Why Many People Are Resorting to Anger in Debates

It’s extremely frustrating and happens all too frequently: You’re having a conservation with someone over a point of disagreement, and the other person quickly gets angry. End of conversation; end of dialogue.

What causes this to happen so often? Why do differences over politics, morality, and worldviews often devolve into anger and hurt feelings? Why must arguments result in quarrels?

Three principal reasons come to mind. We've discussed the first two before in different forms; the third may surprise you:

1) An inadequate education.

In his novel August 1914, one of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s characters says, “Intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.”

I think the term “inadequate education” is key. I’ve met plenty of bright people who have years of schooling and letters after their names, yet quickly lose their cool when they encounter dissent from their worldview. A thorough education in the great thinkers, ideas, and events of the past helps quell such adverse reactions, and the pride and insecurity that causes them. It can make you profoundly aware of how much you don’t know, of how many shades of meaning there are, and of how arduous and unending the process is of arriving at truth. In other words, a thorough education can provide you with more humility.

2) A sign of being ruled by the passions.

Plato described the human soul as having three parts—intelligence, emotions, and appetites. Anger belongs to the middle category of the emotions and is considered a “passion” because it is something we “suffer,” i.e., that happens to us without our free deliberation and consent. Plato (and the Western tradition after him) believed that the lifelong struggle for the human person is to gain control of passions like anger. In a famous passage in the Phaedrus, Plato likens the intellective part of the soul to a charioteer who must reign in the two horses of the emotions and the appetites.

When people get angry when we disagree with them, it is a sign that they have not yet reigned in that passion of anger. In a society where education and child-rearing less often involves conscious training in the virtues, it’s likely that more people will remain enslaved to this passion. Anger will also be a favored weapon in a relativist society where beliefs and positions are increasingly thought of as mere irrational preferences.

3) Technology?

French philosopher Jacques Ellul believed that life in a technological society increasingly required people to be reactive rather than reflective. In a documentary called “The Betrayal by Technology” (which I have included below), he expounds upon this requirement:

“Technology… obliges us to live more and more quickly. Inner reflection is replaced by reflex. Reflection means that, after I have undergone an experience, I think about that experience. In the case of a reflex, you know immediately what you must do in a certain situation. Without thinking. Technology requires us no longer to think about things. If you are driving a car at 160 kilometers an hour and you think, you’ll have an accident. Everything depends on reflexes. The only thing technology requires of us is: Don’t think about it. Use your reflexes.”

If Ellul is right, in the technological society, it’s possible that the reactionary response required of us by technology spills over into other human activities. It’s even possible that education—the very thing that is supposed to teach one to be reflective—becomes merely a training in the reactions to certain persons, terms, and ideas.

Ben Reilly wrote:There are a lot of reasons people get angry in debates, ranging from having a big ego/needing to be right, to frustration with people who lack or don't make sense, to being angered by an opinion you find repellent, etc.

On this forum, I often find that when I make what I think is a good point, the person I'm debating with simply ignores it. That can make me mad - don't carry on arguing your points without even acknowledging my points. It's not just rude, it's not even how a debate works.

Syl wrote:Personal insults tend to ruin debates, and if it was a good one that's pretty annoying.

I think I can count on one hand the times I have gotten annoyed in an online debate....or a real life one come to that, what's the point of getting annoyed just because someone doesn't agree with your point of view.

Syl wrote:Personal insults tend to ruin debates, and if it was a good one that's pretty annoying.

Original Quill wrote:

Syl wrote:Personal insults tend to ruin debates, and if it was a good one that's pretty annoying.

Gd. point.  Perhaps that's the reason why they go to personal insults.  They are losing, and they try to blow up the debate rather than admit it.

eddie wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Gd. point.  Perhaps that's the reason why they go to personal insults.  They are losing, and they try to blow up the debate rather than admit it.

Erm yeah....can we think of any posters like that?

Maddog wrote:

eddie wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Gd. point.  Perhaps that's the reason why they go to personal insults.  They are losing, and they try to blow up the debate rather than admit it.

Erm yeah....can we think of any posters like that?

Well, there's me, the lying piece of shit.  Maybe that's who Quill is talking about.  

eddie wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Gd. point.  Perhaps that's the reason why they go to personal insults.  They are losing, and they try to blow up the debate rather than admit it.

Erm yeah....can we think of any posters like that?

eddie wrote:

Maddog wrote:

Well, there's me, the lying piece of shit.  Maybe that's who Quill is talking about.  

Well I don’t think you’re always right, or even totally truthful to your version of yourself but I don’t think you get abusive in debates...maybe a tad childish, but never abusive.

Maddog wrote:

eddie wrote:

Well I don’t think you’re always right, or even totally truthful to your version of yourself but I don’t think you get abusive in debates...maybe a tad childish, but never abusive.

I get dismissive.

I don't get abusive.

I also don't take this as serious as some people because it's all fake people hiding behind stuff.

When I want real discussions I can go elsewhere, because they are far more honest than what you can find on a forum.  

I could probably have a good discussion with Wolfie in person because he would never talk to me like he does on here.

But I have been on forums long enough to know that they are a safe refuge for a lot of folks that just dont function well in the real world and they can reinvent themselves here.  

I don't need to reinvent myself.  

Lurker wrote:Stress. Mental disorder. Lack of sleep. Insecurity. Social Anxiety Disorder. Depression. Debateophobia.
Even diabetes (sugar levels control mood)
There are many reasons for it.

Thorin wrote:https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/why-do-we-argue-online-1.2295986608

eddie wrote:

Thorin wrote:https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/why-do-we-argue-online-1.2295986608

From that article:

“Indeed, there’s evidence from research at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay that ranting online intensifies our anger rather than reducing it.”

How sad.

Cass wrote:In here I am exactly as I am in real life. Sometimes debates come to a natural end. At that point I’ll drop out as I see no further use in going round and round the houses. Its not being dismissive of the other person’s point of view, it’s just I feel I’ve said my piece, they’ve said theirs and the end.

Original Quill wrote:

Cass wrote:In here I am exactly as I am in real life. Sometimes debates come to a natural end. At that point I’ll drop out as I see no further use in going round and round the houses. Its not being dismissive of the other person’s point of view, it’s just I feel I’ve said my piece, they’ve said theirs and the end.

Xactly