Our culture has a lot of knee-jerk anger, righteous angry, religious anger, and indignant anger. While anger has its place, it also can be very unproductive. Wellokaythen thinks it’s because of our news cycles and political culture which encourages people to be full of stubborn rage.
This is a comment by wellokaythen on the post “The Sensitive But Angry Man“.
I think one factor at work here is the political culture in the U.S. today, which encourages righteous indignation. The people who get the most attention are the people who are outraged, and the more people who act outraged the bigger the story is. A happy news story without anyone outraged is just not going to make the lead story. In our coverage of events, in our working lives, and in our private lives, the angry people get the most attention. A little whining just doesn’t cut it anymore. An attempt to examine pros and cons just bores everybody. Contentment just can’t hold our interest. Anger brings attention and entitlement, so why would anyone give it up?
Possibly this is because there are many of us who just can’t stand it if someone else is unhappy. Everyone needs to be happy in an ideal society. If you’re angry, that means you’re unhappy, so something is wrong, so I need to fix it. If someone is mad or offended, that means society has done something wrong to that person, and social justice must prevail. Present-day American culture gives a lot of voice to anger and outrage, all the while being afraid of it.
There are many valid reasons to be angry at the current state of affairs. That doesn’t mean all the expressions of anger are equally important. Every bit of anger has a cause, but that doesn’t mean anyone is supposed to fix “the problem.”
Want to nominate a comment of the day? Email the comment and the post it was on to email@example.com.
Photo credit: Flickr / ed100