All The Feelings • The Sins & Virtues
Wrath: A Love Story (Just Kidding, It's Mostly About Honking)
Thu, 05 Sep 2024
In this episode of Sins and Virtues, we're tackling the fiery emotion of Wrath. Join Pete and Tommy as they delve into the history and psychology behind this powerful emotion, exploring its destructive potential and its surprising presence in pop culture.From ancient Greek philosophers to modern-day action heroes, the guys examine how wrath has been perceived and portrayed throughout history. They discuss the cathartic appeal of violent media, questioning whether indulging in fictional fury actually influences real-world aggression.Tommy shares a personal anecdote about experiencing wrath while driving, particularly the phenomenon of the "beep back." This leads to a thought-provoking discussion about the triggers and consequences of road rage, and whether a little tire-deflating superpower might come in handy sometimes (hypothetically speaking, of course).Tune in for a captivating conversation that explores the multifaceted nature of wrath, its potential for both harm and entertainment, and the delicate balance between righteous anger and destructive rage. ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. Visit our website to learn more.
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All the Feelings presents Sins and Virtues. This episode... Wrath.
Tom, we are unleashing our wrath today. That's right. Our righteous anger. Rar.
Let me be the first to say rar.
Okay. Not the last. Rar to you, for sure. Yes. Okay. So as to set the stage, should we talk about what wrath is? Should we allow our friend to step in? Who, our robot friend? Sure. Unless he's going to be a real meanie about it.
Robot, take it away.
Wrath. Noun. A great or intense anger that expresses itself in a desire to punish someone. Does it?
Always? Well, I was talking to Robot because there's a couple different – sometimes it's just listed as great or intense anger. But then the other half of the definitions that I found also say that it involves this almost idea of either revenge or vengeance, that you're so angry you want to take it out physically or mentally on someone. It's not just – you're not sitting in your anger.
I think that's just anger. Wrath has to be an outward feeling of you were then taking your anger and making it have ramifications on someone. So that's why Robot decided to go with the longer definition. Okay. All right. Because otherwise I think it's just really, really, really angry, and we don't have a word for that.
Well, this is what – so, of course, I'm thinking about why we're doing sins and virtues this season. Why is wrath one of the seven deadly sins? Yeah. And I think this is interesting, especially in the context of the seven deadly sins specifically, because we've kind of talked about this a little bit around the edges. Why was it at its earliest considered a sin?
Because when left unchecked, it can lead to various harmful and other destructive behaviors, right? So wrath itself might be okay right up until the moment that it leads to death. Violent violence and physical harm against others or holding severe grudges, harboring resentment or seeking revenge. Vengeance is a real negative outcome of right.
What's when is it OK then? Because it sounds like all the things that you anger.
Right. I think you said it right. I think it's OK. You're allowed to recognize anger as long as it doesn't lead to. To something else more violent or I see.
So if it's an inside, but then you also said that that but it seems like keeping that inside almost for sure will lead to because you also said like you're harboring bad feelings. Yeah. Right. So that's still inside. Yeah. But it's getting too worse. That's interesting.
Yeah. The early Greeks were really into pillow fighting. And they thought that when you had experience, right, you just hit a pillow real hard and you'll be fine after a little while. They were into the earliest talk therapy. But back then we thought pillows were made of granite. Like we didn't know what comfort was. So everything sucked.
Well, here's the other interesting thing that I found, that some sources actually include in definitions of the destructive behavior of wrath, verbal abuse and hurtful speech or damaged relationships and broken trust.
Oh, okay.
So that feels like a kind of a social construct now and not just a physical like manifestation of violence.
It's not just sticks and stones.
Yeah. Also, my feelings are hurt. Also, words will hurt me too. Right. Sticks and stones break my bones and so do words. That's what it should say.
I was about to say that doesn't rhyme, but neither does the original one.
But words will never hurt me. Yeah, right. Right. So that's the thing that I think is really interesting. And so the concept, you know, I don't know. What do you think? The Greeks, the early Christian thoughts, you know. At one point in the fourth century, there was a Greek monk, Evagrius Ponticus, who identified eight –
evil thoughts or vices and wrath was one of them i guess they whittled one away um one of them was i do actually know the answer to this i believe one of them was sadness i'm not making a joke oh i thought that sadness was considered something that was evil or something to be really shunned And then now, now then it has become the status quo.
Yeah, status quo. Well, okay. That's where I am. That's where I found myself really getting sidetracked about this whole thing. Because, you know, we talk about all the history of rap. Yes, it was on Seven Deadly Sins and the Greeks and the Romans threw people at lions and as an exercise of catharsis. But really, I'm interested in pop culture, right? I'm interested in why.
We humans have such a satisfaction or find such satisfaction in seeing stories of wrath on screen and in books. Why is Patrick Bateman one of my favorite literary characters? Why do we love John Wick seeking such retribution because of the dog? Why is that important to us? What do you think?
I think it's two separate things, because I was about to ask, do you mean wrath or do you mean vengeance or revenge? Retribution, because that seems pretty... Because that's like Kill Bill, like all of the John Wick series is based on you did me wrong and I'm going to do you wrong, Baba Yaga style, 19-fold.
But the opposite is true too because he's – so he's an exercise in vengeance, but the people he's fighting are just exercises in wrath and violence. Good point.
But I guess if you brought up Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, I think it's sort of probably the same reason that we go to see horror movies. It's exploring something that either we are afraid of or that in horror movies, it's something that we're afraid of and we can sort of explore it safely. Go through the steps of death, go through the steps of terror, almost like practice.
Come out the other side and you're fine, maybe learning something along the way. With watching other people be Wrath, And B-Wrath is my wrath name, by the way. Become wrath. Yeah, I think we all have that type of anger in us that comes out actually during... When I talk a little bit later in my segment, I'm going to talk about when I find wrath appearing in my life.
It's a very specific, very weird place that I want to talk about. But because you have that part in you, and I think... Maybe sometimes, whether it's subconscious or not, we feel like we are doing more work than we know to keep that part down. To keep the social code going, we have to say, yes, please, thank you. We try to not get overly crazy when people drive us insane because that's pure what?
Would that be pure id? Of just flying from the seat of your pants? Yeah. And so to be able to have someone, whether or not they are allowed to, to just be like, yeah, well, yes, because with Patrick Bateman, we are fascinated by sociopaths and sociopathy. What would it be like to be freed of those constraints? Yeah.
Ultimately, they are usually punished, not in Patrick Bateman's case, unless you go with that weird reading that he died really a lot earlier in the book. But yeah, to be freed of those social constraints and be able to just live your life as you see fit, punish those who you see fit to be punished, there's something incredibly freeing that we are denied. Right.
I mean, that's why there are places in like Vegas where you just pay to go into a room and smash a bunch of things. Like they give you a sledgehammer, you pay $50 and you get a sledgehammer and you destroy a printer. You destroy a washing machine, probably because the washing machine has taken too many of your quarters over your head.
That I think is it. And I was trying to put my finger on it and you just, I think you just said it. One of the characters that I think is best to describe the dehumanization of Wrath is the Incredible Hulk. Oh, interesting. Go more into that. I don't know. Well, you won't like me when I'm angry. That's his main jam.
And that, I think, is the moniker for how we in pop culture look and resonate with wrath. Like angry people, we don't like them. We don't generally like angry people, even when we see that part of us, that part of them in ourselves. Right. but the character as a sociological exercise is this character who is totally chill until he's not. And then he's out of control and full of shame and regret.
And it didn't take long for this other character to be invented abomination, which is this character of a guy who welcomed that sort of wrath, like to be free and not constrained by it was, it was, um, It was in the Ang Lee. Oh, the Edward Norton – Hulk, which one was it in the one with abomination and William Hurt was introduced?
I think it was just Yeah, I think it was it was just the Hulk one, the main first one in the series, classic Hulk plane, Hulk, Hulk, yeah, Vanilla Hulk. And, and so it was, it was this exercise in, like, this is what happens when you sort of weaponize wrath, and it's ugly, and the character design is ugly it and it is worse than the Hulk's view version of wrath, right? It's disgusting.
And I think that's a really interesting exercise because it really demonstrates the dehumanization, the literal dehumanization. It turns humans into monsters.
And that is a really interesting point when you bring up how disgusting he is. And whereas like Hulk, even when he's hulked out, he's still looking pretty good in those jean shorts. Yeah, right.
Purple shorts.
The world of Patrick Bateman and John Wick, everyone's in suits. Everyone is dressed to the nines for the biggest, always the biggest, whatchamacallit, violence in the entire world. So we're still masking it in humanity. That's what makes it palatable. But if you were just, so I think that's what allows it for us to be like, oh, let's play along with this.
But if it was just pure wrath, if it was pure, I don't really know what venom is, but if it was just sort of like this multi-tentacled, all-teeth monster, then yeah, I think we would shy away from that. That's not fun.
Well, then it's Lovecraft, right? Like then it's, Then it's an example of the unseen mysterious evil that just does bad, but we don't get the sort of power fantasy, right? Because wrath in pop culture is seen as a mode of empowerment. John Wick is an empowering movie because you can kind of put yourself in a suit and having skills that nobody else has. And oh, speaking of skills, right?
Like what is the Neeson movie? I have a certain set of skills, right? Yeah. So that's, those are power fantasies that allow us to live vicariously and be fulfilled by this thing that we can't, as you said earlier, we can't exude ourselves. So there's this other interpretation that I found that was really interesting that used the words moral disengagement.
Oh, like, you know, the rules, but you don't care. Yeah. Right. So we, as members of the audience. get to look at this character like John Wick again, we'll say, and suspend our ethical standards temporarily in order to rationalize extremely violent or angry, wrathful behavior as justifiable in that context, something that we know we would never do.
My first experience with that, like really recognizing it was John Rambo, right? First Blood. I saw First Blood. I was like, this guy is killing police officers in an incredibly violent way. And he, yet he is just a guy returning from the war that nobody understands. He deserves to have this. He deserves this retribution to serve it to others who deserve his wrath.
And where does that possibly come from? In my head, it should not belong there, right? And yet it's viscerally satisfying to watch that happen.
So there is a catharsis. So we're all feeling constrained. We're all angry. I mean, what that sort of leads to is we're all angrier. than we give credence to. We all feel that we are trapped more than we think we are. We're more powerless than we are. And so we give it up to these vengeance characters as catharsis.
You know, I'm really glad you said that because I think that's sort of the next logical step is to say, look, is all this violent media and video games? We spent our pre-show chat talking about just the levels to which we will go to kill video game characters. Like I am a straight up murderer of Mongols, right?
Like that's just, and I've spent a hundred hours in this one particular game and now I'm moving on fighting for the revolution. And I love living in those spaces, but they're very violent, inarguably violent, right? So you ask the question, what really is the relationship between media violence and real world aggression? And it turns out it's mixed, right?
There are many studies that come out and say, you know what, there's a part of it that just experiencing this catharsis actually makes you more chill. than you actually are. There is evidence that says, do violent video games actually have an impact on your violent lifestyle? Are you going to go out and beat people up
Probably not were it not for wildly violent cultural and community sort of standards in which you're living. If you live in a community where you are exposed to real life violence, if you grew up in an abusive home, those are the things that actually have a greater trigger and lead to real life violence. And I think that's so interesting. Japan has the highest consumption of violent media.
and yet has extremely low rates of violent crime. Yeah. Why isn't Japan just made up of an island nation of murderers, and yet there they are with very low rates of violent crime?
I think because they have that catharsis is my guess. I mean, at least cliched-wise or in media, a lot of times they are portrayed as a fairly reserved society in public. But I think they have these outlets. I've always said that I've never agreed with people
demonizing video games or violent video games lead to violence or lead to any real other human behavior that being said it's not exactly violence but i think the number one most dangerous place that i've ever been to in my life is a movie theater parking lot after a fast and furious movie yes because all of a sudden everyone is
family yeah whatever everyone is family and it's just like they're the amount of squealing tires and stuff just to get to the nearest applebee's it's yeah it's it is i mean that is i think that's real i don't know if there are any studies on that but i am definitely like alpha case number one that i could watch 15 minutes of ronin and walk out of my house and be a danger to myself and all of a sudden you're driving yeah
the wrong way on the street for no reason. No reason. Yeah, you're not running from anybody.
Well, and so I feel like it's, I don't want it to come across like I'm suggesting even a little bit that we should just introduce our young children to more violence in video games and media. Right. Because because it's uncertain. But I think it's it's not it's disingenuous to present the case that violence in media leads to violence in real life because it's uncertain. We just don't.
It's not clear. If it were clear, we would know. And it's not we're demonizing it. It's a we're demonizing it. It always has. It's a moral panic. Yeah. So I think it's fascinating. And I'm not going to say I don't want to go play my video game after we talk about this. That's what I've learned is that talking about wrath just makes me want to go exercise some demons.
Yeah, I don't know what that's like. And then cut to me outside just punching a tree. Just over and over again.
Tom's doing great. Tom's jaw is locked on some bark around a tree. A quote from Shirley by Charlotte Bronte. You do not know how the people of this country bear malice. It is the boast of some of them that they can keep a stone in their pocket seven years, turn it at the end of that time, keep it seven years longer, and hurl it and hit their mark at last.
Throughout history, wrath has made men and women do terrible things to their opponents, and sometimes said wrath can backfire onto the very person that sought vengeance in the first place. They say that revenge is a dish best served cold, and in the case of Viking Earl Sigurd the Mighty, it was also best served on horseback.
Around 892 CE, Sigurd Eistinsson, or Sigurd the Mighty, was the famed Viking leader of what is now northern Scotland. Keeping hold of the Scottish mainland was a difficult task, and he was challenged by many opponents for his earldom. One of his strongest opponents was Mael Bricht, also known by the significantly less impressive nickname Mael Bricht the Bucktoothed.
Having grown weary of Sigurd's constant attacks near the modern-day land of Inverness, where Colin Farrell's banshees lived and then one movie, Bucktoothed Mael decided to fight things out the honorable way. Mael and Sigurd would meet on the battlefield, each with 40 men. They would fight it out, and the victor would become the Earl of the Land.
But known both for his military prowess and his shaky relationship with fairness, Sigurd the Mighty squirreled the deal in a mighty way. Breaking the compact, he showed up with 40 horses, but had two warriors upon each horse, thus outnumbering his enemy two to one. Male and his men fought bitterly, but were quickly defeated by the overwhelming Sigurd's army.
Showing contempt and wrath for his beaten foe, Sigurd wanted to punish and humiliate him. He had Male decapitated, and he tied the severed head to his horse as a brutal sign of victory and dishonor. But even in death, Male wasn't quite finished with Sigurd the Mighty, and Sigurd the Mighty's wrath was about to, well, bite him back.
For Male the Bucktooth got his nickname from his protruding front teeth, and this being the late 9th century, dental hygiene wasn't exactly at the top of anyone's list. So while the gloating Sigurd rode back to town, Male breached rotten teeth, scraped across Sigurd's leg, opening a wound.
The wound quickly became infected, and days after his victory in battle, Sigurd the Mighty was brought low by disease and died. For the want of a nail, the world was lost. For the want of a toothbrush, the Viking's wrath was his undoing. Want to ride into battle with Uncle Pete and I and fight off the moths flying out of our wallets?
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So giddy on up to allthefeelings.fun and become a Feeling Friend today, you adorable Norseman, you. Podcast Valhalla awaits. And now, back to the show. Thank you. Hi, Pete. Oh, hi. Hi. I would like to begin this next segment with a memory test. We were talking a little bit about getting older. You want to try a memory test? This, I'm taking you back to December 22nd, 2022.
This will be episode 502. I talked about a phenomenon in Los Angeles, and I was wondering who was happening around the world. Do you remember what I called the beep back? And it's okay if you don't.
The phenomenon of the beep back. The phenomenon of the beep back. What would that possibly have been? No, I don't. Oh, was this a horn related event? It was definitely horn related. Yeah, where somebody does something and you honk at them or you get honked at and it's like a reciprocal honking. Is it something like that? Correct.
The beat back, my anxiety, because we were still just talking about anxieties, and my anxieties was post-pandemic driving when everyone lost their mind. And the beat back was something that I noticed back then, starting in 2022, where usually the aggressor, like the bad guy, A...
does something that angers good guy B because bad guy A does something dangerous so B beeps at him and A was clearly in the wrong but A goes no and beeps back even though he she or it were the aggressor and were the problem It's like a beep-off. Yeah, it's a beep-off. Well, Pete, it has not gone away. It has grown exponentially.
Now I have seen – like when I'm walking my dog, I have seen like someone cut someone off. The cut-off-er – no, the cut-off-ee beeps. The cut-off-er beeps back. And now other people are beeping as if to say, I saw that too. And then like – Like, passerbys, like pedestrians are saying the word beep. Like, it's insane. The beep off has gone nuts. Why do I bring this up?
I was trying to think about when I, in my life, feel wrath. So much anger that I instantly want to or wish punishment upon someone or something. It's very rare. I'm a very... We know this. I'm a soy boy. I'm a beta. I'm very, I'm over empathetic. I'm very turn the other cheek. I'm very in times of war. I would definitely be a dove, but even like less of a, like I'd be a dove at brunch.
Like it's insane. Like I'm just not a bloodthirsty fists up person. Yeah. But I noticed going through like a day, I noticed there is one time more than any other that I do feel wrath. And it's driving. It's road rage, but I need to redefine it.
And this is where it's either not interesting at all or interesting because I want us to sort of explore it together because I can't come quite to the end of it. Or maybe what I'm describing is the definition of wrath and how it works. And I just have trouble figuring it out because I've always, since I started driving, I always had this wish that I had a superpower.
And the superpower would be I could make someone's car, all four of their tires pop at the same time.
I've had that wish. I've had that wish.
Have you really? Yes. But not pop so they go careening. I don't want them to ever be in harm's way.
I want them to drive on their rims for a little while. Yeah.
I want them to be inconvenienced both with time and money. The only time I ever feel that involves cars that I can remember. And I lead a pretty sheltered life. If I had friends that were being threatened, of course, I would, you know, I do have like a sledgehammer and a lot of guns under my kitchen floor. They're ready to come out anytime, wick style. And gold coins. Yeah. So many gold coins.
Yeah. But I think they're chocolate. You know, those chocolate gold coins. Because most of my money has melted into one big coin. So I don't know if I'm rich or... Or destined to. Either way. And then it's also very fleeting. I don't save that up in, like, sometimes people get so angry, you see them muttering, like, three blocks later, or they're still going at it.
It's very fleeting by about, like, two intersections, driving normal speed, so, like, maybe one minute, 45 seconds. I'm already like, nah, I don't know what they're going through. Who cares? It's all fine. But in that moment... I feel the closest that I have to wrath of immediate punishment.
Like I'm glad that I don't have that superpower because like big O tires would go out of business because they would have sold out of all of their stock. Right. So what I realized, cause I was like, well, where, where does that come from and why I feel wrath because I got scared. I'm not angry. I'm not feeling wrath of like, you're taking too long to go through the light.
That's where beatbacks start. I don't ever feel that way. You're just inconveniencing me. Guess what? I'll be fine. I'm never in that much of a hurry. But because you made me feel unsafe, It's almost like through being a little bit inconsiderate or daring to have other things on your mind than my safety, you broke the construct that I have around me that driving is safe. Yeah.
And I'm fine in my everyday life. And had I not been watching your inconsiderate move could have really caused severe harm. Like it was because everyone drives 90,000 miles an hour here. So accidents aren't like we don't have a lot of fender benders on the 405. Like we have the 405 is closed now for a while because that car is now three cars.
And so that's what I found is the wrath doesn't come from I'm so angry at you. It's you scared me. And you sort of shook my foundation of I'm going to be fine. And my response to that isn't an inward response at first of, oh, okay, I'm glad that I was careful. I'm glad all this stuff. Instead, it's like, how dare you put me through this horror movie that I didn't sign up for? Is that interesting?
Yeah. Do you relate to that? I never thought about it that way before until we started researching for this podcast.
Okay. Here's what hits me first. Do you have daddy issues? No. What hits me first is that Wrath, as we've been talking about it, feels very much like the... It's the example of loss of control, right? We're talking about the Hulk, right? It's just like you lose control. And... Loss of control, when you feel unsafe, that is also an example of loss of control.
And so it makes sense to me where if I'm scared because I am on the verge of losing control of my vehicle somehow, that I would end up lashing out in that sort of immediate wrath, that hormonal wrath, because that is what's going to fuel me to regain control.
irrationally irrationally it's almost like making your heartbeat faster so blood goes to the places where it needs it almost right it's almost like a burst of adrenaline we're we're neanderthals you and me we're neanderthals right we're hanging around at the fire pit and we happen to have clubs and let's just say uh i do something that makes you feel out of control and your first instinct is
in that wrathful environment might just be to hit me over the head. And what doing that will do is put you back in control, right? Okay, right. That puts you back into control. So doesn't that make sense that that would be the thing that you wish is essentially violence on others, right? But it puts you back in a position of power and authority.
But I want... Okay, yes, but I want to push back... Like lizard brain authority. Yeah, okay, because that's what I was going to, just for fun, push back at is I wasn't in a... situation when I was driving of authority or power. But I guess if you massage that word into control, I felt I had control over my situation and it was taken away from me.
And the way the irrational way to assert that back is to punish whatever or whomever took me out of control.
Or even better, my relationship with my mind powers to pop all their tires makes the world safer because they're a danger. That's interesting. They're so dangerous. I'm doing a service. Yeah. I am John wicking the roads. Mine was a little bit different than yours.
I did have the tire thing, but I also then saw, I don't even remember what it was, Beverly Hills Cop maybe or one of the Police Academy movies where I had laser mind power and I could saw a car in half and the car would just like and slide off in two pieces where you'd have the people still driving on the front two wheels just dragging the back of the car.
Now they're floating it.
Yeah, they were totally Flintstoning it. And so that was mine when I first started driving. That was my head voice was always like, which car am I going to cut in half now, right? And it was always an example of it would get them out of the way, right? Because they're worse than me.
See, and I think I am mostly that, but there is, I think, also a little bit of self-righteousness in it. That I don't think I'm getting them out of the way of society. I want them also... Well, that's it. I want them to feel what they made me feel a little bit in a way that will be safe.
So I don't want to cut – like some people with wrath, with road rage, you will zoom ahead and recut them off or do a brake check. That's all dangerous, horrible stuff. I never want to do that. But I also want – it's almost like I want to teach them a lesson so hopefully they'll be better in the future.
So I'm not getting them out of the way of everybody else, but I am giving them a real good think while they go to Midas.
Right.
Yeah. For their inexplicably lasered tires.
Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. And because you, I mean, as you're using your words, you're a beta soy boy. Yeah. Like yours ends in the mind. But I think you're right. To call out when that lack of control drives you to regain real practical in-world control and do stupid things.
That's where I – I feel lucky that there is a natural barrier for me to do that. I don't – and it's not like – Oh, if I only could, like, I just don't have any interest in it. And I think that's just how I was brought up or I'm just lead a naturally, try to lead a naturally conflict life.
I don't enjoy that type of adrenaline and I'm still trying to calm down from the adrenaline of almost running into your car. The, another car related thing that when I wasn't driving another time that I felt wrath in much the same way I was walking Foster and this was B, this would be winter because it was night and, Those two things, that makes sense. If you know when I walk Foster.
Oh, it's night. It must be winter. It must be winter. Now we're back to those cavemen guys we were a second ago. It doesn't understand. No, it's because of when I walk Foster, because of California. If I walk him at the same time throughout the year, sometimes it's dark, sometimes it's light. Either way, I was walking. And I had my flashing lights and a flashlight, and he has a reflective collar.
And we were crossing the street. And a woman, not going too fast, but just sort of rolled through a stop sign and almost into us. And so I hit her car with my hand because I was right in front of her. So I hit my car and I went, hey, and she immediately yelled, I can't see you, which is a weird. It was too quick.
Yeah.
That wasn't the right answer.
She had that one locked and loaded. Hey, I can't see you.
Well, you clearly sort of can. That's how this goes. And she was like, I can't see you. And I said, you don't need to see me. There's a stop sign. She goes, I did stop. And I said, no.
and i walked away but but isn't that that act of slapping the car is the act of regaining some control correct yes and it was also i mean because one could see it at the base level of i needed to shock her into stopping because she was going too fast for us to get ahead of her uh but then also yeah that was my initial and that that's what i would do
if I didn't have a superpower that was exploding tires, it would just be go on someone's hood. Did you hear that? Did you hear that? Yeah, that's it. I just want a little bit of a, Hey, you made me feel something like this.
If you were the Hulk, you would have crushed her engine and that would have been equally satisfying.
Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah, you won't like me when I'm walking my dog. This is the interesting thing. We talked about Confucianism last week, I think. We were talking about humility, I think. And we were talking about Confucianism and Eastern cultural thoughts on wrath. And so much of that is around...
control and harmony and wrath leads to disharmony right and so that's one of the reasons i think going back to what we talked about early on about japan um being having one of the lowest uh violent crime uh statistics and yet a lot of violent media their movies are crazy That's kind of it, right?
Is that they don't have necessarily the Western vein of wrath that sits so close to the surface of our forehead skin, right? It's maybe very deeper, right? Like that it's put away because of thousands of years of history, of cultural history, right?
where they adapt to this emphasis on shame over guilt and how wrath is perceived and honor and face and all of those sort of concepts that we don't have. We are okay. You know, you're saying Americans, for instance. Exactly. Right. I would say the West. Right. We're OK being idiots.
Yeah. Right. We're newborns compared to Japan and Japanese history.
Yeah. And look like the example of. Okay, I'll just say the Karen meme, right? Karen's, right? The example, like, go look for the footage of that woman who was clearly in extraordinary state of trauma that she was blind to reality, yelling at the birdwatcher who just asked her to leash her dog. Right. That was a...
A complete innocent exchange, and she was blinded by fear that led her to this wrathful exchange, this screaming exchange at this innocent black man who was doing nothing.
And that's trying to regain control, regain control, but not but the control was so either her general ability of control is so tenuous, or her control was so taken so far away from her. Yeah, the lengths she had to go, the amount of time she had to hit the hood of that car or hand would have fallen off.
It became ridiculous. It became ridiculous and it became an internet thing. But ultimately it's very, very sad because that's somebody who's living in trauma that is unaddressed and fear that is unaddressed. And I think that's what I get out of it. Like this is all an effort to figure out how anger can drive us toward regaining control and agency in our experiences. That's my take on it.
My completely idiotic, unexperienced take.
You know what I think we need emotionally and physically? Just more beeping, Pete.
More beeping. And beeping back. Do you know what we don't have? What? We don't have any, like this whole season, we've done like five episodes and we haven't come up with any new products. I have one. What's that?
It's the all the feelings emotional spike strip that you are able to, through the power of your mind, throw out a thorned metal thing that destroys everyone's emotional tires and makes them all stop in their tracks and roll to the side of their emotional road.
Okay. I'm just going to say as a teaser, we're going to have a post-show chat today. Oh, what? So members, I have a story about that. Yeah. Feeling Friends, hold on. Because when we're done, I have a story and it's just about this. And I think you're going to love it. I think you're going to love it. Okay.
But for the free feed, how do we end this segment?
Oh, we say, sorry. Sorry. Please control your wrath by becoming a Feeling Friend. And until then, we still love you. And now, a thing Mark Twain maybe said.
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything onto which it is poured.
Thank you all so much for joining us this week for another fascinating episode of All Feelings. We are thrilled to be here. This week's tune is Howlin' at the Moon by Define Us. Howlin' at the Moon, right? Wrath.
See, this is all purposeful. We do this on purpose.
This is my wrath coming out. At the end of the season, you're going to need your own murder board with a lot of yarn because it goes all the way to the top.
Yeah. What are we doing next week? I don't remember. You just told me that. Oh, chastity, right? Put on your chastity belts, everybody, because this is going to be a real family-friendly one. Throw away the key. Throw away the key. Exactly right. Until then, I am Tommy Metz III.
And I'm Pete Wright. Thanks for downloading. We'll be back next week on All the Feelings, Sins, and Virtues.