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In Defence of Anger
Sometimes You Don’t Need to Calm Down
According to Freud, depression is just anger turned inward. And if internet memes are to be believed according to “the Buddha,” which may or may not be referencing Siddhartha Gautama according to the meme maker, “Anger is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.”
They’re not wrong. But they’re not right either. Anger has a purpose. Sometimes that purpose can be distorted or manipulated and certainly too much of anything is bad, but if you’re never angry then something is likely very wrong. Anger is like any other emotion. You are not always happy or sad or nostalgic or fearful or succumbing to ennui and it would be weird if you were. But you have experienced all these things. And sometimes you indulge them. Sometimes we actually seek out ways to feel these emotions safely just because we want to feel them.
We do this with anger too. We just don’t admit to it or do it safely.
It is difficult to say what kind of anger is appropriate, and the reason it is the one emotion everyone seems to be ashamed of is because anger’s entire purpose is disruption. Anger exists because of the perception that something is wrong. Anger exists to point out that problem and scare it away. Anger disrupts the system. Anger is…
