Righteous Rage—High and Mighty or High as a Kite?
As so often happens when I spend time on the Internet, I’m in a lather. But this time, I think my worked-up-ed-ness is worth exploring because in this days and age of 24-7 news coverage and real-time feelings-fests, righteous anger is the most easily scored drug out there. Man, it feels good to be angry. Mostly, when you know you’re right. Hell, especially when you know you’re right!
I’m reminded of a quote from Randal in the movie Clerks…
: And I hope it feels good.
: You hope *what* feels good?
: I hope it feels so good to be right. There’s nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others, is there?
(got this snippet here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109445/quotes)
This need to feel oh-so-superior comes out repeatedly in authors-behaving-badly discussions, message boards, twitter, etc. Heck, I’m pretty sure Fox News makes it’s living off outrage. But that’s okay, because if you’re liberal and need to feel outraged all day long you can turn to MSNBC. Half the headlines nowadays involve the word “SHOCKING” though I’m fairly sure we’ve all lost our ability to be shocked long ago.
Of course, being angry is only so effective when you’re doing it alone. To get really furious, you need like-minded people to jump into the mosh pit and party with you. We’ve all seen the formation and disbandment of Internet mobs. Hell, I’m pretty sure I accidentally started one on Twitter a while back when I allowed my rage-fest at some blogger about whom I did not give a shit anyway to funnel into my twitter stream. Next thing I knew, there was a letter-writing campaign against this person. And honestly, *I* was only pissed off for maybe 15 minutes.
(If you want to read more about Internet mobs, this is a great article and will really get you thinking: http://annerallen.blogspot.com/2013/05/gangs-of-new-media-twitchforks-hive.html)
Also, it’s been proven that drama and anger are addicting.
Here’s a quote from the above-linked article:
When you participate in drama your sympathetic nervous system increases: blood pressure, fuel availability by metabolizing fat, adrenaline, oxygen circulation to the vital organs, blood clotting to minimize the loss of blood if you’re wounded, pupil size and peripheral vision (improves vision), while decreasing fuel storage (decreases insulin activity to store glucose, for example), digestion and salivation. Recent studies show that when this occurs, the brain produces dopamine (in the substania nigra) which makes this process more pleasant and rewarding, thereby making humans more likely to participate in it.
So, yeah—getting pissed off feels gooooooood. Which is why there is a multi-million dollar entertainment industry set up to give us all the anger we can handle whenever we feel like it. Cool, huh?
But I did have another point about this…
My personal righteous rage of this morning is about a Christian, authoritarian child-rearing book that has been cited as the cause in the deaths of at least three children. I don’t want to mention it here because to even type the name of it would overload my nervous system with so much fury I would likely pound through my keyboard like the Incredible Hunk.
Basically, this book advocates starting to whip your babies before they even learn to walk, and inflicting pain, hardship, hunger and even thirst on them in order to totally break their will and make them mindlessly obedient.
Now—what does this have to do with Righteous Rage, you may ask! Well, I’ll tell you…
I recall reading in Josephine Myles’ book Screwing the System that the Dom in the story really need the sub to call him Sir (or whatever. I can’t remember exactly) because it took a measure of “oomph” to really hit another person. And the Dom couldn’t get into that headspace without a layer of authority and personal distance. In other words, the Dom needed to be able to work himself into a lather. A controlled, finely tuned lather, perhaps. But a lather nonetheless.
I’ve hit precisely four people in my life. Three of them were men. One I was dating, one was trying to molest me, and one was some guy I knew who was just annoying the shit out of me. And I have to say—in each and every instance I was in A LATHER. A hissing, spitting, hysterical fit. It’s no co-incidence that all three of those instances happened for me between the ages of 16 and 21. Ages when I didn’t have self-control, and when I didn’t understand that blind rage was something I actually had control over.
Back then, I thought it someone else was WRONG it was fine if I enacted hurt upon them.
Okay—in the instance of the potential date-rapist, maybe I was right to sock him. But I’m sure if I were older I would have navigated my life so as to not have ended up on hittin’ terms with him in the first place.
What does this have to do with The Most Evil Book of All Time? Well, I posit that as much as the authors claim they are teaching their disciples not to “hit in anger” they are training them to simply live in a constant state of righteous fury, where they can overcome even the most basic human desire to care for and nurture their own children.
Most people do not want to hit babies. Certainly not for the kind of minor infractions the books’ authors suggest. Most people, if not under the influence of mad amounts of dopamine, feel guilty as shit if they hit their kid and their kid starts crying.
Most rational, sane adults realize that their anger is something to be controlled and faced and hopefully minimized. And most parents realize that their children end up being the unwitting recipients of parents’ anger even if the child has done nothing wrong. (Heck, even good parents take shit out on their kids. We all do. It’s not “right” but it happens.)
The problem is, we live in an era of glorification of anger. Plenty of people in politics seems to believe that they should get their way simply by showing they are more angry than the other side. As if somehow rational thought and the rule of the majority are secondary to the pure, exalted joy of white-hot rage.
We need to stop this.
Just because anger feels good does NOT means it’s good for you. Just because it feels good to spank your kids does not mean it’s the right thing to do.
The author of The Most Evil Book of All Time commented once how his small granddaughter laughs as she spanks her babydoll for being naughty. (Well—my toddlers shoved their babydolls under their shirts to pretend to nurse them, but to each their own!) He goes further to say that houses where parents discipline their kids so ruthlessly are “filled with laughter.”
Well, I can tell him why everyone is laughing—it’s NERVOUS LAUGHTER YOU DIPSHIT!!!! According to Wikipedia, “Nervous laughter is a physical reaction to stress, tension, confusion, or anxiety. Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran states “We have nervous laughter because we want to make ourselves think what horrible thing we encountered isn’t really as horrible as it appears…”
Le sigh. People are idiots.
Anyhoo—anger. It’s the drug of our times. It’s peddled by churches, rap music, Sarah Palin, listserves, and even parenting manuals, and It. Must. Stop.
There is nothing “righteous” about anger. Feeling pissed does not make you a good person. It just makes you more likely to hit or hurt someone. Quite possibly someone you love.
Not sure what else to say on this topic, so I leave you with the immortal words of Billy Joel…
There’s a place in the world for the angry young man
With his working class ties and his radical plans
He refuses to bend, he refuses to crawl,
He’s always at home with his back to the wall.
And he’s proud of his scars and the battles he’s lost,
He struggles and bleeds as he hangs on the cross-
And he likes to be known as the angry young man.
Give a moment or two to the angry young man,
With his foot in his mouth and his heart in his hand.
He’s been stabbed in the back, he’s been misunderstood,
It’s a comfort to know his intentions are good.
He sits in a room with a lock on the door,
With his maps and his medals laid out on the floor
And he likes to be known as the angry young man.
I believe I’ve passed the age of consciousness & righteous rage
I found that just surviving was a noble fight.
I once believed in causes too, I had my pointless point of view,
Life went on no matter who was wrong or right, ohhhhh
And there’s always a place for the angry young man,
With his fist in the air and his head in the sand.
And he’s never been able to learn from mistakes,
He can’t understand why his heart always breaks.
His honor is pure and his courage as well,
He’s fair and he’s true and he’s boring as hell!
And he’ll go to the grave as an angry old man.
WANT TO CHANNEL YOUR RAGE RIGHT NOW?? –> Sign the petition to get this book removed from Amazon!
The post Righteous Rage—High and Mighty or High as a Kite? appeared first on .
