In the “Physical Response to the Non-Physical Aggression” Thread, there was a phrase that caught my eye.boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=515010
“There’s a lot of free floating anger around.”
My response was, “You got that right.”
Now I’m wondering why?
Why this anger? People are killing each other over the dumbest little things. Yet our lives today are better than they’ve ever been in history, and show all the potential, regardless of some economic hiccups, of getting even better with advances in medicine and technology and such. Racial tension is on the downturn. Marriage rights for gays is being seriously discussed for the first time in history. As a woman, I can do whatever the hell I want within legality. Food is cheap and plentiful. Things are great.
Yet the majority at large seems to be looking for a fight, or sizzling away inside while wearing a happy face outside, or absolutely certain they’ve been cheated in life somehow, and by god, nobody’s going to get that parking space but me! Hey!
You stole my space, and then flip me off? I’ll take this gun and kill you motherfucker!!!
Why? Were we raised to expect more out of life and now are disappointed? Are we constantly told to assert ourselves or else we’ll be wusses? Are we stressed and overtired from our jobs and joblessness, and the angst that comes from thinking too much about that next paycheck and how to get it, so we feel resentful that we’re missing out on life’s pleasures? There’s too much to do and not enough time to do it in? And if we do find time to breathe, are we anxious about feeling empty inside because the beauty of life doesn’t appear instantly?
I guess I’ve rambled a little too much here, and now see? I have to start working. I’m no better than a slave here, and the fuckers I work for are assholes and my head hurts and this always sucks…(grumble grumble grumble)
Various aspects of this could be debated for a long time, but the bottom line is that morality has changed. Back in ye olden days, people viewed anger as a sin, thus giving them motivation to decrease it, and to avoid expressing it publicly when they did experience it. This approach was widely supported throughout society, and developed by educating children on the downside of anger unleashed. (Think The Iliad for example.) With the collapse of traditional morality and the creation of ‘anything goes’ morality, people have no reason to resist anger, and consequently they don’t. Children, in particular, learn nothing in school about the management of anger. (Or any other emotion, for that matter.) Consequently, people are now unleashing mindless anger right and left. (Political pun intended.)
Not sure “things are great” as much as the OP would have it.
Certainly the US enjoys a lot of prosperity. However, in the last decade or so we saw a distinct growing of the divide between the haves and the have-nots. The growth the country experienced was not experienced by the vast majority of the population. In short, the very rich got very richer and everyone else, at best, held in place or slid backwards.
IIRC the Gen-X generation is the first expected to NOT do better than the previous generations. Then when the shit really hits the fan in the latest economic crisis the rich STILL getting colossally richer while everyone else are distinctly going backwards, and the rich are getting richer at the expense of those going backwards, people get angry.
And that is just the US (and other Western industrialized countries I suppose). We forget that the vast majority of the population of the world lives under considerably worse conditions. If a given population feels they are moving forward, that their kids will have a better life than their parents, and the trend is upwards people tend to be more content. But when they see the “haves” (Western countries in general and the US in particular) living in luxury and they feel (rightly and wrongly) that it comes at their expense they get cheesed off. Add that in some countries things like women’s rights are backsliding and they are worse off (Afghanistan just passed a law that basically makes it legal for a husband to rape his wife).
Societies work best when everyone feels they are sharing in the good stuff or more simply phrased, a strong and large middle class. When the future looks more bleak than the present and the divide between rich and poor grow anger and problems ensue.
Care to expand on this? I think “gay rights” (using that in a broad, generic sense and as a stand in for other such expansions in rights) is an increase in morality of the country. When we decide to stop discriminating that is a good thing, morality is better.
I think that our society, mired in capitalism and its concomitant values as it is, promotes competition to an unwise degree, causing almost everyone (who isn’t actively fighting the underlying conditioning) to feel that yes, being one car ahead on the way to work (or having the parking spot 10 feet closer to the door to the grocery) actually is, or may be, worth someone’s life and/or health.
Add the constant driving, texting, Ipod-ing, Internet-ing, and that fact that because of these things people are socially interacting with strangers less and less, (by this I mean in person, in conversation, where you might get to see another as kinda like you) only increases the tendency to regard others as non-persons, or at least as obstacles to one’s progress.
Actually back in ye olden days people indulged in casual violence at a rate that would make a citizen of a modern western democracy vomit in terror. And Achillies was the hero of the Illiad. Readers looked up to him, repulsive as his actions seem today.
Free-floating anger is a part of the human condition. It always has been, and If anyone asserts that it’s worse today than earlier in history I’d like to see some evidence, not just assertions that everything was great until those damn hippies messed things up with their long hair and rock music.
Obviously the above is a general statement. It seems plausible that in poor economic times people are under stresses that make them lash out more.
Nothing seriously astonishes me as much as the sheer amount of “the 60s and liberalism began the complete decline of Western civilization” I see from otherwise capable-as-passing-for-sane people…you’d think I’d be immune from astonishment after the first couple, but still…
We have a winner, and thank you for the Simpsons reference.
I totally agree. People have a lot of material possessions and things (in some countries. Tell it to Somalia if you assume that’s how it is everyplace.), but in a lot of ways, emotionally we’re pretty much hairless apes and we get angry and scared about the same kind of things, and react in the same kinds of ways. We keep ourselves in check a lot of the time, but once in a while people snap. It’s unrealistic - actually it’s completely ridiculous - to blame that on entitlement or the gays. I don’t mean to totally dismiss social factors or the economy, but I think the above is the bulk of the problem.
I’d like a cite that people in Homer’s day were less angry and/or violent than they are today.
As to the OP, frankly, I think that we will always have a need to show and exercise dominance. If I can’t be alpha male at work, then maybe being an asshole on the road will make me feel more important or in control.
I think there’s certainly an argument to be made that, relative to the status quo, these days there are very few ways a man (or woman) can stake his claim to territory, or command respect/obedience from others.
I haven’t personally seen much of the anger you’re describing. Maybe that’s partly because I don’t live in a big city. I’ve heard that overcrowding leads to increased aggression, in animals and humans, and that may be a factor in the anger you observe. (That’s only one of several factors, though; others have already been mentioned in this thread.)
Think for a second, Einst…Aristotle. Do you think the Greeks would have *needed *morality tales about how releasing one’s anger is wrong and can in some cases lead to becoming a bitch to the gods and having to fetch their damn apples if people didn’t release theirs back then ?
Oh bullcrap. Going postal is nothing new, and is certainly frowned upon in modern society, as it was back then. The “anything goes morality” you talk about is in your head. It doesn’t exist.