Americans need anger for motivation

I write a column every week, and many of these weeks, I have a hard time picking a topic. Sometimes topics just come to me, but often, they don’t. To remedy this, sometimes I search Google for topics. Sometimes I take the advice of a fellow columnist and Google search, “What are Americans angry about today?” I did that this week, and I was greeted by a slew of articles about why Americans are so angry. There was nothing too specific that day, but essentially, a bunch of news outlets wrote pieces about why Americans are so angry about many different things.

If I’ve noticed anything throughout my 20 years as a citizen of this country, it is that Americans are a rather angry bunch.

Why are we so angry? I think we can all agree that we’ve been told it is not good to spend too much of our lives being angry. Negative feelings can stick around and turn us into negative people. Optimism is an admirable trait, and generally, it’s difficult to be an optimist if you’re angry all the time.

Humans tend to default to a slightly positive mood. If we are not presented with any negative stimuli, we are more than likely going to be in a good mood, even if nothing particularly good happens to us. This is good, right? Being too positive can cause us to make dangerous decisions and ignore negative things we should pay attention to. Being too negative can cause us to engage in antisocial behavior and not function at our optimal level.

Yet, if you had to pick one, you should probably pick positivity over negativity. It’s better for your health, the health of those around you and the future of our species. This is probably why we tend to lean toward positivity — it serves us better. You may argue that the lives of humans have gotten a whole lot easier over the past several generations, so it may be easier for us to be happy. You wouldn’t be wrong, and I wouldn’t argue this is a bad thing.

So why are we, the people of the U.S., so angry? There has been plenty of research to prove that anger is not the best place on the mood spectrum to settle. You see, I would argue that the anger many Americans feel isn’t so much blind anger as pointed dissatisfaction.

The difference to me is expectation of change. Anger, in my mind, is merely a feeling. It is not necessarily felt alongside a desire to change anything, but it merely serves to show us and others that we are upset. Dissatisfaction is felt with the potential to change. It serves to show that we are not OK with some situation and wish to change it. I won’t say that every American who is angry is feeling dissatisfied, but when I look for column topics, this is the anger I am looking for. We should strive to be positive, but in my mind, this anger is positive.

Without this anger, we have no motive for change. We have no motive to feed the hungry, find a way to make health care a right rather than a privilege, close the gender pay gap, fix our broken foster care and prison systems or fight for equality. We wouldn’t feel the need to make the world a better place. It’s OK to be angry. Without it, we would plateau, and that is not something we can afford to do. Of course, I’d love to Google search, “What are Americans angry about today?” and see zero results because we have achieved equality and satisfaction for everyone. But until that happens, get angry. Be dissatisfied, because without you, there is no hope for a positive future.

 

Taylor Cavaliere is a psychology and journalism junior. Her column appears on Tuesdays.