How our ‘appetite’ for emotional content can lead us to despair.
Recently, I came across a quote by the Roman emperor/philosopher Marcus Aurelius that struck me as highly appropriate for the times we live in. Here it is:
Aurelius was emperor of Rome at a time when its empire was being assailed on several fronts and war was erupting with regularity. As well as that, 4 years into his rule, Aurelius’ soldiers brought back the Antonine Plague from battle in the east, a pandemic which ended up killing between 5 and 10 million people in the Roman empire. One might expect a leader, living through such troubled times to reflect some of this chaos in his writings. However, a quick glance at Aurelius’ ‘Meditations’, a collection of musings written during his reign, shows us a soul seemingly not at at all at odds with the world. In fact, one is immediately struck by the sense of calm acceptance in his work and a respect for the immensity of the universe, for example:
“All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike.”
Aurelius drew his ideas from a group of earlier Greek philosophers known as the Stoics, who believed that happiness can be found by accepting the moment as it presents itself, and not allowing oneself to be controlled by the desire for pleasure, or by the abhorrence of pain. Their writings have provided people with solace in times of hardship for centuries and they have a down-to-earth appeal and everyday application that remain popular today. Indeed, Stoicism has informed various ‘schools’ of psychological thought such as CBT, Existential Therapy and DBT, amongst many others.
Returning to the quote above that caught my eye, ‘The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts’, First of all, I love the image and poetry of the statement – it drew me in and made me wonder about its meaning immediately – the concept of having one’s soul dyed opened up something in me. Secondly the meaning; how I interpret it is, that if we think about or ponder something a lot, then the emotion contained in that thing will invariably affect our psychology and mood (the Greek word for ‘soul’ being ‘psyche’; Aurelius wrote his ‘Meditations’ in Hellenistic Greek). So for example, if we read a lot about something frightening and ruminate on it enough, we will to some extent become stressed and scared ourselves. This also hold true for other ‘negative’ emotions such as sadness and anger, but less so it seems for ‘positive’ ones such as joy and happiness.
It seems to me that anger is perhaps the most dominant emotion of our time, albeit with an underlying and often unrecognized sub-emotion of fear. All around us we can see how eager people are to get whipped up by certain ideas and opinions and engage in fractious ‘debate’ and questionable forms of protest. Newspapers, magazines, websites, and social media platforms, all thrive on clicks and shares, and because human nature is the way it is, the articles that get the most clicks are the ones which most generate fear, disgust, shock and outrage. Indeed, there is an old adage in the newspaper industry about choosing front-page stories that still packs a punch today: ‘If it bleeds, it leads’.
For better or for worse, our minds seem to be more impacted by negative news than positive. Our brains are hard-wired to perceive threat and in a sense, we ‘need’ bad news or news that shocks and angers us. Many websites, such as YouTube and Facebook, use algorithms to give people what they ‘want’ and this usually leads to recommended links which repeatedly dwell on a certain subject. This can give the user the impression that what they are consuming is ALL there is, and other ideas and opinions that exist outside that bubble, are either false at worst, or not important at best. (The excellent podcast ‘Rabbit Hole’ goes into this in depth – I hugely recommend it)
There have been of course, many attempts to create ‘good news’ websites and newspapers, but to my knowledge, all have failed, but the websites and news agencies that trade in outrage and finger-pointing, seem to do very well indeed. Even website creation platforms such as this one, WordPress, encourages the use of more emotional vocabulary to drive hits; as I write the headline to this very post, WordPress tells me how I can optimise the post to attract more hits by using more ’emotionally triggering’ expressions, so we can see a direct link between generating outrage and making money. (Current emotional word score = 0!)
Knowing then that on some level our brains can ‘love’ outrage, we ought to be aware that if we swim in currents of anger, we become more susceptible to drowning in them. We put so much of our energy into being angry that it becomes an all-consuming thing. We even find it difficult or boring to converse about topics that are non-triggering. Interactions with others can become one-directional and lacking in nuance, while we try to find out if the person is either ‘for’ or ‘against’ us. We should perhaps ask ouselves, ‘could my anger be put to better use’, or at least wondering whether we are merely propagating ideas that are designed to make money, or give political power to someone whose motives may be less than pure.
I should point out here that I’m not trying to say that anger is something bad in itself, or a ‘wrong’ response to some negative event. Not at all. Anger can be a very positive thing that changes society for the better when it appropriately focused and anger can give us the energy to act when we feel physically threatened. However, if we spend too much of our time being angry or outraged, what are the effects on our body? This great infographic answers some of that question:
And what about the effects of anger on society as a whole? That’s perhaps a question too far for this blog post, but I think that taking a look at recent events in England in the wake the Euro 2020 final, and the storming of the Capitol in the USA, gives us some idea as to the emotional temperature right now.
So what can we do? Returning to Marcus Aurelius, he might suggest that we need to be aware of the thoughts we are consuming, the emotional tone of them, and ask ourselves the questions:
- ‘Do I really need this anger/fear in my life right now?
- ‘In what way am I benefiting from feeling angry?’
- How we can I use my anger in a way which more benefits me and society in general?
- How do I know when I am reaching an emotional saturation point, and what can I do about it?
The answer to the last question is perhaps the key one and perhaps the one that will be different for everyone. The phenomenon of compulsively reading about triggering news events has become known as ‘doomscrolling’ and that term captures the thing very well. I definitely have indulged in doomscrolling myself and may well do so again, but I also have a kind of voice inside my head that tell me to stop, get up and do something physical. If I go down a rabbit-hole for too long, I get a kind of queasy feeling in my stomach, not totally unlike when I eat too much sugar or something un-nourishing. When I feel that unease, I listen to it, and I try to get out of my phone and into the world. The funny thing is, I never regret doing so.
And you? How do the thoughts you consume colour your mood, and more importantly perhaps, what do you do to escape them.
