The Pleasure of Anger
why are we so addicted to our anger?
Q. Why do we derive pleasure in anger?
A. Because anger brings the certitude of righteousness.
The pleasure of anger - the gnawing attraction which makes one return again and again to its theme - lies, I believe, in the fact that one feels entirely righteous oneself only when one is angry. Then the other person is pure black, and you are pure white. But in real life sanity always returns to break the dream. In fiction you can put absolutely all the right, with no snags or reservations, on the side of the hero (with whom you identify yourself) and all the wrong on the side of the villain. You thus revel in unearned self-righteousness, which would be vicious even if it were earned.
Haven't you noticed how people with a fixed hatred, say, of Germans or Bolshevists, resent anything which is pleaded in extenuation, however small, of their supposed crimes. The enemy must be un-redeemed black. While all the time one does nothing and enjoys the feeling of perfect superiority over the faults one is never tempted to commit:
“Compound for sins we are inclined to By damning those we have no mind to.”1
I suppose that when one hears a tale of hideous cruelty anger is quite the wrong reaction, and merely wastes the energy that ought to go in a different direction: perhaps merely dulls the conscience wh., if it were awake, would ask us ‘Well? What are you doing about it? How much of your life have you spent in really combatting this? In helping to produce social conditions in which these sort of things will not occur!?’
— C.S Lewis, in a letter to Arthur Greeves, 17 January 19312
Reader, how many of us have become addicted to our anger? How many of us have come to rely upon a steady diet of rage and outrage to sustain us in these trying times of hardship and suffering and agonising deconstruction? We wrap ourselves in rage, gleeful in our righteous certitude, “while all the time one does nothing and enjoys the feeling of perfect superiority over the faults one is never tempted to commit.” It feels soothing like a warm blanket, doesn’t it, reader?
Yes, the Holy Trinity of our anger-rage-outrage can feel like a warm blanket when we wrap ourselves in it. In the words of Brian Zahnd, “don’t let the devil steal all your joy and turn you into a jaded cynic who can see nothing in the world but misery.”
We know all the best drug dealers from which to get the best fix, we doom scroll on Xwitter, looking for that perfect emotional and cognitive crack rock. We seek out our favourite flavour of anger-rage-outrage. I remember in my crackhead days that I had my favourite dealers who consistently delivered quality crack. These days social media echo chambers and independent media provide the richest source of rage-crack for those who subsist on mind-numbing (out)rage and anger to survive. Like that consistently reliable drug dealer in the DTES hood, we can rest assured that, through rage-baiting online echo chambers, we will find our favourite strain of our drug of choice. Aside from Xwitter, rightwing-biased independent media functions as a fabulous source of emotional Holy Trinity-crack.
How do you become an anger drug dealer in these times?
You craft the most inflammatory take, the hotter the better. You choose the most narrow and outrageous interpretation of the facts of the matter. No extenuation allowed, because, reader, extenuation ist streng verboten. We will make no room in our cognition for benefit of the doubt. We will crawl into our righteous certitude and dig our heels in and refuse to budge. The enemy must be un-redeemed black.
We will light our hair on fire every chance we get. We will drink in the most outrageous and rageful interpretations of the news. We will decant it. We will serve it to our guests and followers for tea time. We will shut our minds and seal our hearts off to any benefit of the doubt—block any context that could extenuate. We will make rage our god. We will remain numb in our worship of the most inflammatory and narrow-minded interpretations of reality. We will bow down to our anger. We will bathe our neural circuitry in the soothing juices of (out)rage. We will drown our neurons in adrenaline and cortisol, in vasopressin and oxytocin. We will revel in the neural aggression. Anger, our god. Rage, our god. Outrage, our god. We elevate and honour and embody that new Holy Trinity: Father rage, Son anger, and the Holy Ghost outrage.
Reader, scroll up to look at that wheel at the beginning of this essay. Anger typically arises in response to an uncomfortable emotion or felt sense. Helplessness or powerlessness, fear, anxiety, overwhelm, confusion — amongst others. Often we resort to anger and rage in response to the injustice of “hideous cruelty”. Scroll up and read the excerpt from C.S. Lewis. He sees an anger response to “hideous cruelty” as “quite the wrong reaction”, and “merely [a] waste [of] energy,” a thing that “perhaps merely dulls the conscience.” If “… awake, our conscience … would ask us ‘Well? What are you doing about it?’”
Anger seems easy, in its effortlessness. Rage feels pleasurable—like a snort of cocaine or a pipeful of crack. In the end, what do they accomplish? Nothing, they accomplish nothing. Certainly anger, rage, and outrage do nothing to relieve the cruelty that gave birth to them.
So, next time you feel yourself reach for the emotional Holy Trinity-crack pipe, pause and ask if that’s really what you think will make a difference. Will your rageful self indulgence and cynicism help you produce the social conditions that will relieve the hideous cruelty or injustice which carried you to the oasis of anger?
I’ll leave you with some more Hudibras by Samuel Butler.
In proper terms, such as men smatter When they throw out, and miss the matter. For his Religion, it was fit To match his learning and his wit; ‘Twas Presbyterian true blue; For he was of that stubborn crew Of errant saints, whom all men grant To be the true Church Militant; Such as do build their faith upon The holy text of pike and gun; Decide all controversies by Infallible artillery; And prove their doctrine orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks; Call fire and sword and desolation, A godly thorough reformation, Which always must be carried And still be doing, never done; As if religion were intended For nothing else but to be mended. A sect, whose chief devotion lies In odd perverse antipathies; In falling out with that or this, And finding somewhat still amiss; More peevish, cross, and splenetick, Than dog distract, or monkey sick. That with more care keep holy-day The wrong, than others the right way; Compound for sins they are inclin'd to, By damning those they have no mind to: Still so perverse and opposite, As if they worshipp'd God for spite.3
Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963. 1979. They stand together : the letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, 1914-1963. New York: McMillan Publishing Company. pp. 403-4.
Reminds me of the somewhat popular phrase, "rage is all the rage these days". Remember hearing it some 50 years ago, and Google's Gemini fills in the blanks with other more recent examples.
And the C.S. Lewis quote -- 1931 -- shows the theme, and human failing goes back much further.
Humans have supposedly been touched with the finger of God, but clearly there were some design flaws, or He -- She, or It -- had to work with shoddy material to begin with. So to speak. 🙂
This resonates.