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Areas › Anger › Righteous anger and perfectionism
Look back at the last hour of scrolling and count how many items were built to get exactly the reaction you gave them. You do not have to swear off the news to change this. Dropping one source, or moving it to a set time instead of all day, lowers the number of times your body gets called to arms before lunch.
If a troublemaker brings you news, check it first, in case you wrong others unwittingly and later regret what you have done (Quran 49:6). The instruction assumes provoking news will arrive, and it puts a step between its arrival and your response.
الحجرات
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓاْ إِن جَآءَكُمۡ فَاسِقُۢ بِنَبَإࣲ فَتَبَيَّنُوٓاْ أَن تُصِيبُواْ قَوۡمَۢا بِجَهَٰلَةࣲ فَتُصۡبِحُواْ عَلَىٰ مَا فَعَلۡتُمۡ نَٰدِمِينَ
Believers, if a troublemaker brings you news, check it first, in case you wrong others unwittingly and later regret what you have done
Qur’an 49:6read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In an experiment on vaccine messaging, both exposure to misinformation and exposure to corrective messages shifted people's anger and their attitudes. Anger at a perceived wrong is partly a product of the messages that reach you, not only of the wrong itself. It was one study on one topic, so take it as an illustration.
Featherstone JD, Zhang J. (2020). Feeling angry: the effects of vaccine misinformation and refutational messages on negative emotions and vaccination attitude.. Journal of health communication doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Nobody stays calm about something they are shown twenty times a day.
When something in the room or in the wider world unsettles you, saying so as your own unease usually travels further than handing down a verdict.
That flash of temper when someone meets a fact that undoes their story is not stupidity. It is a mind defending its own shape, which is a real need rather than a shameful one.
When something is genuinely wrong, try saying the whole sentence: this is wrong, it should not be like this, and it is. Then ask how it came to be, before asking what to do.