Hate and Rage-- What's the difference?

[Dhara]

First-class cabin fuels 'air rage' among passengers flying coach, study says

 

[Dhara]

When a brand slips up, people are more than eager to vent about it on social media, and it’s natural for companies to worry about these gripes going viral.

A new study finds that once a business responds to a specific grievance on Twitter, it could also open the floodgates to more criticism. But that doesn’t mean brands should clam up when an issue arises. Twitter can be a helpful tool for companies hoping to regain the trust of unhappy patrons, and responding to customers on public forums is better than not responding at all. In fact, reaching out can greatly improve the way people think about a company.
Why Companies Should Respond When Twitter Rage Spikes

 

[Dhara]

What is internet anger?
Internet anger is what I call the anger that results from online interactions and disputes, usually on social media (e.g, Facebook, Twitter) but also in email and even text exchanges. It’s very common, a 2013 study by Fan and colleagues, found that anger spread faster online than fear, disgust, or sadness, making it the most “viral” emotion.

How is it different from regular anger?
The emotion itself is the same as offline anger and, for the most part, so are the causes.

What makes internet anger so problematic is how people sometimes respond to their angry feelings. Angry internet users will often rant in a way that offends people or damages relationships. Likewise, people who rant online often have problems with their anger offline too. According to a study my research team and I did in 2013, people who frequently ranted online were likely to experience more maladaptive anger in their offline life than others.
Internet Anger | All the Rage

 

[ZackB]

Anger, hate and rage are emotions like any other, neither good nor bad. When you don't see them coming or you haven't cultivated a relationship to them, you find yourself behaving from anger and often hurting yourself and others. To make it worse you might be embarrassed that you were reactive and acted out of anger and so pride takes over and refuses to let you apologize or repair the damage you have done.


To begin to practice with anger it's helpful to start with an understanding of what goes on before you feel angry. Of course the causes and conditions that give rise to anger are many and complex, but we can start with three of of the most obvious.


First there is a primitive anger that arises in the face of a real threat. You are likely familiar with the term "freeze, flight, or fight response". When faced with a real threat the reptile like part of your brain chooses from one of these three responses in an attempt to ensure your survival. The fight response has a rush of adrenaline, a narrowing of focus, and a physical contraction that pushes blood to your fists, that most people would call anger. Unfortunately because the power of interpretation is so strong, if you misperceive someone's behavior as a threat the same response can occur. If you often misperceive threat and find yourself in "the freeze, flight, or fight response", then seeking modalities that heal trauma may be the best way to work with this kind of anger.


Second, there is an anger that builds from resistance to what's happening. This can occur in two ways. You might be responding to any little thing with resistance, going along grumpily wishing you didn't "have to" to do this or that, resenting traffic, complaining that you work too much, etc. You are unconsciously cultivating a mindstate that is quick to anger. You might create this same mindstate around something specific. For example, let's say that you have a specific idea about how customer service should be. You call your telephone company and they don't measure up. You complain talking about how you should have been treated. You compare the next customer service experience to the last, refining your complaints and getting ever more specific about how it should be. Over time you tighten more and more around your view about how customer service should be. This is a perfect condition for anger.


Third, there is anger that arises out of a lack of resource. Parents all know about this anger. They see a tired, hungry, or overwhelmed look on their child's face and they know a meltdown is just around the corner. When you are under-resourced and you can't meet the next thing, anger shows up to help you bulldoze through the situation or simply shield you from what's happening.


For practicing with these last two types of anger, let's look at four concrete practices.


1. Cultivate awareness. Reflect on situations in which you got angry with the following questions:

Do I have any specific standards or expectations to which I am comparing myself or others?

How was I relating to my experience before I got angry?

Was I complaining? Was I experiencing things as burdens or obligations? Was I dreading something and thinking about what I would rather be doing?


2. Pause and expand. It's helpful to remember that anger lives on a continuum from slightly irritated to livid. By mindfully pausing with even the least bit of irritation, you can shift directions. Engaging in little practices like closing your eyes just for a moment and inviting your whole body to relax and expand takes you off the anger continuum. Doing this many many times a day will result in a deep sense of peace that grows over time.


3. Self-care and Planning. When you are in an under-resourced place, make a specific plan about how to handle that. Check in with the needs list and name what needs are going unmet. Make a date with yourself or get the support to meet those needs immediately or within the next few days.


In the meantime, remind yourself that in an under-resourced state, anger and other forms of reactivity are more likely to show up. This means that if you want to get through the day in alignment with your values, extra mindfulness is required. Bring your energy in a bit more so that you can focus on what's right in front of you. This isn't the day to count on a spontaneous flow of wisdom and compassion, give yourself permission to take long pauses before responding to others whether in person or in email. Where there is flexibility, put off difficult conversations for another day. Make a specific plan about how you want to relate to challenging people or situations in the day ahead.


4. Allow Grief. Lastly, if you are not resisting what's true in a challenging moment, then you likely regularly feel grief. When that customer service agent isn't helpful, taking a moment to feel your disappointment helps you maintain a sense of peace in that situation. Allowing grief isn't about wallowing around in a pool of sadness. Grief is an expansive state that has its own rhythm of coming and going. It leaves you more able to see a situation clearly and take wise and compassionate action.

Total bullshit. Rage and anger are most definitely not just like any other emotion. A maladjusted fuck up or a demented and damaged person may get angry and fly into a homicidal rage for some stupid reason that would not cause 99.9% of the rest of the population to get upset. Maybe he is at a bar and the waitress brings him Coors instead of A Bud. Or maybe his new girlfriend spits instead of swallows. Next thing you know there's a head in the freezer, and arm in the oven, and a pair of feet in the washing machine while the lunatic eats Cherios and watches Family guy.

The problem with you, Dhara (among many others) is that you have no objectivity. You are damaged yourself. You are really on a journey to rationalize your current behavior rather than an academic pursuit. Your quest is selfish and narcissistic. If you are going to study human behavior objectively then you need somebody completely removed and with a borderline sociopathic personality...like me! I am disengaged like a fucking alien. But I digress.

Dhara, you are not even suited to urinate indoors. Your basic understanding of emotional and psychological health is fundamentally warped, and is most certainly incorrect.

 

[Dhara]

The internet fuels some people's rage. Driving fuels other people's rage. Flying still others. That shows how common a feeling rage actually is. It's being studied.

 

[Dhara]

A recent “Gray Matter” column by Matthew Hutson in The New York Times titled “The Rationality of Rage” highlights a number of recent academic papers examining the potential benefits of expressing anger in certain interpersonal situations. It’s a useful summary of cutting-edge experimental research on the role of emotions in dealing with other people and achieving our ends, whether those be self-oriented (such as improving your terms in a contract negotiation) or collective (such as social protest).

Hutson ends the piece with this summary:

We tend to associate anger with the loss of control, but anger has clear applications and obeys distinct rules. It may be blunt, but it has its own particular logic. And used judiciously, it can get us better deals, galvanize coalitions and improve all our lives.
Thinking About “The Rationality of Rage”

 

[Dhara]

Despite your best intentions, emotions will still overtake you from time to time. When you find yourself enraged and unable to calm down, have a plan in place. Roger recommends the following:

Put physical distance between you and other person. It’s likely that you’re about to be emotionally hijacked by your anger and that words will not be enough to deter any ill-advised behaviors on your part.

Tell the person to back off and then remain quiet. Do not look at the person or entertain any comments they might make.
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-manage-your-seething-rage-productively-1453235396

 

[Dhara]

I chitchatted over cocktails at a Washington office Christmas party in December, and saw, looming above our heads, the pulsating, angry televised face of Donald Trump on Fox News, I couldn’t help but feel a little nausea permeate my stomach. And as I watched frenzied Trump rallies on C-SPAN in the spring, and saw him lay waste to far more qualified political peers in the debates by simply calling them names, the nausea turned to dread. And when he seemed to condone physical violence as a response to political disagreement, alarm bells started to ring in my head. Plato had planted a gnawing worry in my mind a few decades ago about the intrinsic danger of late-democratic life. It was increasingly hard not to see in Plato’s vision a murky reflection of our own hyperdemocratic times and in Trump a demagogic, tyrannical character plucked directly out of one of the first books about politics ever written.

Could it be that the Donald has emerged from the populist circuses of pro wrestling and New York City tabloids, via reality television and Twitter, to prove not just Plato but also James Madison right, that democracies “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention … and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths”? Is he testing democracy’s singular weakness — its susceptibility to the demagogue — by blasting through the firewalls we once had in place to prevent such a person from seizing power? Or am I overreacting?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html#

 

[ZackB]

I chitchatted over cocktails at a Washington office Christmas party in December, and saw, looming above our heads, the pulsating, angry televised face of Donald Trump on Fox News, I couldn’t help but feel a little nausea permeate my stomach. And as I watched frenzied Trump rallies on C-SPAN in the spring, and saw him lay waste to far more qualified political peers in the debates by simply calling them names, the nausea turned to dread. And when he seemed to condone physical violence as a response to political disagreement, alarm bells started to ring in my head. Plato had planted a gnawing worry in my mind a few decades ago about the intrinsic danger of late-democratic life. It was increasingly hard not to see in Plato’s vision a murky reflection of our own hyperdemocratic times and in Trump a demagogic, tyrannical character plucked directly out of one of the first books about politics ever written.

Could it be that the Donald has emerged from the populist circuses of pro wrestling and New York City tabloids, via reality television and Twitter, to prove not just Plato but also James Madison right, that democracies “have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention … and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths”? Is he testing democracy’s singular weakness — its susceptibility to the demagogue — by blasting through the firewalls we once had in place to prevent such a person from seizing power? Or am I overreacting?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html#

That is a totally asinine thing to say about Trump. These things do not exist in the vacuum of your empty head. There are far more variables at work with politics right now than you are taking into account.

 

[ZackB]

The internet fuels some people's rage. Driving fuels other people's rage. Flying still others. That shows how common a feeling rage actually is. It's being studied.

And you have a vested interest in this line of study, don't you?

 

[Bonzi]

 

[Bonzi]

rage
rāj/
noun

1. 1.
   violent, uncontrollable anger.
   "her face was distorted with rage"
   synonyms: fury, anger, wrath, outrage, indignation, temper, spleen, resentment,pique, annoyance, vexation, displeasure; verb

1. 1.
   feel or express violent uncontrollable anger.
   "he raged at the futility of it all"
   synonyms: be angry, be furious, be enraged, be incensed, seethe, be beside oneself, rave, storm, fume, spit; More

 

[Toro]

Seriously, I don't hate anyone, and I have no rage at all. I'm a happy guy.

But I also had great parents and a good upbringing, and I stay away from toxic people.

 

[Bonzi]

Hate is self defeating
Rage is a product of the building up of hate released

Pride is one cause (inability to be wrong, put down, or stood up to)
Putting your self worth in others hands is also a contributing factor (inability to be "ok" with yourself as is)

 

[Dhara]

Hate and rage are emotions. If all that happens is you feel them, no problem. Holding on to them, suppressing them and acting out on them is problematic.

 

[Dhara]

Here is another interesting article:



Hate is a composite emotion.
Hate is: Judgement Directing Anger

A deeper part of the problem is that anger itself is a composite emotion which is often a mix consisting of frustration and survival.

With this information it now becomes possible to work against hate from several different angles. The high level process is: when feeling hate: it’s time to begin a process of release.

Since hate is a composite emotion you can focus on the sub elements first rather the the entirety of hate. For most people to work at the final combined feelings of hate is too complicated and it quickly becomes a process of spinning around the issues rather than dealing directly with the roots of the problem. By focusing on the sub elements of hate you can quickly unravel the hate all together.

Resolving Feelings of Hate

 

[Dhara]

Tara Brach, author of "True Refuge" suggests the healing presence of RAIN:

R: Recognize what is happening. Sensation, thoughts, how the emotion is living in your heart.

A: Allow life to be just as it is. Say yes to whatever is happening.

I: Investigate with intimate attention. Ask what is it that wants my acceptance?. Notice what emotions are present. Ask them "what do you need from me now"?

N: Non-identification. Rest in natural awareness. As you notice what's going on, relax and be the noticing, aware place. See the emotion as waves in the ocean of your awareness.