It’s good to feel your own rage at times
Anger is the mode of expression of our days that’s on the rise, but it takes only 90 seconds to calm down
Iwas utterly furious to read about the new initiative launched by the Met Police [in Britain] to encourage us all to be less angry. Well, OK, I wasn’t actually furious about the Take: 90 advert, which was pretty powerful. It features an apoplectic man screaming down the camera but with his words replaced by a meditative voice-over, explaining it takes only 90 seconds to calm down.
But I was angry in the sense that I’d just got off a crowded Tube, where a woman with a bulky backpack had refused to move an inch further into the carriage, meaning that I hit my head on the doors when they slid shut (at which point there was a gasp from other passengers who thought I’d been guillotined).
And I was angry because then I went to a HIIT class in my local gym, where the instructor shouted at me for not doing star jumps fast enough. HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training, but after half an hour of being berated by a man shaped like a triangle sporting overly tight leggings, I wanted to HIIT him more than anything else.
It strikes me we are all getting angrier. We live in a world where the pulsating buzz of mild fury has become the default for many of us who live in cities and have highpressure jobs.
Life moves so quickly, and the progress of technology has made us so hyper-connected, that we are able to respond more immediately than in the past. When I first started out in journalism, the only way for an irate reader to contact me over an article I had written was by letter. They would have to go to the effort of sitting down, putting pen to paper, finding the correct address, buying a stamp and walking to a postbox.
There was a built-in period of reflection, which meant the letters I received were often considered and cogently argued. Yes, I got my fair share of vituperative green-ink, but it was never overwhelming. Now, anyone with access to a laptop or smartphone can fire off a ranting Tweet the very moment the red mist descends. It’s not that I’m against the immediacy of online contact — I’m not — it’s simply that it can be done without thinking, in the heat of an irrational moment, without taking those 90 seconds to let the knee-jerk rage subside.
Anger is the mode of expression de nos jours. We’re constantly encouraged to have opinions — by Facebook, by TripAdvisor, every time we take a taxi and rate our Uber driver — and the more extreme those opinions are, the more reaction we generate.
It can get addictive. Just ask US President Donald Trump, who seems in a state of perpetual meltdown as he tweets his thoughts in a stream of capital letters and exclamation marks.
A video compilation of the football pundit Roy Keane’s angriest moments (“I want to rip his head off”) recently went viral. And as I was writing this, a story broke about two men punching each other on the M25 after one cut the other up in a traffic jam.
There aren’t that many recent statistics about how much angrier we might be getting (a fact that almost made me angry before I realised the irony), but one of the most comprehensive reports on the topic dates from 2008 and was conducted by the Mental Health Organisation. It found that almost a third of people polled had a close friend or family member who had trouble controlling their anger, while a fifth said they had ended a relationship with someone because of their partner’s anger.
Where does this leave us? I think there’s an important distinction to be made about “white noise” anger — a generalised fury expressed on impulse when triggered — and focused anger directed at something we should be annoyed about. It is perfectly right and proper for us to be angry about child soldiers or sexual slavery or the gender pay-gap, but that anger must act as fuel for change.
I also believe that women, in general, have more of an issue expressing their anger than men. This is partly because, for centuries, the idea of a rageful woman was seen as unfeminine and shrewish.
In the past, I have certainly been guilty of suppressing my anger and turning it inward. At its most harmless, this means you end up sending a series of passive aggressive texts to your partner about the fact he’s forgotten to buy any more toilet roll. But at its worst, you can find yourself pushing aside hurtful slights and sadnesses for years, until the whole careful charade implodes when you least expect it.
So maybe what the Take: 90 campaign has taught me is that, the next time I feel angry, I will give myself a minute and a half to think calm thoughts. But if after that I’m still furious, then I’ll know there’s probably a reason for it. And I’ll probably tell you to take your backpack off on a rush-hour Tube carriage.
I think there’s an important distinction to be made about “white noise” anger — a generalised fury expressed on impulse when triggered — and focused anger directed at something we should be annoyed about.
I also believe that women, in general, have more of an issue expressing their anger than men. This is partly because, for centuries, the idea of a rageful woman was seen as unfeminine and shrewish.