It’s really hard to avoid rage as a driving force in the news today. Article after article, video clip after video clip, there is anger, upset, and rage. There is a link between what we think and how we feel, and that used to be determined by us. Now it is determined by the headlines we read and the videos we watch.
Cognition used to drive emotion, now emotion draws us towards information and that information caries a bias that fuels anger in one of two opposing ways:
1. Disgust: How can this happen in our society today? What kind of world are we living in? This is so wrong!
2. Rebuke: This is not a crisis. This is overblown! Everything is sensationalized.
These two reactions towards the same topic fuel even greater rage. If you think something is completely unacceptable and I ask you, ‘what’s the big deal?’, how does that make you feel?
Anger does not invite clear thought. It does not invite discourse that we can learn from. It does not foster a healthy environment.
It upsets me that headlines are so geared towards rage and anger. It saddens me that I still follow the headlines, clicking links and watching videos. I’m not impervious to the emotional draw. It’s similar to slowing down on the highway to see why emergency vehicles are pulled over in the oncoming lanes… we are pulled in by the macabre.
It can not be healthy to draw our attention to the world through rage. It clouds the truth, hides it in bias based on anger. This is not how we should be learning about the going’s on in our world. This is not news.
