Granular is a word that’s starting to make me wince, maybe because of the people who use it or maybe because it’s so onomatopoeic. I can almost feel it in my shoe, like sand. Nevertheless, I just came across a new theory that I love, involving “emotional granularity.” Just as you would suspect, it means getting into the minutia of emotions, the gradations that distinguish one type of anger, let’s say, from another.
Apparently, it helps to label an emotion when you’re trying to manage it. I guess that makes sense, if only because stopping to label it is a form of counting to ten. You also have to accept the notion that there are all kinds of anger, and in other cultures there are kinds we may not have experienced or named.
Germans have a word that means “a face in need of a slap,”or backpfeifengesicht. I’m not really familiar with that feeling but I’ve heard men talk about “the kind of face you want to punch.” Mandarin Chinese has a word for anger directed toward oneself; that one is familiar and ongoing. Ancient Greeks distinguished between short-term anger (orge ) and a long-lasting anger that’s permanent (menin.)
In Thailand, there’s seven degrees of anger, starting with displeasure and ending with (just guessing) homicidal rage.
So anyway, your ability to distinguish between the many varieties of your emotional experiences can help you cope better. If you can say to yourself, “That guy is an annoying cunt” instead of “Why are people so awful!” you will be less depressed and less given to binge drinking. Studies have shown, alright?
I have already written about the varieties of misery experienced in other countries but not anger. I think that in the U.S, people are experiencing new and debilitating forms of anger that probably need to be labeled, like the kind you feel when people with Southern accents talk about Christianity. Or the kind you feel when you listen to Tucker Carlson. And the kind you feel when reading about immigrants in cages.
What about the kind you feel when the person in line in front of you at Starbucks has a ridiculous order? After all these years, I still have that one!!! What about when the thing you wanted at a great sale price is no longer available in your size?
What about the kind when you see Taylor Swift trying to dance? Or the kind when someone starts talking about “the program”? So many types of anger, yearning to be named.
I often have the one when your husband keeps reflexively contradicting you. Today, I experienced the anger you feel when your dog eats your toast because you looked away for ONE FUCKING SECOND at your Instagram feed.
So, what do you guys think? Angry? Is it the kind where you thought reading a blog would be entertaining but it was just a waste of time? Are you buying the concept of emotional granularity and can you name an emotion that needs it’s own label, like schadenfreude? I’m going to call that Tucker Carlson feeling tuckerschmerz. And I’m hoping that this time next year, it will be a fading memory rather than menin .
Oh God, that one with southern-accent people talking about Christianity is such a ubiquitous part of my life, being southern, that I’ve been forgetting to get enraged. Thank you, Sister Wolf! My angers are all so about me that I don’t think they’d qualify as categories for other people. Like one is the anger I feel precisely because it’s so all about me. There’s the anger when a physical problem I thought was getting better comes back, like this benign paroxysmal positional vertigo shit that’s like an involuntary ride on a Tilt-A-Whirl for 20 seconds when I get my head in certain positions. The anger when I can’t figure out what my cat yowls about for hours (indoor only, neutered). Anger at YouTube comments, can you imagine?!? Anger when the drive-through fucks up my order and I didn’t check it before I drove off.
I want a name for when doing shit that I thought was going to be easy, and that everybody tells you will be easy/painless, isn’t.
Another great word we germans have – „Fremdschämen“. It describes a feeling you have in a situation where you feel ashamed for the things another person is doing or saying.
Yes to granularity – I am so sick of undifferentiated discussions!
„ Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.
Aristotle“
I’m too grumpy to work it out!
I believe that “granularity” began its current popular trajectory some years back as a bit (or, lamentably, grain) of business speak. I also believe that it is on its way out. That “menin” shit, though, the shit that’s been following us since our Civil War? No amount of coffee or reflexive contradiction or stolen toast or face punching is going to usher out a single atom of that.
Business speak also gave us the odious phrase “best practice.” It seems like the best practice now is to take up meditation and get some time in at the gun range.
Bevitron, I think your cat is certainly saying ‘let me out’.
I agree with all of this.
I’m getting really fucking sick of “honoring” things like creativity, “holding space” and all that other fake therapeutic schmaltz-y “self-care” talk that’s sort of swept over the cultural landscape or whatever. I’m also really fucking tired of corporations pushing “mindfulness” as a capitalist tool.
I haven’t got the energy to be pissed off. Just have a glass of wine and read a book. Life is good and sure beats the alternative.