Rage, wrath and fury

“F*** off you ******* fat *****.” These bellowed words, minus their editorial asterisks, hung strangely in the scented, pristine early summer air as I walked up to college for another day’s teaching. For anyone in any doubt as to the actual words veiled behind the antimacassar of discretion, suffice to say that fricative and plosives were prominent, and the speaker displayed a gift for alliteration worthy of an Anglo-Saxon poet. This individual was at the wheel of a newish, expensive looking, I’m guessing high spec BMW, a device able to transport its owner over limitless distances quietly, smoothly, protected from rain, wind, and uneven road surfaces, with regulated air temperatures, and all to the accompaniment of whatever musical delights he chose. At the time of his oral contribution to the urban soundscape, his words looped jaggedly over an oddly incongruous R&B track. The cause of his outburst was clearly apparent. Because of construction work at a crossroads there’s a temporary two-way traffic light, and someone in the car behind him had briefly tooted their horn as he dithered over inching forward as the lights changed. Perhaps, Lennon and McCartney style, he hadn’t noticed; perhaps indeed he had blown his mind out in a car, fragments flying free in those plosive-fricative gobbets.

No-one except me appeared to take any notice. The traffic continued to idle in the morning heat; children continued their reluctant route to school; shoppers headed on to shop. Somewhere a dog barked.

But as I continued on my way, towards my first class of the day, on Coleridge’s poetry (yes, I know how fortunate I am), I found myself musing on this peculiar incident, not least the realisation that it was not particularly peculiar. In fact, there appears to be so much rage around that it’s almost surprising when people aren’t frothing at the mouth over something or other. The previous evening’s newspaper headlines had screamed unhappily from the shelves in my local Co-op “Fury over…Rage as…anger over…” The ancient Greek Furies, or Erinyes, would have been surprised, and possibly a little degraded, to find themselves so often called upon to denounce the local council’s policy on leisure centres.

Why and when did we become so angry? It’s clear that newspapers have a need to dramatise, exaggerate, hyperbolise. A headline reading “Some people, on balance, feel a sense of disquiet or mild irritation about…” Until the Brexit referendum of 2016, it was possible to believe that great numbers of the population woke up seething with rage at immigrants, migrants, Polish plumbers, wokey-leftie-liberal-vegans who want to ban Christmas, spending their days thinking of little else.

Marcus Aurelius, during his nineteen years as Roman Emperor, found time to reflect, in words of great beauty, on his own Stoicism. In his private meditations, he argued persuasively that A real person doesn't give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance – The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength. I’m not necessarily expecting BMW man to sympathise, or even to be aware of Aurelius’ beautiful, measured and self-critical words, but they do provide an interesting perspective on our tendency to explosive irascibility.

Not that anger can’t be a thing of wonder, divinely cathartic and illuminating. When Shakespeare’s King Lear had been stripped of crown, palaces, attendants, soldiers, sycophants, the truths from which his life of privilege had screened him, burst out in great illuminated thought bubbles. Standing bare headed and unprotected amidst the storm, on his blasted heath, he challenges the elements to express his own anger: Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow! Accompanied only by his Fool, he realises the art of our necessities is strange/And can make vile things precious. Lear realises that it’s only by ridding oneself of life’s luxuries that one can hope to understand what is really significant. And if, like Lear, your life has been spent ignorant of the concerns of ordinary mortals, suddenly realising your own shallowness might be a genuine cause for anger. What’s interesting is that this rage is directed not at someone else, the council, a fellow occupant of a chariot, but at himself. Aware for the first time in his life of the for the first time in his life, of the Poor naked wretches…that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, he realises, with a coruscating, blinding, epiphanic rage, that he’s guiltier than anyone: O I have ta’en/ Too little care of this.

Do similarly pampered, privileged and foolish leaders, Johnson, Putin or Trump, experience similarly enlightened self-rage? It would be nice to think so.

There are many answers to my earlier question about the source of this tsunami of anger in 2023. Post-Covid frustration? The collapse of the political post-war consensus? The suspended Damocletian sword of climate crisis? Or the increase in our own comfort levels, the consequent alienation from the natural world, and the depersonalised, atomised nature of so much of our lives? It’s certainly easier to shoot off misogynistic bile on a Facebook post at someone you’re never going to meet, or insult an anonymous and certainly exploited operative in a call centre- or indeed to shout abuse at a fellow driver from behind the carapace of your insulated bodywork.

Despite his 21st century air conditioned, heated steering wheeled, richly upholstered, satnavved, glamourised cart, this morning’s angry man could have been described over two thousand years ago by the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes, as like a dog tied to a cart, and compelled to go wherever it goes. A glamourous and extraordinarily sophisticated cart, admittedly. Yet whilst there appears to be such overwhelmingly universal anger, I suspect most people’s instinct is to seek a quiet and pleasant existence, doing good where possible- as Epictetus advised, a virtuous man avoids anger, moderating his will to suit the world, remaining sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy.

I should point out that

none of the texts I’ve referenced in this piece feature anywhere in the contemporary educational curriculum; now there’s something to feel really angry about.