Over Easter weekend, as everybody knows by now, the Navy SEALS rescued the captain of the Maersk Alabama after Somali pirates kidnapped him. My first reaction, of course, was, "Cool -- pirates!" Then, however, I hoped things would turn out okay for the captain, and was glad to find that they had. Still, three Somali pirates were shot in the rescue mission.
Now, I don't particularly object to the shootings, but they did make me wonder if it was necessary to dislike the pirates in order to kill them, or even to support killing them. Can one attempt to understand the social forces that made these individuals become pirates, while at the same time recognizing the necessity to fight them? Phrased more broadly, is anger a necessary corollary to firepower, or can we oppose our enemies without hating them, perhaps feeling for them a little too?
I believe that we can, and that this principle applies not only to lethal force overseas, but also to civil everyday arguments and minor altercations. It is possible to oppose without hating -- and even to have a little sympathy to boot.
Recently, as I was reading the book "Anger" by Robert A.F. Thurman, an expert on Buddhism at Columbia University, one sentence struck me in particular: "Our goal surely is to conquer anger, but not to destroy the fire it has misappropriated."
This idea, I think, is profound, and it made me reflect more clearly on my own anger, its uses and misuses.
I'd say anger is my primary fault. I'm liable to stew about something for hours (okay, days), and I don't let arguments go very easily. But it seems to me that this fire, which propels my own anger, is the same as the fire that propels my creativity and my analytical abilities (however meager their apportionment). It is, in fact, the same energy that propels the writing of this column every two weeks.
I believe that there must be a way to transmute the feelings that would normally make us angry into something constructive. I don't mean to suggest turning my anger into a flaccid and retreating pacifism, quietly self-absorbed and unconcerned with the suffering of others, so much as I mean transforming it into a robust fierceness engineered to benefit other people.
I have no simple solution to break the link between the fire and anger, not being an expert on meditative techniques and the like. But, I can say that I've noticed that there is definitely a connection between my physical sensations and a mental state of anger. This is almost like that old psychological idea that you don't experience an emotion first, and then react physically to it. You react physically first, and then interpret those sensations emotionally. To give a common example, if you saw a bear in the woods, your glands would start emitting adrenaline (or whatever) after you mentally registered that it was a bear. But you would only experience fear and panic after that, after the adrenaline hit you.
When I'm angry -- during a contentious argument, say, or when dealing with the menace of American governmental bureaucracy -- I can feel my nerves getting on edge. I can feel this weird irritation in my spine -- almost a sense of depletion. I can just hold on and watch these sensations happen without reacting to them, or I can throw in the towel and get pissed off (which is what I do pretty frequently). When observing these sensations, though, I'm not angry, but physically uncomfortable. And if I'm in a particularly sagely mood when anger makes its appearance, I can sit down and write something -- something that is typically better than usual -- or I can go get some exercise.
So, you can transmogrify your pissed-off-ness into something nice, something energetic and constructive, and no one will realize what an inferno of rage you typically are. Allen Ginsberg once said that he was interested in Tibetan Buddhism because it was all about "alchemizing shit into roses." I feel the need to do this, too -- to make lemonade out of lemons -- because it is essential to my survival.
Maybe these principles can even be applied on a more macroscopic scale, and we can change some of that world crisis manure into a healthy heap of fertilizer.
