Rage – Part One

Estimated reading time: 4.4 minutes (without a bathroom break)

“The Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is couching [not “crouching”] at your door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.’” 

Genesis 4

Why This Is Critical

God gave man the ability to rage but left self-regulation up to man.

Bad decision.

Like an incurable cancer, rage rages on generation after generation.

We need to stop raging before we all kill each other!

*****

On March 27, 2022, at the 94th Academy Awards, Chris Rock did what most emcees do at awards shows: he made fun of one of the celebrities in the audience.

His target happened to be Will Smith’s wife.

Will rose from his ringside table, strolled up on the stage, and slapped the shit out of his old friend, Chris Rock, who was nowhere close to Will’s weight class, in front of God and everyone.

Will then proceeded to cuss Chris from his table while Chris stood in stunned amazement, his talent for improvisational wit jarred like an eighteen-wheeler just hit him without so much as the beep of a horn first.

***** 

If you believe in the historical (or symbolic) accuracy of the Book of Genesis, we are the pissed-off descendants of a pissed-off God who made us in his image, put us in the Garden of Eden, and then cast us out because we pissed him off.

Why did God get so pissed off at an uneducated young couple, who had to be hungry, for munching on a piece of fruit from the “Tree of Knowledge”?

The only “knowledge” they got for their troubles was the awareness that they were naked.

Being pissed off, angry, upset, petulant, passive-aggressive, violent, and rude are symptoms of the disease of rage.

Rage worms its way into personal relationships as verbal abuse, domestic violence, and displays of machismo.

Rage, in the guise of a lone wolf, creeps into elementary schools with an AK-47 and murders teachers and 5th graders while cowardly cops stand by waiting for divine intervention.

Kool-Aid Drinkers, intoxicated with the thought that they are “patriots,” rage unthinkingly at politicians for simply doing their jobs.

“Hang Mike Pence!” [1]

Enough is enough!

I will briefly explore current theories about rage, offer examples, and pause to allow for contemplation before resuming.

This is only Part One.

I’m on a mission!

Current Psychological Theories 

According to Rage: A Step-by-Step Guide to Overcoming Explosive Anger (2007) by Dr. Ronald T. Potter-Efron, emotional gunpowder comes packed in two powder kegs: (1) sudden rage and (2) seething rage.

Four distinct triggers make the powder blow:

1.   Threats to survival: Some asshole decides to invade your country, murder women and children, and bomb pediatric hospitals. Threaten a person’s survival with rage, expect counter-rage.

2.   Feelings of impotence: “This is the rage of the man shaking his fist at the sky, demanding that God explain why his son has just died.” Poor old, loyal, and pious Job is a good example, even though he lost more than just a son.

·     Impotent rage may manifest as “passive-aggressive behavior.”

·     The victim feels powerless to confront the persecutor but acts compliant while secretly sabotaging and silently forming alliances to overthrow the emperor.

·     These days, if you are too chickenshit for face-to-face raging, you can rage passive aggressively by text, email, or social media, as exemplified by the middle-of-the-night emailer who sends you insults and snide remarks to start your next day on a pleasant note.

·     Marital infidelity is often a form of passive-aggressive behavior and may be more about rage than sex.

·     Erectile dysfunction may be vascular or, passive-aggressive, or a bit of both.

·     Impotent rage can take the form of “revenge rage.”

·     “You tell ‘em I’M coming, and hell’s coming with me!” [2]

·     Chris Rock came from the streets; he may have friends, bad friends.

3.   Shame: If you feel that someone has humiliated, disrespected, or criticized you, you may react with rage.

·     My favorite example is when Muhammad Ali stood over Sonny Liston, beating him into submission, while shouting, “What’s my name?” because he felt Liston disrespected him by consistently referring to him as “Cassius Clay.”

4.   Abandonment: When a spouse leaves or threatens to leave their partner for someone else, that will do it.

·     The sneakier they are, the more intense the rage; no one likes to have the rug of their life pulled out from under them.

·     This may also take the form of cowardly passive-aggressive behavior.

·     My favorite example is what I call the “breadcrumb cheaters.”

·     They don’t have the guts to tell you they are boinking someone else; they leave breadcrumbs, like 750 text messages recorded on the monthly phone bill, the whiff of unfamiliar perfume, or the all-time classic “lipstick on your collar.”

·     Children whose parents abandon them, physically or emotionally, may shake their fists at the sky for the rest of their lives, never trusting anyone.

·     Abandonment rage may be the result of severe feelings of rejection (“You’re not good enough,” “You’re not loveable,” “Go away, boy, you bother me”) or fear of being alone.

************ 

·     Is rage like a drug to some people?

·     Are some people “rageaholics”? [3]

·     Does rage give them an adrenaline rush?

************

·     What is the cost of rage?

·     Ask Will Smith.

·     How’s it working for you now, Will?

·     Is that the mark of Cain I see on the credits for your new movie?

Sudden (Impulsive) Rage 

Sudden rage is usually impulsive and explodes without warning like an Icelandic volcano.

For people who have not developed any self-regulation skills, rage may be involuntary for all practical purposes.

Aside from our old friend, Will:

·     Romulus and Remus [4]

·     Ted Bundy

·     Charles Manson

·     Whoever murdered Tupac

·     Joe Pesci in Goodfellas

Seething Rage

Seething rage percolates before boiling over.

It usually, but not always, rattles before it strikes.

·     The Israelites in bondage in Egypt

·     Whigs of the American Revolution

·     Jacobins of the French Revolution

·     John Wilkes Booth

·     Bolsheviks who brutally murdered the Romanov family

·     Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment [5]

·     Jack the Ripper

·     The Invisible Man [6]

·     The Nazis and their antisemitic progeny

·     Lee Harvey Oswald

·     Jack Ruby

·     Sirhan Sirhan

·     James Earl Ray

·     Timothy McVeigh

·     More school shootings than I have time to list, including Sandy Hook, Columbine, Jonesboro, Parkwood, and Uvalde.

Rage Based Upon Biological Factors of Mental Illness

In some cases, rage seems inexplicable and defies categorization.

·     Aaron Hernandez, the former tight end for the New England Patriots, murdered his friend, Odin Lloyd, in a fit of rage and later turned his rage on himself in prison by hanging himself.

·     A later autopsy revealed that he suffered from CTE, a degenerative brain disease and an occupational hazard for professional football players

·     Leopold and Loeb were two wealthy boys who murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks as he was walking home from school just to prove their intellectual superiority and ability to pull off the “perfect murder.”

·     Was this “narcissistic rage”?

*******

·     Can we dig deep enough into the human psyche to get to the root of human rage?

·     If we cannot cure it, can we at least mitigate it?

·     Knowing what we know, why do we not teach anger management skills to young children in schools?

·     Dr. Potter-Efron proposes a seven-step program, which I will discuss in future installments.

·     My four minutes are about up.

There is something we can do! 

If you tell me there isn’t, I will feel impotent!

That’s going to piss me off!

How many descendants of Cain do we have to endure?

Join me in fighting the War Against Rage [7]

If you have a problem with rage, know someone who does, or is interested in this topic, please email me at tom@coachingwithwisdom.com.

[1] I don’t even like Mike Pence, but “hang him”?

[2] Wyatt Earp.

[3] Take Donald Trump, for example. Does a day go by when he does not rage about something? This sometimes goes on all day and late into the wee hours.

[4] A variation of Cain and Abel. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, Romulus slew his brother Remus, both of whom were raised by a she-wolf. Romulus not only did not get a mark or ousted, they named a city (Rome) after him, proving that sometimes fratricide pays off after all.

[5] I thought a literary reference would give this article a little class.

[6] Ditto.

[7] I take full responsibility for my choice of words. I know an oxymoron when I see one. Non-sequiturs, however, are harder to spot. And those pesky paradoxes persistently plague our attempts to make our perceptions coherent.