Sunday, January 28, 2007

Rage (pic)
Many things stress me out, much more i get sad about, some frustrate me but i get angry about few things in life ...
i am happy then sad sometimes my emotions cover the spectrum from the ultra euphoric to the infra vehement depressive in the span of a span. I strut around with a flick and a bounce making staccatos with my stilettos then I grump and I slouch and I hide in my couch. I am bipolar and multipolar and I oscillate with unexpected amplitude and heightened attitudes but I get angry about very few things in life …
I get frustrated with details, with endless altercations, with meaningless compilations, with out of tune personalities. With people who talk too much. With stories with no punch lines. With cabs in Manhattan. With waiting for someone without knowing the time. With waiting for someone and knowing the time. With long lines at the supermarket that the best gossip column can’t divert me from. With people who drive too slow. With people who drive too fast, other than myself. With people who talk on the phone next to me, in any social scene. Now, in loud places and at the movies. I get frustrated with slow computers and slow minds and slow speakers and I’m a slow speaker myself. I get frustrated with being sad, with being happy and with being frustrated, but I get angry about very few things in life …
I get stressed out when I get frustrated …

Anger beyond control is a very rare feeling. It is a very rare exercise of our rights as well when its effects surpass us to affect others. It is a rare exercise because, only when rare, it might be understood, forgiven or even accepted.
I give you the right to be introverted but not to hold grudges, to be a loner but not to hurt, even to be passively rude but not purposefully impolite.
Anger is an emotion we allow ourselves based on feelings of moral superiority, based on being wronged and unfairly treated. Anger has to emanate from a tremendous sense of self and sense of one’s worth and it is a feeling completely emotionally detached from others and from the environment. Most examples of anger, and the reactions that it dictates, are acute and result of a sudden feeling of loss or wrong or accumulated frustration that builds up to a moment of exaggerated hate and the need for retaliation. I truly think that the most balanced of us must be able to fire up in anger once we face a subject of hate. Chronic anger is more characteristic of psychosis and a weak psyche in general. It builds up as a result of delusional paranoia and an overwhelming sense of betrayal by family and society that leads to dangerous self-pity. Chronic hate towards a specific subject might exist in all of us once faced with the subject of our hate. It is a conditioned response that will trigger the same reaction. The threshold to our rage depends on the nature of the trigger and how we internally label it.

Anger is then a personal feeling and in most cases might not be a feeling of the moment.

I understand collective hysteria (an aftermath), collective depression and even collective euphoria. Where does collective chronic anger come from?

I will assume that a whole population has the same reason to be angry about so in this case it is not a personal feeling anymore. I will also assume that this whole population cannot be psychotic so a whole population cannot be angry all the time unless it is under collective hypnosis and a severe manipulation of thoughts masquerading as anger. Whole populations brainwashed to believe that they have been wronged to the same extent by the same entity can undergo a wave of collective hysterical rage.

The reasons to get angry being true or false, a person cannot remain angry for a long time and anger might appease into frustration with time unless that anger comes from chronic hate. When we talk about a whole population being ready to fire up in anger at the same time to the same trigger, we have to be talking about chronic hate.

Do we chronically hate each other?
No leader can fire us up so quickly unless we already hate each other …
That is one of the few things that make me angry and I get angry about very few things in life …

11 comments:

Zee said...

You are starting to get brilliant Mirv.
Chronic hate is like a drug addiction, no escape, no surrender,no cure.
Whilst the drugs are purely personal abuse, the addiction to chronic hate affects everyone, even the innocent who has not yet been addicted.
By the way, I will try to call you tomorrow while I drive my son to JFK.
Be well, Lukas - ohhps,Zee.

jimmy said...

breathtaking mirvat.

your theory also applies to the justified and unjustified anger and hate that are boiling in palestine and israel.

my 2 cents: collective chronic anger is mostly and most effectively driven and manipulated by propaganda.

_z. said...

:) hehe

chronic frustration! it's like you tell the story of my life... better than I would have. (Do you remember the "frustrated" email I sent you when I went back to Lebanon this past Christmas)...
So I guess you were just tying to comfort me while you always live the same dilemma and the same state of mind...

I second zee... a brilliant post indeed; and that's nothing new on Passing for Normal.

when you talk to someone, you feel like a weight was lifted off your shoulders, and you are comforted. the same thing happens when I read your posts.

you write... I feel better!
therapy my dear... therapy

Unknown said...

yes Lukas and it gets propagated through generations with the same intensity which always surprises me. you're in nyc?

thanks jimmy.. propaganda and history .. so many mistakes in our past that we need to truly forgive.. a new start that the present events are not allowing.. in our case and in the case of palestine. as if the politicians have a gold mine in our hate and keep playing on our memory whenever we dare to forget.

than you zouzou :) ma we all have the same 'issues'. i feel better when i read your reactions to things even when you project them very indirectly and sharing our perspective is always therapeutic. your post i3tisam lamoubali had the same effect, on me, as what you describe as a delayed time bomb of nostalgia.

gitanes legeres said...

everything is collective bil 3arabi... wel bil akhass bil lebneneh...collective suicide. collective idiocy. collective delusions and hallucinations. collective retardation. i could go on for ever..and i'm so f.... sick of it. seriously... sick...

_z. said...

gitanes... you forgot to mention my favorite topic of discussion: "collective memory" :P

Ghassan said...

collective it is. bas if we collect all the collective hatred - from all sides - and channel it toward some unified object, the intra-different-factions hatred will diminish. say, all Lebanese hated ice cream fervently, this would take up all the hatred capacity in them, and they'll become samen 3a 3assal. isn't this what took lace last summer?
(sheftoneh 3am betfalsaf - hehehe)

Unknown said...

no we're perfectly able of fighting each other and the outsiders at the same time.. the hate is there and that's the point. the outsiders byishighlouna for a while till they leave us with too much free time to fill..
sometimes, if not all the time, we include them in our games and fight each other through them .. you know up 3al jomhour we alla ma3kon we inta dawwe we ma3leik...

inmotion said...

It's been a while since I've read something on your blog that I had something to say about other then what you'd already said.

When I look at people around me that are Lebanese or Palestinian, I don't feel a sense of hate towards any of them. I don't even ask what their religion is. I just go with it. What I do feel is this urge to want to impress them, to want to show them how good I am as a person or at what I do. In a way its sort of like me asking for their approval so that I can feel I belong. It was like I was looking for an extended family to replace the family (on both sides) that made it seem like they wanted nothing to do with us being the children of our parents.

This feeling, this want used to come to the surface always a long time ago. I used to be desperate to want to feel like I fit in or belonged to something. I wasn't just another kid but the thing is that I was. I wanted to be able to say I am Lebanese or I am Palestinian or I am this and that without shame and without fear that someone might judge me.

It's been subdued now and now since I've moved back with my family to Dubai I have realized you belong to your beliefs more than you belong to a people and I believe that the Lebanon and Palestine that I belong to are not represented by the people that govern them.

What I want to say is that this collective anger or chronic hate is not something I see or experience and I seem to have missed out on it. If anything I don't like the people that made me feel like there was something wrong with having parents from both sides.

What I do experience is the disdain for the narowmindedness that it all represents.

Anonymous said...

no, we don't chronically hate each other.

we're just chronically afraid of the other.

Zee said...

I re-read this ... pardon, you sound like me :)
Different wordings, same root.