Anger Is Great. Anger Is Also the Worst.

Some thoughts on the mess we’re in and how to climb out of it

Image licensed from Shutterstock

As soon as it was morning on the East Coast, I texted my brother.

He quickly texted back: ‘I lived through it once, I saw it coming, and yet I still feel unprepared for what’s to come.’

My brother and his partner are both immigrants living in Florida. They are also both scientists. The decision that many Americans made last week directly impacts their lives, careers, and, most importantly, futures. Donald Trump’s presidency could mean suspended work visas, stricter green card requirements, and severe cuts in science research funding. And that’s just the things off the top of my head.

I feel his anger. Just like I feel the anger and the avalanche of other negative emotions — shock, pain, fear, despair, anxiety — surging through everyone else whose lives will be upended by this outcome. Especially women and trans people. Many of us here, in Europe, share that anger, too. Trump’s return is terrible news for Ukraine and for nearby countries like Poland, where I have family, too. We’re merely outsiders looking in, and yet our futures — and those of countless others around the world — are being shaped by a choice we had no voice in. I don’t even want to talk about how absurd this is. Not right now, at least.

What I do want to talk about, however, is the one emotion that most of us — regardless of political views or where we are in the world — have felt at some point in recent years.

Anger may be one of the main outcomes of all this.

But it was also the fuel that got us here.

---

In the final play of Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy, The Eumenides, Orestes, son of Agamemnon, is pursued relentlessly and viciously by the Furies as punishment for killing his mother. The Furies, also known as Erinyes — which translates to the ‘angry ones’ — are a trio of goddesses in Greek and Roman mythology said to have sprung from the blood of Uranus, one of the primordial gods (whom, fun fact, I once played in a school production.) In essence, they embody unconstrained anger and vengeance and all that comes with it — pain, fear, and madness.

When we think of anger, it frequently resembles the unyielding intensity of the Furies. It’s chaotic, consuming, and seemingly endless. It’s a pain that, all too often, begets more pain.

Many people, I believe, have felt this kind of anger lately. After all, there’s plenty to be angry about, and not just for those living in the US.

Global food prices have soared in recent years. And so have the costs of many other essentials, including housing. Yet workers’ wages have barely kept pace with the rising cost of living. Jobs — even well-paying ones — no longer provide the security they once did. As a result, more and more people are pushed into extreme poverty and homelessness and are left without access to essential health services. We are, understandably, very, very angry. We want to have better lives. To be able to afford to own a home, buy groceries and access healthcare. To set aside time for proper rest and not have to power through burn-out and health issues because the alternative is losing our jobs or going into debt. To live in dignity and happiness.

But many of us can’t, and don’t, because our world has become increasingly unlivable. Layer on top of it systemic inequalities, ongoing conflicts, the pandemic, and the worsening climate crisis, and you have quite a storm of rage building up.

We’ve been in this place before, though. We’ve seen the destructive power of similar storms in the 1920s in Italy, the 1930s in Germany, and several other times in history. Widespread anger, particularly of the economic kind, combined with the belief that tougher times lie ahead and the shortcomings of the political establishment in addressing the crisis, create fertile ground for the rise of authoritarianism. Autocrats understand this well — they both acknowledge and justify this anger. Hitler and Mussolini, for instance, frequently portrayed their countries as victims of unfair treatment after World War I, each for different reasons. And then, they offered a seemingly simple solution in the form of a potent brew of nationalism, populism, and violence.

In the hands of power-hungry people, anger becomes the perfect tool to further their goals and inflict more pain. But that pain, they argue, is entirely justified, too. They betrayed us. They deserve it. They should’ve known better than to harm us first.

It’s no coincidence that Trump’s use of violent rhetoric and the pronoun ‘Them’ to target specific out-groups — such as global elites and immigrants — and paint them as threats have sharply increased over time, particularly in the lead-up to the election. In doing so, he redirected people’s anger — anger born of very real, very serious problems — toward specific segments of society, fueling support for his agenda. Right-wing podcasters, YouTubers, Twitch streamers, etc., who target young men with misogynistic content masquerading as ‘male empowerment’ have done the same. They tell men their anger is justified and offer a simple solution: blame women and marginalised communities.

But here’s the thing: anger doesn’t have to turn into an inextinguishable flame that burns everything in its path.

---

After enduring relentless torment from the Furies, Orestes seeks help from the goddess Athena. She agrees to set up the first courtroom trial for him and enlists a group of Athenian citizens as jurors. When the trial ends in a tie, Athena casts the deciding vote, ruling in Orestes’ favour and sparing him from death for his crime. Initially, the Furies aren’t pleased with this outcome. But the goddess persuades them to accept the decision and see the value in channelling their anger at injustice into pursuing constructive force of vigilance rather than violent retaliation.

Anger is undoubtedly a powerful emotion. But it doesn’t necessarily need to lead to more pain, which neither undoes nor lessens the harm already done. When aligned with ethical standards and well-grounded, it can drive positive change, helping to eradicate injustices and uplift those in need rather than contributing to further suffering.

History shows us this is possible, too. A few weeks ago, I wrote about just that — examples of women, specifically, who have sparked movements, led strikes, and staged boycotts across centuries and continents. From fighting for fair wages and better working conditions to demanding equality and freedom, women have repeatedly, and successfully, harnessed their anger to fuel social change. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that the Furies were portrayed as women, is it?

The female anger is so, so potent. And it stands in such stark contrast to the servile passivity that femininity has been synonymous with for so long.

Yet, anger remains the one emotion that women are told they can’t express, and if we do show it, society wastes no time labelling us ‘hysterical,’ ‘irrational,’ and ‘incompetent.’ Angry men are simply being ‘passionate’ and ‘assertive.’ Angry women, though, are just one outburst away from having to be checked into a Victorian asylum. Black women, in particular, are severely punished for expressing anger due to the pervasive stereotype that they’re ‘inherently’ hostile and ill-tempered.

And so, even when our anger is entirely justified — as it is today — because the world seems intent on turning back the clock and taking away our rights and freedoms, we’re told to keep our cool and stifle our fury.

Only playing it cool never did us any favours, and it certainly won’t now.

An interesting recent article in Political Research Quarterly explored how people, including those who may not identify as feminists, perceive the anger of women activists — specifically analysing the protests surrounding Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 US Supreme Court confirmation hearings. (To refresh your memory: Kavanaugh previously faced accusations of sexual assault and misconduct from three women.) The paper’s author, Kimberly Killen, found that these ‘angry feminist claims,’ as she calls them, can actually have a mobilising and productive effect. As she points out, ‘the way in which they [the activists] are using anger is reclaiming — either intentionally or not — the position of rationality.’ In other words, they imply that if you’re not angry about this issue, you’re the irrational one — not them.

Killen also argues that women’s anger can empower other women to articulate feelings and experiences that fall outside traditional norms — norms that have long dictated who gets to be publicly angry and whose voice is amplified.

Needless to say, we all can channel anger into something good and civic — something that motivates us to act against injustices and push for a better world.

The tricky part, of course, is understanding how to do this.

---

Just a couple of years before the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v Wade, my home country, Poland, introduced a near-total abortion ban.

I wasn’t living there at the time, and I hadn’t for many years, but the news still hit hard. I kept thinking of the women in my family who still live there, the women I grew up with, and all the other Polish women and the hell some of them will have to go through because a bunch of men decided they shouldn’t have the right to control their own bodies. Not long after the ban came into effect, several women lost their lives because doctors were too afraid to perform lifesaving interventions out of fear of facing prison time.

I was angry. But it’s precisely this anger that drove me to write more and more until I eventually decided to make it my full focus: writing about the things that make me furious in the world and how we can make it better.

Anger isn’t my only fuel, though — love, compassion, and empathy are all equally important and powerful. Anger might light the fire, but it takes those other forces to keep it burning in the right direction.

And I do wish more of us understood that today.

After all, Trump’s win in the US isn’t an anomaly; it fits into a larger pattern of democratic backsliding and surging support for far-right movements that can be seen all over the world — including in Europe. In countries like Hungary, Finland, and Italy, far-right nationalist parties are already dominant in government, and in others — such as Germany, Austria, France and the Netherlands — these parties performed strikingly well in recent European Parliament elections.

The accompanying rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric, attacks on women’s rights, and dismissals of science and climate change are clear signs of what could come next if we’re not careful. What’s also clear is that people across the globe and across political divides are angry. And angry people eager for change are often drawn to those who promise swift, bold solutions, even if there’s no intent to follow through. This is hardly the whole story, of course. I have no doubt in mind that some people vote for aspiring autocrats and right-wing nationalist leaders, fully aware of what that leadership would mean, especially for marginalised communities.

But not everyone. Perhaps not even most people.

That’s why I think it’s so important to acknowledge the common struggles so many of us share and the anger we feel and ask ourselves: who benefits when we turn that anger toward each other? And how can we move away from this sort of unproductive, divisive rage that plays right into the hands of those in power and instead channel our frustrations to build solidarity?

None of this is easy, and I certainly don’t have all the answers. But I do believe it has to be done.

Martin Luther King, Jr. also once made it clear, outlining these two types of anger in an essay written in 1959:

One is the development of a wholesome social organisation to resist with effective, firm measures any efforts to impede progress. The other is a confused, anger-motivated drive to strike back violently, to inflict damage. Primarily, it seeks to cause injury to retaliate for wrongful suffering. It is punitive — not radical or constructive.

---

Another important thing to highlight is not just that nearly everyone is angry, but that they’re also entitled to that anger. Having privilege — whether due to your gender, race, sexuality, or any other aspect of your identity — doesn’t mean you’re entirely immune to suffering. It simply means your suffering might differ in scale or nature compared to others.

If we could recognise this and understand that we have far more in common with one another than with the forces trying to divide us, we could channel our collective frustration toward meaningful change.

Anger can certainly be a unifying force. But it can also be a dividing one.

Ultimately, the choice is ours. 

---

The Noösphere is an entirely reader-supported publication that brings social sciences research into frequently overlooked topics. If you read it every week and value the labour that goes into it, consider liking or sharing this essay or becoming a paid subscriber! You can also buy me a coffee instead.