Moving Beyond Anger
The collective unconscious unleashed by giving most of the world a megaphone is an angry adolescent. We are seeped in the kind of angst usually reserved for punk kids smoking cigarettes waiting outside the all-ages venue. Our culture is so perpetually pissed off that furious displays of righteous anger don't feel adequate to capture the distress of the moment.
I used to subscribe to the idea that anger was the energy for change, and drove it into every aspect of my psyche. Some of it was post-adolescent affect, trying to embody punk rock with the kind of idiocy someone with more taste than sense usually does. I also found that it was what worked. If you were too sad, fuck it get angry, and break shit. Every opportunity I could, I pushed through with a healthy dose of “fuck you.”
That didn't last long. I was burnt out by my mid-twenties, my cortisol receptors fried, and I was drunk and smashing up bits of my life just because I couldn't express any other emotion, but fuck it. All the rest of that vulnerability was still there, just pressed down into a snarling ball that lashed out like a cornered cat. I spent some time sober, meditating, and went back to college. This isn’t a prescription; it’s just what worked to get me out of my cycle.
I still get mad. I yell in traffic, and I make fun of the idiots at work, I’m not saying anger doesn't have its place. It's the petty indulgence in spite and assuming it's a productive force. I don't drink until I don’t feel feelings, and I spend the night in when that's the impulse. I generally assume that moving my life forward involves effort and planning, and not spite and improvisation.
When I look around the culture, I see plenty of people mistaking a well-timed Twitter dunk with making a difference. We are facing a mixture of intractable and frightened old people clutching their last bit of cultural relevance while spitting bile, chaos monkeys flirting with burning down the planet for the lulz, and people so mind mumblingly pointless the only thing they can take pride in is where their great grandparents fucked. If we don't fight smarter and keep assuming a smart-assed remark and righteous indignation are going to get the job done, the seas are going to swallow us all.
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