The Wisdom and Generative Power of Anger
It was the summer of 1996 and hotter than normal in the California Central Valley. My two fellow mediators and I were sweating, and not just because of the feeble air conditioning in the modest non-profit where we volunteered. We were mediating a case of informal child custody for a couple whose relationship was dissolving, and it was tense.
I’d been included on the panel because, even at 26, I’d built a reputation for being skilled with interracial conflicts. The father in this case was a lanky black man in his late thirties with a sharply intelligent gaze. The mother was a scruffy white woman who was younger than her ex, but exuded exhaustion that made her seem older.
I was the “baby” of the panel, both in age and experience, but eager to learn and practice my skills. An opportunity presented itself when dad expressed frustration with his partner’s chronic lateness picking up their kids. I jumped in to offer empathy the way I’d been trained.
“So, you were frustrated that she was late again,” I said.
Dad paused for a moment, leaned forward, then nearly rose out of his chair.
“I wasn’t frustrated! I was PISSED OFF!” He slapped his large palm on the table for emphasis.
“Ah! You were pissed off!” I countered immediately.
“Damn right!” he said, leaning back in his chair. “And then ….”
I don’t remember what he said next. I was too surprised by how quickly he de-escalated, and by my own calm. I’d listened and offered the man some compassion, and it didn’t land. He corrected my word choice, I acknowledged it, and we all moved on.
I learned some important lessons about anger that day. I learned I didn’t always have to fear it. I learned that hearing and acknowledging someone’s anger can diffuse it. And I learned I can be unshaken by another person’s expression of anger, and effective despite it.
Twenty-eight years later, I’m still learning those lessons, along with new ones. I’ve since discovered that empathy doesn’t always diffuse anger, and some anger should be feared. I’ve learned that being shaken by anger — mine or someone else’s — isn’t always a sign of failure.
One thing that hasn’t changed is my discomfort with our culture’s core belief that anger is bad. In the left-leaning, social justice oriented, environmentally concerned, spiritually oriented circles I travel, anger is generally viewed as “low vibration” or a “negative” emotion. It’s seen as violent or fear-based. All these things are also considered “bad”. In such circles we’re taught that good, mature, spiritual people should heal their anger, transcend their anger, transform their anger. In short, anger should be hidden away and changed.
This never sat well, but I thought it was because something was wrong with me. I thought maybe I was fearful, violent, negative, or low vibration — because dammit, I was angry! In fact, I’d been angry most of my life, but I didn’t realize it until adulthood when my nervous system started thawing and I gained access to all my feelings.
The truth about emotions
When the Twin Towers fell, one of my first emotional responses was reflexive empathy for the hijackers. I realized that expressing this compassion out loud would expose me to rejection, disdain, and righteous rage so I kept it to myself. But in the weeks and months that followed, I tested the waters a few times by asking someone, “Is there anything that would make you want to fly an airplane full of people into a building?” The answer was always an immediate, vehement, “NO! Nothing! I would never do such a thing!”
I thought to myself how fortunate those people were. I had nothing like the hijackers’ reasons; I’d grown up white, Christian, straight, and middle class in the United States, in a neighborhood with affordable housing, low crime, trees, grass, and plenty of jobs. And yet I could name several events that would motivate me to comparable rage and destruction.
I don’t know if those “no!” sayers had suppressed their anger so much they couldn’t feel it, or if their lives had been so privileged they didn’t have it. But it took me years of self-discovery to understand I had many excellent reasons to be angry. It took years of therapy and trauma healing to realize I’d suffered as much damage from not heeding and expressing my own anger as I had from others’ anger and abuse directed at me.
It took years of therapy and trauma healing to realize I’d suffered as much damage from not heeding and expressing my own anger as I had from others’ anger and abuse directed at me.
Along the way, I began to deprogram what I’d been taught about emotions being inferior, base aspects of human experience. I learned that emotions provide valuable information. Like an honest, loyal friend, they always tell the indisputable truth about our experience. They are therefore always real, reasonable, and valid, and not subject to others’ approval or validation.
However, emotions don’t necessarily tell the truth about others’ intentions, goals, or experience. Our experience is never wrong, but it’s always incomplete. It’s only one part of “reality” which includes myriad other valid, real experiences, beliefs, values, and speculations.
In learning about emotions, I learned what anger is. It’s not fear. It’s not always grief in disguise. It’s an internal alert that lets us know a boundary, or something sacred, has been violated. Anger alerts us to disrespect. Like other emotions, anger is a loyal friend and fierce ally. As such, shaming, hiding, or suppressing our anger cuts us off from an invaluable source of individual and collective wisdom, and generative power.
Anger isn’t fear. It’s not always grief in disguise. It’s an internal alert that lets us know a boundary, or something sacred, has been violated. Anger alerts us to disrespect.
Humans are arguably the most domesticated species on the planet. And in taming (repressing) our wild nature, we’ve lost much of the wisdom we once had, and that other species retain. Other species know to growl, hiss, bark, show teeth, puff up, change color, bite, or sting when a boundary is violated or something precious is threatened. It’s only highly social mammals, including humans, that attempt to appease a threat under stress. We only do this with members of our own species who have more power than us, because fighting the aggressor or fleeing the group usually leads to death. Today, our “modern” human families, workplaces, schools, and communities are rife with appeasement.
Anger alerts us to injustice, to desecration. Suppressing and denying our anger is thus a form of appeasement in which we tolerate injustice and conform to our assigned place in the hierarchy. We reinforce an unjust status quo by shaming, hiding, or suppressing our intelligent anger. We collude with oppression by quashing our internal protest and resistance, however righteous.
Four reasons liberals get confused about anger
As champions of justice, equity, and dignity for the oppressed, the Left should logically be champions of anger too. However, we get squeamish and confused about anger for four reasons.
First, we conflate angry emotions with violent actions. We’re taught (by the powerful who fear us) that anger translates into action, and that action is violence (which is “bad”). But emotions are not actions. They are sensations (physiological reactions) in our bodies, and feelings in our hearts. Contrary to some schools of therapeutic thought, not all emotions or sensations have a thought attached or preceding them; our genius autonomic nervous system keeps us safe without the brain’s awareness or permission. What we do with the energy and sensation of anger — how we behave — is a choice.
Suppressing and denying our anger is thus a form of appeasement in which we tolerate injustice and conform to our assigned place in the hierarchy.
Second, we view violence as bad. This is a privileged position that denies reality. It’s privileged because most political liberals (in the United States) don’t have to hunt for food, kill pests to preserve essential crops, nor physically defend their homesteads. It denies reality because being alive is inherently violent. “Violence” is simply pain, injury, death, damage, or destruction one entity inflicts on another. Like all living organisms, humans cause pain, injury, death, damage, or destruction (i.e., violence) through the biological and cultural processes of living — even when we don’t intend to.
Death and life are inextricable partners in the natural cycle and co-exist every day in almost every choice we make — conscious or not. In the industrialized “modern” west, liberals’ allergy to (certain kinds of) violence is closely linked to our broader culture’s death denial, a delusion unique to modernity. I’d argue that death denial also drives our worship of unlimited growth and eternal youth, both of which are absurd and dangerous.
To completely take violence out of the life equation is naïve and limiting. This is one reason the Right doesn’t respect the Left. The Right intuitively senses the privileged delusion of liberal aversion to violence, as well as its selective nature. Traditionally, liberals eschew violence in media, child discipline, and our food, and campaign against violence like animal testing and police brutality. But we dismiss or minimize violence against entities the Right cherishes, like fetuses, police officers, veterans, and established institutions. But like a gun, violence is merely a tool — a very effective tool. What’s needed is discernment and maturity in selecting and using tools — not reductionist, fearful, either-or thinking.
So, while humans may exact unintentional and even unconscious violence daily, there may be times when exercising conscious, intentional violence is called-for in service of justice, dignity, or safety — in service of a boundary, or the preservation of something sacred. Personally, I’m very clear that if someone tries to physically harm me or one of my beloveds, I will take them out. I’m very clear that if a precious resource, place, or people is being harmed, and violence is the only way to stop it, I won’t hesitate.
Marshall Rosenberg, the creator of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), is known for saying that “violence is the tragic expression of unmet needs”. Writer, teacher, and activist Parker Palmer made a similar observation, saying “violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering.” As a fan of both their work who was first trained in NVC over 20 years ago, I agree that our communication, relationships, and culture are rife with violence that isn’t useful, effective, or necessary. However, there’s a difference between violence that is an unconscious, desperate lashing out, and violence that is a consciously chosen strategy in service of a noble goal, and mindful of the consequences.
What constitutes “noble”, and according to whom, is another matter. It seems that what’s defined as “violence” varies along six subjective axes: physicality, intentionality, righteousness, necessity, intensity, and costs. For instance, childbirth is very violent — it’s physical, intense, and often costly — to both baby and mother, but most would agree it’s necessary and righteous (whether intentional or not!). Similarly, one might argue that physically “nonviolent” leftist activism (lunch counter sit ins, bus boycotts, marches, hunger strikes, etc.) is violent because it’s intentional and destructive to its target. (In fact, NVC reinforces the notion that unintentional, nonphysical harm is violent since that’s the sort of “violence” the practices are designed to counter.) However, the Left believes the low intensity, high necessity, and high righteousness of such actions justifies their violence, to the extent we reject the “violent” label to describe them.
Violence is a far more complex topic than it appears on its face, but the Left’s instinctual aversion to anything labeled “violent” is limited and limiting, and maps that aversion onto our relationship with anger. This does not serve us individually or collectively.
Third, anger translated into righteous (violent) action is usually met with greater violence. Most people who gravitate towards left-leaning politics do so because they belong to groups who are currently or historically oppressed. By definition, oppressed groups occupy a lower power position in the social and political hierarchy and are therefore more vulnerable to harm. There are higher stakes and greater risks when we assert ourselves or decline to appease a threat from the powerful. Stepping out of place in the caste system exposes us to even greater harm than staying put, because those who benefit from the hierarchy will protect their investment with violence if necessary. This is also why anger in oppressed (female, BIPOC, queer, colonized) bodies is especially suppressed, shamed, and feared — anger can lead to dissent among the numerical majority, and dissent can lead to action that topples the hierarchy.
As examples, consider heterosexual domestic violence or the current situation in Gaza. Women are vastly more likely to be murdered by a man they know than a stranger. In the U.S. 62% of female homicide victims who knew their killer were murdered by current or former male partners, while the small number of women who kill their partners usually do so in self-defense or retaliation. By the time of this writing, Hamas has killed 1,100 Israelis and taken 250 hostages in one day, while Israel has killed 25,000 stateless Palestinians over three months and destroyed hospitals and a university, backed by one of the best-equipped militaries and the most powerful governments on earth.
Liberals instinctively sense that violence doesn’t just beget violence — it begets greater, longer lasting violence because oppressors hold more power.
For members of vulnerable, oppressed groups, acting on our anger can lead to annihilation — even when that anger is righteous and necessary.
Liberals instinctively sense that violence doesn’t just beget violence — it begets greater, longer lasting violence because oppressors hold more power. And despite the Left’s dominance in entertainment, the arts, and higher education, the Right holds a political edge that’s been building for some time in the U.S. and beyond. That edge is reinforced by extremist physical violence which, contrary to popular belief is carried out mostly by the Right. For members of vulnerable, oppressed groups, acting on our anger can lead to annihilation — even when that anger is righteous and necessary. We fear violence because we rightly fear its disproportionate consequences for us.
Fourth, anger is power, and we fear power. Because those who lean Left tend to belong to oppressed groups, we’ve developed an aversion to the word “power”. Because we’ve been victims of oppressive forms of power, we shrink from behaviors and structures that indicate or express “power.”
In doing so, we’ve bought into a narrow definition of power as solely “Power Over” and allowed trauma to limit our access to the full range of human experience and tools. I’ve written elsewhere about Tom Atlee’s exploration of three other types of power (Power With, Power From Within, and Power As), as well as Wholesome Power. Adam Kahane, in his excellent book Power and Love, describes the importance of both Power (“the drive of everything living to realize itself, with increasing intensity and extensity”) and Love (“the drive toward the unity of the separated”). He says both are necessary to move change, and that to wield only one is “to walk with only one leg”. I liken this to the necessary balance between the archetypal feminine (love) and the archetypal masculine (power), which is integral to Life on our planet.
“Power Over” isn’t the only form of power that exists. Power is a tool and a way to wield tools. As with violence, what’s needed is discernment and maturity — not reductionism, reactive fear, or binary “either-or” thinking. Individual power is necessary to live a life of integrity, purpose, and meaning. Collective power is required to co-create a world that works better for more of us, and for more life forms.
Individual power is necessary to live a life of integrity, purpose, and meaning. Collective power is required to co-create a world that works better for more of us, and for more life forms.
As sensation and energy, anger is a form of power. Anger points to what we love. The hijackers who took down the Twin Towers loved their country, spouses, children, parents, faith, and justice. That father in the mediation room loved his children, his freedom, and his values of fairness and respect. I love justice, beauty, order, reciprocity, and truth.
What we love activates our “no!” to disrespect and desecration. Anger never lies, and it can fuel an engine of action — if we choose.
A case for anger
Anger is soulful, natural, and sacred. Fearing and rejecting our anger is rooted in three harmful paradigms that have contributed to our human predicament, also known as the metacrisis: “othering”, reductionism, and a view of human nature as inherently evil.
Those who say anger is inherently bad, negative, or dangerous reduce a complex human experience to an “either-or” binary that is both limiting and dishonest. They “other” (reject) natural human emotions and attempt to bury, shame, or change them. They mistrust the wisdom of our body’s sensations and view human nature as suspect at best, evil at worst.
In rejecting anger, the Left reinforces the very structures we strive to change. We shun anger the way we’ve been shunned. We buy old, oppressive notions about what “good” people do, think, and feel. We agree with those who believe humans are inherently bad and weak — without interrogating whether our bad behavior is human nature, or simply an adaptation.
These are the old, dying ways. It’s the same narrow thinking that cuts us off from our divine Selves and our wise bodies. It’s the same disembodied ideology that detaches us from other people and other species. It’s the same dissociated belief system that allows us to abuse children; beat and rape women; and murder, mutilate, and enslave entire groups of people. It’s the same self-hating orientation that enables us to torture animals, raze forests, extract insatiably, and conquer endlessly.
In rejecting anger, the Left reinforces the very structures we strive to change. We shun anger the way we’ve been shunned. We buy old, oppressive notions about what “good” people do, think, and feel. We agree with those who believe humans are inherently bad and weak — without interrogating whether our bad behavior is human nature, or simply our adaptation to inhumane human inventions like massive hierarchies, toxic capitalism, crowded cities, and extreme competition.
If anger didn’t serve us, we would have evolved out of it long ago. It’s not here to test or tempt us. Like every other natural force on this precious planet, it’s here to inform us, guide us, and help us thrive. We’re not separate from this planet or its natural forces. What we do with this force is up to us.
If anger didn’t serve us, we would have evolved out of it long ago. Like every other natural force on this precious planet, it’s here to inform us, guide us, and help us thrive. We’re not separate from this planet or its natural forces. What we do with this force is up to us.
What we can do with anger is give it attention and curiosity. We can befriend it, sit with it, listen to its truth. We can practice compassion and discernment. We can view it as “legitimate suffering” to hold and learn from — collectively and individually. We can metabolize it, complete the incomplete, release it in what I call “a spiritual pee”. We are in dire need of all this medicine.
What we can also do with anger is activate it in service of a better world. Not one social movement has been fueled without it. Imagine what would be possible if every mistreated, underpaid worker around the world were safe to feel their righteous anger. Imagine what would change if every woman could connect with her anger about being ignored, belittled, assaulted, and treated as property. Imagine what could happen if every person who deeply loves trees or animals were able to feel their anger about this suffering.
Allowing our anger to step into the light is the first step. Psychological activist David Bedrick says judging, rejecting, shaming, or suppressing anger is too late, because it’s already here. The real question is: What kind of relationship will you have with your [anger]? With yourself?
Those are the questions that can change the world.
