If you’re really going to solve a problem, you have to get to the root cause; otherwise you’re treating the symptoms. I’ve posted on this topic before in the inevitable mass shooting and other threads, but was seaching for and never had the answer. I’m not sure this IS the answer, but at worst its one step away.

It’s funny how these epiphanies come to you, a glimpse of something, a sound a word. Today I was listening to the popular morning show and while talking about a humorous topic they mentioned that people can’t control their rage, and it clicked. It really seems all about uncontrolled rage in our society today.

I think about a lot of the issues making the news from people out of control in internet/social media posts, Youtube rants, during traffic stops, in restaurants, on planes, political meetings discussions/protests, parties and weddings, unprovoked physical attacks, stabbings, shootings, etc., and the common theme seems to be people, for whatever reason simply cannot contain their rage and they must vent it somehow. We even have the word included in labels for this behavior: Road Rage.

Pick a topic, any topic, and discuss it long enough and someone will fly into a rage. Watch a news story or a youtube video and look at the comments, it’s inevitable that someone will lose it. If you read some of them it seems like they are not really vested in the topic, but need to vent or release the rage somewhere, at someone.

I’m not sure why people in this country, over the last 10-15+ years, have suddenly lost the ability to control their rage and feel justified in dumping it on or at whoever they feel opposes them. The last sentence identifies two issues, the inability to control rage/anger/frustration, and the willingness to allow it to manifest physically in some form of an attack on another whether it be verbal, physical, or with weapons.

I realize this is a very simplistic view of a very deep and complicated topic, but it has to start somewhere. So to my Sigforum brothers and sisters, the brain trust, the information nexus of the universe please weigh in here.

I see what you are saying and agree with the premise.

I think social media (especially anonymous) has made it MUCH worse. People get used to responding to others in ways that would be totally unacceptable face to face. Once in a while, they get into a conflict in public and have no skills to de-escalate.

I agree and would like to add a few additional thoughts:

1) Entitlement (everyone today wants to get 'something/anything' - because I deserve it)

2) Also, everyone is an "expert" about everything from sports to finance to relationships - everything!

Feelings don't matter, behavior matters.

People operate far too often from their feelings instead of stopping and thinking about their behavior.

In today's "blame everyone but me" society, people (1) don't look into themselves and (2) accept responsibility for their own actions.

I see this at work with one of my subordinates. When she feels questioned, or “attacked", she will spew venom and be a really unpleasant person.
When confronted about it, she breaks down, completely.

She never learned how to control her emotions. When these situations happen, she is like dealing with a toddler.
I think it goes back to how she was raised. Very little correction from parents, and to a large degree, raised herself. Parents were drug addicts (hardcore meth users, and she started at 13).
I think at least in the case I deal with, that she had stopped developing emotionally, or never learned to develop emotionally after her toddler years.

I don’t think she would ever be a shooter, but her verbal actions and uncontrollable rage, and feeling justified in her actions, leads to the point you are making Rightwire.

Concur, and to put it another way, there isn't as much stoicism as there used to be.

quote:

Originally posted by billpocz:
I agree and would like to add a few additional thoughts:

1) Entitlement (everyone today wants to get 'something/anything' - because I deserve it)

2) Also, everyone is an "expert" about everything from sports to finance to relationships - everything!

I was going to post Entitlement, but Bill got there first.
I would go a step further & say that it's further rooted in life in USA being easy - you have time to work yourself into a tizzy over shit that doesn't really affect you. It's a lot harder to be offended/outraged/marginalized when you're working your ass off.
Example: I have retired relatives that get red-hot mad over stupid shit they heard at the coffee shop, that isn't true (or even remotely possible in many cases).
Protests also go way down in January vs warmer months.

I've been composing and erasing here a lot. To sum up what I have been thinking in a few words.

We as a society have allowed ourselves to isolate ourselves with various means, the Internet is probably the biggest reason. It is a tool that can be used or misused. The Internet has allowed people to expound their own theories and beliefs with little or no fear of retribution.

At least in the past people were forced to at least go shopping for food and necessities. Today they can have them delivered to their door with no interaction with other people. We are becoming our own little islands.

At least since the hippie era we’ve had a dramatic increase in parents who want to be their children’s friends instead of a parent. If it feels good do it. Don’t discipline the child, you’ll damage their precious ego and, as mentioned, we’re constantly bombarded with the message “you deserve it!” It’s lead to a few generations with no coping mechanisms. Through in the heavily medicated crowd to stir it up and you’ve got a disturbing number of people with stunted development and altered brain function.

If you had any younger siblings when you were growing up, you probably observed them as infants experiencing extreme rage. I remember when my younger sibling was about 6 months old, and he became upset - probably because he was feeling hunger pains. Within a very short period of time, he was in full rage mode. His tiny little fists were clenched, his screams were intense and his little face was contorted with frustration. My mother rushed in with a bottle of formula, and within a minute, he was suckling peacefully.

But, here's the thing: By the time he was 3 or 4 or 5 years old, behavior like that was UNACCEPTABLE. He was trained from an age before his memory even kicked in to CONTROL his anger, or else my mother would "give him something to really be angry about!" I'm sure I was trained the same way.

People aren't raising their kids the same way anymore. In fact, the new way of raising your kids, which has been around for 30 or more years includes the phrase, "Never say 'no' to your children because if hurts their self esteem."

quote:

Originally posted by billpocz:
I agree and would like to add a few additional thoughts:

1) Entitlement (everyone today wants to get 'something/anything' - because I deserve it)

2) Also, everyone is an "expert" about everything from sports to finance to relationships - everything!

3) Perpetual victimhood causing them to believe they are not responsible for any action.

a deadly (literally) combination of Millennial entitlement, the anonymity of the Net, that allows people to rant vile stuff without consequence, the complicated Civil Rights issues around the severely mentally ill, the decline of the intact nuclear family, all contribute a piece to a person's ability, and willingness, to express themself with rage and/or violence. Very few boundaries anymore for young people. Few, if any 50 year-olds doing mass murder.

Fewer people than ever have been punched in the face at least once in their lives. Or met with any real consequence from a tantrum.

My son is 5, and we don't put up with outbursts. He gets physically removed from any public space if he can't calm down, and he never gets what he wants by yelling or being physical.

People have let their children run their lives, so we have generations of adults who were rewarded for kicking and screaming.

These same adults now believe that feelings constitute a political stance, and that being offended is a form of assault.

Feelings are for friends and family.

Civility is for the rest of society.

The increasing belief that the world has to care about your feelings, that is the problem.

Anger and outrage are easy, and self rewarding. Angry people are easily manipulated.

The uncontrolled feelings of children. You see it in social media, in the news, in entertainment and more in adult members of the Democratic Party than other political groups. In the last couple of decades or so, children turning into adults, failing to make that last critical mental development step of empathy, compassion, self-control, collective cooperation, critical reasoning - traits that infants or very young children usually lack, but usually develop with life experience. The reason is very much a question, and seemingly almost exclusive to this country. What has changed in America in the last ten or twenty years?

I absolutely believe what Arcwelder has said. Very few people have had to face any real physical consequence when they dont control their emotions and throw a tantrum. For example, my friend , say, we call him Matt. His wife behaves exactly like the person referred to by Beancooker And she throws tantrums like you would not believe, and is actually physically abusive towards her sons and towards Matt. Until recently, she got into a traffic incident, a minor fender bender, and she got out of the car full of rage, and physically attacked the other driver, who, BTW, was not at fault. He was a large African-American male who proceeded to punch my friend's wife a few times real hard in the face. Then the cops showed up and stopped the fight. This is the first time in her 55 years that she has been stopped by a good beating, and has had to face the consequences of her misbehavior. Hopefully she will have learnt from her experience, because, she is getting no "sympathy" from all her friends and family.

Poor impulse control...

Great Thread -

"no fear of retribution"


When anger rises, think of the consequences. – Confucius

Don't you wish there was a app to slap the shit out of some anonymous posters.

Too many get out of jail free cards today -

I was raised with a iron hand. Can't do that anymore - Ask me about my visit from child protection after an issue with my 14 year old daughter. Unbelievable - She showed me -

The fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.

I believe that a significant portion of the inchoate rage that seems to inhabit so many people, or put them in a position where they can be set off, comes from a sense of loss of control of their environment and of their future, which is then inflamed by interest groups to mobilize anger for desired results.

Politicians seem to respond to the mob on twitter, the trendy opinion of elite media, or their largest donors rather than the interests of the quiet, day to day interests of their constituents, or what might be termed "the National Best Interest."

Jobs no longer have much of a sense of permanence.

Hard work does not mean that you will have a decent middle class lifestyle.

Then there are the daily frustrations that you don't control. You bought a little house in a nice community 40 minutes from down town 20 years ago. In that time frame, development around you means that your taxes have gone up, there are 4x the cars on the same roads which now have 3x more stoplights so your commute is now 1.5 hours each way, and because of nicer neighborhoods further out, yours is becoming a dated shithole. "They" didn't protect your neighborhood, your commute or your job, and you control none of this. "They" don't even seem to listen when you go to a meeting or call city hall to complain. Welcome to the next tax increase.

So not only does the middle class job not really work for you any more, you can't afford the $6k it costs to take the kids to Disney for a week, and you will never be able to afford the bass boat for going fishing on the weekends. Hell, even if you could afford it, where would you keep it? Zoning probably keeps it from being in your driveway or side yard, even if you don't have an HOA that forbids it.

Finally, there are a ton of organizations that get clicks, sell advertising, get eyeballs, gain social power or consolidate political power by harnessing that rage. Communication is no longer about facts and solutions, it is about "winning", "pwning", "destroying" the opposition and gaining the psychic, cultural and political power from that position. Communication is about inflaming rather than informing, and harnessing the power of outrage culture.

We have created "outrage culture" that is premised on feelings, not facts. Furthermore, while there has always been outrage, fast, easy cheap communications, coupled with the anonymity and consequent lack of accountability as mentioned above, have created the perfect environment to spread outrage.

Public fury is, I think, the natural result of the systems of public discourse that have been created and encouraged by the organizations that profit from the financial, political and social consequences of outrage culture. These effects are cumulative. The lack of consequences Arc and others point out, the emphasis on feelings, a sense of entitlement encouraged by politicians and popular culture, a tendency to self-segregate into like minded communities (physical and virtual) and the concurrent demise of social institutions like social clubs, union halls, churches, VFW/AMVETS/American Legion, the grange, and other civic organizations, means that there is no public place where people are engaged in community social activity, sometimes with people who don't completely agree with you, or validate your worldview. Disenfranchised people are angry, angry people are dangerous; lonely angry people are even more dangerous.

We are getting very good as a society of creating disenfranchised, lonely, angry people. God help us.

quote:

At least since the hippie era

I'm one of that era and not of all of us bought into that crap of being our kids "friends" first and foremost. Or being "entitled". Sure, some of us took a little longer to learn this lesson in life but by the time we turned eighteen or so we figured out that (a) the world did not owe us anything and (b) we had better figure out what we were going to do with our lives, it was not all playtime anymore and most importantly (c) tease the bull and get the horns.

Sadly some did not get the message. They were coddled and pampered into being messed up adults.