A Rising Tide of Anger: Is it Real or is it the Creation of “Fake News” Media?

According to a Press Release by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a Zero-Tolerance policy was enacted for what was described as “unruly and dangerous behavior passengers”. These behaviors included incidents that can be described as verbal absue and physical assault as the result of flight attendants trying to enforce rules such as not allowing passengers to drink their own alcohol to the failure to wear a mask. The aforementioned press release stated that out of the 2,500 complaints, 1,900 of them were about the failure to comply with federal mask mandates.

Recently, three widely reported events that could be described as acts of anger and abuse occurred in the sporting world as fan attendance was allowed to increase for the first round of the NBA playoffs. In one event, a fan in New York allegedly spit on Atlanta Hawks star Trae Young, and was subsequently banned indefinitely from the arena. In another event, a fan in Philadelphia allegedly dumped his popcorn onto Washington Wizards star Russell Westbrook as he exited the court to head to the locker room with an apparent ankle injury. More recently, a fan in Boston allegedly threw a water bottle at Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving, and he has now been charged with a felony.

Here in Miami, there have been multiple shootings in just a few days. So many, in fact, that Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo, has spoken out against the violence by requesting that politicians come together to find a way to make it harder for criminals to acquire guns by “requiring universal background checks and making burglaries at licensed gun stores federal crimes with mandatory sentencing”. These events come just days after it was reported in the New York Times that gun sales during the pandemic set records, a fact that was hinted at by the Brookings Institute amidst the protests of the Spring of 2020, when they reported a large spike (about 3 million) in background check requests being made to the FBI by licensed gun dealers. Just over this past weekend, brawls have been recorded at Miami Marlins baseball games. I saw two such fights on social media and it was enough to negatively influence my decision on attending a game myself with my daughter.

Add to these anecdotes, the videos any of us see on social media of people confronting others about picking up dog poop, or a man pulling down Black Lives Matter signs, or another man tearing down a cross from a church in London, and you have to wonder: what the heck is going on with people?

Some would say: “there’s nothing unusual going on, it’s just people being people”, while others would give credit to the ability of social media to popularize normal and mundane events. Others would blame the media for sensationalizing stories and even creating what they call “fake news”. While I think there may be an element of truth to each of these positions, I think there’s more that needs to be said from a psychological perspective and then from a biblical one.

Psychology

In an article by (Chew et al., 2020), the authors endeavored to review the psychological impacts of past infectious disease outbreaks such as Ebola, the severe acute respiratory (SARS) outbreak in 2002/2003, the (H1N1) influenza outbreak in 2009 (most commonly remembered as the Swine Flu), and the Middle East respiratory (MERS) outbreak in 2012 had on multiple countries and communities. Their goal was to then examine coping responses used by those populations and then try and predict what can be expected as the entire globe enters and then exits a global pandemic due to Covid-19. I believe their findings help to explain why we are seeing this rising tide of anger and why it’s very real and here to stay. The following is a list of the common themes they found across infectious disease outbreaks. These themes usually coincide with what clinicians and therapists like to call “maladaptive coping skills” which is a nice way of saying: the wrong or unhealthy way with dealing with stress or the things that hurt.

1. Anxiety and Somatic symptoms: A common presenting feature for those who endured Ebola, SARS, and the H1N1, outbreaks were anxiety and somatic symptoms (Chew et al., 2020). Somatic symptoms in this case were anxiety-related physical problems and the most reported issue was insomnia. Another article seeks to remind doctors that the current outbreak can induce or exacerbate some chronic disorders such as functional gastrointestinal disorders which would be an example of another somatic symptom related to a psychological outcome due to the pandemic (Nozari, 2021).

2. Depressive symptoms: Feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, which are cognitive (thought) features of depression were present in those communities that experienced SARS and Ebola (Chew et al., 2020). The reasons most associated with these symptoms were the following:

   a) inability to return to their usual routine of life

   b) the contagiousness of the disease

   c) lack of information regarding its route of transmission

   d) stigma (more on this one later)

   e) proximity to the epicentre of the outbreak (Chew et al., 2020).

   Along with the feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, people reported increased feelings of anger and irritability with younger and middle-aged adults experiencing the highest levels of these feelings of any other group. Their feelings were mostly attributed to a lack of conflicting information regarding the disease and the stigmatization they experienced and that persisted even after the disease had dissipated (Chew et al., 2020).

3. Post-traumatic stress symptoms: These symptoms were experienced mostly by survivors of SARS and Ebola outbreaks. Survivors were confronted with flashbacks or intrusive images of corpses and/or other details related to the outbreaks that caused great loss and grief (Chew et al., 2020).

4. Stigmatization, abandonment, and isolation: Feelings related to these symptoms were experienced in seven SARS studies, one H1N1 study, and in all Ebola studies.

   a) Stigmatization was experienced due to the following

   i). One’s identity as a survivor of the disease or having had a relationship to a survivor

   ii). One’s nationality

   iii). One’s place of residency (Latinos were particularly stigmatized as Mexico was determined to be the epicenter of the SARS outbreak)

   iv). One’s health status prior to the outbreak (this feature led to particularly discriminatory attitudes during the SARS outbreak) (Chew et al., 2020).

   All of these factors were affected by media portrayals (Chew et al., 2020).

   b) Feelings of abandonment and isolation often result from experiencing discrimination and stigma (Chew et al., 2020). People who survive outbreaks (meaning they caught the disease and then recovered) report feeling abandoned by healthcare services because of the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and they report those feelings due to the fact that people in their communities ostracize them for being or becoming sick.

   c) Feelings of isolation were invoked due to the need to quarantine even though most people knew about the necessity of quarantining while sick. These feelings also extended to those who had to quarantine while not having the virus; especially those who were vulnerable due to circumstances like mothers from their newborn babies (Chew et al., 2020).

There’s a lot of information to digest there and in the coming years we will get a clearer picture as to what affect this specific pandemic had on people throughout the world. But just by using some of my own experiences as a professor/counselor and what I think is a little bit of common sense, I think it is safe to say that the symptoms presented in other virus outbreaks in recent history have been evident in society during the Covid-19 outbreak as well. From the outset of this pandemic, those of us working in various mental health fields have been talking about how much stress this time period was going to have on people and we have been discussing with each other the best ways to try and encourage people to process what they are going through. But add to the pandemic the death of George Floyd and the subsequent protesting, the already toxic political climate in the United States, and the rising use of social media as simply an echo chamber to hear yourself say the same things you already believe in (Luzsa & Mayr, 2021), and it felt like trying to help people cope in a healthy way with the pandemic was like trying to make a sand castle out of chia seeds. It was impossible.

Now that we find ourselves going back to live sporting events, flying in airplanes, and maybe even taking a trip to Disney, how do we navigate through crowds of people who at any given time might be experiencing the lingering affects of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, stigma, abandonment, and isolation? Any or all of those symptoms will be present because all of their related causes in previous outbreaks have occurred during this one. Here are two examples.

1. Stigma over nationality? Yep, and it’s too easy to point out the attacks against Asians that have happened worldwide. In the United States, there are those whose sense of nationality is tied up with Republicanism, the flag, guns, and Christian Nationalism (as defined here). They have also been stigmatized during this past year as being “non-mask wearers” and “racists” and other terms that lead to feelings of isolation, abandonment and depression. Some may argue that these people should be ignored or that they brought this stigma and the resulting psychological symptoms onto themselves. Whether they did or not, it doesn’t mean they should then suffer psychologically; especially when their suffering could lead to a spiraling that can lead to a detrimental affect on the rest of society. We should pay attention to how they’ve been stigmatized and find a way to close the gap with them.

2. Stigma over health status prior to the outbreak. I felt this one personally. Before the Covid-19 outbreak I was somewhere around 272 lbs (my highest weight ever). Thankfully in 2019 I had started treatment for a thyroid disorder which is when I put on all the weight (I went from 233 to 272 from Jan 2019-May 2019). But I didn’t really tell many people about my diagnosed condition or my treatment. So when the pandemic started, I felt like if I died from the virus, people would just blame me for being fat or gluttonous. That stigma for being obese and vulnerable to the disease made it easier for my family to isolate ourselves but thankfully the stigma did not lead to feelings of depression, abandonment and isolation like it did for others as described above. But that’s only because of my own solid state of mental well-being going into the pandemic and knowing any stigma I might feel is the result of ignorance from other’s about the true nature of my condition. Not everyone was able to have that kind of perspective about their own experiences. I cringe when I think about the Surgeon General telling Black Americans that they needed to “avoid alcohol, tobacco, and drugs”, since they seemed to be dying at a high rate (at the time he made his comments). Statements like these lack perspective and create the stigma I’m explaining here.

Bible

In Genesis 3, human beings experience four conditions or states of being that they were never intended to experience. These conditions of living only entered into their bodies and their psyche because of their decision to enjoy something that was lovely to look at, even if it meant the knowledge it gave wasn’t lovely at all.

1. First, the humans realized they were naked and decided this state of existence was inherently problematic and so they covered themselves. When a person feels that something about them is wrong or simply not right, that feeling can be defined as shame. Shame is different from guilt in this way: guilt helps us understand that something we have done was wrong and that it will be met with negative consequences. Shame tells us that guilt exists and along with that guilt, we also feel that something that isn’t necessarily wrong is now tainted and must be covered up lest its exposure causes more problems for us. A practical example: a 4-year old is singing while dad is working on an email. Dad asks her to be quiet just so he can finish. The little girl walks away thinking that her singing is bad and annoying and so maybe she is also bad and annoying. That’s how shame works. Carl Rogers called this process the building of conditions of worth (Schultz & Schultz, 2017). Going back to the Creation story, God created the humans as two naked beings and that was good. But now…because of their sin and the resulting guilt, shame enters and forces them to cover themselves up in a way that God never intended because He meant nakedness to be good.

2. The second state of being that is new for the humans is fear. God is walking around in the Garden and the sound of movements cause them to hide. Again, this new state of being is tied up with the guilt they have which is in their psyche because of the sin they have committed. Fear is also related to their shame and the desire to control their shame. Even though they had made for themselves clothes out of leaves to cover themselves, they still hide when they hear God and tell Him that they hid because they were afraid He would see that they were naked or exposed. Hiding from God makes no sense but often fear drives people to try and control things that can’t be controlled and in ways that make no sense.

3. The third new state of being they experience is pain. Pain in labor for the woman and pain of labor for the man. This state of being is directly tied to the thing they were guilty for. But pain is so much more than physical for these and other humans. For example, think of that sharpness you feel in your chest when you know someone is about to give you bad news; especially news related to a break-up or a death. It’s why people use euphemisms like “I’m just not in a place for a relationship right now” or “I don’t have time to fully commit to this relationship and you deserve better” when they want to speak the words that cut your soul in half. God doesn’t mince words in this story and He places cherubim with flaming swords at the entrance so that there’s no doubt that the relationship they had is over. On top of that, God curses the human by telling him that he will return to the dust after he is dead. Do you see the irony in that curse? The human tried to ascend into a place like God’s (after God already made the human an idol in His own image and likeness) and God lowers him all the way down to the place he originally came from: the dirt. Ouch…talk about pain. That one still hurts.

4. Now, the text doesn’t explain this next point to us explicitly but it is there with the right understandings of the text. Robert Alter (2019), explains that “the human called his wife Eve, for she was the mother of all that lives.” (Genesis 3:20-21). In the commentary section of his translation, Alter (2019), then explains that the name Eve sounds suspiciously like the Aramaic word for serpent. (In his introduction, he explains his textual sources and why Aramaic should be considered when translating the Hebrew Bible). He posits the question: Is it possible then that the name for Eve was actually an attempt to forever label her as the mother of all sinful things (Alter, 2019)? I believe it certainly is possible. What state of being led to the human naming the woman something that would essentially forever associate her with speaking to the serpent? The answer is: anger. Anger for being kicked out of the garden, anger for having the soil cursed, anger for every new feeling of discomfort from mosquito bites to blisters on the feet to sweat burning his eyes. Was his anger justified? Many men would say yes, while many women would suffocate with the obvious implications of misogony in the question. My official position is: no, he was not justified in his anger because if he were, he would not have been cursed by God. Meaning, he could only be righteously angry if he himself was innocent. They both sinned and they both suffered just consequences for their sin.

This lesson from the Creation story informs me and anyone else who holds a Judeo-Christian worldview that the source of all the shame, fear, pain, and anger that people experience, whether caused by the pandemic or not, is actually sin. So, that leaves us with a very important question: how does one overcome something that seems to be hopelessly ingrained into our existence? I will attempt to answer that in my next article.

References

Alter, R. (2019). The Hebrew Bible: The five books of Moses: Torah: A translation with commentary (Volume 1) (1st ed.). W.W. Norton & Company.

Chew, Q., Wei, K., Vasoo, S., Chua, H., & Sim, K. (2020). Narrative synthesis of psychological and coping responses towards emerging infectious disease outbreaks in the general population: Practical considerations for the covid-19 pandemic. Singapore Medical Journal, 61(7), 350–356. https://doi.org/10.11622/smedj.2020046

Luzsa, R., & Mayr, S. (2021). False consensus in the echo chamber: Exposure to favorably biased social media news feeds leads to increased perception of public support for own opinions. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.5817/cp2021-1-3

Nozari, N. (2021). COVID-19 Outbreak and its Burden on a New Wave of Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders. Middle East Journal of Digestive Disease, 13(2), 91–94. https://doi.org/10.34172/mejdd.2021.210

Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2017). Theories of personality (11th ed.). Cengage Learning.