By ROBERT FUSELIER
Los Alamos
I’ve wanted to write about all the anger that is present these days, but broaching a topic that leads us to be our worst self isn’t that easy. Perhaps it’s not as bad as it seems, just amplified by all the political pundits on cable TV and social media and those chasing power and hoping to stoke the flames of anger so they can motivate us to blindly do their wishes.
Whether amplified or not, there are many in our society who have little if any inhibition to expressing anger whenever the feel angry. I’m not sure when this started to become acceptable, but societies have historically had inhibitions against the casual expression of anger for good reason. It wasn’t that long ago in America when to express your anger in public was seen as a weakness. When you consider that anger is the result of the uncontrolled activation of a subconscious emotional system, to view anger as a weakness makes a lot of sense.
Of course, everyone has the right to feel whatever emotion they are experiencing. And, yes, there are times when it’s appropriate to use the energy that comes with the emotion of anger to oppose injustices. But to react out of anger is simply a sign that we’ve given up our freedom to a state of mind created by a very primitive emotion.
We understand this when we see someone else acting out in anger, but it’s almost impossible to realize it when we’re caught in anger’s grasp. Our minds will defend our actions, telling us we have every right to behave as we’re behaving, In reality, all that is happening is that our true selves have been hijacked by an emotional system designed to help us fight off that which has entrapped us and may kill us or is preventing us from obtaining a needed resource.
The purpose of anger is also its problem. When activated, this emotional system elicits behaviors designed to fight off threats. That’s it. It’s not designed to evaluate consequences, nor is it capable of evaluating cause and effect. When we watch someone else react in anger, it’s easy to see that the person “is out of control”. But when we react in anger, our mind is justifying everything we do.
Today in America, where we’re not running from lions or fighting for food, most of our anger flows from the sense of loss or the fear of some loss: loss of freedom, loss of a way of life, loss of a dream or expectation, loss of a loved one. It doesn’t have to be real; we just have to believe it’s real. This anger makes sense when we get back to the role of the emotional system that creates it: to free us from that which we can’t escape and help us obtain that which we need to nourish ourselves.
The non-anger answer to the feeling of loss, which I’ve learned since the death of my son, is grief. When we’re allowed to grieve, we can release the anger that comes with it without beating up on ourselves and others. But in our culture, grief is seen as a weakness, something one needs to avoid to be strong and self-sufficient. I’m not sure where that came from, especially since many in our country consider ourselves to be Christians and have a great model for someone who grieves. Yet, whatever the reason, inhibitions towards expressions of grief remain a part of our culture.
The answer to the fear of loss is even more difficult for us to reach, especially when we’ve let anger take away our freedom. It requires us to objectively evaluate why we fear what we fear we may lose. Objectivity is not a component of either anger or fear. These two emotions simply convince us our fear and resulting anger are caused by something outside of our control. More so now than before, political pundits are happy to give us reasons to fear and people upon whom we should vent our anger, but we don’t have to listen to them. We can choose to consider a different approach, one suggested by someone, a leader of America during a very dark time, who said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”.
I’m sure all of us have memories of monsters we feared when we went to bed as a child. The night – darkness of any kind – is a scary place. Our parents knew this when they came into soothe us after our nightmares. They comforted us and assured us that our monsters weren’t real, but also kept the light on for us when they left.
Light, in all its forms – knowledge, truth, wisdom – is the answer to our fears and anger. It offers us a choice: we can seek the light that brings us freedom or continue to let others create monsters for us to fear and fight.