Where is the Rage?

There are at least two approaches to this question, and today I’ll take a physiological route. Rage is an emotion. It is viewed as negative if it’s directed at us—positive if directed at some perceived enemy—whence, of course, comes the popular question, asked in frustration: “Where is the outrage?” Viewed from another angle, rage is a natural reflex to threats. For this reason our bodies are constructed so that we respond reflexively, very rapidly—more rapidly than our intellectual brain-cycles can.

Experts tell me (there are lots of articles on anger management on the web) that rage is set off by the amygdala. That’s the singular name for a complex structure of nuclei located in the mid-brain but linked to the temporal lobe. We have two amygdalae; their purpose is to process emotional stimuli. They interpret incoming perceptions, relate these to memories, and set off spontaneous reactions to threats. They cause the release of catecholamines (flight-fight hormones), adrenaline, and other neurotransmitters that prepare us to act—and violently if need be.

Rage is therefore a response to something that threatens. Threats may signal mortal danger, hence the body has no time to waste on thought. The processes set off by the amygdalae bypass the usual bureaucratic brain-procedures and lead directly to action—or at least to preparation for action. Rage is a reflex—and the body is stimulated. Rage acts like a drug. The emotion may be negative, but the body feels good.

To be sure, the amygdalae evoke memory, first of all; they look in memory for appropriate responses based on our past behavior. This suggests that over time we can educate our own reaction to all kinds of stimuli, not least to threats. Thus it’s possible to develop very exaggerated reactions to threats that have not the least potential of immediately harming us—as well as very cool reactions to stimuli that threaten us with immediate, actual, physical harm—sang froid, as the French call it. In the long run, you might say, over time, we can develop optimal reactions to threats.

The modern tendency to raise the emotional above the rational—expressed as “sensitivity” and demonstrated by fictional heroines like Diana Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation who always empathically asks, “But how do you feel?”—produces the widespread cultural message that “rage” and “anger” are appropriate—and human—responses to the endless flow of sewage that spews from the media. Not quite. Rage and anger produce reflex responses. When the threats are vague and nebulous, when most of the news are trial balloons, when the messages, especially in an election year, are designed to rouse and aim the public rage so that it will express itself without the least bit of thought—why then the consequences are worse than all those things that cause us to flare up in righteous indignation. But that indignation feels good, you see. It makes us think that we are real somehow. Thought is so . . . so thin, so nebulous…

Missed by Euphemism

The human mind endlessly fascinates. Our ability to ignore that which we do not choose to see is an instance of a power. But mostly we don’t notice that we have it. Three weeks ago or thereabouts, the electric power lines in our neighborhood suddenly began to stage quite fantastic fireworks. By nights we saw the strangest of sharp, multi-colored lights, whole showers of sparks, and we heard huge booming and/or crackling sounds. Anxious crowds collected to watch this magic display on side-walks and in yards, hands touching faces: would those garages go up in flame? When the problem recurred by day, we saw white flashes and black clouds of smoke rise high into the air. These displays rapidly led to power failures that lasted many hours. My point in all this? The point is that, until this happened, we did not really see those power lines. But for some days after these events, we saw the amazing complexity of wire mazes above us, paralleling our streets, transecting our trees behind our houses—in our neighborhood and others. We had become aware of a kind of utilitarian ugliness that, until then, had been entirely filtered out.

Now the other day, as I was walking, a DEAD END sign came into view. Behind it lay a rather charming little street with well-kept, lovely homes. But now, sensitized by power-outage, it occurred to me that the people who lived there surely did not see that sign any more. In this day and age, to live in a street boldly labeled a “dead end” would surely have, long since, resulted in an explosion of that most modern of emotions, Outrage. How can they do that? How can they label us that way. We’re not dead-enders—no we’re not. We can change that—yes we can. The mind’s power to ignore occurred to me as an explanation why thus far Euphemism hadn’t tamed this yellow diamond. I wandered on, thinking about that sign.

The French call it the bottom of the sack—and living there does little more for property values than “dead end.” In Hungarian these are “sack streets,” in German “sack alleys”; both Spanish and Italian suggest that totally cheerless play by Sartre, No Exit.

I walked for an hour or so, and by the time I glimpsed a new sign on another street, the subject had been replaced by others. But there, right there before me, was a hint that Euphemism may have been stirred up after all. This sign, still yellow, was small, oblong, and affixed demurely just underneath the street's name. It said NO OUTLET. Well, well, well, I thought. And then I thought again. To live in a “no outlet” street might not exactly cheer the overly sensitive. Those words also provide at the least the germ of victimhood. Suppose your marriage is a little rocky. No outlet. Suppose your emotions are bottled up. Dear City Administration! I suggest you go back to the drawing board. What about something hip? DRIVE THROUGH. NOT. Wouldn’t that be better? Any suggestions?