I know that anger can’t be suppressed indefinitely without
crippling or corroding the soul. But I don’t know how useful anger is in the
long run. Is private anger to be encouraged?
Considered a virtue, given free expression at all times, as
we wanted women’s anger against injustice to be, what would it do?
Certainly an outburst of anger can cleanse the soul and
clear the air. But anger nursed and nourished begins to act like anger
suppressed: it begins to poison the air with vengefulness, spitefulness,
distrust, breeding grudge and resentment, brooding endlessly over the causes of
the grudge, the righteousness of the resentment. A brief, open expression of
anger in the right moment, aimed at its true target, is effective — anger is a good weapon. But a weapon is
appropriate to, justified only by, a situation of danger. Nothing justifies
cowing the family every night with rage at the dinnertable, or using a tantrum
to settle the argument about what TV channel to watch, or expressing
frustration by tailgating and then passing on the right at 80 mph yelling FUCK
YOU!
Perhaps the problem is this: when threatened, we pull out
our weapon, anger. Then the threat passes or evaporates. Bu the weapon is still
in our hand. And weapons are seductive, even addictive; they promise to give us
strength, security, dominance. . . .
I see in the lives of people I know how crippling a deep
and deeply suppressed anger is. It comes from pain, and it causes pain.
Maybe the prolonged “festival of cruelty” going on in our
literature and movies is an attempt to get rid of repressed anger by expressing
it, acting it out symbolically. Kick everybody’s ass all the time! Torture the
torturer! Describe every agony! Blow up everything over and over!
Does this orgy of simulated or “virtual” violence relieve
anger, or increase the leaden inward load of fear and pain that causes it? For
me, the latter; it makes me sick and scares me. Anger that targets everything
and everybody indiscriminately is the futile, infantile, psychotic rage of the
man with an automatic rifle shooting pre-schoolers. I can’t see it as a way of
life, even pretended life.
You hear the anger in my tone? Anger indulged rouses anger.
Yet anger suppressed breeds anger.
What is the way to use anger to fuel something other than
hurt, to direct it away from hatred, vengefulness, self-righteousness, and make
it serve creation and compassion?
— UKL
18 August 2014
18 August 2014