The Downside Of Always Using Anger

Downside of Always Using Anger

John Paul Derryberry

There is nothing like the rush of anger—the adrenaline pumping through your system as you right this wrong of your life. The feeling you have of clarity within your moments of fear to lash out, show your vicious teeth, and inform the world you mean business. It feels powerful, it feels like control over an uncomfortable situation, and it has the appearance of problem-solving. There is a reason so many, if the mythical force from the Star War movies did exist, would be tempted by it.  Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering is how Yoda explained it all those years ago. 

The problem of basing solutions on fear and anger is our inability to process information during those moments.  If a black man with his hood up scares you, your brain starts telling your body to send blood to the parts of your body that scream, you're in danger. Do that enough and that fear leads to racism, all over an article of clothing and skin pigment. Racism is anger and hate, no matter what the racist person says it is, no matter if they don't spell out the n-word but just apply it. 

The best example is when anybody tweets about the suburbs being overrun by lawless thugs. It's pure anger at protests that scare them. Since we can't control the demonstrations, we lash out in anger. We don't understand, so we are angry. We want it to go away, so we are mad. We tweet into the void to gain control instead of doing the work needed to calm the situation down and produce the change that is necessary to include everyone in the American dream. It feels like something, but it really is just spinning in circles. Just like anger is never about the moment it arose in you. It's always about something else, some unmet need in your life. 

The downside of anger is eventually viewing everything through this prism. It is looking at someone you disagree with as attacking you. It is seeing someone who points out a false narrative with facts in your arguments as an agent of the devil. It rots from the inside out, where you no longer think about what's in your best interest but about how to inflict pain on your neighbors. It's about revenge. It's about changing the rules so you are always right, hoping that one day, if you win enough, you won't be angry anymore.  But that's not the way anger works. It is never enough. There is always another slight to be avenged, another naysayer to be destroyed. Until you look around one day and realize that the world you tried to build through your anger is the world you were trying to avoid to begin with.