Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Interesting comments in the the Value of Anger posting. As I expected, this is not a subject that people treat lightly. However, I was surprised at how personally some people took this posting.
For instance, Dave Rogers disagrees, strongly, with the concept of “healthy anger”, writing:
Anger isn’t some transcendent experience. It’s a temporary (hopefully) abnormal condition. Let it go.
Frank Paynter was actually “pissed” because Mike Golby and I talked about the healing power of anger. He wrote:
Anger is a bad thing. It comes from fear, and it inspires fear. Fear has a proximate cause. Root out the cause, displace the anger. Anger sucks. Angry people rationalize inhuman behavior. Angry people foster hostility and resentment in others. Angry people haven’t learned a loving acceptance that transcends helpless acceptance. Angry people are stunted in their personal development.
And both Jonathon and Dorothea saw themselves as “gently melancholic and intellectually pessimistic”, taking exception to the line If it’s angry people that forge a new society, it’s the gently melancholic, the intellectually pessimistic, and the complacent and indifferent people that destroy it.
Considering that I was wrote this line after reading a book based on a period of time 1000 years ago, I wasn’t expecting immediate identification. However, this shouldn’t be surprising. No matter how technologically advanced we get, no matter how we see ourselves advancing as a species, we’re still nothing more than humans experiencing human emotions. Love. Hate. Joy. Compassion. And Anger.
Anger is a part of us. It’s been a part of us before we ever attached a name to the emotion so that we could discuss it rather than act it out. To deny anger is to deny ourselves. Might as well deny love – it, too, can lead to destructive actions.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I have no interest in being a saint. And I have no interest in denying my capability for love or anger. I would hope that I expend my love on those that return it – to do otherwise leads to a great deal of pain. And I hope that I can control my anger and use the energy it generates for something productive, such as fighting the current political administration.
Mike had it right – anger is sharing.