I posted a some time ago on social media about the collective anger that many of us are feeling about current events in the world, and got several people were upset about the word anger. "No" they said-"anger is negative, love is the answer." I would like to address that here.
There are some big misconceptions about how our emotions work, and how we evolved on this planet and survived. There are a good many people that are what I term "light junkies". They cannot bear any negativity in themselves or others. This has some unfortunate outcomes.
Love and anger are not mutually exclusive. Anger is a tool.
I don't think nature (or God if that is your name for it) gave us any emotions that are intrinsically bad. They all have a purpose, even fear and anger. Even sadness. The purpose of anger and fear is to alert us to danger and give us tools to fight the danger.
Grief ties us to our community, families, and even our inner self in times of trouble and loss.
While no emotion is intrinsically bad, any can be toxic, even the ones we think of as "good". Love can become co-dependence. Joy can become giddiness.
At this moment in time, we need the anger to be strong enough to overcome apathy and inertia so that we can defend what we love.
What is happening to our country REQUIRES a certain type of anger. It is an anger that comes from seeing the country we love wantonly destroyed. Anger and fear are appropriate and necessary in the face of ecocide, climate disruption, and global poverty, all at the hands of the global aristocracy.
Think of the anger of George Bailey against Mr. Potter, or Gandalf against Saruman. Or, if you will, Jesus against the money-changers in the temple. Right now we need to take back our government and our world. That will take righteous anger to accomplish, but it is the work of every citizen of age to carry out.
Hayagriva! This is in a profile we did of Sea Shepherd's Paul Watson: The Dalai Lama told him Sea Shepherd's work was a form of hayagriva, spiritual rage. "You must never hurt another person," he said, agreeing with Watson, "but sometimes, in order for evil to see enlightenment, you must scare the hell out of them first."
People who don’t understand the most basic things about emotions make me understand. We have emotions to ensure the survival of our species m. There are no “bad” emotions. Anger prompts us to take protective and defensive action. It’s wonderful.
Like anything, it can be misdirected which is not helpful. Misdirected rage can be harmful. But that is not the normal anger we all should experience when boundaries are violated.
I feel like I’ve been explaining this for 49 years (oops — I have).
So many books have been written explaining.
Maybe you can write one. Clearly there’s a need!