By Mark Goddard
It is often said that loneliness and stress blight modern life, but so
too does anger. Indeed, anger might almost be seen as an inevitable
consequence of the other two – especially stress. Modern life can at
times be overwhelming.
The origins of anger
Dangerous as anger can be, it is also natural, even necessary, and has
been hard-wired into the brain by evolution. Most obviously, anger
helped people survive. As soon as this survival was threatened, anger
was triggered, along with violent defensive action. More surprisingly,
perhaps, anger also helped early humans to live together in groups,
acting as a kind of warning signal in the form of threatening facial
expressions, clenched fists, reddening cheeks, and so on. This let
others know that their behavior was unacceptable, that they were
invading someone’s personal space, and that they risked physical
retaliation.
The nature of anger
At first glance, anger seems relatively simple. Ask the man in the
street to define it and he will probably say “it’s what happens when
people annoy you.” Anger can take many forms and has numerous different
triggers. What infuriates one person may pass by another unnoticed. One
individual can make her way through a bustling crowd or sit next to a
screaming child, and seem perfectly relaxed, but if someone questions
her political beliefs or disrupts her plans, she will fly into an
uncontrollable rage.
For some, anger is triggered more by petty annoyances than by major
catastrophes. They will be calm and methodical during a bereavement, for
example, or when travelling to the hospital for an operation, but as a
soon as the neighbor’s car alarm goes off or the printer runs out of
ink, they explode. For others, it is threats to their money, property,
status, or time that act as the major catalyst. They may let the petty
irritations go, but if their car is scratched or their authority
questioned, they become enraged. Finally, some will laugh off both petty
irritations and threats to their money or status. For them,
rule-breaking is the most infuriating thing. This is especially true of
those with obsessive compulsive or autistic traits: people who like and
need things to be regular and ordered. Such rules can be more like
vague, unspoken agreements. For example, someone may be sensitive about
their acne or low income. Friends understand this, so the subject is
never raised. One evening, after a few drinks, someone makes a harmless
remark and is shocked to see their friend explode with rage. It wasn’t
the fact that his low income or bad skin had been mentioned, nor even
that he felt humiliated; his anger was sparked because someone had
broken the rules.
Modern life
Stress causes anger. If there is one thing everyone can agree on, it’s
how stressful modern life can be. For a start, people often live jammed
into the corner of an overcrowded city or town. Even getting to work can
trigger enormous amounts of stress and anger. You wouldn’t be the first
person to arrive at the office fuming because you have sat in endless
traffic or couldn’t get a seat on the train. Work itself is often
stressful (a recent survey conducted in the UK found that over 50
percent of those questioned had physically attacked their computer!).
Until very recently, most people worked on the land. Of course, such
work was often hard, brutal, exhausting, and degrading — but it was
rarely stressful. There was the added advantage that most people were on
roughly similar incomes. If you were born into a mining or agricultural
community, you “knew your place” and accepted this. Today, society is
vastly more complex, with numerous levels of wealth and status.
Unfortunately, this has bred an enormous amount of resentment. People
constantly feel their status, and thus value or self-worth, is
threatened by the promotion or success of their neighbor. In a small,
late-19th-century town, where everyone worked in the local factory, this
was not a problem. The British philosopher Alain de Botton has labeled
this “status anxiety” and describes it as a deeply corrosive feature of
modern life.
Fear is another major cause of anger. Imagine an ordinary working man
living in a small Canadian town in 1900. He would have owned neither a
television nor a radio. If he could read, he might have taken a paper
once a week, or perhaps borrowed a neighbor’s. He would have read about
tragedies and disasters, of course, but they would have been reported in
small print, without color photos, and in a matter-of-fact way. If that
man lived in the same town today, he would be exposed to 24-hour-news
pumping out gloom and fear about everything from overpopulation and
famine in Africa to terrorist threats and economic recession at home.
Different media outlets are in fierce competition. The only way to grab
people’s attention is by triggering fear. Human beings have evolved to
seek out danger. Bad or threatening news holds our attention. Any
reporter will tell you that good news doesn’t sell.
In a sense, human beings are victims of their own success. As standards
of living rise, so do expectations. People are hard-wired to feel anger
when their survival is threatened. Now that famine, drought, animal
attacks, and assaults from other tribes are no longer a danger, this
anger has been transferred to the mundane. Most people expect a certain
standard of living and level of success. When that is denied to them,
their evolutionary anger kicks in.
Solutions
Though many yearn to do so, no one can turn back the clock. Of course,
some drop out of the so-called “rat race” entirely, moving to the
quietest, most isolated place they can find and accepting a lower
standard of living. For most, this is unrealistic. The only real
solution is to raise self-awareness. Anger is a blind, instinctive
thing, but it begins with your thoughts and habitual reactions. Buy a
notepad and spend a few weeks noting down any moments of anger —
especially note the trigger. Gradually, you will develop greater
self-awareness, learning to identify the things that spark it. Next, you
must try and understand why these things provoke such an extreme
response. Finally, get into the habit of re-appraising situations. If a
work colleague is snappy, for example, try and find out why. Maybe she
is simply being rude, in which case your anger is justified. You may
also discover that her sister has just been diagnosed with cancer or
that her partner has walked out on her and the children.
Of course, modern life brings great stresses and provocations, but it
should never be forgotten that life is, in many respects, better than in
the past. The average person is able to live out their life with far
greater dignity, comfort, and health than ever before. That thought
alone should help reduce negativity, stress, and anger!
Source: healthguidance.org