry. Let me not pretend to innocence here or victimization. I have used anger as a way to bludgeon others to my will as well. With the exception of a few saints, we all do it. Yet most of us realize at some point that anger’s usefulness is limited. In fact, anger and its accompanying tantrum is more destructive than helpful in most situations. We look foolish, we drive people away, we do things that later we wish we hadn’t. Sometimes we hurt or kill innocent people and damage or even destroy our own communities.

In our less civilized days anger must have been extremely important to our survival. Anger is the “fight” part of our “fight or flight” response. Nature programmed us with two options in the face of danger -- anger or fear. Fear tells us to run, but sometimes running away from a life-threatening situation is the wrong thing to do. Sometimes to survive we need to pick up a stick and slam it upside our assailant’s head.

The problem comes when the perceived threat is not really a threat. Nature gave us anger for life or death situations when an immediate response is required. But we have learned to use it for the most minor infractions. Someone is going too slow in the fast lane so we snarl and pound our car horns and figuratively shoot them with our fingers. This anger gives us a little charge of superiority, which is no more real than the supposed threat.

You don’t have to watch your television or scroll through your Facebook status updates for long before you see someone exhibiting signs of rage. Because we are communal animals, we often “catch” it. We may feel that person is attacking us or we may feel that whatever is threatening that person also threatens us.

This threat or perceived danger often has no basis in reality. Our lives are not in danger. Even our way of living is rarely affected. As a friend of mine noted when we were marveling over a recent public display of fear and resentment, “These are people who have never missed a meal.” Our feelings, which feel so real to us, can be manufactured or manipulated by someone who stands to gain from the blind anger of others.

That’s the thing about anger. It’s a blind beast. For good reason. When our forebears were being attacked by another tribe, they needed to be able to face the threat fearlessly -- with a certain blindness as to the consequences. Often, however, that very blindness keeps us from recognizing the factual evidence that tells us that the outrage du jour is not a serious threat. The adrenaline in our system says, “yes, yes, yes, the threat is real, kill it.” So we dance around in our anger like puppets and blindly begin destroying whatever we can lay our hands on.

And even when the threat is real. We can choose to overcome it without resorting to rage. We are more than the chemical cocktail stirring around in our bloodstream. We are also rational beings. We do not have to react from our lowest instincts. Or if we do react, we can ask ourselves what is really behind the reaction. It’s easy for me to see someone behaving angrily and to get angry in return. The challenge is not to get hooked into their anger. The challenge is to stay focused on factual evidence. The challenge is to choose love instead of anger.

Interestingly enough, love is a rational choice. Genuine love of others builds community and does not destroy it. If the community is healthy, then we will be healthy. Love is not blind. Love chooses to look beyond the faults and foibles and fears of others and see the truth. Love is fearless.

I am trying to figure out how to answer anger with love. I’m not quite there yet, but I know that’s where I want to be. I want my message to the angry people around me to be: there is nothing to be afraid of. We have problems, yes, and we can solve them if together we look at them rationally. It’s easier than you think.