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3 min.
Staying calm
Anger should only be a tool
Ursula K. Le Guin shows how anger disguises itself as strength, seduces us, and quietly takes control—until we learn to confront it with honesty and regain our inner freedom.
Ursula K. Le Guin shows how anger disguises itself as strength, seduces us, and quietly takes control—until we learn to confront it with honesty and regain our inner freedom.
One day I came across this text by the American writer Ursula K. Le Guin 1, which she published on her blog.
In it she says something interesting: Anger is a weapon in itself; dangerous because it is also terribly seductive... :
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“Anger continued on past its usefulness becomes unjust, then dangerous. Nursed for its own sake, valued as an end in itself, it loses its goal. It fuels not positive activism but regression, obsession, vengeance, self-righteousness.
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Being angry. I find the subject very troubling, because though I want to see myself as a woman of strong feeling but peaceable instincts, I have to realize how often anger fuels my acts and thoughts, how very often I indulge in anger.
I know that anger can’t be suppressed indefinitely without crippling or corroding the soul. But I don’t know how useful anger is in the long run. Is private anger to be encouraged?
Considered a virtue, given free expression at all times, as we wanted women’s anger against injustice to be, what would it do?
Certainly an outburst of anger can cleanse the soul and clear the air. But anger nursed and nourished begins to act like anger suppressed: it begins to poison the air with vengefulness, spitefulness, distrust, breeding grudge and resentment, brooding endlessly over the causes of the grudge, the righteousness of the resentment. A brief, open expression of anger in the right moment, aimed at its true target, is effective—anger is a good weapon. But a weapon is appropriate to, justified only by, a situation of danger. Nothing justifies cowing the family every night with rage at the dinner table, or using a tantrum to settle the argument about what TV channel to watch, or expressing frustration by tailgating and then passing on the right at 80 mph yelling FUCK YOU!
Perhaps the problem is this: when threatened, we pull out our weapon, anger. Then the threat passes or evaporates. But the weapon is still in our hand. And weapons are seductive, even addictive; they promise to give us strength, security, dominance …”
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What can you do about the anger you may feel?
Should you suppress or ignore your feelings?
The images that circulate show us emotionless stoics, strong and dignified, who fear nothing and whom nothing upsets.
There they are, made of marble, sitting on a pile of money - ! - Is there anything wrong with having money? No. But it is a preferred indifferent. Seneca himself was immensely rich - sitting like a king, shaped like a gladiator, looking serious and impassive and surely never carried away by any emotion, neither joy nor anger.
Does the man or woman you aspire to become by reading my texts have to become a machine?
Shouldn't he or she work hard so that he or she never feels anything? Isn't that emotionless his or her strength?
Not really.
This wise ideal that you and I aspire to feels things, feels emotions, like every human being 2.
And so he or she also feels anger. It accepts it, like any other emotion 3, as flowing from a natural source.
And as a signal that nature sends us, this anger is like wrong way sign on a hiking trail that tells you:
"Don't go any further in this direction".
“Step back, analyse the situation, retrace your steps and get back on the right path".
Fighting this inner anger requires constant vigilance, {{username}}, brutal honesty with yourself. You must learn to recognize its signs and listen to the whispers before they become screams. You must have the courage to look into the dark corners of your soul and face what is there.
Only then can we hope to find true peace, free from tyranny.