If You're Not Angry, You're Not Paying Attention: Anger, Empathy, and Activism in Crisis

This question, which provides both the title and general form for Mara Nelson-Greenberg’s play, initially appears deceptively simple. Taking up Nelson-Greenberg’s question as a challenge, I consider how anger operates in our particularly tense and uncertain moment. After all, what is anger? Should it be considered a trait—part of an individual’s inherent personality revealed through their thoughts and actions? Or a state—a temporary condition that individuals experience for a short time before transitioning to a different condition (“Difference”)? What might it mean to “feel” anger? What sensations, reactions, or impulses do we associate with anger? And whose anger do we justify?