Why Is Everyone So Angry? Seneca and the Buddha on Rage

Key takeaways

• We may not be angrier than people 100 years ago, but today we see and hear anger far more often, and it spreads from person to person much faster.
• In a 2017 New York University study led by William Brady of more than 560,000 posts, each word carrying both emotion and moral judgment made a post shared about 20 percent more, mostly among people who already agreed. A 2021 follow-up at Yale found that people who got many likes for angry posts tended to post more anger later.
• Seneca agreed that anger is a brief madness: like a falling building, it crushes what is below and breaks itself too. Anger comes in three steps, and the small gap between the first jolt and saying yes to it is where we are still in charge. His best medicine for anger is delay.
• The famous 'hot coal' quote is not found in the early Buddhist texts. A similar image, an ember or excrement picked up with bare hands to hit someone, comes from Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga, written in Sri Lanka about 900 years after the Buddha. In the early texts, the Buddha does not accept a brahmin's insults, so they stay with the man who gave them.
• Venting does not put the coal down: in Bushman's 2002 experiment, hitting a punching bag made people angrier, and a 2024 review of more than 150 studies found calming activities like slow breathing reduce anger. Five ways: name the first spark, delay, do not accept the gift, ask who is burning, and review your day at night. If anger often hurts people you love, talk to a doctor or counsellor.