Years ago, when the medical community announced that self-righteous indignation can be an addiction, as severe as any drug abuse, I expected the publ… - David Brin

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Years ago, when the medical community announced that self-righteous indignation can be an addiction, as severe as any drug abuse, I expected the public to take notice. Surely (I thought) the vast majority of moderate, reasonable people will now stop listening to those vehement wrath-junkies — the essers — out there, constantly spewing hate from pulpits of the left or right, or religious or paranoiac mania? Now that the pattern is understood, won’t this tend to disempower the irate, who refuse to negotiate, and instead empower those who want to engage in reason? To listen to their neighbors and work out pragmatic solutions to problems? Those who prefer positive-sum games. Won’t this now-verified scientific fact undermine the frantic types, who have ruined argument and discourse in public life, by portraying their opponents in stark terms of pure evil, opposed by pharisaical good? By showing that their fury arises out of an addictive chemical high that they secrete within their own skulls?