There are more important things to be angry about, writes Dawn Picken. Photo / Getty Images
There are more important things to be angry about, writes Dawn Picken. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION
We have so many reasons to be angry. Between our 21st century plague, a warming planet and people who toss fast-food wrappers on to the ground, plenty of stuff will get your goat.
I don't get mad because the world's scientists and doctors overwhelmingly agree vaccinations against potentially fataldiseases such as polio, typhoid, measles and now, Covid-19, have and will save lives.
I'm not angry that the Government is encouraging me to get jabbed to reduce the chance I'll infect someone else at a restaurant, the hairdresser's, the gym or at a concert. I'm not angry about taking the whole family to get a shot.
I am, however, over the indignation born of social media "research" involving memes and charismatic influencers who spew rubbish about fake moon landings, 9/11 inside jobs and the latest thing to get brassed off about - vaccine mandates.
Sometimes we need to whip our fury into a frenzy. I get it. I'm angry, too. But not about vaccines. I'm also not angry about effective cancer treatments, antidepressants or dark salted caramel chocolate. All three could save your life. Only one tastes good.
Scientists believe that the capacity for anger has been hardwired into our brains over millions of years of evolution.
A 2019 article in The Guardian says anger is rooted in the brain's reward circuit and forms part of our instinct to fight off threats, compete for resources and to enforce social norms.
Studies also show anger can make us more impulsive, and that it influences our behaviour in a group. We tend to think more negatively and in a more prejudiced way about outsiders when we're mad.
Thinking about angry people makes me angry.
Case in point: The protesters earlier this week who staged a hīkoi in an attempt to travel from Rotorua to Waitangi, in Northland. They're angry about vaccine mandates and lockdowns.
Māori leaders in Te Tai Tokerau have said the protesters are not welcome due to the risk posed by the Delta strain of Covid-19. Police stopped the protesters at the Auckland border.
Reasons to be angry are under my nose - the website that crashes twice as I'm trying to place an order; neighbourhood cats that dance on my roof at 3am wearing leaden tap shoes before planting tiny grenades in my garden to blow up the mulch.
Then there's the supermarket bag ban - a big source of frustration because it's easier to get angry about the small things than the universe of large things too scary to confront.
So I watch, helplessly, as a gloved cashier places my non-Covid contaminated items into my non-Covid contaminated trolley so I can bring them to my car's boot and deposit them into my non-Covid contaminated reusable bags. It's a lot of double-handling.
Early in the pandemic, we thought Covid might spread via surfaces. Today, researchers say surface transfer is unlikely - Covid is spread through respiratory droplets, not through my shopping bag.
Multiple studies have shown the risk of Covid transmission through fomites (environmental surfaces) is low.
The deep cleaning we do appears to be more effective for psychological comfort rather than disease control. I like a clean room as much as the next person (maybe more), but please, let me use my bags in store.
A supermarket spokesperson last year was quoted saying the reason for the bag ban was to move customers through the checkout process faster. The spokesperson has not seen me bungling through the queue, rearranging items as they enter the trolley.
I'm really ticked off at Facebook, which has just renamed itself Meta. The company this week was accused of putting profits before public health by allowing anti-vax falsehoods to mushroom.
Internal documents showed the company failed to implement measures to stem misinformation. I'm angry with myself for not quitting the site.
Something else to chew on: ACC call centre workers have been caught posting private details of clients to a Snapchat group. RNZ reported earlier this week more than a dozen employees in Hamilton took photos of clients' injury descriptions displayed on their work screens and posted the images to a private Snapchat group called "ACC Whores". What a disgusting breach of privacy.
I'm angry that women are allowed to be sad, but not angry, and that men are allowed to be angry, but not sad.
I wonder if an antidote to anger is gratitude. So I sit with appreciation for scientists and healthcare workers who are learning to fly a pandemic plane at 900 kilometres per hour while airborne.
There are lots of reasons to be angry, but life-saving drugs are not on my list. Maybe I'll channel my anger into online grocery shopping so I can stop fuming (quietly, under my mask) at the checkout.
