Anger as magic II

We can observe anger and rage in infants. It is an expression of frustration, frustration that the world is not doing what we need. Infants rage when they are hungry, cold, wet, too hot. Their expression of their anger is communicative; its goal is to goad caretakers/authorities into taking action to make things right. The baby shouts at the world; the world recognizes the problem and does something to fix it.

We are angry for the same reasons that we expressed our anger as infants. We express anger or rage when the universe and/or other people don't do what they should do. Every expression of anger is aimed at causing the object of our anger to change. It is a primitive expression of demand. The other objects in our world should behave differently, and we will rage at them until they do. We get angry at everything that gets in our way, as if the universe were a sentient creature out to thwart us.

It is our primitive and barely conscious belief that anger is somehow effective in getting what we want from others and the universe out there that is incorrect. If I stub my toe on a rock, walking in the dark, I may curse the stone or the dark, or just "it". I rage at "it" just as if I expected it to attend to my needs like parents when I was an infant. On some level we (and I) have a belief that anger is magic, that it alone creates change in the world.

At the same time, rationality tells us that we are more likely to get cooperation from others when we are not angry. We observe that our anger is more than likely to engender defensiveness in others rather than rational thought. We can observe that attempting to solve our own problems reasonably is more effective than attempting to coerce others (or the universe) with our anger. We know the rock on which we stub our toe can't be forced to stay out of our way through raging at it, but we do it anyway.

Sometimes we prefer our anger to its opposite, fear. The same bodily reactions occur in fear and anger: the rapid breath and heartbeat, the adrenaline flow, muscle tension and the like. However, in fear the direction of our movement is away, to flee, while anger moves us toward forcing the other to change. The question is, however, do we have to be angry to confront something that we need to change? Can we get better results with or without the anger? What would our personal lives be like if we didn't get angry? Could we survive?