In this diary entry, Mr. B continues to explore our twenty-first century anger: What, exactly, triggers this anger?!? He's already taken a look at some ways that anger can be expressed in society today. He's already denied, then admitted, his own anger. Mr. B has even explored the truth about anger, of what emotion really lies at the deepest root of this modern phenomenon. (If you haven't already listened to that entry on anger, you may be surprised!). Now, in this episode, it's time for Mr. B to dig just that little bit deeper ... into what actually triggers our anger, what brings this anger to the surface, and into why the frequency and intensity of our modern anger, individually and collectively, seem to only keep on rising.
Simone Weil...
"In the present crisis [World War II] there is something compromised which is infinitely more precious even than science; it is the idea of truth... So soon as truth disappears, utility at once takes its place, because man always directs his effort toward some good or other. Thus utility [what is useful, for me] becomes something which the intelligence is no longer entitled to define or judge, but only to serve. From being the arbiter, intelligence becomes the servant, and it gets its orders from the desires. And, further, public opinion then replaces conscience as sovereign mistress of thoughts, because man always submits his thoughts to some higher control, which is superior either in value or else in power. That is where we are today. Everything is oriented towards utility, which nobody thinks of defining; public opinion reigns supreme, in the village of scientists as in the great nations. It is as though we had returned to the age of Protagoras and the Sophists, the age when the art of persuasion -- whose modern equivalent is advertising slogans, publicity, propaganda meetings, the press, the cinema, the radio -- took the place of thought."
Noam Chomsky...