By Anne C. Woodlen

I watched a show called “TVMD: Anger” with three guys sitting around a table talking about why you and I are angry. Two of the guys were doctors, the third was an interviewer and, well, frankly, they made me angry. The doctors were dealing with anger management, not the source of anger.

Here are some questions they didn’t ask or answer: Why were we designed with the capacity for anger? What is the purpose it serves in our lives? Why do we need it? What good does it do?

Anger galvanizes us when survival is threatened, and thereby enables us to take aggressive action to protect life.

Physiologically, anger triggers the release of the stress hormones epinephrine and cortisol. The hormones, in turn, set in motion other physiological responses including the increased production of glucose. Higher levels of glucose feed muscles so the host can run like hell to escape the saber-toothed tiger that is chasing him.

One of the two doctors speaking this afternoon was not too bad. He was a reasonably solid quotter of facts and studies. He lacked insight and didn’t exactly have a creative flare, but there’s no danger in that.

The other doctor had a frequent sanctimonious smirk, and scared the hell out of me. He attributed the increase in hostility to a sense of entitlement—“People think they have a right to be happy, and they get angry when they’re not.” He didn’t say he’d observed this in people interacting on the street, so let’s assume he meant people he’d talked to were angry in conversation with him. He is a wealthy doctor who buys himself everything he needs and most of what he wants. He thinks he is entitled to the good life. His patients probably feel the same way. “Am I not a good person? Don’t I work hard? Don’t I try to do well? How come you get the good stuff and I don’t?”

The doctor did not come across as a humble, giving man, but as a man who thinks he has a right to the good stuff—he’s entitled. Because he sees no reason why I, too, should get the good stuff, he is dangerous to me. If he has one tiger haunch and we are both starving, he is not going to share it with me because he does not regard me as valuable.

It is dangerous that the doctor does not consider himself a player in the interview with the patient. If the patient is angry, it is because the patient is “sick” not because the doctor is rude, insensitive and disrespectful. The doctor thinks he is observing behavior, when, in fact, he is influencing behavior. After decades of doctor abuse, I am a friendly, funny, helpful person—except when I’m in a doctor’s office, in which case I go directly for the jugular.

The doctor went on to say that the problem is that angry people blame others. In fact, they probably blame him, and that is reasonable. The planet has finite resources; human beings are animals that live in community. If one member of the community is claiming a disproportionate share of the resources, it endangers the rest of the community.

When a doctor claims a parking space in the parking garage attached to his building, it means a mother with two kids, one of whom is sick, has to walk up the hill to his office in the freezing rain. Why does the doctor—who arrives once in the morning and leaves once at night—get the choice parking place when it is a parking place that could be used ten times during the day by sick people struggling to see him for treatment?

Society wants to view anger as the problem of the person who is angry. In fact, anger is the problem of a society in which there is an inequitable disbursement of resources. We live in community, and anger is usually an indication that there is a dangerous breakdown in the functional health of the community.

In the natural mix of things, people who have plenty—plenty of food, money, friends—want to protect their privileged status, therefore it is to their benefit to stop other people from being angry. Keep in mind that because of the hormone release, an angry person is stronger and quicker than a person who is not angry. In other words, if there are two people of the same size, the angry one can beat the crap out of the complacent one.

What is the best way to stop an angry man? Throw him the tiger haunch you were going to eat. Share your resources. Give him what he needs. Of course, this means you will have less, so is there another way to calm him down?

Regarding hostile persons, the doctor wants to prescribe SSRI's—antidepressants. The doctor notes that they will calm the hostile person—SSRI's will also affect eating and sex. Hey, ho! The privileged doctor sees a man who is angry because he isn’t getting what he thinks he’s entitled to, so the doctor wants to give him drugs that will, by the doctor’s declaration, slow down his sex life. Doctor, would you please take a couple of those pills yourself? No? Why not? Got a problem with losing your sex life?

The doctor says that one of the problems with hostile people is that they refuse to take the medicine that will help them. Damn, I can’t imagine why! It just might be because the medicine will help the doctor a whole lot more than the patient. The doctor wants the patient to feel better without getting better—better housing, better schools, better transportation. Poverty is a frequent source of anger; unmedicated anger leads people to act in ways that they perceive will improve their lives, like stealing the doctor’s Lexus.

The doctor is drugging the patient into passivity, into feeling as if it’s not so bad that he doesn’t get the good stuff. The patient, being fully human, is fighting for survival. If he submits to drugging, he will become a pliant member of society and he will never get the good stuff. The way to feel good is to arrange your life so you get the good stuff. Feelings are not independent of facts. What is this business in which we want everybody to feel good but don’t want to do anything to help anybody live good?

America has sealed everybody off into cells of isolation. Your problem is your problem, not mine. Your hunger has nothing to do with my full larder. Your small apartment has nothing to do with my 2.5 acres in suburbia. Your joblessness has nothing to do with the fact that I buy Japanese. Your poor bus service has nothing to do with the two cars in my garage.

Human beings are designed for community. Anger arises when part of the community is doing a very good job of surviving and part is not. Society is a seesaw; we can all be on the same level, but if some people are very high and others are very low, there will be trouble. Anger is an emotion of relationship. People get angry with each other, not angry within themselves. Heal the relationship, heal the anger.

Doctor, share the tiger haunch with your patient—and stop prescribing drugs to slow down his sex life.