sacred rage
“Don't trust anyone who isn't angry.”
– John Trudell, Native American activist 1946-2015
Are you irate? Pissed off? Furious? Think carefully before you answer, because this is a trick question...
If you’ve been conditioned by modern culture, you might be tempted to lie. Whatever you’re actually feeling, you might choose to present yourself as a calm person, of even temper, filled with grace and equanimity. Anger is a problem we’ve been told, and it’s best to keep it under wraps. We’re expected to suppress it, dampen it, manage it, control it. So maybe you’ll deny what you’re feeling. You might even be ashamed of your anger and claim that it doesn’t really exist.
But if you’re an honest, historically-normal human being, the correct answer is–or should be–“You’re damn right I’m angry.” Even if you won’t admit it in polite company, your animal body is–or should be– furious, raging against the machines, forces, ideas and institutions that are killing the life that you hold dear.
Unfortunately, many of us in the modern world feel uncomfortable with anger and do whatever we can to make it go away. Prevailing cultural belief holds that anger is a failure, a flaw, even a personality disorder. If you’re angry, there’s something wrong with you and that something needs to be managed, extinguished or dampened by practice and self-control. A typical perspective comes from the Dalai Lama himself: “… anger never helps to solve a problem. It destroys our peace of mind and blinds our ability to think clearly. Anger and attachment are emotions that distort our view of reality.” This view is often supported by teachers, therapists and life coaches who give us advice on how to control what we’re feeling. Anger is widely considered toxic and dangerous–a disorder. If you’re angry, you need an anger-management course, therapy and/or medication. In particular, you need a more powerful pre-frontal cortex to bring all that nastiness under strict neurological control. If your hair is on fire, you need to put the fire out.
relax, you’re perfectly normal
But what if we’re wrong about all of this? What if anger is a normal human-animal response to abnormal circumstances and an alien environment? What if your anger is an appropriate, rational, life-affirming response to the destruction of life-supporting habitat? And what if the absence of anger is the real the dysfunction of our age?
As usual, it’s essential that we think in terms of big history, especially big human history. For the vast, overwhelming majority of our time on this planet, humans have lived in direct contact with the natural world and identified with habitat. Around the world, people have spoken–and continue to speak– of this primal unity: “I am the land, the land is me." "I am the forest, the forest is me." "I am the river, the river is me.” This identification was–until quite recently–a human universal. Everyone bonded with habitat.
To put it another way, humans have long experienced a profound continuity between their bodies and the natural world. And to destroy habitat is very much akin to an attack on our very tissue. As Australian aboriginal elders have put it, “To wound the earth is to wound yourself, and if others are wounding the earth, they are wounding you.” So if someone is attacking your habitat/body, wouldn’t it be appropriate, normal and natural to be angry? And isn’t your anger the sign of a healthy, wild animal fighting back against the destruction of its habitat? Isn’t this anger a good thing? And wouldn’t the absence of anger signal a dysfunction in the human animal?
a marker of health
Anger is a reflection of our values, our attention and a healthy concern for what we hold dear. As Edward Abbey put it, “Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.” And if you love habitat–as historically-normal humans do–then you ought to be furious when it’s threatened or destroyed outright. In other words, anger is normal and healthy; peace and equanimity in the face of habitat destruction are not.
People sometimes ask “Why are you so angry?” But in the context of rampant habitat destruction around the world, the essential question is “Why are you not?” Or to put it another way: “The planet around you is burning and the arsonists are in charge. How can you be so calm and so resigned? With all due respect, what exactly is wrong with you? Maybe you’re suffering from an anger-deficit disorder. Maybe you should see someone."
As you can probably tell, I’m angry about the fact that so many people aren’t angry, that too many of us are willing to sit back in a state of repose while the planet burns. I’m angry that our hair is not on fire, that vast numbers of people are willing to stand by while the last shreds of life-giving habitat are put to the torch. Why aren’t we raging?
No, anger is not the problem. The problem is our lack of passion and outrage. And with all due respect, if you’re chronically calm, maybe you’re the problem. Maybe you need counseling. Maybe you need a tranquility-management program or medication. And most of all, maybe you need to see a biologist who can tell you in intricate detail just exactly what is happening to the natural world, including your habitat and your future.
precision anger
To be sure, some forms of anger are dysfunctional, and some expressions of anger do far more harm than good. And to be sure, a broad-spectrum, unfocused anger that randomly erupts is definitely counter-productive. But what’s lost in the conversation is the fact that the absence of anger is a signal of something gone horribly wrong: exhaustion, capitulation, resignation or domestication.
So no, anger is not the problem. The trick is to focus it, channel it, clarify it and above all, make it functional. Random acts of anger are worthless, but precision anger is precious. This is something we might well teach our young people. Sometime around 400 BCE, the philosopher Plato wrote “The chief purpose of education is to teach young people to find pleasure in the right things.” Well said, but we might also phrase it this way: “The chief purpose of education is to teach young people to be angry at the right things.”
In other words, stop being angry about minor upsets, trivial issues and superficial annoyances. Instead, be angry about the alpha issues of our time, the megafaunal threats to our habitats, our bodies and the planet as a whole. Be angry about the fact that our future is being chopped up and sold off to whoever’s willing to pay.
To paraphrase a famous passage from Aristotle, “the goal is to be angry with the right thing, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way.” In other words, it won’t be much help to be angry with the entire human species, or even the totality of the modern world. But it might be useful to be angry with the cultural narratives of “man over nature” or “profit over planet.” And it might be even more useful to be angry with particular, specific policies, projects and programs that destroy habitat and in turn, our future.
But above all, we must sustain, honor and cultivate our anger. Anger is our wildness coming to the surface. Anger is a natural response of any wild animal who sees his home being destroyed.
Our anger and rage are sacred expressions of our animal nature and our fight for life. Even our anxiety, depression, doubts and confusion are sacred. As the writer and eco-therapist Joanna Macy put it, “The sorrow, grief, and rage you feel is a measure of your humanity and your evolutionary maturity.”
So don’t suppress your emotion. Care for your anger and give it the respect it deserves. Focus it to a laser point and remember: there’s nothing wrong with you. On the contrary, there’s something very much right with you. If you’re angry, good on you. Now more than ever, we need that energy.
““Stay angry, little Meg,” Mrs. Whatsit whispered. “You will need all your anger now.””
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, 1962