In support of the rage of man

[Athene]

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I can give a few examples of my own rage (I've full-on triggered maybe half a dozen times in my life), but I'll start with one.  Keep in mind I live in Korea.  I was approaching a tunnel, and the posted speed sign for the tunnel was 40km, which is quite slow, so I was slowing down.  I was also changing lanes, because you aren't allowed to change lanes inside the tunnel.  I had my signal light on for at least a couple of seconds.  In my rearview, I see some guy in a sports car bombing toward me doing about 100 in the lane I was moving to.  But I'm already in the lane well before he arrives at my position, and I'm very clearly going the speed limit.

He goes fucking crazy honking at me-- obviously, he didn't intend to slow down to the posted speed, and he felt I was cutting him off even though he honked at me not to.  We get out of the tunnel (both doing the posted speed of 40).  He quickly pulls around me, still honking, STOPS in front of me, and gets out of his car.  It's a young punk, a bit gangster-looking, too young to own a car like that unless his daddy's a CEO for Samsung or something. He approaches my car, screaming bloody murder in Korean.

That's when I trigger.  I get out of the car shouting, and believe me I had every intention of putting the fucker in the hospital.  There was nothing in me that had the capacity to resist the urge to introduce his face to the pavement except his fairly remarkable running speed.  He saw a big fucking white dude charging him in an army coat (I'm not IN the army, just have the coat because it's like the best coat ever).  He changed his mind about how tough he was, jumped in his car, and drove off with a bennyboy-sized fist indentation on his trunk.  My guess is that since I was driving an old beater, and since I was actually driving the speed limit, he thought I was a female driver.

Now, legally, I was all kinds of wrong if I got my hands on him.  But I think that threat needs to be there-- we shouldn't be so cocksure in our expectations of civility that we'll just dump on some stranger, and ignore the constant implied threat there-- that if you want to tee off on someone, they might decide to rip off your arm and beat you to fucking death with it.

And that's one thing we never talk about, because it's considered irrelevant-- what was going on in the environment just before some guy's fight/flight flipped into full-on-nuclear destroy mode?  Was someone riding him?  Did he give them warning?  Cuz in my case, I'll almost always try to walk away-- it's when someone makes a point of initiating a confrontation, and will not allow me to walk away because they think they just HAVE to be allowed to complete their emotional vent, that they discover their idea of right behavior isn't going to save them from having a really bad day.

I've raged at my wife a couple times in my life.  One time I warned her "I need to go for a walk" but she blocked me: "I want to talk about this now."  I said, "Look. .  I'm getting upset, and I shouldn't be having this conversation.  I'll come back later and we can finish this."  Then again: "I'm telling you.  I'm losing control here, and you need to stop talking to me like this!!!"  But she was on a rant about something and wouldn't / couldn't let it go.  That's when I went full nerd-gorilla and tossed a TV across the room-- the old Sony Trinitron tube TV, that you couldn't lift without about a liter of adrenaline in your blood or about 3 friends.  It smashed in a pretty spectacular fashion and left a pretty good dent in the floor.  She decided then that maybe I did need to take a walk after all.

Was I "right?"  No fucking way.  It would have been better if I hadn't triggered-- I mean. . . at the very least, I lost an expensive TV.  But after that, she knew-- if I'm trying to escape the environment, and I tell her I'm getting triggered. . . maybe standing between me and the door isn't the best idea.  If you trap an angry gorilla, who's right by the societal standards of the day doesn't really matter-- the physics of gorilla vs. environment are on a higher level of reality than that.

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Oh, yeah...You definitely need to be learned, not coddled.

And you will be one day; As a direct result of being too childish, impulsive, self-indulgent, and stupid to count the costs...to yourself, and to others.
Eventually the justice system will catch up to you, you'll lose your livelihood, you'll find yourself alone and completely alienated from those you love, and/or receive a truly brutal beat-down by someone defending themselves or at the hands of a bigger/dumber/angrier Billy Badass.

You simply haven't lost enough as result of your raging tantrums, is all.

Once you do, I bet you'll begin figuring out this whole self-control thing...as if by magic. LOL.

[tackattack]

@Mathilda They're both seeking to satisfy chemical responses, the only difference is the aim and methods I would imagine. The problem, as I see it is we are not as well adapted to our environment as we would hope. We have very complex biologic structures to which we have very little insight. We (male and female) instinctively, in the absence of reason and knowledge, revert to primitive behaviors that are reflected all throughout the animal community. If you could mimic a hierarchy found elsewhere in nature what would you pick and why? Currently I see a lot of lobsters in us and think I'd like to see more of an ant society.

[I_am_not_mafia]

bennyboy. You use the word triggered. Do you mean that literally as in something has connected with a traumatic event in your life? Because if so, your anger is a symptom of a deeper pain that needs to be healed.

[Amarok]

I hate to break it to you, but dominance hierarchies have been around since before trees. They're not social constructs from the floor up. Social constructs can amplify and reinforce negative feedback loops that are on top of the framework. I believe this is why the term "misogynistic male patriarch" was invented, it's a misnomer though. Only in the minutest minority are the guys out there seeking to subjugate women to secretaries because they fear a challenging opponent. Most are just doing what they feel it takes to get ahead and whatever cost they feel is appropriate. It wouldn't matter if you were a male or a female, but those types tend to pick easier fights. Men are driven to have the best stuff, and some of that stuff man wants is a high quality mate. It may differ from individual, time period and society what the definitions of "stuff" are but one particular drive is the opposite sex. It is definitely objectifying, but could changing women's selection criteria vary the formula enough to shake things up?

And everything in this paragraph is bullshit

[bennyboy]

What's the difference between the rage of man and the rage of woman?

Different hormonal mechanisms, I think.  I believe there are qualitative differences in what triggers rage, how it is experienced, and how it is expressed, that are ingrained at the level of evolved instinct.

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bennyboy. You use the word triggered. Do you mean that literally as in something has connected with a traumatic event in your life? Because if so, your anger is a symptom of a deeper pain that needs to be healed.

No, I mean triggered along the lines of fight/flight mechanism, i.e. a deep and automatic response that once a certain critical emotional mass is arrived at, is no longer in any way under control of the individual's conscious intent.

[The Grand Nudger]

If having a conversation can do that to you, ends up with you pitching shit across the room..you probably shouldn't be in any rooms with other people, or have conversations.

[bennyboy]

If having a conversation can do that to you, ends up with you pitching shit across the room..you probably shouldn't be in any rooms with other people, or have conversations.

Did you read the stories, dude?  In which story I expressed was I "having a conversation?"

But yes, the truth is that I talk to my wife much less than I used to. I'd rather avoid her than risk a confrontation that is going to make me feel frustrated.

[The Grand Nudger]

Did you or did you not just explain that being forced to listen to your harpy of a wife made you go "nerd-gorilla" and toss a tube tv across the room....?

I'm guessing that I don't even want to know the answer to why you respond to her in that way, or why you've decided that the best way going forward is just to talk to her less.

[Yonadav]

What's the difference between the rage of man and the rage of woman?

Different hormonal mechanisms, I think.  I believe there are qualitative differences in what triggers rage, how it is experienced, and how it is expressed, that are ingrained at the level of evolved instinct.

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I'll be a little more specific.

Some studies have recently revealed that women are the perpetrators of most unreciprocated  violence. Apparently women hit more frequently, but mostly in situations where no one will hit back.

Also, women are far more aggressive with rumor, innnuendo, and reputation destruction.

Also, rage in men subsides pretty quickly, and they frequently make peace with the person who has enraged them fairly quickly. Women are prone to remaining enraged over the long haul, and don't make peace with those who have enraged them so easily.

I rarely try to make peace with a woman who has become enraged with me. It's just not worth the trouble. If she gets over it, she gets over it. If she doesn't, I don't care.

[Amarok]

Did you or did you not just explain that being forced to listen to your harpy of a wife made you go "nerd-gorilla" and toss a tube tv across the room....?

I'm guessing that I don't even want to know the answer to why you respond to her in that way, or why you've decided that the best way going forward is just to talk to her less.

Because avoiding a problem is always a good way of solving it 

---

'll be a little more specific.

Some studies have recently revealed that women are the perpetrators of most unreciprocated  violence. Apparently women hit more frequently, but mostly in situations where no one will hit back.

Also, women are far more aggressive with rumor, innnuendo, and reputation destruction.

Also, rage in men subsides pretty quickly, and they frequently make peace with the person who has enraged them fairly quickly. Women are prone to remaining enraged over the long haul, and don't make peace with those who have enraged them so easily.

I rarely try to make peace with a woman who has become enraged with me. It's just not worth the trouble. If she gets over it, she gets over it. If she doesn't, I don't care.

So more empty opining's