Anger
A meandering look at a little tiny speck of demon changing into a huge overbearing and bloated creature. The imagery of Anger is this little speck puffing up to this giant thing and quite an appropriate one it is. Suddenly from almost nothing arises this huge monster. Out of thin air and on the thinest of justification or reason a fierce-some creature manifests.
Think about the last person you witnessed becoming angry, better still think about your own last venture into the realm of anger. Likely the person who was angry was timid, meek, or mild. I’m guessing if you whispered at all, it was whispers of aggressive words or perhaps caustic ones at the least. Anger does not look up to the person one is becoming angry with, it looks down, even if not physically. The perspective of up and down is not one of height but one of superiority.
How could you make such a mistake? What’s the matter with you, you idiot? Can’t you do better than that? Only a careless person does such a thing? These and countless others are typical from angry people. The thing they have in common is they are predicated on superiority. They are based upon the notion that the person who is angry has never done such a thing, they are better than the person being angry towards.
The relationship in anger is unbalanced and always favors the person who is angry. The person to whom the anger is directed is always less than in some way. The person who is angry is not seeking so much to solve a problem as to further complicate and magnify the problem. In fact a cause for the problem is left at the feet of the person to whom the anger is directed, and they are expected to solve the problem even if they have no tools to do so or didn’t even cause the problem in the first place. Sometimes it may simply have been an accident, a simple mistake which would have been easily fixed except now the person in anger has taken that problem and ensured it will become a major incident to better themselves at the cost of the person who made the mistake.
Anger is not directed to solving a problem, it is directed to finding fault, and frequently complicates or even causes more harm making the problem even more difficult to solve.
While righteous indignation does often come with a solution that solution is secondary to the need to blame someone or something, or if not secondary it is predicated upon someone being wrong, even morally wrong. One interesting thought is if there is a problem that needs to be fixed can’t it simply be fixed without the anger? I do believe so, even though I am aware that I do not always act in that way.
I suspect it is easier for humans to be motivated into action if there is a villain, something to be conquered, a foe to be overpowered.
I recall recently reading an assessment of the Civil Rights movement and the white response to segregation, even among liberals. The most intense actions, the actions that garnered widespread public action happened after white boys were killed during Freedom Summer. That isn’t to say there was no response before, there certainly were actions taking place all over and long before Freedom Summer. They were however limited to a small segment within the white community even while blacks had been losing their lives for years before.
It was easy to be outraged when the dogs were unleashed on children and peaceful marchers one Sunday morning in Selma, Alabama. And the event is considered the turning point in the efforts to secure voting rights for blacks.
The injustices existed for years and years, but when some action could be specifically pointed to as exceeding societies tolerable norm, and that speaks poorly of us all, then rallies were held, voices were raised in large enough numbers to finally affect change.
I don’t want this section to turn into an assessment of the wrongs of white treatment of blacks. These are however images that are close to home and heart. Some international incidents that come to mind are the peaceful protests of the Chinese People’s movement, or the Polish trying to overthrow the yoke of Soviet Communism. Think of Nelson Mandela and the apartheid regulations of South Africa. In the case of South Africa eventually the consciousness of the world was mobilized to exert financial pressure so intense it helped move the government to change it’s policies. I still remember the days of the overthrow of the apartheid government and the creation of the modern flag of South Africa.
I think of the days during the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the return of Sayyid Ruhollah Mūsavi Khomein, or as known in the west Ayatollah Khomeini. I was quite excited that the Shah was being overthrown and I can recall being hopeful for the people of Iran. It didn’t work out so well for the US, and I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if in the end it worked well for Iranian people.
My point in this is there was a lot of energy, anger, in these events. Perhaps the anger moved people to favorable results, it wasn’t always certain and never guaranteed. In each case the problem existed long before the energy was generated. And frequently by the time the actions are taken there are harmful forces already in play to sidetrack the desired outcome.
One of the greatest dangers I see to leading from anger is it lacks connection to people. It is primarily self centered or centered on one’s views of self versus other. Again the issue at the root seems to become secondary to a different issue.
All of this has veered away from picturing anger as an emotion or sense of self, as an action which is not helpful because at the core it continues the division of self and other. Anger is not necessary to problem solving, and problem solving is best done and achieves the greatest when it serves humanity as a whole. It is quite noticeable that as Kanzeon saves people from threats it is through actions which do not demonize those things that are threatening. Bad things are bad things, they don’t need to be worse in order for us to respond. Kanzeon simply intercedes, solves the problem, and does so without aggression. Interesting. Can I do that more?
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