Anger Mismanagement

I've been deeply disturbed lately by the violent outbreaks at the town hall meetings about health care reform. And not just because I think universal healthcare is long overdue in America.

I'm not the only person to detect a powerful, toxic undercurrent of rage in America. Anger is a natural reaction when one is promised something, and that promise is not delivered upon. It seems to me that for at least one generation, if not two, the American populace as a whole - 300 million strong - has been sustained by vague promises of more... that life is only going to get better, for everybody, all the time.

I won't delve into who is responsible for that promise - we can all share the blame. The media, certainly, politicians, economists. But I think that all of us are complicit. We have chosen to believe in "more," as an ideal, as a promise - that more will make us happy, and that it is our due.

So this anger is out there, and in my opinion it is, to a great extent, appropriate - but what scares me is, I think that we, as a society, are less capable of processing anger in a healthy way than perhaps any culture in the history of the world.

Anger has been a major ingredient in every major sociopolitical change in human history - the French Revolution, the Declaration of Independence... but it's also been one of the root causes of every atrocity imaginable.

One of the main objectives of this documentary, one of my principal intentions, is a discussion of healthy anger - how men can feel and express that emotion with integrity, and without violence. Because it is possible, and I've seen it done.

But I think to a lot of people out there, there's very little distinction between anger and violence - either physical or emotional attack. This cannot be good for us as a society.

I think that many people have internalized taboos about anger - that it has no place in a corporate workplace, or in a happy household. That it should be contained and avoided at all costs. So, we've repressed it, to the point that we're not even aware that it's there, bubbling away deep beneath the surface. We feel powerless to combat the injustices of our jobs or the economy, we feel wronged by our cell service provider or our health insurer, or the guy who cut in front of us in traffic - and we don't know what to do with those feelings.

I want people - even white male conservatives - to feel empowered to express their anger. They have the right to be angry - everybody has the right to be angry, it's a basic human emotion.

But, based on my observation of our sociopolitical culture in recent years, I'm deeply afraid that our collective anger will be manipulated by the same people who have bought our complacent consumerism with the idea of "more" for the last fifty years, rather than encouraging us to use our anger to motivate positive change in our own lives and in our world.

For more historical context about the town hall violence - not very optimistic, I warn you - I recommend the lefty blog Orcinus.