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Americans Are Angrier Than a Generation Ago, Poll Says
The Wired Word for the Week of July 7, 2019
In the News
About 84 percent of Americans say they are angrier today than they were a generation ago. That's according to a recent NPR-IBM Watson Health poll of 3,004 people, reported last week on NPR. Asked about their feelings over the past year, 42 percent of respondents said they were angrier more often than they had been in the past.
Regarding what made them angry, 29 percent reported getting angry often while checking the news, and 42 percent said they get angry sometimes while doing so. Age seems to make a difference, however, with those over 65 saying they were somewhat less likely to be angered by the news. Only 21 percent of seniors said they were likely to be angered by the news, compared with 38 percent of people younger than 35.
Social media is another anger trigger for some respondents, with 31 percent saying checking such media gets them angry sometimes and 12 percent saying they get angry often while checking social media. The percentage of respondents who are angered by social media decreases with increasing age. Only 7 percent of people 65 and over said they were often angry when using social media, compared with 18 percent of people under 35. Seniors, in general, are much less likely to use social media.
Some 12 percent of all respondents said they do not use social media.
A whopping 91 percent of respondents said that they feel people are more likely to express their anger on social media than they are in person.
About 69 percent of respondents said anger is a negative emotion, but 31 percent said that isn't always the case. NPR research beyond the poll suggests that getting mad can be motivating and help lead someone to positive action.
Commenting on the increased rates of anger, Dr. Anil Jain, vice president and chief health information officer at IBM Watson Health, said, "I think of anger as a health risk. The fact that the survey showed that we have a generation of Americans who believe that they are angrier than they were a generation ago tells me that this is going to lead to some consequences from a health point of view."
"There's no question we are in angry times," said Scott Hensley, reporting for NPR on the poll. "It's in our politics, our schools and our homes. Anger can be a destructive emotion, but it can also be a positive force."
The poll was conducted in November 2018 but only recently reported on NPR. The margin of error is +/- 1.8 percentage points.
More on this story can be found at these links:
Poll: Americans Say We're Angrier Than a Generation Ago. NPR
Health Poll: Anger. IBM Watson Health
The Big Questions
1. As long as you don't break the law, is expressing your anger your right? How do you express your anger? What does anger look like on you? In what ways, if at all, have you adjusted how you express your anger from how you did in your youth?
2. What is your perception of how your anger affects your well-being? What is your perception of how someone else's anger aimed at you affects your well-being?
3. Anger can be harmful, but it can also be helpful, such as when indignation motivates us to fight injustice. How do we tell when our anger is righteous and when it isn't?
4. Because anger often has a negative effect on the ability to think clearly, what things can you do to ensure that decisions growing out of anger are appropriate and in keeping with your commitment to follow Jesus? What is the Christian view of anger?
5. Do you think you are angrier today than you used to be? If so, why? In "angry times," do Christians have a greater responsibility to control their anger? Why or why not?
Confronting the News With Scripture and Hope
Here are some Bible verses to guide your discussion:
Psalm 7:11
God is a righteous judge, and a God who has indignation every day. (For context, read 7:9-16.)
God "has indignation every day," says this verse, though, as translated above, it doesn't identify the cause of that indignation. The Common English Bible words this phrase as "... a God who is angry at evil every single day," and the Revised English Bible renders it as "God is ... constant in his righteous anger."
Righteous anger is indignation triggered by behavior that violates the holiness of God and does harm to others. Indeed, what kind of a God would the Lord be if not one moved to anger by flagrant wrongdoing?
Questions: In what ways does the idea of God's anger help you in thinking about your own anger? Do you consider God's anger to be different from your own anger?
Does it make sense for God to be angry, or to have any sort of emotion? Why or why not?
Should all plans that arise from righteous anger be acted on? Why or why not? If we are made in the image of God should we consider anger an integral part of who we are? Or are human emotions unrelated to God’s nature?
Mark 1:40-41 (NRSV)
A leper came to [Jesus] begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!" (For context, read 1:35-45.)
Mark 1:41 (CEB)
Incensed, Jesus reached out his hand, touched him, and said, "I do want to. Be clean."
Mark 1:41 (REB)
Jesus was moved to anger; he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, "I will; be clean."
This text, which we have quoted in three versions, reports a time when Jesus was moving about Galilee, preaching and healing. At one point, a man afflicted with leprosy came to him, saying, "If you choose, you can make me clean." Most Bible translations, including TWW's default version, the NRSV, indicate that in response, Jesus was moved with "pity" or "compassion." But some of the modern versions include a footnote on that word, telling us that some of the old manuscripts of Mark's gospel say that Jesus was moved not with pity but with "anger." And some of the newer Bible translations even render it that way; see the Common English Bible (CEB) and the Revised English Bible (REB) quoted above.
The differing wordings in different manuscripts of Mark could be because either 1) some early person copying a manuscript made a mistake or 2) the copyist didn't like presenting Jesus as angry and changed it to the softer word. There is considerable support among Bible scholars, however, for the harder reading, that Jesus was moved with anger.
If the anger word is indeed correct, then we need to ask, what was it about this situation with the leper that made Jesus angry? It's possible that seeing the miserable condition of this poor leper and knowing that lepers were treated as outcasts in that society, Jesus' anger was at that whole state of affairs.
But there is a more likely explanation for why Jesus was angry. Earlier in this chapter Jesus had been doing so much healing that he had apparently exhausted himself. In fact, he got up that very morning -- "while it was still very dark" (v. 35) -- and went out to a deserted place to pray. But instead of recognizing that Jesus needed this time alone to be recharged in God’s presence, his disciples hunt him down. "Everyone is searching for you" (v. 37), they say, meaning, "more people want you to heal them."
Jesus, however, responds, "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do" (v. 38). Clearly, when sick people were right in front of him, Jesus would not turn them away unhelped, but he also saw that the clamor for his healing work got in the way of his primary mission, which was to proclaim the Good News of God's transfiguring power.
Thus, when Jesus moves on and the first thing that happens is that a leper comes to him asking for healing, possibly Jesus' irritation breaks through and his temper flares. But the thing we want to notice is that even if "anger" is the correct word here, what happens next is an act of pure compassion. Jesus stretches out his hand, touches the sick man and says, "I do choose [to heal you]. Be made clean!" And the leprosy immediately leaves the man's body.
For we who are trying to follow Jesus, both his anger and compassion are instructive. There are other places in the gospels where Jesus gets angry. Mark 3:5 says that Jesus got angry at the hardheartedness of some of the synagogue attendees in Capernaum who didn't want him to heal a sick man on the Sabbath. Mark 10:14 reports that Jesus became "indignant" when the disciples tried to stop little children from coming to him. And remember when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple?
We see righteous anger in Jesus, so as his disciples today, we shouldn't pretend never to be angry -- anger itself is not sin, but how we express that anger can be -- we should strive to only anger over the right things. Much anger seems to arise spontaneously in response to given circumstances, and does not seem easily controllable. We have no "on-off" switch for our temper. And trying to suppress our wrath and pretend we are not angry can make the rage fester.
But it does not follow that the expressions of our anger have to be destructive. There is a point right at the beginning when we need to deal with our hurts and frustrations in a positive way before our emotions go over the top. The difference happens when we funnel anger toward a positive result -- controlled anger versus toxic anger.
More importantly, we also need to temper our anger in the manner of Jesus—by letting compassion win.
Questions: Which translation -- "pity" or "anger" -- do you prefer here? Why? Which one is more instructive to you for how you react to unwelcome interruptions. When have you let compassion be the outcome of your anger?
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