Modern Anger and Violence

She is surprised to hear that I like listening to heavy metal:  “Really?... I wouldn’t have pictured you…”

It’s not the first time it has seemed that a female friend of mine cannot wrap their mind around anger and violence.  True, we are an evolved species and probably should be able to live without violence and war.  The American male has definitely had his sharp edges chiseled down in the popular spotlight, but aren’t we still animals, hunters, killers?  And even my immediate reaction to that last sentence is, “Well, not every man…”, thinking of scrawny nerds and pushover nice-guys.  No, every man has an animal in him.  Even women have a animal in them too, but for different reasons.  Men, however, are somehow still linked to our cavemen grandfathers, no matter how emasculinated our technological age has taken us.  We work up our company ladder, have our shirts tailored, send each other silly emojis, but still yearn for battle.  Fantasy football, WWE, hardcore porn, Game of Thrones…  is it hard to see that these are the products of men who are flailing for muscles and cries of war they have long forgotten? 

There are doubts and arguments that these remnants of a primal man are not Good, and if something like fantasy football is an outlet for that buried aggression, then that’s just fine.  “Let them go play” she says, happy that her man will be there when the neighbors come over for dinner.  She’ll roll her eyes when she overhears the guys talking about their favorite wrestlers on Monday Night Raw.  But come home with a black eye and a fractured hand?  Now you are an untamed animal.  This does not compute.  “There is no NEED for this!  We are civilized, we live in a great neighborhood in the best country in the world!  WHY would you get in a fight?!”

She wants to keep him safe, and tries to protect him in a way she thinks is right.  To her, anger and violence are things of a ancient era and should be overcome, or at best, suppressed.  She does not recognize the part of a man that has imagined turning someone’s face into a bloody mess.  “That is fine for movies, but YOU are not an action hero!”