SCREAMING MONKEYS

With Mars lurking about for the past few weeks, my mind has turned to the examination of anger, its causes and its consequences. This has been an abstract study, I’m happy to say, since I didn’t actually seem to experience any of it myself. This, for me, is a good thing.

Many years ago, I had a very volatile temper. I would snap, sometimes violently, at just about anything. There are some people who have a difficult time “getting in touch” with their anger – not me. In fact, for many years, I think that it is just about the only emotion I was able to fully experience.

Anger made me feel strong, powerful, in control. It was, in a sense, addictive because of this. The world can be a frightening place – who wouldn’t want to feel immune to that?

In a way, I think I’m lucky. Because anger was such a huge factor in my life, there was no way that I was able to just ignore it or continue to live with it unexamined. Perhaps if it had been less dramatic, less disruptive, less dangerous, less obvious, I would have gone my whole life without really looking at it. But it wasn’t – it was right there in my face threatening to send me to jail, ruin my life, destroy my relationships, so I had to look at it long and hard enough to really figure out what it was.

And sure – I had “reasons” to be angry – who doesn’t? There are very few people who make it through life without reasons for anger. In this time and place, those reasons abound. If all I wanted were justifications for my anger, they were there in abundance without really looking too deeply. But excuses for behavior weren’t what I went looking for – I wanted to understand what it was, no longer content with just knowing where it came from.

According to some, anger, attachment and ignorance are the causes of all the suffering in the world, and after thinking about this for a few years, I would have to agree. But for now, I’ll stick with anger…

Anger seems to originate in fear, pretty much all of the time, and hate is just anger that doesn’t go away. Whether it is fear of bodily harm, idea of self, a threat to an internalized ideology, loss of freedom or resources, or being taken advantage of financially when splitting up the bill from lunch, it all stems from fear. Given the choice between feeling anger or fear, most people would choose anger. (See above.) And, if fear is experienced, it will often turn into anger in retrospect as a way to counteract the feelings of helplessness often associated with fear. (How dare you frighten me like that!)

There are so many things to be afraid of in the world that it is no wonder anger has run rampant the way that it has… Anger creates violence, violence creates fear, fear creates anger, and so on, and so on, and so on. It is a tight and vicious cycle, emotions begetting actions begetting emotions, until nearly everyone in the world is afraid, angry, and ready to jump toward violence to fend off the never-ending threats.

Of course, this cycle is self-perpetuating – the more anger there is the more anger is created. It makes me wonder who or what, exactly, profits from this…

Some argue that, as human animals, anger is an evolutionary biological by-product which is largely involuntary. I, as a person who has historically experienced a lot of anger, disagree with this. In the animal kingdom, I have a difficult time believing that a tiger feels “anger” at the antelope – it is more a matter of those eating and those eaten. The tiger doesn’t check out the antelopes and then pick the one who is making patronizing faces in its direction, i.e. the choice of lunch is not based upon an emotional perception of threat to the tiger’s ego.

In other instances where animals fight, unlike humans, it is rarely to the death. When mating or territorial rights are at stake, animals will fight until one “dominates,” not until one is laying on the ground dead. (Sure, accidents happen on occasion, but it is quite rare.) The only instances of “fight to the death” scenarios which do occur in nature happen in extreme famine situations, such as when a predator threatens or kills the young of another predator – in other words, do not mess with mama polar bear.

Only humans, with their species specific sense of righteousness, will get up a good head of anger and then kill another of their own species for emotional reasons. This “righteousness,” I think, is experienced to some degree by any one who feels angry. It is the sense that this particular feeling of anger is justified, that it is the correct and only response to a situation, which allows the person to experience it in the first place. Certainly, anyone in my position would feel angry – it is my right to feel this way! Rarely do people, at least in the moment of anger, think, oh, wait, I’m really being an irrational fool right now. Maybe I should back off…

But really, what does anger do? In what way is it of benefit to anyone?

For some, there is the belief that anger is a means to achieve safety, i.e. if I am attacked I must get angry in order to defend myself. In my experience, this is definitely not the case. In fact, it is much easier to defend one’s self from a calm state of mind rather than from an irrational one. Options for action are much clearer when the mind is not clouded by anger. When one is angry, counter-attack may be the only option considered when there may be several other options available if the mind was clear enough to see them.

This same dynamic, in less physically threatening situations, generalizes to encompass more abstract means of attaining safety. For some, it is believed that not becoming angry leads to a state of ongoing victimization, whether that be physical, psychological or ideological in nature. When one perceives “attacks” from others, society, etc., it may seem that a state of anger is the only way to “stand up” to this. Again, this is not really the case.

It is also a common belief that the only way to counteract anger from another is with more anger. The dichotomous flip side of this would be to react with fear or cowering of some kind. Of course, this assumes that in all “threatening” situations fight or flight are the only two options. If some one is angry at me, I must be angry at them, right?

I see most anger-based conflict sort of like a tennis game. One person lobs anger at another (though no one will ever see themselves as having sent the first volley), the other sees the “anger ball” coming toward them, so they whack it back in the direction from which it came. This little game can go on and on, perhaps until one player gets bored and walks away, or perhaps until both players start hitting each other with their rackets until one or the other falls down on the court.

The other option, and one which is actually easier and requires less effort, is to simply step out of the way and let the ball bounce past. Just because someone serves a ball onto your side of the court doesn’t mean that you have to agree to play the game and hit it back. By nature, it takes at least two to play this game. If only one is lobbing balls, the other is free to wander off of the court and go do something more interesting.

But, for many, when anger is thrown at them, they feel a near compulsive desire to “defend” themselves by throwing it back. It is, again, that sense of righteousness which sets in and makes the anger justifiable, and therefor nearly irresistible. However, with a little practice, it is much easier to just watch the ball harmlessly bounce in the corner and sit there rather then to expend the energy to play the game. Because, of course, as soon as the anger is thrown back, regardless of whatever feelings of righteousness one may have, one is engaging in the very type of behavior which “caused” their anger in the first place.

Which is another thing I’ve observed… There seems to be a common belief that anger is caused by external factors. Meaning, that if one is angry, there is almost always an outside “source” for this anger. Anger, as with all emotions, arises from within the person experiencing it. It can be triggered, perceived or attributed to almost anything, but the emotion itself always comes from within the person experiencing the emotion. No one can “make” another person angry – it is impossible to force any emotion upon another.

Experiencing and deconstructing my own anger has definitely made it much easier for me to deal with anger in other people. I don’t even really view anger as an emotion in itself – rather, it is a smoke screen for other feelings, namely fear. I don’t need to know what the fear is, where it came from, if it just arose now or has been within the person for fifty years – all I need to know is that I’m dealing with someone who is experiencing fear. The magnitude of the anger is the magnitude of the fear. How or why should I be angry at a fearful person? Really, that is the last thing that they need.

I had a wonderful experience a few months ago of being screamed at by a bus driver. She was upset because I had pointed out (at the request of the people sitting in honking cars) that her bus was parked in such a way as to block entrance to a business. I let her know, then went back to pumping my gas. On her way back to the bus and the line of beeping cars, she went out of her way to come over to me and start yelling at me. I had no reaction. I went about my business, and at a point where she paused to draw another breath, I very calmly pointed out to her that I didn’t care one way or the other where she parked her bus – I was merely imparting the information I had been asked to impart. Rather than continuing to yell, she sighed, glanced at the line of cars, smiled, and went to move her bus.

This was a good experience for me for a few reasons. First of all, it demonstrated to me that I really had gotten over the tennis game dynamic of anger. Ten years ago, I would have taken a situation like that as an excuse to vent some of the pent up anger that was always inside of me somewhere. Secondly, it was no effort whatsoever. I didn’t have to “struggle” to not become angry – there wasn’t any anger inside of me, so there wasn’t any to come out. Thirdly, because I stayed as calm as I did, a total stranger was able to get over her perception of feeling criticized, accused or threatened and let go of her own anger, rather than spend the rest of the day in a negative mood. As for the line of people in the beeping cars… well, their anger was up to them to deal with.

Anger can manifest if a variety of ways which lead to varying degrees of discomfort and / or pain for the one experiencing it and for those nearby. Anger manifested in the body leads to violence – it is typified by mugging, assault, rape, war and various forms of bar room brawling. This form of anger is often viewed as the “worst” in that the damage done is physical in nature and can effect a wide range of people. It is also the most likely to perpetuate the cycle of anger and fear in that physical violence can lead to long-term mutilation of body and psyche, not to mention the potential outcome of death.

Anger manifested in the voice results in all kinds of abusive speech, insults, yelling, name-calling, arguments, and the like. Again, it effects the angry person as well as the people around him or her, thus playing a part in the anger / fear / anger cycle, though no one has ever died from words. Unlike physical rage, verbal anger is often not perceived as violent, though it still has the ability to contribute to the cycle of anger perpetuation. Though, in the case of angry words, the amount of damage done is largely reliant upon the choice of the receiver of the words to internalize and react to them.

Anger, however, most often manifests in the mind. Though the most prevalent, it is also the most insidious in that it often goes unnoticed. It is also where the other two manifestations of anger originate – one will not express anger with the body or voice if it was not initially present in the mind. (Thus, one cannot “cause” anger in another.) But, because it is such a “quiet” and internal thing, it often lurks in the mind, boiling, picking up steam, growing, in a relatively undisturbed state. It is only when it bursts out from the mind and toward others that it is given any attention, but the mind is where anger is created and lives.

For every ounce of anger expressed in the external world, there are a hundred pounds left unexpressed. That is the real irony of anger – the person made the most miserable by it is the person who experiences it. The outward manifestations are just puss leaking out of the wound, not the abscess itself. The wound is very, very painful, and sometimes that pain gets onto others, but the majority of it is experienced by the person with the wound. There is no reason to get angry at a wounded and fearful person – rather, they are deserving of compassion and as much understanding as one’s own ego will allow in that moment.

These days, most of the things which used to trigger anger in me triggers nothing at all – there are no buttons to push, so not much pushes my buttons. I have also realized that fear won’t kill me – in fact, it’s much less unpleasant and passes much more quickly than anger. Fear isn’t fun, whereas anger can have that sort of addictive quality of falsely perceived power, but at least fear is real. And, the good news is that fear can be transcended, but only once it is recognized as such. Once it is gone, instead of just buried beneath anger, it is gone for good.

So, as Mars scoots on past on its trajectory, I happily wave good-bye to it and the little geyser bursts of anger that I’ve seen pop up in the last couple of months in the world at large. I’m not certain how others perceive of the mythical figure of Mars, but I see him as a loud, boisterous bully cowering underneath all of the bravado. Any god of war is a coward in my book – anger is not a manifestation of fearlessness, but rather its antithesis. If Mars was here right now, I’d make him a glass of warm milk, give him a hug, and tell him that the world really isn’t as scary and threatening as he thinks it is. In fact, it is only believing such which makes it so.