Yeah, if someone can’t help but destroy objects around them or punch holes in walls, I wonder how many bad days or situation escalations they are from targeting a person instead of an object. Rage isn’t a pressure vessel that needs pressure to be released in the form of violence, rather your mind is something you train habits into, meaning you’re training yourself to react to frustration with violence.
Not to mention it never helps anything. You mentioned the feelings of shame, but there’s also more direct consequences of destroying things that happen to be in reach. There was a bash quote from someone who had to print a school paper or something and got so frustrated when they couldn’t access the file that they threw their printer (or something essential to what they needed to do) out of their high storey window in frustration. They were lucky they didn’t accidentally kill someone in the process, and then had a new real problem of not having equipment they needed once they realized the disc or whatever the file was on was sitting on their desk instead of inserted for reading. Or videos of kids getting gamer rage and destroying their keyboards or monitors. That will just make it harder to stop being pissed off because now they need to spend money to get back to where they just were (and were already unhappy about).
Though I do feel differently about object destruction not done in the heat of the moment. Like the printer scene from Office Space or getting enjoyment from demolishing a room before renovating it. It’s a deliberate choice, which doesn’t imply they might fly off the handle and do who knows what.
Now that right there is some Buddahriffic wisdom. As someone who has destroyed a keyboard in frustrated anguish, I can say the satisfaction was dismally ephemeral and every time I found a loose key for months afterward, I felt ashamed of my impulsive and violent behavior.
Although, in the exact moment in which the keyboard exploded into shrapnel, the satisfaction was intense, although I think the novelty of the situation and the personal distraction it caused were the real source of the delight. When I turned back to my sorely inadequate and poorly behaved workstation, the feelings of frustration quickly flooded back, only worse now that I needed to find a new keyboard…and waste time cleaning up the old one.
Yeah, if someone can’t help but destroy objects around them or punch holes in walls, I wonder how many bad days or situation escalations they are from targeting a person instead of an object. Rage isn’t a pressure vessel that needs pressure to be released in the form of violence, rather your mind is something you train habits into, meaning you’re training yourself to react to frustration with violence.
Not to mention it never helps anything. You mentioned the feelings of shame, but there’s also more direct consequences of destroying things that happen to be in reach. There was a bash quote from someone who had to print a school paper or something and got so frustrated when they couldn’t access the file that they threw their printer (or something essential to what they needed to do) out of their high storey window in frustration. They were lucky they didn’t accidentally kill someone in the process, and then had a new real problem of not having equipment they needed once they realized the disc or whatever the file was on was sitting on their desk instead of inserted for reading. Or videos of kids getting gamer rage and destroying their keyboards or monitors. That will just make it harder to stop being pissed off because now they need to spend money to get back to where they just were (and were already unhappy about).
Though I do feel differently about object destruction not done in the heat of the moment. Like the printer scene from Office Space or getting enjoyment from demolishing a room before renovating it. It’s a deliberate choice, which doesn’t imply they might fly off the handle and do who knows what.
Now that right there is some Buddahriffic wisdom. As someone who has destroyed a keyboard in frustrated anguish, I can say the satisfaction was dismally ephemeral and every time I found a loose key for months afterward, I felt ashamed of my impulsive and violent behavior.
Although, in the exact moment in which the keyboard exploded into shrapnel, the satisfaction was intense, although I think the novelty of the situation and the personal distraction it caused were the real source of the delight. When I turned back to my sorely inadequate and poorly behaved workstation, the feelings of frustration quickly flooded back, only worse now that I needed to find a new keyboard…and waste time cleaning up the old one.