‘If you’re not angry, you’re either a stone, or you’re too sick to be angry. You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So, use that anger’, urged Maya Angelou.
Which anger? Well, we have more reasons for anger than we can count: relentless violence in the form of genocide and ecocide, bigotry in the form of democratic procedures, maybe our own numbness to it all, and a myriad other ways, some only seen by few, some seen by many, in which injustice manifests.
But I have forgotten how to be angry.
I’ve heeded the calls for pragmatism, heard the questions, ‘But what good is it?’ And in doing so, I’ve dulled my anger into an indistinct mass of feelings that could be exhaustion, indifference, cynicism, selfishness, or bitterness – I’m not quite sure. Mostly, I notice a vague confusion. As a torrent of horrific news invades my consciousness, ‘horrific’ is nothing but a word I know is an appropriate description.
I am untouchable. But I want to be touched.
Not being touched by the world is akin to non-being. Yet I am tired of feeling heartbroken – years of witnessing horror and war in my neighbor’s yard and in what was supposed to be the promised land, now a broken promise, not to mention everything else – the collapse of blue skies.
Anger seems like the apt response. Anger can be harnessed. Above all, anger demands hope – something to strive for
It is not strength to rise above it, to wait for it to end, or to look at it from the high perch of history where pain becomes text, map, number. Nor is it strength to hopelessly hurt, wasting soul, wasting life.
Anger seems like the apt response. Anger can be harnessed. Above all, anger demands hope – something to strive for.
So why is anger so often criticized as irrational and unproductive?
Philosopher Amia Srinivasan, in The Aptness of Anger, suggests that ‘conflicts between getting aptly angry and acting prudentially themselves constitute a form of unrecognized injustice: affective injustice.’ In other words, when society suppresses justified anger, it commits a subtle violence against us, denying us the fullness of our humanity. Worse, we often do this to ourselves, quashing our own capacity to feel and react authentically.
I have been guilty of this – internalizing the belief that anger is counterproductive.
But Srinivasan addresses my doubts directly: ‘Even if anger is counterproductive, we can still ask: Is it the fitting response to the way the world is? (…) If so, anger serves a means of affectively registering or appreciating the injustice of the world.’
To suppress anger is to risk being blind to injustices that demand our attention, thus hollowing out our ethical responses
Anger contains knowledge – it signals that something is profoundly wrong. Given that anger can serve as a moral compass, it’s no surprise that its suppression often prevails. For some, ignorance is bliss; for others, it is power. (Ask yourself: Whose anger is most vehemently suppressed?)
To suppress (your own and others’) anger is to risk being blind to injustices that demand our attention, thus hollowing out our ethical responses. Srinivasan prompts us to consider: ‘Imagine a person who does everything by the ethical book but is left entirely cold by injustice, feeling nothing.’ My imagination fails here – feeling seems inherent to ethical action; anger seems inherent to witnessing injustice.
Anger is also frequently maligned as a precursor to violence, yet it is not inherently violent. Suppressing anger on the assumption that it inevitably leads to harm is a misguided approach.
While it is true that anger does often result in violence, this may be because we have not yet learned how to feel it or fully embrace its significance. When acknowledged and understood, anger can offer profound insights. It has the potential to inspire thoughtful action, creativity, and meaningful change.
We have more reasons for anger than we can count.
It is time to feel our anger and let it move us towards less angering realities.
So, please, feel angry.
VALERIA CERNEI