24. A Trustworthy Person Is Angry at the Right People, for the Right Reasons, Expresses It in the Appropriate Manner and
24. A trustworthy person is angry at the right people, for the right reasons, expresses it in the appropriate manner and for an appropriate length of time.24
To speak of justice, as we have in previous chapters, is to speak of injustice and therefore of moral outrage. Such outrage takes place in our third chakra, where we carry our anger and where we feel “kicked in the gut” when we hear of the taking of children at the border from their parents to be put in cages. Or when we hear lies that do not stop from our politicians and presidents; or when we admit the facts about climate change—and its deniers. Or when we see the insane amount of money spent on weapons worldwide ($56,000 per second!), while children starve and youth go without education. (And note that half of that $56,000 is spent by the United States.)
All prophets are angry. It is what they do with their anger that counts and sets them off from the rest of us. Gandhi, Dr. King, and Nelson Mandela all employed a nonviolent strategy that brought forth genuine results. It has proven effective in throwing off an empire (Gandhi), desegregating the South (King), and making for a relatively peaceful transition after years of rigid apartheid (Mandela). Prophets tap into the anger of their people and direct it in ways that are effective, so that it does not get lost or dissipated. Venting by itself can create more backlash and even violence and thus give birth to still more outrage and anger. This is also why all prophets are artists—they create social art, the creative gathering of anger and imagination to transform social structures of thought and action toward the long arc of justice.
As Rabbi Heschel tells us, the prophet is all about passion. “We are stirred by their (the prophets) passion and enlivened imagination. … It is to the imagination and the passions that the prophets speak rather than aiming at the cold approbation of the mind.”32
We are all called to be prophets—people who interfere—just as we are all called to be mystics—people who love (and are therefore angry when what we cherish is threatened).
Aquinas knew this. Unlike many dualistic spiritual teachers, he does not advise people to repress their anger, or sit on it, or dwell incessantly in bliss, or run from the pain of the world, or go into denial about the evil that provokes anger. Rather, he reminds us to treat our anger with respect and find appropriate outlets for it. And not to let it control us (“for the appropriate length of time” he counsels). Invest it! Yes, we should invest our anger—for it is an energy source par excellence—in effective action to bring about change.
While anger, of course, must be regulated because it can take over our reasoning faculties and run away from us, when it “follows the judgement of reason it helps toward the execution of reason’s command” (422). Anger provides the energy to get something good done even amid obstacles.
Once we have determined the appropriate causes of our outrage at injustice, Aquinas counsels us that art—including social art—represents the “appropriate manner” in which to utilize or invest our anger. From such anger emerge allies who can join us in our action. The word community, after all, comes from the Latin words cum munio, meaning “to share a common alice
That is what politics is really about. People seeing what is missing in society and banding together to do something about it. From injustice to justice. From outrage to action. From despair to hope. From disempowerment to empowerment. Anger can offer energy for the struggles that ensue. Aquinas knew this. And Jesus knew this, as is evident in the story of his turning the money-lenders’ tables over in the temple. Jesus often expressed his anger directly in debates with hypocritical religious powerbrokers and, more subtly, in his artful storytelling and parables. He did not run from his anger, but found a healthy outlet that refused to psychologize it (“Oh, you are so angry, Jesus”) and instead reached down to identify its root causes.
Aquinas praises anger when he says: “Nothing great happens without anger.” Anger is an energy source that we must tap into—but in appropriate ways and for the appropriate length of time and directed at the appropriate people, just as Aquinas advises. Anger is one of those passions that Aquinas celebrates as being the very place where virtue is born within us.
Aquinas believes that anger is related to injustice—“that which provokes anger is always something considered in the light of an injustice.” We are angry because something we love is being threatened or endangered: “If we are angry with those who harm others … it is because those who are injured belong in some way to us; either by some kinship or by friendship, or at least because of the nature we share in common” (184).
Playfulness, or Fun,
is
a Virtue.