All the rage | 30 June 2012

New York
The western world seems not just unhappy, but intoxicated with anger. It is the kind of anger that feeds on itself. Offence is not just taken but relished, and multiplied as in a hall of mirrors.

I have a name for this kind of anger. A few years ago, in a book about how Americans had learned to brush aside their old ethic of self-control and plunge into the delights of sneering and rage, I christened it the ‘new anger’. It was as if the snarling John McEnroe at Wimbledon in 1981 had become the embodiment of national ideals.

Of course, it wasn’t entirely new. The emotionally flamboyant have always attracted notice, and a certain type has always wanted to out-Herod Herod. The difference is that we used to think that habitual and unbridled choler was a fault. A man without self-control was pathetic, and in situations that counted — such as battle — a danger. A woman without self-control might be indulged if she had the voice to sing Verdi, but shrews were either for taming or domiciling in the attic.

But now we have licensed everyman to be his own spigot of hot steam, and a woman without a screw-you attitude is treated as a quaint relic of a bygone age. I exaggerate, of course. Precisely because displays of anger have become a form of entertainment and because it is often more a performance than an emotional reality, most people know how to turn it on and off. We just prefer the on tap a lot more than generations past.

When I wrote about the emergence of new anger in America, I considered then put aside the idea of commenting on anger elsewhere. That’s because every nation has its own emotional habits, its tacit rules for when to weep and when to keep a dry eye — or when to give a Clint Eastwood stare and when to bring forth one’s inner Jeremiah.