The Frantic Politics of Cortisol

The favorite drug of toxic dudes, terrified parents, and the loudest protesters on the lawn.

Nowadays, when I see people getting angry, I mostly see cortisol.

Cortisol, as you probably know, is one of the hormones most responsible for the body’s stress reactions. It often floods the system when we’re angry, upset, or, dare I say it, triggered. This has an obvious evolutionary benefit: like adrenaline, cortisol has probably saved your life, if you’ve ever had to make quick decisions in danger. It also helps you wake up in the morning. And while you can’t perceive cortisol itself, its effects are familiar: a quick energy boost, increased heartbeat, tensed muscles, and a mind that accelerates to make a fast decision to evade that predator before you get eaten.

In a nice convergence of Dharma and biology, attending to the effects of this chemical can help demystify and depersonalize some of the emotional reactions that, particularly in this political moment, seem to get more respect than they really deserve.

After all, cortisol does not help us make good, rational decisions.  That’s not its job: its role is to alert us to the presence of a threat and get us stressed out about it.  This is, of course, quite unhelpful if you’re trying to fall asleep, or deescalate a conflict with your partner, or have a conversation about Israel/Palestine.  When we’re activated in this way, our brains are not functioning as they normally do.  We don’t think straight.

On a personal level, it’s possible to cultivate the ability to be mindful of cortisol – or at least, the effects of cortisol.  As you get used to noticing the effects of cortisol in the body, you can observe when cortisol is released at an inconvenient time – say, in bed at midnight – and catch yourself before descending into a mental doomscroll.  You can just say to yourself “cortisol” and demystify the whole thing. Just noticing what’s really going on can help get off the express train to insomnia.

And, parenthetically, by labeling an experience as “cortisol,” I can avoid judging myself for having it, or justifying it, or feeding it.  This really helps, in my experience. Stress is simply something happening to the mind-body system. It’s cause and effect. I think a particular thought, cortisol is released, and now the body is feeling the effects of stress, anxiety, fear, or anger.  This is the Buddhist insight of “non-self”: that things we take to be I, me, or mine, are really just cause-and-effect phenomena, rolling on as they do. The conditions are present for anger, and anger arises.

After all, what is cortisol, really? On one level, it’s just C21H30O5. It’s a chemical. For all the drama, it’s a drug.

On a communal level, cortisol is often deeply destructive – and wildly overvalued.  On Right, Left, and Center we live in a time in which displaying the symptoms of rage and fear is richly rewarded.  Obviously, the MAGA movement runs on the fuel of anger, resentment, and pain; it is a faux-populist movement of rage and desperation.  (I say “faux-populist” because for all MAGA’s nativism, its economic agenda rewards elites at the expense of the masses.)  Whether it’s Christian Nationalists on a crusade to save America’s soul from evil, or anti-immigrant nationalists motivated by unconscious or conscious racism, or just rural whites who feel they’ve been cheated out of their future, this is a movement in which rage is practically deified.  Sometimes literally.

And yet… it’s just cortisol.  What’s so great about that?

And on the Left and Center too.  There’s nothing angrier than a centrist angry at the extremists on both sides – especially, as I’ve been talking about more lately, in the IDW-Roganverse in which rage at every bubble except the IDW-Rogan bubble is accorded the highest respect.  Culturally too.  MMA, WWE, gun fetishism, militarism, extreme violence in games and other media.  I’m not saying cortisol is bad – on the contrary, I love a good catharsis.  But this insane glorification of cortisol-intoxication and toxic masculinity, as though they are signs of strength or moral rectitude?  Dude, you’re just high on cortisol.

This is often true on the Left as well, where the angriest voices at the left-wing protest get the media attention, as if more cortisol means more truth.  (It is usually the opposite.)  After all, who gets excited by protesters calling for more nuance, empathy, and dialogue?

I made the meme; Shir Meira Feit made the words.

I’ve seen this in unprecedented amounts in the last few weeks, as the war in Gaza seems to have taken second stage – in America, not in Palestine or Israel – to the “war” on college campuses.  People are losing their minds – kind of literally, if you think about the effects of cortisol on cognitive functioning.  I’m not judging the presence of cortisol; pro-Palestine activists are outraged by the carnage in Gaza, many Jews are scared by the protests and by antisemitic attacks on Jewish people, and people are upset.  But I am judging the indulgence of cortisol, as if the most enraged response is somehow the most deserving of attention.

Personally, after writing what I thought was a pretty centristy article noting that, while antisemitism is increasing, a lot of what’s being called antisemitic is actually strong, disturbing political protest, I’ve received outraged messages not just from haters on right and left (who are often indistinguishable from one another), but from friends who are quite sure I have no idea what I’m talking about, even as they don’t engage with any of the specific examples I tried to discuss.  One even began their message to me by saying that he hadn’t read the piece, but is sure I don’t understand what’s really happening on his campus.

Jewish trauma is real.  We have a two thousand year history of persecution, and many of our holidays (including the liturgy of Passover, being celebrated right now) recall persecution even before that.  And more recent history too: I can say that when I see a group of people in keffiyehs, I sometimes get “triggered” because I associate it with the threat of violence, because terrorists often do wear them, and because that’s my conditioning.

But that’s not insight — it’s just cortisol.  It’s my job to step back from that hormonally charged moment, notice that my body-mind system is feeling stress, and reflect as analytically and rationally as I can about what I’m actually seeing and what people are actually doing. The keffiyeh means different things to them than it does to 12-year-old me. What I’m feeling and what is actually happening — are different.

Sometimes what is happening is antisemitic, as when any Jewish person is targeted for being Jewish, or when antisemitic language is used. Sometimes, though, it isn’t. A lot of time, there’s a cortisol flood that comes more from my own conditioning than from what is actually happening.

At the same time, we all need to take responsibility for what we are saying and doing. When protesters use the most incendiary possible language, is that necessary, skillful, or wise?  Is taking maximalist positions the best way to help vulnerable populations who need protection? (As John Lennon once sang, “if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.”)  Just as right-wing rhetoric leads inexorably to far-right violence, so left-wing rhetoric leads to far-left violence.  (Indeed, both even lead to antisemitic violence.  Funny how that is.)  If you stir up a pot of cortisol, you can’t disclaim responsibility for what happens next.

I want to conclude by reiterating that I am no Bodhisattva when it comes to cortisol.  I have been hurt and I have spoken (and even acted) from that hurt.  Nor is it to say that rage or fear are never justified.

But we don’t have to be marionettes controlled by hormonal puppeteers. We can listen to the better angels of our nature – or, if you prefer, the parts of the pre-frontal cortex that aren’t under cortisol’s influence and which might help us think more clearly and get along a little better.  

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I’ve been chest-deep in cooking, cleaning, and ritual-making for Passover this week, so I’m pleased to have no links to share with you. Instead, my Passover kitchen playlist has included a deep dive into Makaya McCraven (who I am now obsessed with), a listen to new albums by Taylor Swift and Vampire Weekend (both good, but no Cowboy Carter) and Khruangbin, a Pitchfork-inspired dive into Bark Psychosis, plus Daniel Lanois, Mitski, All India Radio, Sam Prekop, and several more replays of Cowboy Carter, usually in little chunks. Also, the most recent installment of Youth/Martin Glover’s Cosmic Odyssey Mixcloud series was absolutely sublime, though that’s more about the couch than the kitchen. Happy Spring!