Over the past few months, I have observed in both my personal life and in the world at large that too many people are investing in anger. I have experienced this on a personal level with people who choose to stay angry at each other rather than trying to resolve their anger. It is both sad and frustrating.
On a national level, since at least 2016, the United States has devolved into people taking sides and isolating themselves by being angry at “the other side.” This investment in anger serves no one’s best interests other than those who profit from the anger, such as gun manufacturers and politicians who stoke the anger in order to get elected.
On the international level, perhaps the most acute example is in the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. While Israelis have every right to be angry about Hamas’ horrific terrorist attack, the choice to fuel that anger by horrific retribution is not only resulting in mass death and destruction in Gaza on a scale that this century has seen nowhere else, but it is fueling reciprocal anger on the part of Palestinians, making the likelihood of resolving this nearly century old conflict more remote than ever.
Some might argue that anger has its purpose because both on a personal level and a global level, if we ignore when bad things happen, those bad things will simply perpetuate themselves because the evil-doers will realize that they can get away with it. In addition, anger is a normal human response in reaction to occasions when bad things happen.
But I am not suggesting that anger has no place in our personal lives or in the world at large. Indeed, it would be naive and perhaps inappropriate to suggest that one should not get angry when atrocities are committed. The real question is what does one do with that anger?
When one simply invests in anger, it is virtually guaranteed that the problem will not be solved. Rather, the investment in anger raises one’s own stress level and if the investment reaches the point where one acts viciously or violently towards others (on a personal or collective level), then the cycle of violence and retribution simply continues and whatever ill caused the anger remains, perhaps even on a larger level, and violence, death and destruction are strewn in anger’s wake.
Not long ago, I noticed that someone dear to me was very invested in their anger. I asked them, “who is your anger helping?” They looked at me quite puzzled because most people, while investing in anger, are not thinking clearly, and they certainly are not thinking about whether their anger will actually solve the problem they are angry about. Momentarily, I could see the anger dissipate from their eyes. Unfortunately, because they were still invested in anger, they eventually lashed out and caused the problem they were angry about to grow even larger and less capable of resolution.
Almost 8 years ago, I wrote, Let’s Stop Admiring Our Problems & Start Solving Them. While that post was not specifically about anger, it described another symptom of investing in anger. When we simply invest in anger, it is easy to complain about problems, whether personal or global. It might even feel good to post about one’s anger on social media and get a lot of “likes” on one’s post. But does that make one feel better about the problem? The problem is still there because too many people invested in being angry about the problem instead of investing in solving the problem.
As I was doing my research for this post, I noticed that the only articles written about anger investment are about financial investment and they uniformly explain why it is a bad idea to invest one’s money using anger as a decision making guide. Accordingly, if many studies point out that using anger as a financial investment tool is a bad idea and brings bad investment returns, it makes complete sense that using anger to resolve other problems, whether inter-personal, local, national or international, will similarly bring bad results.
It would be naive, of course, to suggest that we simply get rid of anger. Anger is a normal human emotion. The challenge is what to do about one’s anger. If one invests in anger, the result is to stay angry and not resolve the problem one is angry about. If we simply vent our anger, and then shift our focus to letting go of the anger and solving the problem that has caused us to be angry, not only we will be less angry, but we increase the likelihood that we will resolve the problem that has caused us to be angry.
As an example, in the current Israel-Gaza crisis, as I have written before, anger has devolved into both Israelis and Palestinians considering each other barbarians, which as we can see has not freed all the Israeli hostages, has not defeated Hamas, and has killed over 10,000 Gazan children. No problems have been solved. Nobody feels better and no end is in sight to the cycle of terror and retribution.
That is why I continue to invest in groups of Palestinians and Israelis working together, not in anger, but in an effort to bring peace and justice to their people, such as Standing Together and the Parents Circle of Bereaved Palestinian and Israeli Families for Peace. Anger will not bring peace and justice to Palestinians or Israelis. If it would have done so, then we would have seen progress toward those goals after nearly 100 years of conflict. It is well past time to stop investing in anger, and start pursuing actual solutions.
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For more information on how I can help you accomplish effective, progressive systems change contact Jeff Spitzer-Resnick by visiting his website: Systems Change Consulting.
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