Anger: I snarl, therefore I am

Discussion Open Forum
#1

It’s snot just in the political realm that anger is is becoming THE way of expressing oneself.

Scary. What would John Lennon say?

[quote]
No wonder Americans are infatuated with anger: It is democratic. Anyone can express it, and it is one of the seven deadly sins, which means it is a universal susceptibility. So in this age that is proud of having achieved “the repeal of reticence,” anger exhibitionism is pandemic.[/quote]

[quote]
Wood notes that there is a “vagueness and elasticity of the grievances” that supposedly justify today’s almost exuberant anger. And anger is more pervasive than merely political grievances would explain. Today’s anger is a coping device for everyday life. It also is the defining attribute of an increasingly common personality type: the person who “unless he is angry, feels he is nothing at all.”

That type, infatuated with anger, uses it to express identity. Anger as an expression of selfhood is its own vindication. Wood argues, however, that as anger becomes a gas polluting the social atmosphere, it becomes not a sign of personal uniqueness but of a herd impulse.[/quote]
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co … 01589.html

So,now instead of just being sheeple, we’re ANGRY sheeple.

#2

Sometimes anger is the only appropriate response.

And I really don’t like that ‘holier than thou’ “sheeple” designation. Its insulting on a grand scale.
Not directed at you, of course.

#3

Mmm. I feel a strange sense of arousal.

#4

[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Sometimes anger is the only appropriate response.

And I really don’t like that ‘holier than thou’ “sheeple” designation. Its insulting on a grand scale.
Not directed at you, of course.[/quote]

But I think at least in the political realm TC, anger is turning a whole lotta people into mindless snarlybots. You hate us? Oh yeah? Well, we hate you back!

Why you runnin’?
'Cause you’re chasng me.
Why are you chasing me?
‘Cause you’re runnin’.

I don’t use “sheeple” lightly either, especially in politics. I just happen to think there are a whole lot of quasi-edumicated weiners out there who know little more except how to hate people who oppose them politically.

#5

Interesting. Is anger a product of the service culture we are developing into? We want a coffee, which is hugely marked up. We know it, we know it destroys forests, we know the producers of the coffee are getting nothing. We know the servers don’t get a living wage either. But we have convinced ourselves that we want it and need it.

We are also small cogs in a similar business enterprise, so we know that the profit /cost disparity is as large as it can possibly be. The customer is always pushed to the absolute limit of what they are willing to tolerate in terms of cost, quality and inconvenience to maximise this profit.

This feeling of being constantly ripped off and milked, while we do longer and longer hours (we are also customers at work; we pay with our time, which has different value depending on our intelligence, education and what others are willing to pay for our time balanced against the urgency or desirability of the service we provide) means that we feel we DESERVE it.

At the coffee shop, the service is slow and surly. The place is a bit dirty, there’s a weird smell coming from the toilets. And the coffee isn’t that great. And the sandwich you ordered comes. It’s advertised as X and there’s a beautiful picture of it in the menu. It looks like it came from the seven eleven. It’s been microwaved, even though it has salad on it. It was 100 NT, ffs! So you snarl at the waitress who agrees but can’t say so because her boss is listening. The boss also has no control over what’s on the sandwich; sandwich component and assembly instructions come from head office.

Everyone is powerless when they are a consumer. The only way out is to be so rich that you don’t buy things.

It’s one theory, anyway.

#6

[quote=“jdsmith”][quote=“TainanCowboy”]Sometimes anger is the only appropriate response.
And I really don’t like that ‘holier than thou’ “sheeple” designation. Its insulting on a grand scale.
Not directed at you, of course.[/quote]
But I think at least in the political realm TC, anger is turning a whole lotta people into mindless snarlybots. You hate us? Oh yeah? Well, we hate you back!
Why you runnin’?
'Cause you’re chasng me.
Why are you chasing me?
‘Cause you’re runnin’.
I don’t use “sheeple” lightly either, especially in politics. I just happen to think there are a whole lot of quasi-edumicated weiners out there who know little more except how to hate people who oppose them politically.[/quote]JDS -
Then you’re talking about the use of ‘anger’ rather than reasoned debate and discussion, I take it.

In that case, my answer is still yes…that is what the norm has morphed into.

The politics of the “Extreme.” Take it to the next level before your opponent does.
Yes, this is what we currently have. Volume over veracity, as it were.

Well, on the internet everybody is equal and an insult can carry more weight than a fact.

#7

You can’t have good service without someone taking pride in their work. So,how do you go about getting it? Pride that is…

I don’t think that’s true, but possibly the perception of it is true. I can choose NOT to go to a certain place to spend my money because the service/product was IMHO subpar. And I do this all the time. “Let’s not eat there. The food sucks.”

I don’t think about the rainforest when I drink my Brazilian mindbender coffee. Should I? I don’t drink Starbucks often, because 70NT for a friggin cuppa joe? Get bent.

But I’m not angry. As a consumer, I have alternatives. I can buy a bag of good stuff at a gourmet coffee shop, or even at Costco. Cheaper than SB. Or, at home anyway, since I blew up the coffee maker, I drink instant.

You could also be poor and not want anything. :slight_smile:

#8

Yes, jd, good points. Not sure if i agree with what I wrote, just playing with ideas.

The thing is, you have to buy some coffee, somewhere (go without? hmm) and that coffee is guaranteed to be the cheapest cup of shite that the company can get away with without losing customers. I’m not sure that this is always a conscious decision by the mangement, but the bottom line always exists in business. The only freedom we have as consumers is to spend our dwindling free time weighing up the tiny differences between products.

Ok, coffee is just an example. Switch it to something you really can’t (or really don’t want to) do without, such as a bank account or shoes for your children and see how much choice or power you really have.

I’m not really and angry person either, but when I am angry, it’ll usually be something dumb like that. Or being pissed off about being a small cog (low level consumer) in an international organisation (at work).

Anyway, just a few thoughts, not Buttercup’s unified theory of how consumer economics relates to emotional states. Any more people centred reasons why anger is on the rise? I don’t believe it’s because we have all just spontaneously become meaner, stupider and more selfish.

#9

Maybe it’s an across the board loss of our sense of worth.

The world is big, but small. We’re are important, yet we’re insignificant. What we do affects the world, but what industries/nations do does NOT seem to affect us.

I mean really WTF?!

My wife and I went hiking today. There’s a path along the mountains here that runs by a Budhist temple/school. On the path was a sign that read, “Eating meat causes high blood pressure and stroke.” And something along the lines of “And you shouldn’t be killing animals anyway.”

I had to laugh, as I think vegetarians just eat living beings that can’t run away.

Maybe we’re angry because people nowadays are seemingly ALWAYS trying to get us to think/behave in a way different from what we are doing at present.

Anger could be the result of a loss of personal reflection.

#10

I’m not angry near so much as disappointed, but perhaps someday I’ll learn. Anger comes and goes in waves – about every 3 months or so I snap a bit and let somebody have it for what seems (to me) to be inexcuseably unsafe or discourteous public behavior. I imagine someday I’ll give the almighty smackdown to a driver-side window the next time a cab comes up from behind and turns so close that it runs over my feet.

As to politics, I do miss the days of the early 1990s when people were saying that it was “essential” to have a third party shake things up in the U.S. – that Perot’s candidacy was needed because the Republicans and Democrats were “too similar” to tell apart. Now that we can tell them apart, I wish we could get them back to muddling along in a synched center again.

#11

aah buttercup, stay away from Buttfucks if you like good coffee. surely yuou can find a small cafe near you that’s not a chain store?

or invest in an espresso machine of your own in the office. nothing like a good grind to beat the daily grind.

and jdsmith, good point. vegetarians pick on food that can’t fight back. a good many of them believe that plants have feelings too, so if they don’t like eating meat because of the poor animals feelings, WTF are they doing eating vegetables anyway? try some bacteria soup. or perhaps some Soylent green? is today Tuesday already?

#12

The coffee wasn’t the point. I wasn’t writing about Starbucks, I was writing about a local chain. I meant that any coffee product is bad and potentially anger causing unless someone gives it to us.

#13

I suspect that a fair number would find reasons to complain about coffee that was given to them as well.

#14

I suspect that a fair number would find reasons to complain about coffee that was given to them as well.[/quote]
Instigator!
:raspberry:

#15

Aggression and anger is about American as apple pie is. :s

#16

I’m distraught. Are we so shortsighted nowadays? Do we not read any books or remember anything we saw as a child? Has our history been so sullied as to lay waste to the truth?

Look up Musket Wars, Aztec empire, Mongols, Japanese Feudalism, European Feudalism, #1 killer of 18-25 year old Australian Aborigine men before the white man came. I mean WTF, Julius Caeser anyone?

Humans have always been angry. They will always be angry. We are born that way. It’s as natural as walking. Thinking of waving an open hand as a greeting, supposedly came from showing the other guy you had no weapon ready to kill him with. This isn’t new, this isn’t abnormal, this is just humanity as it has always been.

Now what makes us progress is anger management, why are we angry and is it really worth it? Babies already know how to hit someone to get what they want.

Cheers,
Okami

#17

You know what really pisses me off, gets under my skin, makes the veins on my temples flare, has me grinding my teeth at night, fills me with a violent urge to punch a wall…

You don’t want to know.

#18

[quote=“Fox”]You know what really pisses me off, gets under my skin, makes the veins on my temples flare, has me grinding my teeth at night, fills me with a violent urge to punch a wall…

You don’t want to know.[/quote]

I do. Or maybe I don’t. I dunno, you don’t seem like a person who ever gets angry.