#202: On Anger Right Now
Ironically, when I first heard about the protests I felt so angry that people were doing so and not following protocol; I was tied to my own mindset and opinions about the virus and how to feel and how one should behave or react. And then I thought how that notion in itself makes it clear we all experience a similar, reactive anger even if it's rooted in different fears or worries as we are all emotional beings simply craving human connection at the end of the day.. which maybe makes us not so drastically different after all? Thank you Lauren for instilling a sense of hopefulness for the future through your writing. I do believe we will all move forward in the next year with a fresh AND softer set of eyes.
- Amanda
On Anger Right Now
The other week, you may have seen protests starting to spring up in some parts of the United States. Adults and children marched despite state orders to social distance and remain at home, saying their liberty had been taken away from them because of the restrictions – sometimes drastic – the stop the spread of COVID-19. They were angry because they felt as if too much was being done at the expense of the economy and people’s well-being. I have spoken to people too recently who are angry, even filled with hatred, because they do not feel like our leaders are doing enough.
To me, anger is the emotion we feel when our sense of identity is compromised in some way. I think back to the times when I have been most angry, and they were all moments where I felt misunderstood or someone was devaluing my worth (or another’s), whether that worth was inherent or tied into something I had done/said/created.
It therefore would make sense that people are angry now. People are being told to stay home. To not open the doors to their business. To not see loved ones, perhaps loved ones that are in a lot of danger right now. People feel like they are being made promises by their leaders that are not being kept. Being given so many restrictions can feel like your agency is being stripped away, a dehumanization. I’ve certainly had moments of anger too.
Anger has the potential to be a productive emotion. In the Christian and Jewish traditions, lamenting – or expressing anger publicly – is seen as a holy spiritual practice. The term “holy anger” or “righteous anger” is used at times.
But there comes a point where anger is more about the act of being angry than what anger has the potential to lead us to. If we look at movements like Occupy Wall Street or the Yellow Vest Movement in France, we know that anger is good at mobilizing people, but not very constructive when it comes to long-term change or when people need to efficiently organize around a cause. A recent study out of Northwestern found that while anger can be something that unifies outsiders, it does little to motivate institutional insiders, or those whose partnership is needed for more transformational change. If anything, those insiders may feel anger BECAUSE those outsiders are angry – their anger conflicts and grows.
Amidst all the noise of COVID-19 coverage, the 25th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing – when 168 people died, included about 48 children – quietly came and went. But the remarks given by the current city mayor shook me when I heard them –
“Evil acts like the one that occurred behind me depend on the triumph of dehumanization, the idea, first perpetuated through words, that you’re different than me…To accept such dehumanization and to reject all the things that we share in common, the reality that we all love, we all have families, we’re all seeking virtually the same outcome, requires a remarkable amount of delusion. But we as humans have proven ourselves time and time again capable of such delusion. And we pay a terrible price, time and time again.”
I think we dehumanize people – and our anger thus becomes toxic - when we only see how they are different from us. And I have wondered if it is taking this global pandemic for us to fully see just how interdependent we are on one another. How we need one another to not just survive (i.e. social distancing) but to also flourish (i.e. children placing painted rainbows in windows) – I’m hoping we see an expansion of empathy, a growing space for compassion and forgiveness, now and on the other side of this too.