Hiding the anger management books
Well, it’s been a while. Partially amnesia and partially that I’m not actually that good at writing these blog things.
That’s not to say that I’ve forgotten about the whole thing; I’m still getting up 1 minute earlier each day (7.13am and counting).
OK, I want to talk about anger. It may not sound like the sort of topic that is related to this but I believe that it is. I’ve always practiced unreactiveness to situations, even emotional detachment. This means that emotions such as anger are all internalised. I was watching a program last night about the oldest people in the world and when asked about the secret of longevity, one woman replied ‘I am honest… because I am honest, God looks after me’.
Now, I don’t subscribe to this sort of sanctimonious bullshit. I mean, what are we saying, a four year old girl with cancer is a serial liar? But, on another level, maybe our internal state is one of the keys to long life. Repressed anger could be killing us slowly. I think that there’s been times where we have been pissed off, angry, for a whole day, and you can literally feel the anger reverberating around your body. This can’t be a good thing.
Think of the word disease. Break it down into it’s constituents. Dis-ease. A body that is not at ease with itself is diseased.
But, anger is an emotion that society itself represses. It’s pretty much fact that all emotions are just electric currents of different frequency in our brains. The happy emotions can be discharged through the body easily. You can smile, you can laugh till your sides ache, you can chat to anyone and everyone. The bad emotions aren’t that easy to dislodge. I mean, is it socially acceptable to scream and shout at work? Or even at home in front of your flatmate? Hence, they do not get discharged as easily.
You have to wonder why it is that, when a relationship ends, the bad stuff enters your head more than the good, even though it was good probably more than 90% of the time? All those good emotional currents had been dissapated out of you.
Gary was saying to me on how he told a bird at work that he fancied her, and he was feeling embarrased about it. Well, my point is, we shouldn’t, as we are men, and that is what happens when women look good. In fact, I don’t even think I would have had the bottle to muster up such words. That is Gary for you though, I reckon he tells a woman this on average once a month, which is excellent.
So, we also shouldn’t feel embarrased to show anger - we need to do it to keep things healthy. Don’t bottle it up, because it will slowly kill you. I want you to rage for a while, and then it can be over. It’s done.
In a fit of inspiration, I realised that part of the reason I like going to Orient football games (and I suspect that most men do) is to let off rage at the referee, opposition players and other fans. I am sure Gary would agree that the raw passion is what makes it better than watching Man U on the telly. Because it is socially acceptable to scream abuse at football, it acts as a good release.
We, as men are chasing oblivion, orgasm. We want the goal - the build up, the feeling of scoring in the 90th minute, shouting your tits off and savouring the sweeting nothingness after the goal as been scored. It’s kind of actually like you had an orgasm. Think about mens films, action films, seeking the oblivion of death, the big battle scenes where one side is wiped out.
Women don’t enjoy this because they run on different tracks. They seek completeness, the union of two as one. Think of women films, the rom-com where the two lovebirds eventually get together. Soaps, where it constantly revolves around the breaking down, and more importantly, making up of relationships.
Anyway, I’m drifting now. The key thing here is to BE ANGRY. Here is a list of what angers me at the moment:
1) Dumb, ignorant people. I wouldn’t say I’m Einstein, but some people are so fucking thick it takes the biscuit.
2) Sad saps that bum the X Factor and similar shows: Can’t you dumbos see that this show is totally fixed? The only smart guy here is Simon Cowell, he has got rich off complete morons who buy shit music from shit performers who cannot actually play any musical instruments. It is a sad indictment of society that we have to copy other peoples songs.
3) Faux charity collectors. Stupid benders that want me to donate money to their ‘charity’. There are 5 of them on the street getting paid £8/hour to canvas people, how much of that money is going to good causes? They do not like it when you point this out. Charity is good, however, I use www.kiva.org - let’s educate, and not give.
4) Bandwagon jumping. On this subject, shit like Live 8 and stuff, totally lowest common denominator stuff. People like Geldof - the man that said ‘you shouldn’t buy from China as it encourages cheap labour’. I meam, what a retarded view.
Did you know that profits in Geldofs company - that supplies cabling for concerts - went up 400% in the wake of the concerts? And not to mention his mates who got awarded contracts to sell a burger and a cup of tea for £8.00.
And yet, people assume that because some good bands are playing, they must be solving the developing world problems.
The sad fact is most of these people could not even name one of the countries in Africa that is hard-up.
5) The Pop Artist Mika with that song: Big Girls, you are Beautiful. I seriously want to smash the radio every time I hear this because this is such a canniving, bumlicking piece of shite designed to sell records, can no one else see it? Big girls are not beautiful, sorry, they are just fat. But no doubt, they will love this song to bits as if Mika actually sincerely means it from the bottom of his heart. If you want the proof, the guy has been dating GAIL PORTER. Clearly, if he thinks big girls are beautiful, I want to see him date the fatty from Hollyoaks.
6) Orange Internet Customer Service. Why the fuck move customer service to India when you know fucking well that most people will be calling up with problems? I don’t blame the Indian workers - it is not their fault - but rather Orange who want to save some money at the expense of peoples tempers. Faggots. Of course, this point would be moot if they actually provided a decent service, but they don’t, forcing you to call up. It is akin to hiding the anger management books in the bookshop.
I think this kid has it going on well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXaUS7pZAg0
Seriously, a little show of anger is what the doctor ordered.
January 9th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
this is all, of course, assuming that the anger is called for as there is the obvious case for questioning the thing that is making you angry in the first place.
Maybe it isn’t about the externalising of emotions (anger in this case) and more about being more fundemental than that.
Why are you angry?
In a lot of cases, there is such a cross-over in emotions that pity, sadness, resentment and whatnot are all bundled together and incorrectly indentified or expressed as anger. When I think of what things like X-Factor represents in terms of our country and society, I am not angry, I am saddened. When I think of the truely ignorant and uneducated, I feel pity.
Very little angers me and yet I am very aware that I do have a very short temper but mostly, when it happens I am angry at people’s behaviour. Then again, it could just be that I do still live in a very sheltered life where I don’t have to face the usual worries of the average guy.
Or perhaps I am wrong and that I have a problem all of my own in that I don’t get angry at all.
Who knows?
In this case though, I don’t think it is honest as in not hiding away feelings but in the most fundemental way; honest as in being 100% truthful and correct in the things you say and do.
As I said earlier (and in many of my own blog posts…), this involves questioning yourself about everything. Here, in the case of being angry, it is the most basic of questions:
Why?
January 9th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
That’s a good question.
I believe that under anger, there is always pain. Not of the physical type, of course, but of the nagging feeling that maybe if you were a better person, somehow the situation that was making you angry would be averted.
I do admit anger is a bit of a generic term. It ranges in it’s guises, from full out rage, to an under the surface bubbling feeling of discontent.
Reading back on the post, I sound a bit mad, but I’m not an angry person. Things that make other people raging, don’t really bother me. For example, road rage. I hate bad driving as much as the next person but I can’t understand why some people get so wound up about it.
Rather, I think I do a bad job of discharging it, I’d let things build up. Certainly this was the case in relationships, maybe real life, too. I knew a guy who had a lot of inner rage; he is pretty fucked up.
Too much anger is a bad thing, but think about this: is it better to be in a relationship with arguing, or no arguing? People might suggest no arguing, but that would mean you would have the same thinking, the same viewpoints, the same habits, and so on. I’d rather take the highs and lows rather than one straight line.
The fundamental question, why do I get angry? Because I am not (entirely) happy.
Nobody is happy 100% of the time. So, for me, maybe it’s 90% - 10%. For you, it might be more.
January 10th, 2008 at 12:09 am
ahhh… but then question would be why isn’t there arguing in the relationship.
What if it were genuinely trouble free?
Does no arguing automatically you are the same kind of person as your partner?
Does being different to your partner and hence allude to confilict existing in one for or another, automatically mean you are going to argue? That does bring into this a different context which is what makes a relationship and what makes one work. It is also dependent on character and the type of relationship it is. The question of compromise rears its head here which brings up honesty (again) to yourself in those compromises.
In the case of arguments, just what it is are you arguing about?
I think too many people lose focus of the points of discussion and argue to win; which is a totally different topic but adds another question to this one.
As for happiness; lately, I’ve been having a hard time finding a defintion of it that isn’t almost exactly the same as content or even just satisfied. This could be because of my recent fascination of being absolutely accurate in my actions and words but happy is something that has eluded me thus far. I am content most of the time, satisfied slightly less than that but I’m not sure where I would put my happiness. It would help if I could think of something specific that would make me happy but then again, I would say that I am happy with what I’ve got.
Now if only that made any sense.
Anger being an expression of pain is an interesting concept and one. Perhaps the thing that makes it interesting is that it is, in your example, one that is questioning yourself and questioning responsibilty for that anger/pain.
I don’t think inner rage is the only problem; I think any unreleased emotion is a bad thing. I know a guy who has a lot of inner self pity. He won’t admit to it but every now and then, it creeps out. There is another friend of mine who is overly modest but you can see the look in her eyes when people do just skip past her achievements. Neither aren’t in any way healthy.
January 11th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Well, I honestly do not believe that there is a relationship without differences, hence the arguing. Actually, I lie about that, I did read about one old couple who claim they never argued, but the guy was the most under the thumb guy ever. I think on a very fundamental level, relationships are all about compromise. Man was not designed to be tied down to one partner, we are meant to have as many as possible in order to increase the chances of our genes surviving forever.
I agree with you on the rest of that. Too much of anything is certainly harmful, but too little of anything could be harmful as well. It’s all about balance here. I honestly don’t think there is a absolute measure of happiness, like on a scale of 1-10. And no doubt it would fluctuate quite a bit from day to day, week to week.
I tend to not let that bother me. I mean, I don’t mind not being complete. The day I am complete, is probably the day I would like to die, because I would have nothing left to strive for.