The Economics of Anger

Robert Palmer’s classic Addicted To Love tells us that we might as well face our habit brain’s lusty desires.  I could go on to discuss the dehumanizing nature of women that the video portrays but hey it’s an upbeat tempo and sex sells so it’s easy to gloss over the glass ceiling for the mirrors on the bedroom walls.  We understand how we are driven by the base of our basic needs.  Especially when they call it Love.

Maslow puts love smack in the middle of his hierarchy model. 
But I believe there is an equal and opposite shadow self echelons that seeks its own self-satisfying state of being.

We all indulge in our immaterial needs where we find our self drawn to spend time and energy on unimportant things of no essential consequence.  How many likes on social media can I get for this selfie of me holding a beer and my baby?

At each level of the shadow pyramid of needs we justify, rationalize, and defend our actions, thoughts and beliefs in order to maintain our status lo.  Our ignorance fuels our anger and instead of selfie’s we are posting mean memes of disinformation and disrespect.  And we certainly believe our own opinions to the point of being blinded by the light that pours thru the pinhole of the door of seeing All That Is.

As the illusion of love is the fragrance of the self realization hierarchy, the taste of blood that anger elicits marks the territory for maintaining our ignorance at all cost.

It’s no secret to the industry trying to convince you to buy their get well-rich-thin snake-oil-sales-pitch.  They rely on your addiction to love (inner-peace,bliss and the other new age status whoa wayz and memes). Our shadow addiction to anger and outrage is also exploited by the establishment for their own Machiavellian gain.

Look how easily we are polarized by the political paparazzi.  The amount of money our candidates spend to buy our vote and vilify the opposition is epic.  Divide and conquer.  Our shift from trying to win over the “undecided” voter is now deeply entrenched instead in demonizing the opposition.

Not since 1968 when Nixon wins the popular vote with 60% have we seen a president win with more than about half of the american voters.  And Tricky Dick’s popularity of course didn’t last through the end of his term.  Clinton wins with 43%, GW Bush takes the presidency with 47.87% of the dangling chads (of course Gore received more with 48.38% but who’s counting?) and Obama became our first black president with 53% of voter support.   We can assume that the 2016 election will also be a close race, or perhaps a Nixon reminiscent landslide ending in impeachment, who knows anything is possible.  But if your narrow minded brain thinks the sky is falling and the world as we know it will end if Trump moves in to the Whitehouse (don’t gloat, I could have just as easily said Hilary Clinton) then you have bought into the best hype and hysteria that a billion+ dollars can buy.

So what’s the big deal?  A billion dollars.  Well, these aren’t $9 personal checks to Bernie Sanders.  Between 1996 -2008 Political Action Committees (PACs) were < 25% of the total contributions.  But in our 2016 election reality TV show, PACs make up half of the revenue.   Who cares?  Well, if you don’t mind a relatively few super-rich individuals to have greatly magnified and undue influence over the results of our elections and thus buy government decisions then its no problem at all.  But if we learned anything from Nixon’s popular vote we know that if we follow the money we can easily see the corruption.

Feed the fears.  Smear the newsfeeds.  Dangle the drama as if its sweeps week. Because we say we deplore drama yet we continue to find ourselves recipients of the daytime emmy for our supporting soap opera role year after year.  It is a paradox until we understand our addiction to anger in all of its facets and forms.  Until we seek out our own shadow hierarchy of needs and begin to question our assumptions and outrage.  If we don’t follow the money, we can certainly look at the source.  Who re-tweeted the meme?  #ScrewU2moron may not have any interest in presenting facts if their income stream capitalizes on your ignorance of the issues.

Not only are people on the outside using our anger as pawns in their own game, but our own neurobiology rewards anger.   It feels good in the moment, we justify our own anger. We get a rush like other dopamine (DOPE, get it) reward receptors in the brain.  When we bang our fist on a table or write an angry post on FB the release of adrenaline can actually make us feel good, creating an even greater sense of excitement.  Over time we wire our brain to experience pleasure from our irrational rants.  But like any cool drug, we will need to keep upping the anti in order to get the same high as we use to.  That’s why we find ourselves more angry, more often and yet we may wonder why our blood pressure is high, our anxiety is peaked, our depression isn’t giving us a break and our sleep cycle is all about crash and burn.

Anger is such a convincing drug, that we may not want to change or we believe we are incapable.  And that’s what the news fiends are counting on.  They want to keep you lit like a colorado hit or else you may remember what you came here and forgot.  The open heart, state of compassion that leads us to realize our full potential as a self-actualized being.  We become problem centered instead of self-centered, we accept ourselves and others as they are, we perceive reality efficiently and can tolerate uncertainty, with empathy and compassion for others regardless of situation or circumstances.

Is anger ever justified.  Of course but it is insufficient for change on any level.  When we feel ourselves begin to clench our Facebook fist we have an opportunity to examine our motivation.  Who profits from our emotional sin-phony, are we creating a rush to satisfy our need for speed or are we hell bent on feeling superior? What if we considered a different opinion.  What would happen if we dialed back our anger and turned up our creative talent towards helping seek justice for all in whatever small way we can contribute with our unique gifts.  The only peak experience we can have comes as we realize we can no longer afford to fight among ourselves or within our self.  We can not be blind to the truth of another person’s pain nor can we continue to ignore the imbalance and injustice that color our canvas.  We have an opportunity at every level to reach our hand and help someone else up so that they have their basic needs met, so that they feel safe.  So that our love becomes an outreach for others and our actions align with the highest order of loving kindness.  In this way, we all get a piece of the billion dollar pie.