permaculture

[Lee Flier <lflier@mindspring.com>]

Jack Rowe wrote:

>Some thoughts on anger:
>
>Perhaps as part of learning a healthy level of assertiveness, we learn to
>[re]act constructively with healing action before we've actually reached
>the point of anger in many instances... 

Eek!  So anger can't be healing?  Anger can't be part of a "healthy level
of assertiveness"?

>Anger can supply the energy needed to move us through the difficult places
>of discouragement we naturally and cyclically encounter when we try to
>change the status quo... IF the anger is directed through constructive
>circuits in our psyches. We are given few enough constructive circuits, and
>anger is a powerful enough energy, that I think it is easy for anger to
>spill out of the postive modes we can creatively direct it into... then it
>can become actively negative or passively dissipative.

It CAN... but we have seen so many examples in our society of misdirected
or inappropriately expressed anger that I think we've forgotten its real
importance in a healthy life.  In fact I think most  inappropriate
expressions of anger are the result of a lot of REPRESSED anger - not the
failure to transform anger into something else.

>Anger is so often keyed to something WITHIN us that we don't like... so
>often the disdained external is pressed into service as something of a
>smoke screen. Anger can be an excuse or a way to distance ourselves when
>there exists less actual distance than we are comfortable with.

Sorry but I don't buy this.  It's true that this CAN be the case - but I
get really tired of hearing the line, whenever someone gets angry, that it
must be because there is "something within that we don't like."  ANY
emotional response can be misapplied, but that doesn't mean a proper
application doesn't exist.  I find the "new age" way of dealing with anger
- namely being afraid of it, mistaking it for uncontrolled rage and
insisting that it be avoided whenever possible - to be very troublesome.

In actual fact there is much too MUCH tendency in our culture to
internalize feelings of powerlessness or pain.  Psychotherapists insist
that all emotional problems are personal and can be worked out in an
individual or, at most, nuclear family context.  The fact that there really
are massive problems that exist on a global level does not enter into
modern psychobabble, nor is any outlet provided in most "self-help" or
"conflict resolution" agendas for dealing with sources of pain or conflict
that are larger than the individual or family.  

Essentially this promotes feelings of powerlessness against the larger 
world.  If you feel depressed or angry you can take a pill for it or join a
12 step program or attend a relationship workshop.  Anger as a healer or
motivating force, which allows one to shake the demons of self-loathing and
spurs one to action in the larger world, is rarely considered.  About the
only lip service I've seen paid to anger by the new agers is the "warrior
archetype", which in any case is still made to be mostly a personalized
token and is usually much too precious to have any real effect.

So most people who feel they have been victimized by rage feel guilty about
being angry and are terrified and/or offended if anyone else is angry.
This is a sad state of affairs because it means that a lot of good people
end up internalizing their feelings and blaming things that go wrong on
themselves because they can't bring themselves to feel anger toward people
or systems that any sane person would feel anger about!  They are also
prone to being isolated from others because those who don't shirk from
anger are automatically rejected by those who do, being labeled as unloving
or troublemakers or whatever.

>It seems
>that often when we can love and forgive OURSELVES sufficiently (which can
>be surprisingly difficult) we find that a lot of our anger is 'transmuted'
>(hi, Vicki!) into compassion. We are so little trained in being loving that
>it's fairly speculative on my part, but I think love and compassion are
>more powerful working places than anger, in terms or effecting positive
>changes.

But anger IS part of love if it is expressed directly and not as repressed
rage.  Think about what anger is - it evolved as a defense: "You are
threatening something or someone I love and cherish, and I'm not going to
stand by and permit that!"  THAT is the basic statement you are making when
you get angry.  If it isn't, the anger has probably already transformed
into something bigger and badder since you didn't express it in the first
place.

Personally, the people I am closest to and hold dearest to my heart are
those with whom I can have a good shouting match without it degrading into
name-calling and/or offended whimpering, who know when it is over and don't
harbor bad feelings afterward.  All the above of are hallmarks of healthy
anger.  I don't feel that when those I love are angry they are not being
compassionate, nor do I feel I'm being unloving when I am angry.  Quite the
opposite in fact.

Bill Mollison has stated that it is anger which drives him to do what he
does, not love.  Yet it's obvious that such anger DOES come from love:
"You're destroying the land I love, the animals and plants I love, my
children's and grandchildren's future, the future of countless people of
other cultures!  You bastards!"  Where else could such anger come from but
love?  And what better could actually drive someone to take successful
action than to be really and properly angry?  Ya know, even Jesus got
royally pissed off on many occasions.

At its best, anger is a very simple and direct response to an often complex
and therefore potentially debilitating situation.  It can be a  great way
to cut through bullshit and bureaucracy.  That's why I think the "grumpy
old man" exists - if you're young and angry, people are scared of you and
think you're a loaded pistol.  But elders, like children, don't care so
much what others think of them and feel they have earned the right to just
say what's on their mind.  In turn their advanced age makes them appear
less "dangerous" to people who are afraid of anger, and such people are
then more likely to actually listen to what the elder is saying as opposed
to focusing on the fact that he or she is angry.

Even so, such grumpy old men are apparently not much appreciated by the New
Agers.  From some comments I've seen on this list and others in the PC
Activist, it appears there are a lot of people who seem to sum up the
Grumpy pattern by saying (I'm paraphrasing):  "Well, Bill Mollison
obviously has a lot of great ideas, but he's just a quaint little old man
from a different era whose social skills need refining, and WE can do
better in that arena."  It's a way of derailing what is actually a very
important part of Mollison's (and others') philosophy and is responsible
for much of his effectiveness: his anger.  Until we examine that anger -
and our own - in that context and not as some personality quirk or flaw
that would be better if it were "transmuted" - I don't see that we will be
capable of being either healthy human beings or effective activists.

= Lee =