Fury Is Valid, But Only If You Know What You’re Furious About
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Channeling Rage Into Something Useful (Or At Least Honest)
Friday morning, and I’ve been angry for approximately six months straight about things that change faster than I can actually process my anger about them. By the time I’m fully enraged about one policy decision, three more have happened that are equally enraging. So my rage is diffuse and ineffective and mostly just making me miserable.
This is the actual problem with modern politics: there’s too much to be angry about. Your rage exhausts itself because there’s always something new and worse to be angry about. You become rage-fatigued. You either check out entirely or become one of those people who’s just constantly angry about everything and actually accomplishes nothing.
The Anger Problem
What I’ve learned from trying to live a politically engaged life is that anger is only useful if it’s focused. Diffuse anger is just suffering. You’re angry about the government, but the government is too big to fight. You’re angry about capitalism, but you can’t exit capitalism. You’re angry about injustice, but injustice is systemic and vast.
So the anger just sits in you. And after six months of that, it either turns into depression or turns into recklessness. Neither is productive. Both are just different ways of surrendering.
The Productive Anger Path
What I’m learning is that productive anger requires a concrete target. You can’t be usefully angry at “the system.” But you can be angry at a specific policy. At a specific decision-maker. At a concrete, changeable thing. And if you direct your anger at that concrete thing, you might actually accomplish something.
The problem is that as soon as you fix one concrete thing, there are twenty more things to be angry about. So you have to choose your battles. Pick the rage you’re going to pursue and let go of the others. Which feels like surrender but is actually sanity.
The Honesty Problem
What I’m trying to do now is be angry but honest about what I’m angry about and what I can actually do about it. I’m furious about inequality. But I can’t destroy capitalism. So instead I can: support organizations working on it, vote for politicians who care, consume more ethically within the system’s constraints. It’s not revolution. But it’s honest.
I’m angry about political dysfunction in Europe. But I can’t fix Europe. So instead I can: inform myself about what’s happening, talk to other people about it, participate in what small changes are possible at my level of influence.
The Acceptance
What anger has taught me is that I have to accept that I can’t fix everything. That most of what I’m angry about will continue regardless of my personal rage about it. And that’s okay. It’s okay to be angry about things you can’t change. You just have to accept that your anger is grief, not fuel for action.
Grief you can sit with. Grief you can process. Grief you can eventually integrate. But you can’t use grief as fuel for sustained action. You’ll burn out.
So I’m choosing to be angry about fewer things. Things I can actually affect. And to accept my grief about the things I can’t affect. It’s more balanced. It’s more honest. And it’s actually sustainable.
For rage-fueled analysis, read NewsThump.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
