All the Rage

This week I wanted to process some thoughts about a violent event I witnessed.

Are we becoming angrier as a culture? Is our collective rage level rising? I nor anyone else can definitively answer these questions. Abstract ideas like anger or rage can’t be quantified. Any attempt to do so will at best be a conscious extension of our bias. Furthermore, whether we are becoming a more aggressive society has little impact on our actual lives. Society is big. Just because cultural trends are going on around us does not mean we are directly affected by them. I ask the question though, whether we are more prone to anger because it did affect me personally. I don’t want an answer, rather I want to spend some time with this question. I am curious about the societal consequences of our emotions. I want to reflect on how our ability or inability to be tolerant, to maintain composure shapes the world we live in.

This question was sparked by an event I witnessed a few days ago. The short of it is, when waiting for a bus I witness in my peripheral some conflict between 2 kids. One looked no older than 14, the other was at most 25 but perhaps was a teenager. There wasn’t anything unusual about this. I witnessed plenty of people shouting at each other. I accept it as part of the backdrop of city life; no more out of place than mosquitoes by a lake. What sets this apart was at some point in the conflict the older kid flashed a knife at the younger kid. Nothing happened beyond that. The younger kid jumped back They were both scared. I had a chance to talk to both of them afterward. Whatever their initial conflict, it quickly escalated beyond both their control. Things could have been much worse. I’m grateful they weren’t.

This is one incident. I don’t want to read to much into this alone. People have had ever lived in a nerf utopia where everyone is guaranteed safety. Shit has always happened, as the blood-drenched books of human history show. But from my bias perspective, it seems that we are becoming less tolerant. We are becoming more aggressive. I hope I’m wrong.

There are other signs that I think we should heed. It seems we can’t go a month without hearing about a mass killing of some kind. There have been politically-themed riots. While all these incidents have their particulars that can and should be studied, I want to ask is there a common source fueling all these, on the surface, different events. What frequency are we all tapping into that undermining out patience and feeding our anger? Again I don’t want to answer this question, I only wish to ponder it a bit. I believe there is value in just being with a problem for a while. We can perhaps learn something from holding ambiguity long enough to shift our thinking in ways that will set us on a better path.

As of now, my thoughts on all this, revolve around our connections and lack thereof it. We seem to be growing more and more disconnected from one another. Its seems that while its easier to access each other's online avatars there is less authentic connection between us on a human level. At the extreme ends of this disconnect, there is violence. To enact violence against each other we need to be at least temporarily disconnected from them, if not we would feel the full pain of what we are doing. That feeling is what gives our more destructive urges pause.

We are not just becoming more disconnected from each other though. We are becoming disconnected to ourselves. When I talked to both kids involved in the conflict I could feel their fear. Both were scared. Our bodies want to avoid violence. Every cell of our bodies has an epigenetic awareness of where violence leads. If we listen to our bodies we will be directed away from danger. Which isn't to say we won’t ever be hurt. Nothing can guarantee uninterrupted safety but we can learn to avoid many dangers. Our minds are different. Our minds can craft our thoughts in a sort of ways that can easily lead us astray. It’s easily seduced by violence. We can easily learn to mentally edit out the actual consequences of violence.

I started studying massage, at a time when I was being exposed to a different practice to connect me to my body. I wanted to find a practical way of sharing what I was learning. I felt that no socio-political solutions to any problem would amount to much if we as individuals were estranged from our bodies. How could a simple change of public policy change anything If we were denied access to the wisdom programmed into our bodies from the lived lives of millions of ancestors. I learned that society was just a distorted reflection of our collective health. If we want to improve society in many ways we must first improve ourselves. Be the change to as Gandhi said. If we want that change to be a physical tangible than we need to make some physical tangible change within yourself. What that means will be different to everyone. But I do believe there are consequences if we don’t make some effort to connect to our bodies, to that place that knows the results of violence.

Anthony Bruni