Holding the line with anger?

We have built a socially interconnected world and it has enriched our lives with incredible levels of resources, not just physical but in terms of social capital. We have a safe societies that are capable of feeding themselves, keeping the peace and enabling people to trust each other who have never met through the medium of money. These social ideas and stories that we have created allow us to enjoy so much whilst giving up so little, though there is always a price to be paid, the de-escalation of violence in everyday life is one of our most precious victories. I am proud to live in a world where might is not right, where the strong have a duty of care to the weak rather than a monopoly of power, though we did have to abandon the freedom of unrestricted anger.

However we should not lose sight of the raw power of anger, not uncontrolled tempers or fits of violence rather its power to provide clarity and a drive for action. It is only raw anger that enables a mother bear to protect its cubs from an aggressive male twice its size, only anger can drive a soldier to protect their motherland from overwhelming forces to hold the line with their lives, only anger can sustain a long
campaign to right a social injustice and to protest not once but for a lifetime.

Anger should not be wasted or directed against the wrong target, it should not be  wild, indisciplined or descend into unthinking rage. You never want to be controlled by anger, you should not be it's slave or suggestible friend, a bad choice to is still a poor one, it should not be used just to destroy rather it should be a bridge to something better. To undermine the foundations of a corrupt society by refusing to comply with something you know that is wrong, and when we look within we always know what is wrong, goodness is not an external standard of behaviour, it is when we look within ourselves and know that it is something that we cannot live with doing. How we respond is up to us, withdrawing our economic consent through a no-spend policy, protest, campaigning, descent, that is up to you, but recognising wrong is the
first step, and anger helps us to do so.

Whenever a general idea is used to justify a specific wrong, when something is for the general good but bad for the individual, that idea is just wrong, no ifs or buts, no just this one time. You can look within yourself, if
you dare, and know with certainty that you are wrong, because that mirror inside ourselves is the exact same mirror as from sleeping beauty, it never lies, it tell you the truth when you are doing bad. You can cover that mirror up, ignore it's whisperings and even convince yourself it is incorrect, but eventually we always realise
that it was telling the truth all along, and you only find peace when you accept it.

It is anger that can untangle the lies that we tie ourselves up in, anger hates lies, wrongs and injustices. It can cut through the Gorgon knots of self deceit, it reacts to the distortions in thinking by giving you clarity that the action you or someone else are taking is wrong and should be stopped, and it needs to be stopped and because you are the one you are having this revelation, this clarity of thought, anger gives you the responsibility to stop it.

Like when you realise that someone has to be the adult in the room, it usually means that you have to be the adult in the room because it is the self same realisation that makes you the adult in the first place. In the same
way, being angry about something makes you responsible for it, life gives you problems and then you have to solve them, how you respond and you do not get to decide what those problems are, they will come and find you, you just have to solve the problem in front of you, and we have a range of ways of dealing with those problems. We can negotiate, refrain them, find ways round them, out think them, be stubborn, patient, nurturing but when all else fails there is always anger.

When we finally say that it is enough, we refuse to accept it any longer and we dig our heels in, that is when you turn to anger, cold determined anger that says you can do what you like but I refuse to move or change my mind. The kind of anger that allows a child to refuse to eat liver no matter what the threats are for failing to put it in your mouth, that allows a person to stand in front of the tank with only an umbrella or bunch of flowers for protection. Anger forges our resilience, we can change the structure of who we are, change our character from being meek to having the strength of Hercules, the heat of anger takes lumps of metal and turns it into a dangerous weapon that can cut through any argument, bullying treatment or injustice. It can sustain a campaign of counterinsurgency, it can make you strong enough to suffer any indignity or hardship, we can make it into our life's work, the meaning that we find in our existing, can create a vivid, lucid dream of a better world that has fairness at its core.

It can give us the vision to change the world, to say this is not right, to be brave in an unfair world, it can even teach us to live the kind of life that we actually want to live. The fully realised kind of life, it is perhaps at the core who we are, anyone who can look death directly in it's eyes, and not have ever felt a kind of anger at its existence, is in my opinion missing but fundamental piece of being human. It is that anger that can give us the clarity to live our lives without regret, that drives us to say the things that need saying, to tell the person that you love how you feel and that is what enables us to love so fiercely and live a life well lead, a life that is good
enough for us.