Anger, Stereotypes, and Hate

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Some people think America is awash in these three things today. I recently saw a TV commercial featuring a lot of celebrities that advised that hate is winning and we cannot let that happen.

So is America drowning anger, stereotypes and hate?

It certainly seems to be drowning. Or flailing. Or failing.

There was a recent national election and it didn’t go the way it did because Americans were of the overwhelming opinion that everything is just great. A man was recently assassinated on the streets of Manhattan in a very public way. A lot of people were publicly angry. Not at the assassin. At the industry the man who was killed works for.

I’m not so sure that means people are angrier than they have been for the past two administrations. But I have a feeling America is going to get way more angry here pretty quick. Or maybe pretty slow. But I don’t think the next 4 years are going to find Americans mellowing out.

It looks like radical change is on the agenda and radical change ain’t mellow. It ain’t chill; it ain’t cool, and if there’s any mellow left radical change is prone to harsh it.

So let’s talk a little bit about public anger.

Anger is an emotion that arises when an individual (or a group) feels that something important is being threatened and there’s something they can do about it. That’s pretty much the long and the short of anger. You can get fancy and psychological about it, but you don’t really have to.

Because anger is an emotion, it urges a person to do whatever they can do to protect the thing that’s threatened ASAP. Fast. Emotions are fast.

The types of things anger thinks of doing first tend to be like smashing, destroying, strangling, bonking, shooting, yelling, screaming, stopping, hitting, and generally discharging a lot of physical energy at the object of one’s ire. That’s the kind of advice your anger brain will generally give you.

Most of the time smashing, destroying, strangling, etc. are not going to work all that well, so your ‘for God’s sake don’t fuck up your life’ brain will generally try to get you to calm down before you do those things by taking some deep breaths or something. But some yelling will probably sneak out anyway. Some harsh words may very well escape your anger brain and come spilling out into the air or social media or the email you are composing or whatever. Anger is not a friendly emotion with those it is angry at.

Sometimes, in fact often, it will come to pass that the public will have the feeling that it ought to be able to do something about some issue of concern (like let’s say immigration), and yet nothing actually seems to happen. That’s the sort of thing that can lead to anger. Immigration at scale, by its nature, feels threatening to the people experiencing an influx of newcomers from different places.

It does not matter who is immigrating to where; people experiencing the influx don’t like it. In one place you can call it gentrification. In other place, Coloradans are not happy to see an influx of people from Texas. Oregonians are not happy to see an influx of people from California. Northern Italians do not want to see an influx of those yucky southern Italians. Americans don’t want to see a bunch of people from Mexico. Canadians don’t want to see a bunch of people from America. Nobody wants to see a bunch of people from New York City.

And so on. And yet people will deal with it. Right up until the point where whatever people are used to where they live feels to be under such threat that the change in (loss of) the place they live is inescapable. And then they’ll get pissed.

And they’ll want to do something. Like:

STOP THOSE PEOPLE FROM MOVING HERE IMMEDIATELY!

And that so rarely works. People can work themselves into spinning vortexes of pitched rage over things like this and they do.

And it almost never works. By the time the anger sets in, it’s too late.

There are ways to keep people from moving to wherever it is that you are – but anger, sadly, is rarely one of them.

You can, if you choose, belong to a group that does the most horrible things to people because you are mighty pissed off that a) they are different from you and b) they are near you. And yet, in spite of your earnest horribleness, those people will continue to exist. Even attempted genocide – horrific as it is – is not as effective as genocidal maniacs would like to believe.

Hard as it is for any of us to accept –

PEOPLE ARE GOING TO BE DIFFERENT FROM YOU NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO

Yup, the world is going to continue to be full of groups of people that are different from the groups of people that you belong to. That will never stop annoying humans and it will never stop being true.

Everybody knows this and almost no one really accepts it.

So one of the ways people deal with this conundrum is to come up with stereotypes. Stereotypes are mental shortcuts that allow substantial groups of people (Toyota drivers, Asian girls, NBA players, K-pop band members, whoever) to be characterized with common traits, whether positive or negative. Terrible drivers, loud and silly, good-looking and glamorous, amorous and generous, whatever.

In America, as in most places, we like to stereotype people based on geographical origin. That’s just something the human brain likes to do. It’s not going to go away.

But yes, if you’ve got groups of people who are angry at an influx of people from another geographical region, then the stereotypes can get pretty vicious. Because the anger brain wants to stop the influx by smashing something, and it gets itself all riled up and starts thinking of angry reasons to smash, strangle, destroy, deport, or otherwise devastate the people comprising the influx.

It’s when this doesn’t work, when nothing works, when the sense of loss and powerlessness overwhelm the anger brain so that it feels like no amount of smashing is going to bring immediate relief that hate sets in.

Hate is an emotion created by pain and powerlessness.

It is intense. A feeling of intense dislike, aversion, antipathy, rejection, disgust. You want to curse for all eternity whatever it is that is causing you such pain. You can’t stand it. You detest it.

And yet – whatever it is – it’s still there. It won’t go away and it won’t stop causing you pain. You can’t stand the pain any longer so you turn it into hate.

And turning anger and pain and powerless into hate does offer some semblance of relief. Hate does feel better than powerlessness. It can feel like it rises above.

Something is wrong with the world you live in – and while you can’t change it – at least you can hate it. In this way, hate can be a moral emotion. Hate can help oppressed people survive – and sometimes it does.

When hate turns against a group of people, it can become evil. When groups of people decide to hate other groups of people (often based on their geographical origin), it can become entrenched evil.

This type of group-to-group hate is one of the tragedies of the world.

Because it’s almost always wrong. Not morally wrong, although it is certainly that. Factually wrong. Based on those stereotypes. And that ridiculous but insidious underlying belief that somehow or another you can get everyone else in the world to not be any different from you. That you can, that you should, that you have a right to, that you want to, that if people are different they are threatening by their nature, that the world, that humanity can be something other than what they will always be.

Group to group hate will never ease your pain. It will only increase it.

So, for the record, mass deportations, no matter who is being deported, are horrible. And they will not make you feel better.

I don’t blame anyone for being pretty fed up. I’m just saying doing horrible things won’t fix it.