Feeding the Beast (7.16.25)

Plenty of room, at the Hotel California.

Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash

I spent a lot of my adult life carrying anger.

It’s not like I was an office screamer, or a road rager, or one of those surly, bitter, explosive types. But something simmered beneath the surface, and occasionally, it would come to a boil. Like most other people, my anger had a mechanical dimension, with predictable triggers producing predictable responses. In my case, these responses included shutting down, becoming emotionally unavailable, acting out in some passive aggressive way, or taking an unreasonable position on a matter. However, I was fortunate to always have good people around me. Rather than stoking my anger, they listened to me and gave me the space to calm down, level-set, and chart a better path forward.

When Covid came, the game shifted. Rather than operating autonomously in our individual spaces, our family was squashed into close proximity, three of us working/studying remotely while Mrs. Deeply Boring sought to be the glue holding us together. The result was a compression effect that blocked off the normal channels to dissipate negative energy. Spending hours on Zoom, I didn’t have the benefit of a trip to the water cooler with a trusted friend to gain perspective; nor could I observe how others I trust handled tricky situations (always a useful reference point for whether you can do better). Whatever it was that was below the surface now simmered at a higher intensity, and our locked down world did not always afford the space I needed to find equilibrium. I could no longer keep running away from my anger; I would have to confront it.

Photo by Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez on Unsplash

I’m not sure how often you dwell on the topic of anger, but I think about it a lot. At first blush, it’s easy to brush it off as just another natural feeling. We feel angry when we have been disrespected, when a friend or loved one is mistreated, or when we observe injustice. This is expected, even appropriate. But over the past fifteen years, the world has experienced higher rates of negative emotion, including worry and anger, according to the Gallup Global Emotions Report: the percentage of survey respondents feeling a negative emotion in the immediately preceding 24 hour period rose from 23% in 2007 to 33% in 2023.

Analyzing all the reasons why the world has become angrier is beyond the scope of today’s essay. However, one phenomenon of particular concern is the proliferation, and profound impact, of digital rage-stoking. Decades ago, we would spend the evening at dinner with friends and occasionally get wound up talking about something. But then dessert would come, or we would have to get to the movie theater on time, and we would move on. Today, having 24/7 web access on a mobile device means we can get sucked into the doom-scrolling rabbit hole at any time, from the moment we wake to the second we sleep. None of the following should surprise you: that negative headlines draw more attention than positive ones, that rage-baiting (a.k.a. rage-farming) is a real business model; and that online and social media revenue is threatening to eclipse traditional media. Consequently, everyone is jumping on the outrage bandwagon, and we are only too happy to cheer them on.

Photo by KARTIK GADA on Unsplash

We are feeding an insatiable beast, and the most important question is “who is the beast”?

Digital rage-stoking has accelerated a transformation, from a world in which anger had space to work itself out, to one in which anger is a focal point, perhaps the focal point, of our existence. Like my experience during Covid, the entire world is experiencing what seems to be an inescapable “anger compression effect”. Of course, all the usual sources of anger are still there (personal affronts, pain caused to loved ones, societal injustice). And there seem to be new reasons for anger every day (wars, elections, incompetent officials, policies we disagree with, layoffs). All this anger produces angry people (office jerks, school bullies, bad cops, brake-checkers, and so on). Whether the world is actually worse today than before is debatable (I’m pretty sure there were office jerks in Ancient Rome: just ask Julius Caesar). But so long as there are strong incentives to fan the rage-stream, X, Truth Social and Bluesky (pick your poison) are simply going to force feed us more of the world’s badness than ever before.

Photo by Gilles Lambert on Unsplash

Of course, we all recognize that this hockey stick inflection in the number of anger triggers we are daily exposed to, coupled with shrinking space in which to decompress/step away, is a toxic combination. But what should we do about it? The main reason I don’t write about current events on Deeply Boring/Beyond Boring is to help us seek a cruising altitude above this turbulence. Of course, I read the news. Of course, it affects me. Of course, I have an opinion. But I have no interest in fanning your outrage, in drawing you to my writing by appealing to your dark side. No, an essential purpose of my writing is to recognize that the dark side is out there, and to offer a space in which we can seek ways to tame, rather than feed this, our insatiable, resentful, hunger.

This may be a strange juncture to invoke Star Wars, but something rings true in Yoda’s instruction to Luke:

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”

(The Empire Strikes Back, 1980).

Alas, this Star Wars fanboy is obliged to point out that such wisdom does not originate from George Lucas, but the stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, who conceived that the antidote to anger is self-control:

“A real man doesn’t give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance – unlike the angry and complaining. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength”.

Lucas mirrored these ideas in Star Wars: Luke is encouraged by Yoda to show patience, to train in the Force, to calm his mind. But the Sith Lord, Emperor Palpatine, advocates the exact opposite in turning Anakin to the dark side:

“I can feel your anger. It gives you focus, makes you stronger.”

(Revenge of the Sith, 2005)

Photo by Frank Tunder on Unsplash

Whichever way you lean politically, consider which tagline better matches what you are hearing on your preferred social media platform or cable news channel: “The nearer one comes to calm, the closer we are to strength” or “Anger gives us focus, makes us stronger”? Whether you take red pills or blue pills with your coffee and Wheaties, you know your overpaid news host wields a crimson lightsaber, just like every other card-carrying, dues-paying Sith.

Let’s get back to Covid-era me. As I said, it’s easy for one to nurse anger and let it stew, wrapped in a defensive shell and rationalized by a self-righteous mindset. I did that, and got away with it, for so very long. But in things that truly matter, this is not a winning strategy. For me, it came down to my kids. When I was that person, they didn’t want to talk to me when bad things happened, they didn’t want my advice, they didn’t want to open up. They were going through that transition from kids to teens, and from teens to adults, and they had a keener sense of the kind of person who is worth putting your trust in, and I was not that person. So, they closed themselves to me. This hurt. And it made me angry – with myself. I could have simply let this feed the vicious cycle, but to what end? In the end, I found a way to let go of my anger. My kids, and my relationship with them, were too important not to. It has been quite the journey, and we still have a long road to travel, but we are miles ahead of where we were before. If you read last week’s post, “Simple Interest”, you can get a sense of how far we’ve come.

Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

In things that truly matter, setting aside your anger is the only winning strategy.

Feeding the beast only makes it stronger.

So don’t.

It would be nice to pretend that this was simply a matter of willpower. That, like Marcus Aurelius, I took it upon myself to become “a real man”, and that I bootstrapped myself into being a person of “strength, courage, and endurance”. But I am no Jedi, and I did not travel a hero’s journey. After all, I had been trying to fix things myself for years, and it hadn’t exactly gotten me anywhere. Mine was a different path. It involved allowing myself to be broken down, to find a basis for my identity that is true and wholesome; to find a well of water so deep that it could resolve the great shame I felt at my own failure; to seek, and to find, a way forward through a gate of redemption opened not by myself, but by another. I won’t go into that now, but if you message me, I can share my other writings that shed light on this process, and answer questions you may have.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

Whether my personal journey interests you or not, I hope you take away a few things. Our institutions and our media want us to be angry. Your friends or family may be captive to one or more pied pipers. You may be as well, to some lesser or greater degree. All this anger will not lead to anything good. Even if it is confined to one sphere today (say, politics, or work) it is a cancer that metastasizes and spreads. This is a deep challenge we all face, and we need support from each other to break free.

What I hope to send you today is encouragement. If you are dealing with anger, know that it comes from fear. Know that fear, and anger, are natural, but also destructive. And know that in facing your fear, you can face your anger, and you can stem the cycle of suffering that your anger will inevitably produce if you do not deal with it. It’s an uncomfortable thing, to be discussing my shortcomings in such a public way. But if the result is some insight, conversation, or action that helps us – helps you – stand firm against the angry tide that wants nothing more than to sweep us all out to sea, then it’s worth it.

Or at least it seems worth it, to me.

May your day today be filled with grace and blessed with peace.

J

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