"Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers."
-- Jimmy Breslin
I have found in my blog that it is easy to make a post when I am pissed off about something.
But then I usually delete the post again within hours.
I believe anger and conflict are meaningless and counterproductive. Sure, they do tend to *capture* attention, both for the originator and the audience. But that does not mean they are important or really interesting.
Positive things and creation are important and productive.
Many great things can come up from rage. In fact, I believe no emotion is bad at all.
ReplyDeleteThe rage can take great part in art, if you can control yourself. If not, you forget the basics, and of course, a purely emotional work will rarely be good.
I don't think that anger is negative per se... anger is a healthy response to many things. It may be that most of the energy released when we evacuate our anger is used inward to restore our own emotional balance, whereas creativity requires a release of energy to the outside?
ReplyDeleteI like to write things when I'm irritated because it seems like when I've actually put them down on paper (metaphorically speaking), I can then get them out of my head. And who says you can't create anything with rage? Rage against the injustice in the world to make it better, for example.
ReplyDeleteWhatever you concentrate on you get more of. Therefore, rage against anything is a questionable idea. Much better to be for the opposite.
ReplyDeleteThis, BTW, is also why the US administration's War Against Drugs/Terror/etc is a ludicrous proposition. And I think the results here (or lack thereof) prove my point.
"You don't fight for peace, you peace for peace." —David Icke
For the writer, irritation and anger is a good 'source' of energy, but as Eolake points out, your output does not tend to be all that creative in this state. For in order to become angered by something you must have already limited the choices you allow for yourself pretty heavily. Rage, therefore, is almost an antithesis to creativity. It is, after all, the emotion of frustration.
I'm totally with lucid twilight - anger can be very useful to push oneself into motion but it can be pretty dangerous if it's perpetuated. Besides reflecting about it can lead to great insights about oneself.
ReplyDeleteI understand where you are coming from with regards to being constructive and not posting in anger, and I agree that anger makes it hard to differentiate and be "reasonable" and constructive. However that doesn't make it meaningless - obviously there's a trigger for it which wants to be addressed in one way or another and you ignore it at your own peril.
Also in my view conflict can be very useful in helping to find out where one stands, what one's own values are and, not least, how one is able to handle it constructively.
Mind you, conflict is not per se destructive, rather than just an encounter of different, often but not always mutually exclusive, intentions and points of view.
In my mind anger and conflict are just parts of life, often intense ones at that - labelling them as meaningless would require denying quite a bit of one's own life, personality and relationship with society - there's heaps to be learnt (by working out how to handle them constructively).
To anyone who tells me conflicts like those between authority and personal liberty, "freedom" and "security", between countries or religious groups or between copyright owners and consumers are meaningless I say "sure you can just stay out of all that but then you'll have to put up with whatever you get, like it or not". Conflicts between large and/or powerful groups have an impact on large parts, if not all, of society, i.e. on you and me, and we can choose to influence that impact or let other people decide the rules and circumstances for our future lives.
Reminds me a bit of the Hobbits in "Lord of the Rings" who believe that if they just mind their own business and are friendly to each other all will be good - the rest of the trilogy is about how this is not so and how taking a stance in a conflict makes a difference, not only to oneself but to society as a whole.
Being constructive and creative is great, but denying anger and staying out of every conflict is not the solution - it's about accepting the challenges they pose and being constructive and creative about them.
D'uh - not that I'm angry or anything... - just my 3 Cents in any case.
To ronald and everyone who assumes that "changing" the world and/or other people is the way to personal liberty, I strongly recommend the book How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by the late Harry Browne. It is, perhaps, the most important book ever written on the subject of personal liberty.
ReplyDeleteThe book sure looks interesting, thanks.
ReplyDeleteI certainly don't think that personal liberty requires to change the world and/or other people (which is pretty much impossible anyway). I'd just like to have a say in what requirements and/or restrictions are imposed on me personally, by others.
Of course there are things I'll just have to accept, but if some people unilaterally decide to make things worse for me, and I have an avenue to do something against it, why wouldn't I try? I think there's a big difference between accepting things that cannot be changed, being accepting of other's needs, and avoiding conflict at any cost - the latter is called self-denial.
Of course people like Viktor Frankl have proven that personal liberty completely independent of the outer circumstances but somehow I still prefer living a life where I'm free to choose what I do to spending my time in a concentration camp, as he did, or in an environment as described in George Orwell's 1984, which I think we are getting pretty close to.
Also I guess nobody would seriously suggest that Mahatma Gandhi was after personal liberty, but still he had the goal to change the world, and he did. Even though he did so peacefully and constructively that doesn't mean he was not in conflict (with the authorities of the time).
Even if anyone wouldn't want to change anything at all in the outside world, anger and conflicts would still not be meaningless; if all they meant was that one has to search within for the reasons why they exist and how to change oneself to remove their causes. If one is not even willing anymore to do that then there's probably no anger anymore anyway, rather than just fatalism.
I believe that there is nothing meaningless in life and *any* way to handle one's emotions and situation is better than denial.
I agree, Ronald.
ReplyDeleteI work continually on solving my own reasons for being emotional. This helps me deal much more effectively with the world.