I’m very angry these days.
Some people think that’s a good thing, that if people get angry enough they’ll do something.
I think that’s bullshit. Dangerous bullshit.
Back in my karate days, my teacher sometimes tried to make me angry to make me fight better. It never worked.
Here’s the thing: I get angry when I feel like there’s nothing I can do.
Now maybe if you made me angry enough to trigger blind rage, I might act, but I’m pretty sure the resulting action would not be a good thing. In general, people responding out of rage cause a lot of harm, even if their rage is justified.
What I need in order to act is to be centered enough to see options.
And it’s really fucking hard to keep my center these days in spite of forty years in martial arts, because there’s just so much destruction and harm going on and many of the tools we have available are slow and ineffective or – even worse – compromised.
So I’m angry, though I’m struggling to find enough center to do something constructive.
On the “how to deal with the destruction of the United States” front – a major reason why I’m angry – I have become involved with Unbreaking, which is an organization documenting the damage done to our government and the responses to it.
It took me awhile, but I’ve found a niche there working on summarizing litigation in the data security area. I spent years working as a legal editor and reporter, so combing through opinions and dockets is something I know how to do.
Figuring out what’s happening and summarizing it: that’s something I can do. So it helps.
But some of the other things I’m angry about are not directly tied to the current regime destroying most of what actually worked in the U.S. government. Rather, they are things that would exist even if we had responsible leadership in Washington. Continue reading “So Tired of Being Angry”…