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Everyone is so full of anger right now. And to be clear, all of those feelings are valid--there is so much to be angry about. But when all we do is show our anger to each other, then we only escalate.
When we turn our anger on people we make them fearful, and when people are afraid, they become defensive and dangerous.
I know you& #39;re angry. I& #39;m angry too and I haven& #39;t even had to experience most of the suffering other people have to feel. I& #39;m only two generations removed from attempted genocide, but my life has been fairly easy.
All around me, friends and loved ones face bigotry and violence, and financial hardship, all for the crime of trying to live their lives in peace.
And it& #39;s infuriating. I am not saying anyone is wrong to feel anger. I& #39;m just saying that *acting* in anger inevitably leads to more anger, which just makes our collective suffering worse.
I also realize this sounds like tone policing, or some other form of control, and that is not my objective. I& #39;m just someone who has spent a lot of time learning social psychology, and who sees our society on the brink of terrifying violence.
So I am not telling anyone what to do. But I am asking, encouraging, and pleading for all of us to be gentle with each other, even if someone has hurt you. They are just caught in their own trauma they haven& #39;t even recognized.
We are all so deeply traumatized by this world, and everything around us reminds us of how hurt and how angry and how afraid we are. But when we turn our anger on others, all we do is perpetuate a cycle of violence and abuse that is spiraling out of control, all around us.
Our society is based on so much deeply-ingrained injustice. When American was founded, the only people who counted as people were white, male landowners. So, people like me. But the people like me who had the power wanted to keep it for people like them.
Over time we have very slowly begun to recognize others as people, but the entire system is still built for people like me. And that& #39;s true no matter what the laws are, that is a matter of culture.
So culture is what we need to change even more than our laws. Changing laws wouldn& #39;t hurt, but there& #39;s no way to legislate away the fear and anger that have been built into our society.
We need to recognize that the people who protect this system have just had it beaten into them their entire lives that that& #39;s their job. They have been lied to their entire lives, and when we get angry at them for believing the lie, they just become more entrenched.
It is unfair to have to do emotional labor for the person who has hurt you, but hopefully it can inspire them to do their own emotional labor to unlearn the harmful myths they& #39;ve heard all their lives.
And even if they don& #39;t, you will benefit from doing that emotional labor, and society will to. We are all worse off in a society with entrenched racism, sexism, and economic violence, even the racists and sexists and rich.
If someone is working to uphold injustice, we must do our best to realize that they are victims too, they just don& #39;t realize it yet. We may not be able to change their mind by showing them our humanity, but if we set aside our humanity, we& #39;ll only reinforce their fears.
And this is why we need to change culture, not just laws. It is not enough to diagnose the problem, we must actively work to heal the divides.
And because we need to change culture, we need to embrace the only message that has ever endured--that we are humans, capable of causing pain and feeling pain. That turning our pain back on the person who caused it only creates more pain.
We must see each other with love, even as we hold each other to account. Anger and violence, even in the name of justice, only set back our journey towards a truly just and equal society.
If someone wants to attack our message of love and forgiveness and equality, we will show them the other cheek. Only when we all learn to respond this way will we build the promised land, where we can all truly live in peace and shared prosperity.
I realize how difficult it is to do this when things are spinning out so much, but that& #39;s exactly when compassion is needed most.
When there are legitimate outrages daily, we can easily get consumed by them. And while each outrage deserves all of our grief, we cannot lose sight of the larger effort. We cannot win by destroying others, we only win by healing our broken society.
As @valariekaur says, rage in safe containers, then breathe, and then push.
