How rare is it for people to live without anger?

Due to events in my life, I had to go through anger management courses and therapy. When they were finished I continued Stoicism-inspired meditation. Anger almost disappeared completely from my life.

One thing I noticed only later is how I had almost abandoned all social media platforms in the meantime.

That and at some point people that I got to know primarily through social media interaction voiced the fact that my reputation in their eyes grew, although never having been necessarily angry with them.

I believe that our media are actively stoking outrage and shock.

People have a built-in tendency to pay more attention to danger than opportunity: if you fail to notice some berries on a bush you won’t necessarily die but if you fail to notice a scorpion on the path you may very well die. So people react strongly to negative information.

This strong reaction registers as “engagement” and media think they must be offering info that people want. In the digital age, engagement can be counted and tracked, which allows you to quickly adapt and do more of whatever creates that engagement.

We’ve been experiencing that optimization loop for the last 20 years and it is now at a deafening roar. We don’t have problems in the world, we have existential crises. We don’t have political disagreements, we have mortal enemies. We don’t have a venal buffoon for a president, we have a fascist dictator murdering rapist psychopath.

This isn’t the only factor but it is significant and it is also new. Yes, there has been sensationalism in the last but it is new to be able to track media consumption like this and adapt on the fly, automatically. It’s taken us to a whole new level.

I lived without anger for almost 15 minutes today.

That's almost a record.

I was living pretty much entirely anger-free until 2 things happened:

• I started working at my job, where I was hired for my expertise and yet I am frequently interrupted mid-sentence, disrespected, or told to do things in ways that defy the foundations of my entire discipline (before anyone tells me to quit, I can't, because of immigration-related reasons)
• One of my friends has fallen down the alt-right/X/Musk fanboyism pipeline and just about everything he rants is uninformed, reactionary, and rage-inducing. He spends too much of his time being angry about problems that don't exist and spreads that anger everywhere

Saying that, I am autistic and often struggle to distinguish between anger, frustration, feeling hurt, and even sadness. I can isolate depression as a feeling fairly reliably though, because that is more numb and less passionate.

It's healthy to live with a range of shifting emotions. Getting stuck in a cycle of anger, anxiety or depression may be due to not having some emotional needs met or tools to address them.

While I was going through my posts on Twitter and deleting them all, I noticed that nearly all of the were gripes or complaints about something during my day. That's not to say I had a lot of bad days but I'd be more likely to want to vent them than just vibing through the good days in social media silence. Each person is very different, but unless I was in a space where socializing was a daily thing, my tendency was to be more negative than positive Most of the time.

It's far more pronounced on the internet anyways. People come here to vent. And the (social media) platforms incentivise them to do so, the way they're build. I'd say it's far less a thing in real life.

You can work on becoming self actualized, it's a process but it is something that can be improved.

I don't live with anger nor hate. I understand logically that all the subjects that frustate me are not changeable because of human nature. Like Politics for example, it frustates me the way every politician is always a little corrupt (or a lot sometimes) for some subject, but I understand that it's not only about that one person, it's also about human nature to want money and power and there is no way to change it, unless we put an alien or an AI in charge.

I'd say it's relatively rare.

The ability to feel anger, but not dwell on it, takes practice. Anger is partially chemical, hormonal. So you can't eliminate it entirely. The best we can do is work towards a set of anger related goals.

First, there's the skill of noticing anger in its very earliest start, so that you can prevent it from being enough to take concentration to control. That's what stuff like mindfulness, meditation, and the like help with the most regarding anger. They give you the tools (eventually) to default to a more observant state, where you'll notice the beginnings of anger and use mechanisms to divert it.

That makes anger management much easier because a lot of what gets people into trouble with anger is how long it takes for that rush you dissipate once it gets going. So you can apply anger management techniques to accelerate that cycle reaching its end.

That makes it more likely that you'll resist any actions that might be spurred by anger until you can choose to make them if they're useful and appropriate.

Pretty much all of our emotions are at least partly chemical. I'm not aware of any that aren't, but I'm hesitant to say it's all of them period. Some emotions are harder to resist than others, but not all of those chemicals are equal. Adrenaline, for example, is there to bypass conscious thought and control and spur us into action of some kind, even if that action is seemingly passive (like freezing up). Yeah, it's more complicated than that, but we don't need to cover every inch in this kind of chat.

But, and this is the key to successfully managing one's anger, you have to be willing to recognise that feeling anger is neither uncontrollable, nor a reason to act on that anger. It's a response to stimuli, but it also isn't something someone else makes us feel. We can mitigate our responses when angry, and (no matter how much another person is intentionally trying to make it happen) it is an internal process.

The problem is that it's a shit ton of work, and the learning curve is not a gentle one. It also is harder to work that curve the more reasons you have to be angry.

I know what you speak of. I am of course unhappy or disappointed or frustrated ih certain situation, but really rarely angry. In those rare situations its usually not longer than 5 to 10 min. In situations my friends are angry I am more often sad. Only once in my life (let's say after 5yo) I shouted at someone - to defend a good friend who was treated incredibly unjust. That's 17 years ago....

I never hated anyone. I think I could hate some politicians but I know them not personally so I cannot have that much emotion for them. For people I know I always have explanations for their behavior keeping me from being angry about them. Still wanting excusions so I am not excusing them for their actions but knowing (or thinking I know) why they behave like they do I cannot be angry. I think its too much emapthy in my case?

I'm kind of similar. I can't think of the last time I got angry. I've never been red faced angry since maybe I was a kid.

Also don't know anyone I would say I hate. Trump is close maybe. I'd verbally say "I hate him" but in reality he doesn't get much real emotional rise out of me except extreme disappointment and disgust.

"Hate" seems reserved for someone I have strong emotions toward. Strong enough I might want to do something violent about it. Nobody fits that bill.

I suspect we might be talking across a deep valley with the people that have anger issues. Neither can really understand the other.

Your experience is not unusual. Everyone gets frustrated occasionally but comment sections are a special slice of hell.

I've been arguing for years that you cannot find world peace until everyone finds inner peace. There are many practices you can follow to quell that inner turmoil. I think most people aren't even aware of how unbalanced and unsettled they are and instead blame external forces outside of their control. I feel like it has gotten worse in recent years. I have no idea how to steer others out of their inner chaos. Religion, mindfulness, music, pharmaceuticals, sex, the outdoors, sailing, stargazing, pottery wheels - there are many ways. Social media and TV do not usually help.

I don't feel anger very often (and it's very quick to vanish) and hate is extremely hard-won, but I have C-PTSD from childhood abuse and neglect. So I'm not your average person.

Don’t hate any individuals I know. Not being angry at injustices and those perpetrating them just sounds like a lack of empathy though.

Start from the perspective that there is a huge machine out there that is monetarily driven to attract views, name whichever business sector you want, but it’s probably going to be something to do with media.

The most successful ways to get views are fear and anger.

Now couple that with people that want fake internet points, get real money, or want to drive you to a place for someone else to make money, and they’re also going to post fear and anger.

Of course this type of information incites some really strong feelings. Couple this with people doing the same with literal lies, distorted and incomplete facts, and even plain old bad spelling, all designed to drive interaction and views, and now you get an internet spammed with hate and anger.

Fear and anger sell like crazy. And everyone wanting a view or a click are posting it everywhere to drive interaction in order to profit in some way.

So I would say that yes, the take you have about this stuff being overrepresented is correct. It’s deliberately overrepresented for engagement reasons.