Anger is an Energy...

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Musings of a grumpy old man...

Anger is a force for good or bad depending on how you use it. While some see it as a wholly negative often self-destructive emotion, anger itself is a neutral act, for example, it only becomes the sin of wrath when it is misdirected or used excessively. Yet seldom is it portrayed in any positive way even though anger has resulted in many of the most positive things that man has accomplished as well as many of the most destructive. [Just consider how much worse killing without anger is...] Anger can take us to war yet anger can also cause us to commit selfless acts of charity and compassion. Bob Geldof didn't express pity or remorse for the starving children of Ethiopia; he got angry about it, not only that, he got angry about how governments and aid charities allowed that to happen; so he decided to do something about it - not just to raise money for relief and aid, but to change how that aid was managed and used. That angry "punk" attitude (that Lydon wears like a badge of office) Geldof channelled into motivating millions of people to do something good. And this isn't the only example, "f_ck that's not fair!" has motivated far more people than "oh, da's a shame." - the abolition of slavery wasn't a 'oh, what a pity' reaction to the injustice and inhumanity of slavery and that passive, unemotional, reaction wouldn’t have result in a bloody civil war. Anger is the most powerful energy we possess.

Anger means you care about something in an intensely emotional way, in that respect the opposite of anger is apathy because anger motivates people to action whereas apathy results in inaction. To my way of thinking the crime is to be angry about something and do nothing, being 'grumpy' (bad-tempered and sulky) is then nothing more than unresolved anger. If something makes me angry sitting in the corner sulking about it isn't going to change anything. I can only be grumpy if what I type is tirade of whining and complaining that doesn’t attempt to change the cause of my anger.

However, none of that stops anger being destructive - unchecked and uncontrolled anger is always a bad thing. The trick is resolving the anger without releasing it in a destructive way - like splitting the atom can be used to generate heat to drive a generator turbine or it can be used to level a city. It's that *sharp intake of breath* moment where anger is used as the motivation and impetus for action but should never be used in the execution of that action. 

So "Hooray for big things!", but getting angry about the big things in life isn’t something we have a great deal of control over. However, life is not a succession of big things, and life on this forum is never about big things. Really, it’s not – can’t get your own way? That’s no big deal, the world continues to turn and no one died; just shrug and move on. Life is an endless round of small things and trivia, and yet we get angry about the mundane and trivial things in life, the universe and everything... and everything Prog. Music is something that we get passionate about because it has the power to move us and we get passionate about lots of things that move us emotionally. To be passionate is to care - "Trump" grrrh! - why? because I care, "Farage" grrh! - why? because I care, "Kardashians" - meh - why? because I don't care. There are a lot of things in this world that I don't care about but I ain't going to get angry about that either.

Anger often spurs me into making a post here; it would be rare and unusual for me to respond to something that doesn't move me because, frankly, I have better things to do. Post: "<insert your fave band here> is the greatest band in the World!"  and okay, I'm happy for you but I couldn't care less one way or another whether I agree with you or not, however, "<insert my fave band here> are crap" - and now that's a different synopsis - that's a *sharp intake of breath* moment, but not one that will cause me to react because it is pointless. I'm never going to convince anyone that <my fave band> are not crap and no one is going to convince me they are - all that will happen is words will be exchanged, things will get heated and one of us will end up feeling hurt or bitter. That’s never a good outcome. So that *sharp intake of breath* will be released as an unvoiced, unposted, "Meh, so what?" and I’ll get on with my day. Opinions are ten a penny and subjective opinions that mean the world to one person aren’t worth a light to the next.

Back in the last century, when the Internet ran at 2400 baud and IRC and Newsnet was all there was, I frequently “posted angry” because we all did, protocols and etiquette (netiquette as it was known back in the day) were different then. Flame wars were commonplace and everything was a lot more volatile, so tempers flew through the ether like bullets over a battlefield and words were hammered into the keyboard with such force your fingers would hurt by the time you’d finished. And that was all very tiring, a heated conversation would leave you emotionally drained, and arguments were seldom won they just died of attrition and fatigue. But boy could we hold a grudge, the next discussion would begin with the same angry intensity that the previous one had finished with and the cycle never seemed to end. When I first came here in 2007 the PA was still a little like that, a lot more refined and sedate, but some trace of that frontier attitude persisted and the occasional angry outburst was not unknown. Now that behaviour is seen as trollish and uncouth, which often it is, but not always – sometimes an angry response is justified and sometimes it’s good to vent and have a tiny little rant. When someone responds angrily to something said it’s not a cue to respond in kind, it could mean that you’ve may have over-stepped the mark.

'Yeah, but you're always posting angry"... I hear you say. "Oh, it's Dean, the grumpy old git's having an angry rant again." - But the truth is I'm not. I pause and take a breath, calm down and then compose a considered reply, born from anger maybe, but delivered without it. If I think I’ve written an angry response I’ll not send it. It is as simple as that and often the catharsis of typing an angry response is enough to clear the mind – hitting [Clear Form] instead of [Send] can be just as satisfying. Of course that is not to say I will not be very forceful and often quite blunt in what I post but that is because dumb words strung together are powerful things and, strange as it may seem, I'm pretty poor at using them (and we’re all pretty poor at interpreting and comprehending them). 

Unfortunately, I've no fancy certificates to show how fantastically bad I am with words because those more expert than I in academia were emphatic in deciding that I had absolutely no skill in that area at all, and being atrociously bad at the written English language is not something they hand out certificates for. If you think of the lowest grade that modern education can give a candidate and subtract a random number - that's how poor I am at using the written English language - I failed so badly at every English test I've ever taken I can only surmise that I also managed to spell my name incorrectly on the exam papers. So as a consequence I have a penchant for using 30 words when 3 carefully selected ones would have done the job far more effectively and I use run-on sentences and fill my posts with clumsy grammar and endless word lists. I turn the grammar checker off in Word because practically every sentence has something underlined in green.

That's because basically I write as I speak, and I speak at the speed that thoughts pass through my head ... which is very fast – once wound up and let loose I'm a motor mouth supercharged with nitrous oxide (and that's no laughing matter). If you ever have a conversation with me IRL I'll talk your ears off so quickly you'll not have time to blink, let alone think, I'll batter you into submission with a barrage of words because you'll not be able to get a word in edgewise. I speak with such rapidity I don't have time to get (or stay) angry... but you will have all the time in the world to brood and fester because after a few minutes you'll simply stop listening - the aural equivalent of tl;dr is tl;dh. 

So when I type the same is true. I talk a lot but don't say a great deal because I’m desperately trying to convey the seemingly endless freight train of thoughts that are queuing up in a way that can be comprehended by all, without ambiguity and misunderstanding.

English is the lingua franca here, but not everyone fully understands what everyone else is saying, nuances of language, idioms, cultural differences, regionality and age-differences all add up to confuse and confound. Being a chimera of Germanic and Romance languages English is shot full of ambiguity, double meaning and misunderstanding. Take rhetorical sarcasm, I use this sparingly and far less often that you may perceive because it’s so easily misconstrued, especially British sarcasm which is kind of arse-backwards to everyone else’s sarcasm and when used well the intent to offend is inversely proportional to how offensive a statement actually is. Boris Johnson is destined to fail as British Foreign Secretary because he doesn’t “get” this distinction. There are problems enough when you can say something funny and people will think you’re being serious and you can say something serious and people think you’re joking without bringing rhetorical sarcasm into the conversation. (Yeah, right).

I recall a few weeks ago a member of Kayo Dot was complaining (i.e., got angry) on Facebook about how European fans would follow praise with a piece of constructive criticism: “I liked <praise> but <criticism>”. [One of the examples he gave was “I liked your show but your drumming was better on the last tour”]. I believe some Americans call this The German Compliment but all Europeans do it, it’s our way of bring a compliment back down to earth, to show that the compliment is genuine and not born from sycophancy. I was listening to the Saturday Review on Radio 4 last night and every critic on the programme used the “liked… but…” sentence structure in their review. Of course, the idea that unsolicited criticism is unwanted while unsolicited praise is accepted is not unusual or unexpected, while both are said with the same level of intent, it’s the praise that is used as the tagline on a bill-board but criticism that is remembered. However, when a speaker of American English does this they are using the compliment to sugar the bitter pill of criticism so will spin the phrasing around so the criticism comes first and the praise will follow. Rather than building you up then knocking you down, it smacks you in the face then kisses it better.

Anger motivates us to type, (as does incredulity, disappointment, disbelief and a raft of other things), but what appears on the screen can never reflect our emotional state when it was typed. There are very few clues to that within a post because we do not allow personal attacks and frown upon the use of ad hominem logical fallacies so the words themselves are directed solely at the presented opinion/argument/discussion and not our emotional reaction to it or that of the person we are replying to. Just because I say a statement is stupid, dumb, smart or erudite it does not mean that I think the person who said it is any of those things – even the smartest here can say stupid things and even the most respectful can behave like a knob, (present company excepted). 

So… if you think any piece of text posted here is angry, read it again without the preconception of anger and see if it changes your perception and interpretation of what is being said.

...and may the World rise with you. 

Edited by Dean - September 25 2016 at 04:03

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