More anger management

I’ve been thinking a lot about anger lately. I’ve posted about it here (most recent) and I’ve found other people writing about their anger elsewhere. Miguel at Laughing~Knees is angry that the Japanese government has decided to send troops to Iraq. He has also written to express anger over what we humans are doing to our beautiful planet. I commented to him that we need positive ways to channel that anger, and we need examples of hope such as the Geneva Accord. Anger without hope is what terrorism feeds on.

There are those who say don’t feed the anger – practice peace and nonviolence, as Thich Nhat Hanh says. That is a good thing. He is not saying to be apathetic and ignore the problems that create anger, but to to take action to create peace, starting within ourselves. I also want to see political action because a lot of the anger people feel comes from the sense of being disenfranchised, powerless. That’s why Howard Dean is appealing to many in the U.S., I think, because he makes people feel included in the process. And he is channeling their anger, though I hope we will see more positive messages coming from him as well, as I've said before.

I just found this Jim Moore post about Jonathan Schell’s book, The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People:

Schell contrasts societies constructed on war and war-making and those that do the soft, ecological, sometimes tedious work of constructively developing societies with empowered, wise and free citizens… We need to develop a plan for the US economy (and the world economy) based on non-violence… non-violent toward our environment, toward the poor, and toward the poor in other nations, at least. And it would be non-violent toward our own middle class, and our selves no matter what our economic situation.

It’s good to see that people are thinking and writing about these things. It gives hope and that’s very powerful.

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