The Art of Anger

I inherited a large part of my strong hunger for justice from my parents. They are both moved by injustice and act, each in their own way, to redress that injustice where they can.

My mother has devoted many, many hours of her life to teaching children who learn in ways that don't fit well with the standard school curriculum. She cares about those children and believes that they all deserve better than what they are getting from the education system. She believes they can learn and has both the skills and the patience to support them so that they do. The very few times in my life that I have seen my mother angry have been when she has been talking about the ways in which the education system fails these children.

My father believes that prisoners are people too (I know, he's radical like that!) and works with a world-wide network of other people who share his radical beliefs. They work to improve prison conditions and to ensure that once people are locked away they are not forgotten. Whatever your views on whether or not prisons do anything to make our societies safer, the reality of our prisons today is enough to make anyone who is brave enough to actually look into them very angry.

Dad and I were talking on the phone last night about anger. We were talking about how anger is often the appropriate response to injustice, but that the trick is to learn how to speak and act wisely when we feel anger.

After our talk, Dad emailed me this beautiful passage on "The Art of Anger", written by Soren Johnson, one of my father's colleagues in Prison Fellowship International.

“Anybody can become angry,” Aristotle wrote, “that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody’s power, that is not easy.”

Aristotle’s voice is reasoned but difficult to hear.  Emerging from the most violent century in human history, we are much quicker to recall examples of anger tied to physical abuse, violence and discrimination.  Surely, we think, anger must be removed entirely from our lives.  And yet, Saint Thomas Aquinas ... commended an anger which ... can, when governed by reason and will, be called “morally excellent.”   

Anger is a neutral and necessary force—for moral excellence, for authentic mercy and justice—pulsing within every human heart which sees and senses that something is not right.  To borrow a common metaphor, we are “hard-wired” with anger.  Erasing it from our lives would leave us defenseless and voiceless in the face of evil.  Anger is a traveling companion of courage on the road to justice and truth. 

I try to imagine a world where no anger stirs men and women to dream and to bring about the impossible.  ...  It is a far crueler and more inhumane world than what we know today, for it is a world without William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Mother Teresa…"

The line in bold is my father's favorite line in the passage. 'Anger is a traveling companion of courage on the road to justice and truth'.

I feel anger in response to injustice. The injustice of climate change makes me angry because the poorest people in the world did the least to cause this problem and yet they are now the first to begin to feel the damaging impacts of climate change. The injustice of this 'global economic crisis' makes me angry, because again, the people who had the least influence, power and control over their economic lives and who benefited least from the extravagances of our consumer madness are now the people who are suffering most from the collapse of that mad system.

This anger does motivate me to take action in response to injustice because I know that acting positively is how I keep the energy and power of anger moving through me and avoid getting stuck in anger. But I also know that it is not anger alone that motivates me. Hope motivates me to act, a sense of common purpose motivates me to act, the joy of doing things well motivates me to act and yes - love motivates me to act.

Actually - I often think it is love that makes me angry. When I was in Afghanistan I would be overwhelmed by the waves of love I would feel for the people in the town where I lived, especially the children. It was a love that made it very, very hard for me to leave. It was also a love that people recognised, I suspect, since my nickname in the town was "delsous" which means the compassionate one or the soft-hearted one.

But that love made me very angry about the terrible global injustices that cause those beautiful, flawed, ordinary people to suffer. If I didn't love them I don't know if I would have felt the anger. But I had to learn to handle anger - it's a potentially harmful emotion if you handle it poorly.

This morning I got an email from a friend with whom I've been talking about how we can motivate New Zealanders to take more action on climate change. We've been talking about finding positive ways of motivating people, about not relying on fear and anger. But we also understand the place of anger. He sent me this quote today:

"Anger is an emotion that demands change. When it's left to simmer, it can lead to all kinds of harm...The good news is that anger itself can give you the feedback necessary to turn it around. If you can recognise and experience your anger simply as a kind of energy, you'll be able to see and then choose another way of feeling and behaving..." (Bennett, 2002)

I still think that we need to act in love, but anger is a powerful energetic response to injustice and I believe that if we learn to allow that energy to flow through and work through us, then we can be emboldened by our anger to act in hope and in love.

Comments

[Lubna]

Well said. Hope you are better now.

[Anne-Marie]

This post is timely for me as I have been thinking a lot about anger recently. I often feel anger but it is a powerless emotion, and I have been considering how I can use my anger in a more positive, powerful way. As your friend said … anger can be an energy force. There is much for me to ponder in your post. Thanks.

[gem]

thank you for this, dear soul.
warmly,
gem

[amy]

thank you for sharing these words. your parents sound like wonderful inspirations.

[John Mullis]

I like the sound of your dad. Righteous anger it a tool of love, the trick though is getting people to care enough about anything to combat injustice.

I suspect it's one of your dad well chosen legacies and aptly entrusted to you. Mixed with love it will drive your book.

[Emma]

Very wisely explained. Thank you!

[susanna]

I remember hearing the passion you felt towards Afghanistan and your co-workers there when I saw you in New York. You know, I've been thinking of you lately, thinking of how much I learned from you about the UN and conditions in Afghanistan. You certainly opened my eyes, Marianne.

[KL]

You've opened such a delicious conversation about anger. I spent many years not feeling any - or at least, not realising I was suppressing it...

Now, I love it when I feel it and it's right to be with that feeling in that moment and even to express it... because as quickly as it arises it is gone...evaporated and dispersed back to whence it came.

And when it comes I look at it, I feel it, and I wonder what it has to tell me about what I believe that causes me to feel in such a way in this moment in this time.

Thus it teaches me. A messenger of searing heat in moments of deep dreaming.