Thinking Out LoudWe have a collective anger management problem. After the attack on Helen Haines, our national conversation about hostility – verbal, physical, and political – points to this difficult truth.
While social anger is multi-faceted, our Federal Police Commissioner and ASIO Director have linked the anger on our streets with the anger on our screens. The digital age is the perfect storm. A lack of accountability for what we say. A lack of proximity to . And an online algorithmic environment that rewards extreme emotion.
When online outrage boils offline, we find ourselves needing signs reminding us not to be abusive on buses, on trains, and in supermarkets – an embarrassing indicator that public civility is on the ropes.
Christian author Frederick Buechner wrote that of all the sins “anger is possibly the most fun…to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come…in many ways it is a feast fit for a king.”
Anger sounds like an easy dopamine hit. But then comes Buechner’s punchline: “The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”
Anger destroys its source and its object. That’s why the Bible equates it with ‘giving the devil a foothold’ and calls on people to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.
Psychologists suggest that the three most destructive anger-propelling narratives are: seeing ourselves as victims; seeing those with whom we disagree as villains; and seeing ourselves as helpless. Avoiding these narratives – online and offline – won’t be easy. But a senseless attack on a sitting MP can be more than a wake-up call. We can make it a turning point. We must. Or the skeleton at the feast will be us.
This Thinking Out Loud was first published on Facebook.