On Anger Online

Friends, check your recent posts. Do more than 10% include 😡 reactions from people who agree with your anger about something?

I feel like constantly reveling in anger, especially on social media, is the equivalent of going some place like New York City for the day, but instead of going to the Met, St. Patrick’s, and the Statue of Liberty, you go to the back alleys and dumps. At the end of the day you tell everyone how disgusting everything is, and everyone agrees with you. And now everyone feels the stench and ugliness of the back alleys and dumps. And nothing has been gained. Instead, you could have been moved by the goodness and beauty around you. You could have shared that with everyone. And everyone would have felt the joy and peace that comes with experiencing beauty, even second hand. And that would have begotten more goodness and beauty.

I think, in fact, that anger and beauty are very much related. Anger blocks peace of the soul and the ability to see the millions of ways that God gives goodness and beauty to us. Dostoyevsky was right, “The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”