Anger and information

Our society has been living in a stew of anger for over a decade now.

Anger, like all our emotions, is a complex physiologic and emotional response.

Anger sits as a facet of shared environment that includes complex information.

Anger, like all shared information, can be manipulated.

Anger can be a harbinger for where to look for a problem to solve, and supply extra energy to get started. Anger can be a manipulated tool to get people to stop thinking.

Physiological response

First, let's get a little real. Anger is a stress on our body. Long term effects include rewiring your brain, increased risk for heart issues, a weakened immune system, digestion issues, and sleep issues.

It's like running an engine in the red. If the engine is well maintained, or even intended to overclock and has other supporting structures around it, the run periods can be longer. An overclocked engine isn't intended to last long, though. It's usually brought in as a bridge solution while a more appropriate fitting gets into place.

Anger pumps physiological changes while it's being felt, too. It increases heartbeat and breathing, sends signal cascades through nerves to keep them primed for a fight response. To do all this, it has to pull from other systems, with digestion slowing down as one of the first and most common affects.

Think about that: to be angry, you're running through scads of extra resources while diminishing the function that replenishes them. It's keeping your entire body overclocked for as long as you remain angry.

It's stress. Stress over time wears us out, physically and mentally. Keep at it long enough, and stress wears out until there is a system collapse.

Anger isn't a good place to stay for long periods of time.

Manipulation

In designed manipulation, anger is {chef's kiss}.

Anger derails thinking. Anger gets people in a binary state of mind – go/no-go, us/them, right/wrong. Anger takes so many resources to process the physiological response that there's not much left for logic and critical thinking. Anger can get work started. It does not produce good, effective, and long-term-solution work.

We all have had our buttons pushed. We've all seen buttons pushed in other people.

Start paying attention to when and what sparks anger. Does it seem to be mostly in one outlet? Research it: the people writing and producing, financing, other publications' takes. Is it written? Look for sparky words and phrases. Is it verbal, with or without video? Look for emotive inflections that are priming you to reflect anger, either as a next-step response (like in reaction to disgust) or in reflection.

Then, stop feeding the anger beast. For yourself and the people who love you, stop ingesting the materials that make you stew in anger. For cultures and society, starve the media that lives for anger.