The Anger Trap

The sight of the buildings burning on TV. The smoke pouring out of the rows of windows. A body sailing in the air. The plane flying into the building, exploding. The building seeming to give like cloth.

The piles of dust and dust, debris and debris, faces coated with it, walking among the rubble, body parts everywhere under the dust. Human beings connected with a cell phone on a plane, a husband saying goodbye to a wife, a wife to a husband, knowing they are going to die.

The moment of acceleration before the plane hits the buildings, dives into the earth. The hundreds and hundreds of individual deaths: burned by fire, crushed, bones broken. Sailing in the air for dozens of seconds before landing--a choice of death better than burning, desperate choices. A moment before, drinking coffee, answering the phone, now, trapped on a rooftop, the heat from below, the fear, decision if it's going to end, end it myself--a couple holds hands and drops together through the air.

Such sights and sounds repeated over and again, on television, until the very seeing hides seeing--numbness quickly sets in. This is all a television show, a movie, a special effect: It is unreal, it is not normal. Then the platitudes: It's a new idea, a new era, this is Pearl Harbor, worse than Pearl Harbor, we are at war. The president speaks. The moments of silence. God Bless America, the familiar. This shall not stand. The anger: revenge, who did it, track them down, Osama bin Laden. Palestinian folk handing out candy on the street. Arab-Americans fearful, fights in high schools, insults, anger.

We dig in the rubble of our own hearts, looking for the feeling. When we understand the pain of individuals, we are touched--when we view the whole panorama abstractly, as televised images repeated, we lose touch. The spectacle erases the particular: the giant building, the huge plane, the enormous rubble. These images take over, and only when we are reminded of particular human suffering can we begin to feel again. Our fear begins, then in time our fear is layered over in dust. We too are buried under the rubble of our everyday lives. We don't want to feel, don't want to know.

But we are afraid and also, at the sight of death, we are angry. We cannot help being angry. We do not yet know the enemy, but we already have an enemy because anger needs an object It is impossible to sustain our anger without an object.

Yes, anger is normal, healthy in the sense that it is not numbness. Anger, rage at our helplessness, fear, these are normal responses. The desire to help, to give blood, give money, to come up with answers, to rally behind political leaders--all this is normal. But is the anger good as a long-term condition?

Those who live in anger, whose consciousness is daily stewed in it, over time are damaged. We know this physiologically, we know this psychologically. We need to understand it spiritually. At the physiological level a constant state of anger is bad for the heart. Anger produces toxins and poisons, irritants in the blood.

At the psychological level, anger is a feedback loop. Anger produces anger. There is no evidence that "releasing" or "expressing" anger relieves it--that is based on the metaphor of anger as a kind of steam pressure that builds up. But this does not fit experience: Those who use angry words, conjure up angry images, get angrier and angrier. Their consciousness becomes steeped in anger.

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