Righteous Anger and the Pleasure Centers of the Brain

More thoughts (see the last two posts) about moral rage—all highly speculative and easily dismissable (feel free). We have long known that many addictive behaviors are linked to the release of pleasure-giving chemicals in the brain—from drinking to drugs to risky behavior to watching football. The behavior feels good, at the most basic neural level, which encourages us to repeat it, even if it is potentially harmful to us.

We know this is true of anger as well—anger leaves us feeling temporarily empowered and more in control—and also releases pleasure-giving chemicals (e.g. dopamine). Anger often arises in situations in which we initially feel the opposite—frustrated, weak, and not in control. Nothing new to any of this.

What occurs to me—which is new to me but perhaps old hat to others—is that ideas can also be a form of behavior and that ideas can also cause the release of dopamine in the brain. I feel pleasure from reading something wonderfully written—both because of its form and its content. It occurs during and at the end of any good poem for instance. Or a powerful Bible verse. And so I read endlessly. I’m hooked.

This helps me understand the attraction of righteous anger (and its common twin, self-righteous anger). Something in the world strikes you as evil. It perhaps harms others, not yourself (directly). Nonetheless, it is an offense against how you think the world ought to be. It is an offense to your ideas about the world. (We use metaphors like “such and such is a slap in the face” to indicate this link between something purely cognitive and the feelings of being physically assaulted.)

If you were the omnipotent ruler of all things, you could eliminate this offense instantly. But you’re not. You are frustrated that this is happening, you perhaps feel there is very little you can do about it personally, you get angry. And, what do you know, that angers feels good. We may think we are unhappy, but at the chemical level we in fact feel happier than before. The anger releases pleasure-giving chemicals in the brain. It makes you feel more empowered; it makes you feel you are doing something. It not only feels literally, physically good, it feels morally right (it reinforces your ideas). In fact it feels so good and so right that you want to feel it again. And some people do, every day of their lives.

I’m making no ethical judgment about this phenomenon (if it is one). It can lead people to act in the world for either good or ill. Some version of it motivates (activates) my own behaviors in the world. What interests me at the moment is that ideas and world views (including political views) are potentially as addictive as drugs and are linked to the pleasure centers of the brain, which helps me understand myself and others a bit better. Why do offenses to our values and views make us angry? At least in part because the brain likes the feeling of anger, all the more if we can congratulate ourselves about it.

Part of me wants to reject what I have just argued. It seems to reinforce a common tendency these days to see us as helpless in the face of all kinds of forces: social, psychological, historical, neurological. And if helpless, then not responsible.

Perhaps a way out of this is to argue that we are not required to give in to our brains. We have the capacity to choose the ideas that shape us, and to choose the kind of anger we allow ourselves. Choose even to reject the pleasure that righteous anger gives us and to respond instead from our better selves.

Just as we can learn to say no to other addictions, dopamine notwithstanding, we can say no to expressions of anger that do more harm than good, including exaggerated moral outrage. We do have a say in how we see the world and how we react to offenses to shalom. This need not lead to indifference, but to wiser action.