Angry!

This months Readers Digest features in The Maverick article Dr Sandi Mann, an anger management specialist who angers that though anger once helped our ancestors survive, these days in our 'easy' society, it is becoming a misfiring instinct that leads us to get cross about the smaller, inconsequential stuff.  She argues that since we no longer face body-weakening poverty or genuine life-threatening injustice or mortal danger we have become a race of people who "like toddlers, we expect everything to be perfect, and when it isn't we stamp our feet".

In many ways I agree with her in many ways, we do seem to spend a lot of time being furious about non important stuff.

How ever I also disagree with her on other points.  There are very many reasons why we should be angry:

• Disabled people still being treated like freaks.
• Women being denied basic education.
• Children dying of starvation.
• Big businesses dodging taxes and the little people being squeezed for them.
• Politicians who wouldn't know the truth if it bit them on the butt.
• The NHS falling apart at the seems.

There are lots of reasons to be angry.  There are lots of reasons to be really, really angry because it's angry people who get the job done.  It is angry people who stand up and say "no, this is wrong and I'm going to do something about it!"  It's angry people who won't be afraid of the confrontations that get the job done.  It's angry people who take the stand.

"Singing the song of angry men,
Singing the song of the people
Who will not be slaves again."

However, it seems to me, from where I'm sitting, that we are not allowed to show that we are angry.  If we let on to the fact than the injustices that still plague the world makes us angry we are told "Oh stop being so aggressive, there is no point in being angry about stuff that is happening out there, we can't do anything about it."  It seems that it has become socially unacceptable to be angry.  It is a taboo to be angry now.  So we don't let the anger out, we hold on to it inside until something comes along that is just one little niggle too much, one little thing too many, whether it is someone carving us up on the road or a computer that doesn't want to get a move on and log into our e-mail and then we explode.  We almost can't help it.  We have so much anger built up inside of us from the days, weeks, months of coping with situations we cannot or are not allowed to do any thing about that it is like the magma chamber of a volcano, it has to come out of the weak point and we start yelling and throwing things.

What is more doctors have proved that living with so much anger stored up inside is actually physically bad for us, particularly our hearts.

It makes me wonder if one of the reasons the Italians seem to live so much longer with better health is not only because of the diet but because in Italy it is still socially acceptable to be angry.  If a wife finds something wrong with her husband's behaviour then the whole street is likely to know about it.  If the siblings are having a spat with one another then the whole playground will know.  If two business men are having a disagreement about the price the market will probably hear the exchange.  Anger is something to be yelled at the top of the voice and then it is done with.  Flash, bang and then over and done with, no carrying that burden of unreleased anger around in the heart.

Also if I was having an Autistic day out in Italy, people probably wouldn't realise that there was anything unusual about me.