Aggression’s hotbed

Aggression’s hotbed can refer to both a metaphorical concept in psychology and a specific linguistic commentary:

In neuroscience and psychology, the amygdala is often described as the brain’s hotbed for reactive aggression. It processes fear, threat, and anger, triggering immediate, impulsive aggressive responses before the prefrontal cortex can regulate them.

Empirically, extreme heat serves as a literal and situational hotbed for violence. The “heat-aggression hypothesis” suggests that rising temperatures can increase irritability, hostile thoughts, and physical assaults.

In societal commentary, journalists and columnists often refer to the unregulated media environment, or a “wicked pen,” as a hotbed that shapes public anger and societal conflict.

Honestly, it’s rarely a pleasure, joy, amusement, fun, or whatever to read and look closely at different daily papers here in the Philippines and elsewhere around the globe. Only bad and negative headlines seem to help increase a paper’s circulation. Yes, sure, our world has not become better.

The three “C’s” are the fundamental factors: catastrophes, crime, and crisis! Surely, television and other news media are not much better.

Sensible suggestions and negotiations, failed compromises, disclosures from prominent figures’ bedrooms, double standards, the church in deep crisis, calumny suits, and sometimes reports, editorials, and columns that drip with bad taste and spitefulness.

For more than 65 years, I have learned that a journalist can — of course — mentally form and shape public opinion, characters, life, communities, and the way things go. That’s why I have also learned that a journalist should always remember self-discipline, responsibility, care, inquisitiveness, and respect.

Of course, empathy and sound judgment, along with self-assurance, common sense, and human dignity, also belong, whether the topic is politics, economics, commerce, culture, sports, or special topics such as police reports or war correspondence.

Chasing rumors, revealing embarrassing and mostly untrue things, producing sensational reports to make money and increase circulation or viewership, and pursuing personal prestige are harmful to the public and especially to journalists themselves.

Writing with a wicked pen and having a sharp tongue don’t mean that a journalist, host, or commentator should walk disrespectfully through life, so to speak, like an elephant in a china shop. Likewise, it is the journalist’s duty to uncover, disclose, or reveal what the public should know, but without getting personal. Yes, eternal vigilance matters, even without a wicked pen and a sharp tongue.

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