After all these years, I still don’t get anger.
Don’t misread the last word of that sentence. I wish I could say that I don’t get angry, and I’m working toward that goal. But I’m here to say that I don’t understand the special place that anger itself has been granted among all other human emotions.
To use the recent parlance, why is this still a thing? We consider ourselves civilized above all other animals: we are (relatively) discriminating about what we consume and where we excrete; we engage in commerce, recognizing that division of labor makes life more efficient and productive for everyone; we pass laws and amend them as society advances. But unlike lawlessness, unfair trading, and urinating in the swimming pool, we give anger a pass, even at times defending it by labeling it “justified,” or more frequently “righteous.”
This is not blind acceptance. Unlike, say, joy or sadness, we sometimes work to “manage” anger. An ancient culture included anger (aka “wrath” or “ire”) as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. But alone among the seven, anger is routinely blamed on other people. If you were to attribute your gluttony or your lust or your sloth to someone else’s actions, the message is that your own character is weak. In contrast, to say “You make me mad!” implies not just blamelessness but outright victimhood, accusing someone else of imposing on you an undesirable condition. Anger is not only the red-hot emotion, it’s also conveniently coated in Teflon.
What’s more, anger can be used as a sort of bioweapon, deliberately sent to infect others for the purpose of harm. “I’m just doing that to piss him off,” is the reason given for some acts of aggression. (As if reason is actually involved.) Sometimes the action is more passive-aggressive: have you ever noticed how many political-themed postings bear a provocative headline that focuses not on facts, but on adverse reaction? The template is usually something like this: “[Someone we agree with] made this statement or took that action, and [someone we don’t agree with] is fuming mad about it.” It’s not enough to contradict someone’s opposing views; it seems equally important to incite anger in the opposition, because it hurts them and therefore pleases us. This also implies that once someone “makes” you angry, there is damn little you can do about it. It’s the raging white elephant that you are obligated to accept. Or is it?
My first epiphany in this matter came over forty years ago via that great 1970s art form, a made-for-TV movie. It was called The Silence, and starred Richard Thomas in the rather un-John Boy role of a military cadet who is unjustly accused of violating an institutional honor code, and receives the unofficial (but tradition-bound) hazing of internal exile, calculated to drive him toward resigning in disgrace, thus not tainting his class with his shame. The young man’s family hired an attorney to take the academy and its shadowy machinations to court. I don’t remember exactly how the movie ended, but it’s easy to guess. Remember, this was the time when the previous decade’s rebellion had filtered its way into network television as the respectable effort to Strike Back Against the System. Dragnet was no longer in production, and the starring characters in the law dramas were defense attorneys, all fighting the good fight against a corrupt, or at least unfeeling, tangle of rules.
At one point in the film, the attorney asks Thomas’ character, “Aren’t you angry about this?” The response: “I don’t get angry.”
Full stop. From this point onward, no further events in the story are retained in my memory. But the implication of that one terse statement oiled my philosophical gears for decades to come. Anger is a choice. Anger can be refused.
Now, this is in distinction from a catchphrase shared by all too many revenge stories: “We don’t get mad; we get even.” Rejecting anger has little or nothing to do with righting a perceived wrong. It’s about not giving someone else the power to inflict an unreasoning and destructive emotion into your own psyche. It’s about maintaining a level of emotional integrity.
The meaning of that last sentence was especially welcome to me. I was in my seemingly endless adolescence, suffering the slings and arrows (and occasional pleasures) of a baffling array of emotions, all taking hold of me without warning and dragging me into psychological parts unknown. So, the notion that I could control anger was especially appealing at a time when I could barely control the pitch of my voice. Why wouldn’t it be? Anger had nothing positive to offer. The Incredible Hulk notwithstanding, anger doesn’t create heroes. Angry people break things. Angry people make statements they later regret. Angry people burn bridges (figuratively, but who knows?). Angry people are unreasonable, and reject reason in others. And angry people are simply unpleasant to be around, leaving a puddle of awkwardness and hurt feelings behind them. No one would choose anger if they didn’t have to. And apparently they didn’t have to.
I sat on this revelation for a long time. As with any discovery, the answers were soon outnumbered by new questions. If I knew about this, why did it seem that no one else did? If anger is a choice, why would anyone choose it? Is it just easier not to fight it? (That seemed likely.) Is it a bad habit, or even an addiction? If the latter is the case, then I must be cautious in approaching it in others. Even in my barely decade-and-a-half of life experience, I already knew that some people’s struggles were far more difficult than meets the eye. For example, I knew enough not to proclaim that quitting smoking is as simple as “Step One: spit the thing out. Step Two: there is no Step Two.” And I knew that anger is a more primal, more prevalent enemy than any drug addiction.
Also, anger has its defenders. It was anger with the Crown, some say, that led to the American Revolution. Anger with the prevailing social injustice sowed the seeds of the Civil Rights movement, women’s rights, LGBT rights. Hell, anger even prompted people to complain to the landlord about cockroach infestation. Those are all good results, right?
Good results, yes. But I contend that anger, at best, pushed the people along in the direction they were already headed. At best it is a catalyst, and not a reliable one. Anger is a force, but it’s not a vector force. (Pardon the high school physics reference.) Anger should never be asked to steer; anger pushes whichever way it pleases. Anger is not the car, but the JATO rocket tied to the car in the urban legend. Anger is fire, which is useful only when strictly controlled. Uncontrolled anger is potentially hellish.
Do I get angry? I wish I didn’t, but it does happen. And in those times I do my best to keep that anger to myself, even to the point of seclusion until I regain control. Yes, it can be difficult, but isn’t that part of the price of civilization? We don’t vomit in the presence of others, if we can help it, so why would we display anger? To do so is unkind, it brings discomfort to others. That said, I find it takes the utmost diplomacy sometimes when I’m around other people’s anger. To this day I still strongly fight the urge to say something along the lines of, “I’m sorry you choose to be so angry right now. How about if I leave you alone so that you can restore yourself to reason, and then we’ll see about solving whatever problem you have?” I’m not naive; I know that the result would be exactly the opposite of what I want. And yet, it’s precisely what I would hope someone would say to me. Seriously. By the same token, I outright reject the notion of “not going to bed angry.” Why carry out an angry exchange while the body grows more tired with each hour, when instead you can pause it, go to sleep, and discuss the matter next day when everyone is calmer?
No doubt some of you are now realizing that I was completely sincere in the opening statement of this essay.
You might wonder just how well I’m doing in trying to live up to this ideal. The answer is, I’ve had some success so far. When I was teaching, more than once I overheard students remark that “Mr. V never gets angry.” And recently, someone expressed gratitude for my not getting angry with them in a particular situation, adding that, if the roles were reversed, that person would certainly be angry with me. I couldn’t ask for a better compliment, I suppose, or at least I couldn’t expect one.
Some people are able to vent their anger, and then quickly return to normal. Some people seem to hold their anger for years, probably at the expense of relationships and their own happiness, if not their own health. For me, anger is a burden that carries no benefit, and as currency it can buy me nothing I wish to obtain. It’s the emotional equivalent of the appendix, whose usefulness is gone, leaving only potential harm. It’s a glowing, red-hot enigma. Someday I might see it in a different light, but until then I’m doing my best to keep it out of my life.
#anger
