American Anger

Listening to an interview the other day with an American psychologist who had moved to Mexico, she said two things that I've heard (or read) other people say about getting outside of American culture: life was noticeably slower, and she realized she was harboring a lot of anger she didn't know she had. A psychologist who didn't know she had so much anger...only in America, I guess.

Unfortunately, these people never say what they're angry about.

Regardless, there are a few thoughts. First, let's separate anger from hatred. Hatred is an enculturated loathing that we have the choice to nurture or lay aside. Anger is very different. In our caveman side it has two functions: as a natural reaction to someone entering our space uninvited (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, financial, social, etc), or when our wants or needs aren't fulfilled. In other words, when we're caught off guard or frustrated. I have a whole lecture on the difference between wants and needs, and how confusing them leads to all kinds of unnecessary grief, but won't go into it here.

Are Americans harboring so much unacknowledged and unexpressed anger? Anger, if ignored, doesn't go away. It builds and builds until a human turns into a volcano. Or finds some way of leaking off the hot energy, either through hostility, challenges, or socially acceptable actions (would we have ever heard of Martin Luther King, Jr had it not been for his anger for what had happened to his people in our nation?) (and illustrating the point that anger and violence aren't the same thing; anger is a feeling, violence is a chosen action).

What could we be so angry about? Are we so threatened? With our hands in the tills of two thirds of the world's nations, with the most advanced and powerful military, with the ability to go to every new ruler or president or prime minister of any nation on earth and say 'Comply or die', how can we doubt the power we possess? Are our needs so frustrated? With less than a fifth of the world's population we use more than forty percent of the world's resources. The only thing I can imagine is that we have become so conditioned by marketing that we believe we don't have enough and that we're not secure enough and believe it without thought.

I'd love to spend time with these people who realize they're so angry. I'd love to find out what they're so angry about. Maybe we could do something about it, but then the whole world of capitalistic marketing might collapse and we'd find that there is no reason for us to go to war. What are we without those things?

In a separate thought, in the last two weeks a coworker has been challenging me to ping pong every day. She's as competitive as I am, and occasionally wins. But it's brought home something to me: as much as I've figured out about human nature, as much as I've overcome unhealthy stuff within myself, as much as I've come to be in control of myself, I'm still intimidated by a beautiful woman. Her repeated bending to pick up the ball gives me space to observe and notice silent thirst, and today nearly undid me by saying, in the heat of sweaty battle, that she should take off her shirt. I'm not often speechless. She can play the psych game, too. Common sense tells me to not date a coworker, her boyfriend is probably bigger than me (I'm not a fighter, anyway), and she's half my age. But desire refuses to listen to logic. So my ping pong game, fueled by frustrated energy channeled into the game, is getting pretty damned good.