The Age of Anger and
Resentment - Part one
by
Steven Stosny, PhD © 2004
They called the time of my early
childhood the "Age of Anxiety." It was an eponym drawn from W. H.
Auden’s 1947 poem, that inspired Leonard Bernstein’s haunting
symphony and ballet. Scientists churned out impersonal forms of
destruction measured in "megatons." We crouched under school desks,
our heads covered with bony arms and hidden between our knees.
(Someone thought that would save us in the event of nuclear attack.)
Our parents built bomb shelters and stocked them with canned goods.
Endless industrial strikes and lockouts made them wonder whether
they could keep their new pre-fab houses. We began to worry that the
planet might not support the greatest population explosion in the
history of humankind. We feared communism, demagogues, something
called the "yellow peril," polio, genetic mutation, and teenage
gangs wielding chains and switch blade knives. Anxiety rose from
threats to security that were broad and great, faceless, formless,
indifferent, and impersonal, hovering just outside the flickering
gray lights of our new TV sets.
No society, family, or individual can long endure powerless feelings
like anxiety and the guilt, inadequacy, and alienation that go with
it. All powerless conditions must eventually yield to some form of
self-empowerment, whether overt or subtle, predominately physical,
intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, or spiritual. The Age of
Anxiety, following a developmental path common in families, gave way
to the rebelliousness of the sixties, the self-iscovery cults of
the seventies, and the narcissism of the eighties. Now, as we close
out the century that has brought more radical social change than any
in human history, we have realized our most insidious form of
self-empowerment, in the Age of Anger and Resentment.
Now our perceived threats to security have form and shape. They are
not indifferent and anonymous, but malevolent (at least while we’re
angry at them) and highly personal. Unfair, inconsiderate, and
incompetent, they cut us off, make us wait in traffic jams,
overcharge us, and lie to us. They disrespect us, betray us, take
our designer jackets and tennis shoes, laugh at us, reject us, act
superior, and try in countless ways to hassle, harass, dominate, or
control us. In the Age of Anger and Resentment, we have converted
anxiety, guilt, insignificance, and inadequacy into blame and raised
it to the level of sacrament.
Evidence of the Age of Anger and Resentment rises from every area of
society, beyond the often cited fact that we are the most assaultive,
litigious, punitive, and abusive of cultures. It seems a safe bet
that the emotions you witness most frequently, both in professional
and personal lives, are some of the many forms of anger, resentment,
irritability, impatience, chilliness, ill-humor, crankiness,
"attitude," etc. More words describe or express the many forms of
anger than for any other emotional experience. Anger and resentment
dominate our emotional discourse, prompting a client to asses his
marriage with disturbing accuracy: "We don’t really want to
communicate, we just want to complain."
Researchers say that anger is the predominant emotion experienced by
parents. We inflict more physical punishment on children than any
other nation. We see frequent divorce and custody battles in which
parents play out extended revenge motives, tearing their children to
shreds in the process. Research now suggests that bitter custody
disputes cause more harmful stress to children than death of a
parent.
The popular culture abounds with the sights and sounds of anger and
resentment. "Gangsta rap" has built a movement on the confusion of
anger with power. Even love songs seem to have some measure of
dominance or retribution. A whole marketing generation, called, "X,"
identifies with its resentment. Children see thousands of murders
and other violent acts on TV before reaching school age. Movies
contain just enough sex to titillate the central nervous system for
maximal effect of the immediately ensuing violent scenes—the sex
focuses attention to "set us up" for the violence. The dramatic
media have transformed the Age of Anxiety's "strong, silent" and
"brooding" protagonists into virulent models of emotional
dysregulation. In a recent episode of NYPD Blue, Jimmy Smits, its
most sympathetic character, pinned an assistant district attorney to
the wall with the threat of serious violence for making a tactless
remark. The writers probably intended to dramatize the depth of the
police officer's conviction. Instead it modeled anger and violence
at the experience of vulnerable emotion.
Such manifestations of the Age of Anger and Resentment, that come to
one with little effort, form just the tip of the iceberg. The mode
of self-empowerment that most often occurs with anger is alcohol and
drug use. Like anger, substance abuse provides an immediate feeling
of power, confidence, and wholeness to mitigate feelings of doubt,
powerlessness, shame, and inadequacy. Alcohol and drugs relieve the
"reactaholism" that anger creates. The angry and resentful tend to
numb their pain and doubt with alcohol and drugs.
Family integrity, community welfare, and social causes become
marginal in the Age of Anger and Resentment. We strive to relieve
feelings of powerlessness, not right social wrongs. The impulse for
revenge and punishment inherent in anger degenerates the nobility of
social goals into personal power trip and, eventually, into the
petty and vindictive. Doing what’s right soon recedes into
self-righteousness, in-fighting, and power struggles.
The Road to National and Personal Ruin
Begins with Blame
The formula for most of the prolonged negative experience in
societies, families, and individuals: feelings
of powerlessness (e.g., anxiety, distress, pain, guilt, shame) +
Blame = Anger/Resentment.
Powerless feelings raise grave doubts about the adequacy,
worthiness, and potency of the self, the family, or the national
identity. Blame (the primary defense of the toddler), serves as an
externalizer of powerless feelings—they are the result of someone
else’s doing--thus temporarily relieving the self, family, or nation
of shame and doubt. Blaming someone for painful experience unleashes
the survival-based fight or flight response of anger, the most
contagious of all emotions. Experiments show that merely being
around a mildly resentful person stimulates a similar response in
others (even when not a target of the resentment or consciously
aware of it). The motorist who cut you off this morning was probably
cut off a few minutes earlier by someone else. Anger and aggressive
driving pass car by car down the road, just as a rude remark can
spread thinly veiled hostility throughout the workplace like
bacteria in a laboratory culture. Without refined skill in
self-regulation, we are all at the mercy of anger-junkies, i.e.,
those who use the amphetamine and analgesic effects of anger for
energy and pain-relief.
The well-documented reciprocity of anger and resentment can do no
less than shape the demands we place on family and national leaders.
The "Republican revolution" of 1994 had to founder on the very tide
of resentment it had ridden to power. was just as predictable as the
family power struggles that can only increase in virulence or
passive-aggressive manipulation, when anger is used consistently to
relieve feelings of powerlessness. One reason is that anger makes us
ascribe the worst intentions (insensitivity, self-obsession,
recklessness, dishonesty, or gross incompetence) to perceived
offenders, no matter how much we might otherwise esteem, care about,
or love them. Anger gives us permission to dismiss, disregard,
loathe, control, manipulate, intimidate, or aggress without regard
to the overall nurturing of the relationship or good of the country.
Of course, the quick-fix of blame comes at the cost of genuine
power. When we blame our bad feelings on our spouses, children,
neighbors, or government, we become powerless over them. Our own
emotions become the enemy. For they do not seem our own at all, but
the products of inconsiderate, unfair, or incompetent others. A
family or nation that blames its insecurities on certain members or
segments of the society flails ever more powerlessly in the storm of
those insecurities.
Blame directed at entirely external threats, such as neighbors,
school officials or foreign powers, creates a seductive kind of
familial and national unity, so long as the threat remains palpable.
To keep it palpable, we must extend anger beyond the momentary
impulse for revenge. We demonize the "enemy," with terms such as
Japs, Krauts, Gooks, Savages, Devils, Animals, Infidels, Communists,
Sinners, Gangsters, Extremists, Baby Killers, Batterers, Abusers,
Delinquents, Liars, Cheats, Slobs, Incompetents, Hypocrites, etc.
We occasionally try to use the "common enemy" effect to mobilize
"attacks" on relational, social, and economic problems. Witness the
various "wars" on drugs, poverty, crime, and inflation and in titles
of otherwise benign programs like "Fighting for Your Relationship."
The unavoidable failure of such efforts' springs from the inability
to extract blame from anger. Sustained anger at a common enemy
requires demonization of persons, not abstract communication or
social problems. "Common enemy" motivation leads us to punish those
who take drugs, commit crimes, cause poverty and inflation and who
seemingly fail to cooperate in the family’s mobilization against
"the problem." We build more prisons for the easiest scapegoats,
cast derision on the more individualistic family members, and loose
interest when we can’t figure out who’s to blame for the more
complicated circumstances. Anger-related forms of self-empowerment
can only lead to the simplest and least appropriate solutions to
complex problems. We see this plainly in the "common enemy" tactics
of some well-meaning advocacy and special interest groups, who seem
oblivious to the well-being of the country-at-large. Advocacy groups
motivated by anger and resentment tend to multiply like rabbits, as
disagreements within the organizations splinter them into smaller
bodies competing for media and legislative attention. The public
response to resentful advocates is the typical reaction to any
chorus of blame: a mixture of irritated resistance and disgusted
dismissal. (Unfortunately, noble goals are often dismissed along
with the tactics of resentful advocates.) In contrast, passion,
conviction, compassion, and cooperation (all of which dissipate in
the fog of blame), build enduring coalitions for the common good in
families and in society-at-large. They do so by inspiring members to
find viable solutions to problems, not merely to empower themselves
with anger and resentment.
Copyright 2004 Steven
Stosny, PhD., all rights reserved
