Anger is an Energy

Why We’re Primed For Anger Right Now

PETERMBALL Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking , , ,

I’m a lot angrier than I used to be since the start of the pandemic, and I suspect I’m not alone.

There are nine potential triggers for anger most people experience, and the one that inevitably catches us off-guard is being stopped. We are hard-wired to respond to any subversion of our forward progress by an outside party with an adrenaline dump and stress hormones.

This makes perfect sense when our primitive answers feared being immobilised by a bigger, stronger predator, but those same instincts now fire up when faced with a slow-moving queue, call-waiting muzak, or the moment the expected delivery time changes on our Uber Eats order.

It’s also triggered by systemic cultural oppression, by circumstances where we want things to change but can’t see a way out, and the denial of opportunities we’re convinced should be ours.

We’re living in an era full of anger right now. The pandemic thwarts our forward momentum in real and immediate ways, from lockdowns to thwarted plans to the general helplessness in the face of a large and overwhelming problem. Anger is less of a surge, and more a constant companion.

We’re wired to respond to the physiological triggers behind emotions in a ninety-second burst, after which our thoughts take over and we can either nurse the feeling or move on. Which leaves us with two modes of reaction to the surge of anger: reactive, and proactive.

Reactive approaches see you stuff the feeling down, nursing it as a form of icy rage, or seeking the release of an explosive outburst of verbal or physical rage.

The pro-active approach is holding on to your boundaries, acknowledging the rage is there and letting it go. It’s about reframing what you’re feeling and what it means, finding alternative ways to move forward, and disrupting the tendency to stew through tools like exercise, humour, focused breathing, and mindfulness.

Those initial ninety seconds of anger are instinctual, something you can’t avoid. Your nervous system is hard-wired for it, warning you there’s a potential problem that you need to address.

But it’s also an invitation: how will you respond once the ninety seconds are over? Will you slip into the easy, reactive follow-through or find a pro-active way out of the being halted in place? Will you stew or find an alternate route?

Some recommended reading if you’ve noticed a growing trend towards anger or irritability in recent months: Unfuck Your Anger: Using Science To Understand Your Frustration, Rage, and Forgiveness, by Dr Faith Harper.

Dear Culture: Please Make Up Your Fucking Mind About What You Want Art to Be

PETERMBALL Big Thoughts

No government ever lost an election by attacking the arts. It is, after all, the part of our culture where most people assume there is some combination of high levels of entitlement and low levels of actual work. This is the legacy of centuries of magical thinking when it comes to the art, associating the creation of artworks with genius or the muse.

No-one cares when the arts get less. In Australia, in particular, it’s right up there with attacking refugees, young people, and the unemployed as a safe tactic for the right and the left alike.

The last few years have been bad for the Australian arts sector. Not just in terms of the visible stuff: cuts to funding, attacks on the nature of copyright, a general hostility from the sitting government towards all things creative and its creation of a discretionary slush fund that is poorly managed and generally there to buy votes; no, the invisible stuff has been even worse.

When you cut funding, without notice, the way the government did last year, there are knock-on effects. The cuts happened, and the Australia Council responded, just as everyone was putting in four-year funding applications for funds that were no longer there. Hundreds and hundreds of organisational hours lost, then work that needed to be redone under the new model.

More work, because the increased competition means more competitive applications, which means the hundreds of organisational hours that were just spent now need to be re-spent getting a new application together.

The disruption is immense.

So, yeah, it’s a bad time to be an artist in Australia.

Today, ArtsHub released a list of organisations that had been de-funded in the latest round. 62 arts organisations in total. Approximately one-third of the applicants, and I doubt this is anywhere near the full list.

None of these organisations are 100% reliant on funding to operate, but the lack of funding will definitely mean that a bunch of them are going to close. Particularly those on the smaller end.

But the names are an abstraction. It’s easy to overlook the actual cost.

It’s easy to look at some of the literary journals on that list – Meanjin; Express Media; Griffith Review – and think, well, who cares? No-one reads that shit. Two of those three are big, literary magazines. Express Media, too, except it deals exclusively with writers under 25.

It’s easy to look at the small theatres and dance companies and think, well, if you can’t find an audience…

It’s easy to look at the bigger things – Brisbane Writers Festival, State Galleries – and think, well, they’ll find funding elsewhere, ’cause the audience is there…

But, honestly, all that is bullshit. New artists need spaces to explore their work, so they can develop and find their audience. Big events and institutions need funding so they can take a chance on newer works and artists, which may not get a look in when keeping the lights on is the main priority and established artists are a bigger draw.

This is not going to get better. I don’t expect this election to be fought on arts policy, although it would be nice if people did actually give enough of a shit to realise it’s a thing worth fighting.

This is a sideline, to the main problem.

If you want the arts to be treated like a business, you have to FIX THE GODDAMN SOCIETAL PERCEPTION THAT IT ISN’T.

You have to stop treating artists like creative weirdos, inspired by genius and the muse.

You have to build in facilities that help artists build their businesses like a business, and support them the same way you support other businesses like manufacturing, mining, or sport..

You have to stop telling artists that the creation of work is a gift, and they should not feel like they out to get paid, and you have to tell the culture around them the same thing.

You have to stop attacking copyright and suggesting shit like fifteen years of copyright, then you’re done, even as the entire system of how artist make money shifts to make life+seventy-five years an increasingly valuable thing.

You have to fix the cultural entitlement around the arts, which says, this exists, therefore I can have it for free. You have to make it clear that creators deliver value, and deserve to be compensated, even if it isn’t under the models that have been around for the last few years.

Stop telling artists this thing you’ve created has value, but we do not want to compensate you for it. If you want us to embrace arts as capitalism, treat us like any other fucking capitalist and pay us for our services. 

Basically, motherfuckers, you cannot have it both ways. The arts can be a cultural gift, or they can be fucking commerce.

Honestly, I do not care which. I just want you to make up your fucking minds.

Anger

PETERMBALL Big Thoughts

Some days, you wake up incredibly angry at your country. You sit in your bed and you read the news on the your phone and you’re just, like, fuck, really? This is who we’ve chosen to become as a fucking nation?

I don’t like that anger. Not because I feel any particular sense of patriotism, but because I believe that we are facing complex problems in the world and I recognise the need for complex solutions. I want to look at all sides of the argument and figure out, really, where seemingly stupid political decisions are coming from, so at least I can be sure they’re a bad idea. I like to believe, on the whole, in government. In the ability of the assembled political leaders of the day to come together, find a compromise, and lead the goddamn country.

I do not get that luxury, these days.

In the last week alone, I’ve sat through incredible ongoing abuses of asylum seekers perpetuated in my name by the Australian government; I’ve sat through broadside attacks on the industry I love, by the productivity commissions, which proposes shit so absurd that I’m not worried about it being implemented, but I am worried about they’re hoping to grab as they back down from the blatant overreach; I’ve sat through the details of the new Australian budget, which basically continues the trend of the last three years when it says hey, young people, FUCK YOU.

I mean, unemployment as an internship scheme? FUCK THAT SHIT. The solution to the problems with Mutual Obligation was not making that shit FUCKING WORSE.

Seriously, god-fucking-damn it, FUCK THAT SHIT TO HELL.

I’m not even a young person, these days. I do not have kids. It’s not going to affect me. But it makes me incredibly angry. Because you give up things that matter by increments, ceding ground inch by inch, and it feels like the things I always appreciated about my country are working their way towards the end of the plank.

I want to understand where the decisions are coming from, even if I don’t agree with them, but politics in Australia has become extraordinarily bad at that on both ends of the political spectrum.

It may be time to start digging out my Herd CDs and start taking their lyrics much more seriously.