But anger is not a helpful tool and works against our best interests. Anger is not a useful motivator. Anger, and the release of anger in angry words, then violent actions, solves few problems.
Picture this: your computer crashes. You call the help line. You wait for thirteen minutes listening to canned, crackly music and a robotic voice every thirty seconds repeats, "Your call is important to us. Please wait on the line for the next available operator." Frustration rises. You pass between three departments, explaining your problem three times. In the end no one can fix your computer. All the while your anger level rises, until in the end the poor third techie received a full-on broadside salvo as you burst into angry words and threats. The result? Nothing good. Your anger remains. The poor techie gets yet another ear full of abuse. Everyone suffers. All have a bad day.
Nothing good will ever come from a national mood of anger. Some Other—a scapegoat—is likely to suffer real harm when the anger is released. Our worst selves are stirred and nurtured. It takes a while to recover.
I have been working since the nineties in a field often termed "virtue ethics." It's the idea that the "good life" (however we want to see it) is achieved not by merely following rules, or thinking about outcomes, but by becoming a certain kind of person. That type of person is one who has certain virtues—hence is virtuous. It's that kind of person who lives closer to the "good." When many people in society pursue the good, through habituating virtues that approximate to the good, society too becomes happier, eudemonic—from the Greek word eudaemonia, happiness, well-being. Anger is the antithesis of the good. An angry society would not be a happy society.
A good society—or family, or workplace, or religious community—would, surely, be one of togetherness, harmony, love, and fellowship. What might lead us there?
Certainly not anger. Certainly not easy answers that scapegoat the Other as the source of all our problems. Certainly not mockery, name calling, verbal abuse of the Other.
Here's a few virtues that I think might lead us more happily toward a better society: humility, restraint, prudence, and tolerance.
Humility is taking the lower place, recognizing our own fallibility. We all get it wrong at least some of the time. If so, it's most helpful to realize that we might be wrong right now—this blog for instance!
Restraint is the antithesis of the "let it all hang out" reporting in the media. Hold back. Don't let it all hang out.
Prudence is a word well out of fashion, but one we need to reinstate. To the Greeks prudence was phronesis, practical wisdom. Not just knowing stuff, but having the skill to live wisely and well, which comes by hard won experience and many failures.
Tolerance is the virtue of putting up with the Other when you disagree, rather than negating the Other. It's essential in society, families, work and faith communities for any semblance of harmony. In some respects, tolerance is a low order virtue for tolerance does not affirm and rejoice with the Other. But it's an essential starting place toward harmony. Without tolerance the good life is a lost cause.
Humility, restraint, prudence, and tolerance are deeply spiritual virtues. I have long been convinced that such virtues are derived from the daily habits of meditation, mindfulness, and self-examination. Such virtues are the opposite of "mad as hell."
Imagine an alterative universe where the media pundits report, "People we spoke to in Springville are full of humility. They show great restraint, prudence and tolerance of each other ..." Now there's a thought!
+Ab. Andy