Breda O'Brien
Anger seems to drive our world. People were understandably and rightly angry when they were left without power or water for weeks after recent storms. However, much more toxic anger is weaponised to generate profit for cynical operators.
It has been known for a long time that engagement with online content and therefore online advertising is greater when rage is involved.
There is even a name for this phenomenon – rage-baiting. For example, Winta Zesu, originally from Ethiopia, posted satirical videos, such as returning poached eggs and salmon in a restaurant because the poached egg was beside and not on top of the salmon.
People took them seriously and posted really nasty comments. These clicks and engagement generated $150,000 in revenue for Zesu last year. The more anger she generates, the more money she makes.
Zesu seems to be a perfectly nice person despite her online posing as the most entitled young woman possible. She appears a bit bewildered by how people could possibly take her videos seriously.
Women, in particular, have been socialised to be afraid of appearing angry”
While many of us could do with reducing our consumption, it is becoming increasingly difficult to live without being immersed in the internet. Less benign people than Zesu are cynically stoking our anger to generate clicks, engagement, advertising revenue, and sometimes political capital.
Yet anger long pre-dates the internet. It is one of the more complicated emotions, often entangled in our minds with aggression.
Women, in particular, have been socialised to be afraid of appearing angry. Christians, too, have had hard time understanding how to relate to anger. Often, anger is seen as solely negative.
Yet Our Lord was angry, such as when he turned over the tables in the Temple, saying that his Father’s House had been turned into a den of thieves.
Energy
Anger is a kind of energy, which is generated when a boundary is violated. It can motivate us to change situations. We can think of the righteous anger of a Martin Luther King at the conditions of his fellow Black Americans – yet he insisted on strict pacifism. Anger should lead to change but not through harm of others.
The function of anger is to incentivise us to take action, to stand up for our rights and the rights of others.
When we lose our temper, we invariably makes things worse because we say or do things we regret”
There is a difference between rage and anger. It is possible to feel righteous anger but rage is like a red mist which descends, cutting off our rationality.
While anger can have a protective function for ourselves and others, rage is destructive. When we lose our temper, we invariably makes things worse because we say or do things we regret.
I recently came across a journal entry from a long time ago when I had small children. I had given my daughter not one, but several slaps. She came back to me, held out her arms and asked: ‘Is it all over now?’
Reading that entry, even decades later, makes me feel so much shame that I lashed out at a child in a moment of anger and so much gratitude that my daughter was so forgiving.
I don’t think I did this kind of thing very often but it reminded me how easy it is to vent anger on the wrong person at the wrong time.
In Chapter four of the Letter to the Ephesians, what Saint Paul says about anger seems at first glance to be contradictory. He tells us to ‘be angry, but sin not. Do not let the sun go down on your anger.’
Malice
But later on in the same chapter, it says’ Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.’ In one sentence we are told that is OK to be angry, and not long after, to get rid of all anger.
It is the work of a lifetime to become virtuous enough to be angry in the right way”
I think the clue is in the context. Bitterness, rage, brawling and slander are all the result of anger that is out of control. Perhaps we need to teach our children, in particular by our example, that anger is a form of energy that can be harnessed for good ends. (And when we fail to give good example, be thankful that we can always ask forgiveness and begin again.)
We should teach our girls in particular, that anger can be good, like a Mama bear protecting her cubs from predators.
We should be angry when people in rural areas receive lower priority than in Dublin after a storm but we should direct our anger towards positive action rather than at the hapless ESB man or woman who is working flat out.
Anger in itself is not bad. What we do with that anger is what matters. It is the work of a lifetime to become virtuous enough to be angry in the right way, with the right person or institution, at the right time.