One of the conceits of John Sarno’s theory that physical pain is caused by unconscious emotions is the idea that most people have a lot of repressed rage that they are not aware of. In a couple of his books, he points to road rage is one of the rare times where we get a glimpse of our internal rage. This point always resonated with me because I’ve experienced road rage. Someone cuts you off, or drives too slow, and you get this sudden volcanic explosion of anger — you just want to drive into that person’s car, knock them off to the side of the road, pull their screaming body from their vehicle and pound them senseless with a tire iron and then sodomize them and urinate and defecate on them and run them over with their own vehicle.

The problem is that society foolishly frowns upon such behavior.

But why would road rage be such a common occurrence? Well, the truth is, your car in traffic is really one of the few private places in modern society where you can have a complete tantrum without earning disapproval. You could scream expletives and break things in the privacy of your house, but you’re gonna wonder whether the neighbors are hearing. If you engage in such behavior in nature or public, you’re sure to earn attention. Weirdly enough, the car, in the middle of loud traffic, is actually a pretty good place to blow off steam.

And it strikes me: this explains the success of talk radio. You have all these people driving around, fuming about their lives, and then you get some DJ explaining in sneering tones why politicians are scum, or society is falling around us as we speak. It would be almost impossible not to get a reaction out of people. Perhaps this rage is cathartic, perhaps not, but it can clearly be addictive.

FUCKFUCKINGSHITTTT!!!!

(Sorry, I didn’t mention I was driving while blogging.)