In recent days, a Stanford University study found that the Internet is dangerously atomizing American society. But the atoms want to make a connection. A couple of days ago I made a disparaging remark in a web column about Bob Jones University. I admit I had thrown the first hubcap, aiming it like a Frisbee in the direction of the Christian right in South Carolina. Of the Seven Deadly Sins, I would guess that anger is crowding the age's more obvious greed and lust for cultural primacy.
Anger is a dramatic and astringent passion.
Righteous anger may be ennobling, sometimes, but mostly rage merely disfigures the one who is angry. We live in a maelstrom of disorienting change. The stock market flaps higher and higher, soaring magnificently, but something in us expects the sun to melt its wings and bring it down like Icarus. Free-floating anxiety causes anger. Our gaudy overstimulations are too much for our primitive nervous systems.