The Point However Is To Change It

I take out my Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary and I look up the word "gentle." I find it has several meanings. The primary one seems to be "belonging to a family of high social station." Then there is "honorable, distinguished." "Kind, amiable." "Free from harshness, sternness, or violence." Personally I've always associated the term with quiet, delicate touching, and so on. I suppose you could interpret it in a lot of ways.

I don't know why everybody seems to be steering away from the obvious realities of our time. They are not exactly secret, they take up most of the front pages of our daily papers. There is a war going on. It is a very dangerous thing. There are several ways to describe it but not all of them are correct. America is not defending itself. Nor is it spreading democracy, or freedom, or elevating the status of other peoples. America is flexing its muscles, it is spreading its influence, it is building permanent bases in the Middle East, it is creating huge fortunes for selected people and institutions. And it is collapsing. Without this as a backdrop I don't see how any of this discussion can ring true.

To live at home in the empire while the empire plunders abroad is to live in Alice's looking glass world. Everything is askew. Torture is acceptable, prisons are privately owned and operated and stocked to overflowing, civil and human rights are deferred or cancelled outright for the good of the grand scheme, elections are rigged, news is managed, reporters embedded so the Stockholm Syndrome can kick in, decent is vilified, thinking is discouraged. The military budget could cure cancer. Teenagers kill each other in high school. The two major causes of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are military service and rape. The troops drive around in radio active depleted uranium reinforced tanks. We has so thoroughly saturated Iraq with DU that they may never have normal children again. We have killed somewhere around 100, 000 of them. We have lost over 3,000 of our own. Everybody knows this stuff, it is not a secret. The empire works because the citizens don't want to put the pieces together in their heads. They don't want to see that picture.

We have to. We have no choice.

We are not talking about people who have the time to consider how they should express their anger. We are talking about mothers who are trying to put the blown up pieces of their children back together so they can be buried in one place. We are not asking someone waiting for a cab to think before they say something regretful. We are hearing the cries of a million orphans staggering into the next century. This is serious business.

I was at home on 9-11 when those planes hit. A friend called me and told me to turn on the TV. I did. There they were, smoking and on fire. New York City, Manhattan, United States Of America. My first thought was, "what took you so long?" My second thought was, "America will go crazy now." We will have another attack if we stay on this course. You cannot think of slow and artistic ways to respond when your children are burning. We have got to do something about this. Now.

The anger that many people feel is real and justified. And we, as complacent citizens, have a lot to do with it. It is up to us.

Hope? "Desire accompanied by expectation of fulfillment." I don't use the word much, it tends to make me think of somebody not really doing much, just waiting for the cavalry to get there. Waiting for Godot. I think that humanity has always historically evolved toward the humane. And we do that by struggle. I understand that "hope" is a part of the tool chest and I will accept it that way. As long as we do something, that's the point. You mentioned Marx, you said something about his insight regarding our being born into historical situations not of our making. True enough. But he had another great insight that I believe they put on his his tombstone: "Up until now philosophy has only succeeded in explaining the world; the point however is to change it."

We have to change it.

Hope?

A woman once told me 'There are times when there is no hope'.

I find it helpful to assume otherwise.

What do we mean by gentleness?

I am very interested in the ways that some of us seem to have dismissed gentleness as sometimes not being an appropriate political response to certain circumstances.

I wonder, what does each of us mean when we talk about 'gentleness'?

I know for me it's a way of really confronting the oppressive structures we can find ourselves encountering, and a way of looking after ourselves as we do so.

I spent a lot of last year involved in a toxic situation in my workplace (not my current one, thankfully). It wasn't for me so much an issue of 'oppressors' picking on the 'oppressed' (although there were certain events that would allow for that reading). It seemed to me to be more an 'oppressive situation' in which almost everyone involved in the situation had managed to habituate themselves to some form of self-harm or other-harm or both. The atmosphere was truly toxic, and for quite a while it wore me down. I attempted to start conversations, to raise questions about what was happening, but I got pushed down, first by one level of management, then another, until from the very top I found myself being forcefully pressured to leave, for no particular reason other than I had asked for dialogue and discussion about ways that staff members had related to me that I felt were questionable.

The details aren't all that important, I suppose. What's important to me now is to remember how that situation started to get to me, how I felt myself getting ground down, how I started shrivelling up as I got sucked into the twisted logic that so dominated the thinking, the relationships, and the behaviour of most of those I worked with. I will always remember the day when I was in a staff meeting, folded into myself in the corner, head down, feeling unable to speak because I had reached a point where I felt that speaking up made no difference whatsoever within that context, other than to make things worse for myself and my colleagues.

Remembering gentleness allowed me to stay sane, and I sometimes had fears that I wouldn't. Slowly I dragged myself back, slowly I remembered what possibilities looked like, slowly I remembered that I didn't have to think like the people I had grown to hate and fear from the pit of my stomach. Slowly I remembered that I could speak up, but that it might not yet be the time nor the place to do so. I slowly began to revisit my priorities, to recalibrate what was important to me so that I could then differentiate myself from the dominant attitude of the place, space, and people that I worked with. Slowly I grew more sensitive to the ways that my thinking had been locking me into spirals of anxiety. Slowly I reclaimed my heart as my own and learned to listen again to how it felt to be me. Slowly I learned that I didn't want to dance with those people any more, or more, that I didn't have to. They had danced that way for ages and, anyway, my dance moves didn't go too well with the tunes they were playing. Slowly I learned that fighting them wasn't going to help me, and it wasn't going to help my colleagues. Instead, fighting them simply made me more visible and gave people an excuse to squish me on their terms. If I took a stand in relation to what was important to them, even in opposition I stood with them.

In my experience, violence tends to be very ordinary, very mundane. Living in situations where violence and anger and fear become a way of life tends to change us, to twist us so that our best intentions can become our shadow selves, if not obviously darkening our lives now then quietly darkening those of our children and our grandchildren. Good intentions are no guarantee that I'm helping, so for me it's important to try to work out ways that I can quickly gauge the helpfulness or unhelpfulness of what I do, in mind of the generations to come. If violence begets violence, and I wish to reduce the possibilities of violence in my life, then the logics and passions of violence are not my friend. But I think it helps to have a keen sense of how the logics and passions of violence work, otherwise, how will I recognise them in myself when there's always the chance I may be dazzled by my own good intentions?

I'm not all that keen to say what gentleness looks like. I am getting a sense of what I mean by gentleness feels like, though, and there's no way I can force that. If it's not happening it's not happening. I'm more keen to identify the ways that I take myself away from gentleness, because for me an attitude of gentleness allows me to better defend myself from harm, to become more aware of the situation in which I find myself, and to become more aware of how I might be contributing to the dynamics that I am criticising. For me gentleness is about coming to terms with the insight that Marx, among others, had, that we make our own history, but not quite as we please. That we are born into conditions and ways of thinking and behaviour that were around before we were, and that our lives are spent trying to make sense of that and trying to make sense of the ways that people try to convince us or themselves that people don't really matter all that much. Gentleness for me is about assuming that we all matter, that we all make a difference, all the time, often in the subtlest of ways, and that understanding how in more subtle ways can make us far more helpful as we play our part in particular kinds of social change. Each of us has, I believe, opportunities to really transform our lives and the lives of others, and gentleness for me is at the heart of how I think about that, a deeply political engagement, a deeply political critique, a very immediate way to think about empowerment.

Tools Of Our Emotional Landscape

Anthony, I will try to answer some of your questions. It was about 10 years ago when I was performing as a "guest lecturer" at a local Latino community center called El Centro de la Raza, facing a room of about 15 teenagers almost all of whom could easily have decided to become gang members, that the reality struck me. It's true: I can drive all night across town and never have to worry about getting pulled over by the cops. And if I do get pulled over chances are good that they woun't beat me up. Not true for these kids. They have a different pathway laid out for them and I know it. This is racism I'm talking about. I am a privileged white guy. And they're sitting there in that class room thinking, why am I listening to this? I had to wonder the same thing. And my mind started racing around and I realized that these kids had been told over and over again to stop being so angry, to lighten up and be nice, in short "don't worry, be happy." And I knew that such an instruction would bury them as human beings.

When your father is an unemployed second class citizen who drinks to make himself feel better, when your mother has to clean up after other people's spoiled children, when you yourself have no future that's worth a damn - you might get angry. And you have a right to. Your complaint is legitimate. That's when I developed the anger as a weapon idea. And yes, it's a good idea. I know a semi-homeless woman, a local poet and writer, who cut that part out of an interview that I did and put it over her sink. It means that you matter, that your predicament is a important as anybody else's and that if the system wants to sweep you under the rug you are not going quietly.

You can call it anger, you can call it intent, you can call it anything you like. Just don't say it isn't there or that it has no value or that the victims of a larger force should not have the feelings that they have. Personally I like calling it anger because that's what it is. And remember, anger is like fear - they both exist for a good reason. It was anger and fear both that kept me from going to Vietnam and I'm glad they did.

I maintain that it was constructively educated anger that ended slavery. Child labor. Apartheid. It will free Palestine and get the US out of Iraq. Foolish blind anger is dangerous and messy and that's the kind that everybody always wants to talk about , because if that's where the conversation stays then they can say don't worry be happy. But when you deal with it realistically then people's real feelings have to be allowed and addressed.

And by the way, Soooz makes a comment about "appropriately selecting feelings to match the situation," which is good, but a lot of people don't have that luxury. Their feelings are no less legitimate for being heated and immediate. We as human beings, as members of societies, will never get anywhere until we deal with the realities of all this. If we don't want people to be angry then we have to listen to their complaints and stop making them that way. That's what I think.

Anger and Rage

I think we’re talking about the difference between anger and rage. As Ant knows that my ‘bible’ is, pretty much, that wonderful book “women who run with wolves”. There’s wonderful instructive myths in there about the wild feminine archetypes (yes men you have this as well) with tales on anger, rage, love, death and dying, being reborn and the soulfulness of storytelling.

In the book there’s a story about anger and rage and the difference. In the story a very rageful man has been given guardianship of a sacred well in an oasis to make amends for his uncontrollable episodes of raging anger. His penance is to give water to all travellers who pass the oasis, and as time passes he heals his affliction and finds peace in himself.

Then one day a rude and belligerent traveller passes through. The traveller treats the well guardian with disrespect and he casts the water to the ground complaining of the foul taste, the poor service and the well guardian’s demeanour. In a state of anger as the rude man is preparing to leave, the well guardian strikes him dead.

Two minutes later the kings guard breathless comes a galloping into the oasis at breakneck pace. He sees the dead man and kneels before the well guardian. The well guardian prepares to meet his death – for his anger, but instead the horse guard says “thank goodness, you have killed the man who was on his way to kill the king”…..

To me this story speaks to me that although anger is a tough emotion. It is warranted, appropriately directed - it is instructive. In anger I feel ‘some real or supposed grievance (dictionary) and I want some sort of action to make me feel better about it.

Rage is ‘a state of violent anger’ (dictionary definition). To me the story speaks to me of appropriately selecting feelings to match the situation. Just my 2c.

Soooz

Sustained anger?

I've been thinking about your post, Jim, and it's something that we've talked about before, and it has given me pause for thought for a long time.

It struck me last week, though; do I find it helpful to call that energy you speak of, that motivating force, that sustained focus of action, 'anger'?

There is no requirement to call it 'anger', and if that is the case, what is it about calling that experience 'anger' that might lead us towards a different place?

I'd be very interested to hear how people you've worked with have responded to framing it in this way. Knowing you, I have no doubt your work with people is likely to be powerful and inspirational. You have been both for me. Have people ever talked to you about the effect of this way of thinking about things?

If I had for years been defined by others and by myself as someone who lives with anger and who privileges anger as a way of making sense of my life, would thinking of a new, less harmful focus as a form of anger allow me to not have to consciously give up on a quality which has become an important part of how I think about and have thought about myself? Would it make the next steps forward more familiar, less frightening? Is calling it 'anger' an important step in some cases, a respecting of the values that are not often helpfully displaced in a moment?

I wonder about the difference between the importance of sitting with, acknowledging the intensity of my feelings, and then using a metaphor which locates the intensity outside of myself.

I wonder if eventually naming it differently, or thinking about it as unnamed energy of some sort might allow me to work with the direction of it a lot easier, a lot more creatively? Would I want to always keep the weapon, or would I work to dissolve the weapon, and magic it back as a powerful shield should the situation call for it? I don't know.

I also wonder if what we think of as the 'content' of our energies, the way we name the more intense energies/experiences that we carry around with us can often be quite arbitrary, nourished by the colour of whichever unhelpful thoughts and ideas might be waiting to rush into the holes of dark water we sometimes scoop out for ourselves, which sometimes have little to do with the earlier circumstance.

Or, if not arbitrary, guided by ways of thinking that are often more appropriate to circumstances that have already passed. I wonder if that might sometimes make our crafting of those energies less appropriate-to-circumstance too?

Giving and Receiving

Growing as a Catholic, the logic of giving and receiving was etched into my being as a demand on my moral directions.

It took me an awful long time to accept compliments graciously, longer to accept hugs enthusiastically, and even longer to allow for the vulnerability that comes with what I thought was receiving love.

What was it that led me to think that giving and receiving was what it was all about? How did I keep thinking that was what it was all about?

Likely my schooling experience was a large part of it. Likely all of those systems of punishment and reward in schooling, religion, and elsewhere.

These days I don't find the logic of exchange implied by all of those sits all that well with me. Too much about checks and balances, to and fro.

At its worst there's John Gray with his idea of 'love units' that we deposit in our significant others. That makes my skin crawl.

I think life at its most helpful works a lot more subtly than exchange.

In the most helpful hugs and relationships I now find that giving and receiving aren't an issue. Hugging and loving and relationship-ing is what it's about for me instead, if that makes any sense.

Not about what I get or give, but how I am, how I approach, how helpfully I presence myself.

The 'what' can change little while the 'how' changes a lot. The 'what' can change a lot while the 'how' changes little.

I find that exchange suggests to me a separation bridged by a transaction.

I no longer start from a supposition that there's any separation there at all.

Transactions require commodities to transact. I don't like thinking of loving, or being-with, or generosity, or attitudes of any sort as commodities.

I have long been concerned that when anthropologists understand generosity in terms of gift exchange I think they are way off base. I haven't found it to be really about the things when honest generosity is happening. I've found it to be more about a character of relationship, about an attitude, a colour, a tone.

Sometimes I think generosity can mean deliberately not giving something, but rather a 'receiving into', a welcoming, a respectful offering of space for emergence, rather than a giving or receiving of something.

I don't know.

Better to Give Than Receive??

Soooz...I relate to what you are saying about growing pains. I have been blogging about this alot lately. Having recently turned 40 I have been waking up to the life energy I give out and asking myself if it is proportionate to what I am receiving back? It looks like I will be getting a raise at work as well at my request. My contract is coming up for an art program I started through public health one year ago.

I started my expressive art program for adults with acquired brain injuries as an experiment on a plastic covered dining room table in a group home and has grown into a well-loved place to gather each week with a full working artist's studio. I am questioning the adage, "It is better to give than receive." What does this mean? I am wondering if this is yet another one of the societal misnomers that we unconsciously live under that keeps us small.

I often awake in the night imbued with the richness I feel for all the giving I do. Yet I am asking myself do I really know how to receive...and if I do not feel open to receiving... what sort of richness am I giving from? What does true receiving feel like? I too am used to being resourceful, creative and ingenious about "getting by" on very little money.

When my daughter was a baby and we were in the breastfeeding stage I remember having a hard time accepting a massage. How do I accept and receive abundance? Just this week I stopped all my volunteer work because of the life energy I pour into it. In reality I am not creating enough money to meet my family's basic needs and my volunteer skills have reached the capacity for money-making.

Ayn Rand and "The Virtues of Selfishness" comes to mind. I read her books in my early twenties and was immensely inspired but then I seemed to slip right back into my feminine conditioning and made it my goal to give more than I receive. I realize there must be a balance of both.

Growing Pains

I have accepted a promotion at work. I earned it, but have recently found I am experiencing growing pains… my back is out. I’m dreading moving forward, but still desperately want to do so.

So at home, I’m completing old jobs that haven’t been done in years. I am installing a bed in my place (a lovely new one, one I’ve wanted for ages) but I have found myself attached to the old bed (a couple of pieces of wood on the floor).

I have also put in for an electronic pass for my car, through all the Sydney tolls, but again it feels weird to be able to afford it, I have got so used to avoiding tolls, or scrabbling for money if I take them. I’ve made the commitment to myself to not penny pinch to be ‘comfortable’ but it’s not sitting comfortable with me just yet.

I have been not so financial lately. Now I am financial – and yet I miss the penny pinching, the making do, the creative solutions…

I am certain I will find the creative in this new status, I think I might sponsor a child or something, but the sand hasn’t settled yet.

I went to the osteopath this morning. I call him a ‘neck whisperer’. He gently moves your limbs and neck and talks soothingly and instead of a big crack there’s a gentle slotting into place. I cried for half an hour after the manipulation. Perhaps my back pain is just holding, being brave, holding on not crying like a ‘good girl’…

I have made a commitment to myself to cry a little more on the weekend…. As I put my new bed up, install my toll pass, and as I make space for the new, more financially together me… I want to travel next year and for the first time since I got my mortgage this is becoming possible.

Perhaps it’s a little death, I'm grieving, the old must pass, I’ve been kinda forcing myself onwards though and realise I need to go a bit more gently….

Soooz

Dancing Ideas

Okay Anthony, I understand more now what you by "gentleness." Something like not forcing your immediate will on an easily broken selection of possibilities. I'll go with that. And perhaps we can all understand each other a bit more as this goes along. The garage is almost finished and its raining, a good time to write.

Let me scatter around a bit... You say: "I don't think there are correct answers, as answers invite the question 'according to whom?' and often it's not according to the person answering. I think there are helpful and unhelpful approaches, and if an approach isn't working it isn't working. If it isn't working, I think we can acknowledge, work to understand a little better, and try again or move on."

I think you will have to admit that there are certain answers that are correct. My car broke down last week - stopped running on the road. What's up? Out of gas? Threw a rod? No - the serpentine belt broke. That was the answer to that question. And now the question changes to "What do I do about it?" Possible answers are: "take it to a mechanic" or "get a belt and do it myself" or "get a belt, try to do it myself, and then take it to a mechanic." One of those answers will be right. We get into trouble when we want eternity - one answer for all time. That doesn't happen.

Maybe you were talking mostly in the world of ideas. I still have to insist that there are correct ideas and incorrect ideas. Remember "The Bell Curve?" That was a book that came out about 15 years ago attempting to prove that blacks are genetically inferior. Wrong idea. Again, I think the trouble is not whether there are right and wrong answers but trying to make them be "The Answer For All Time." That's the problem.

Hi Duke. (I hope that's your name - I apologize if I'm jumping to conclusions) Good story about the angry day. For me "anger" is not something you do, it is an emotional state. And it seems to be mostly generated through the perception of injustice, real or otherwise. A larger force has obstructed your progress - a cop stops you for jaywalking when there is no traffic and he is going to write you a ticket. You cannot reason with him and you have no recourse. And you know damn well that at 57 years old you are perfectly capable of crossing the street on your own. That can make you angry. But anger is also a kind of a crossroads, you can go any number of ways. And in my experience once the correct decision is made the anger dissipates. But it is there as a spark. (In that way its like fear) Should you call the officer an asshole and make a run for it? Or should you accept the ticket with the knowledge that everybody else has to deal with frivolous red tapes as well? I think that's the issue rather than the anger itself.

My idea is kind of like this: people have a right to their anger. Victims of child abuse, racial hatred, systemic injustices, whatever. When the rich white guy on the talk show tells you not to be angry he's actually telling you to stop thinking. Because you can hone your anger like a weapon, like a knife. And by "honing your anger" I mean learning where it comes from, what its historical reasons are, and educating yourself about it. To see that the cause is often so much larger than the tiny little human who is doing this thing, whatever it is, to you is a liberating insight. And that makes your anger intelligent and intelligent anger is not dangerous like a loose canon. You will not be boiling over onto friends, family, and co-workers out of frustration. I call it sharpening your anger. And if the anger has a big cause, something that other people are involved in as well - racism for example - then it behooves you to work on it regularly. And just like a knife, when you have finished sharpening it you can put it away in its sheath, snap it closed and go on about your day. You can go to the movies, listen to music, fall in love - all of that. But when you see racism you can respond with intelligence, you can take out your sharpened anger - which is really just the memory and acknowledgement of historical injustice - and you will be a formidable warrior. "Warrior" in the best sense, not the guy with the helmet and the rocket launcher. Over time the sharpened anger beomes deterimination. That's the point you want to get to, but first you have to allow yourself to be angry.

My friend Utah Phillips is a Korean War veteran. He is haunted by the knowledge that he may have killed people over there. It's very possible but he doesn't know. When he got back he drank a lot and bummed around. Then he got smart. He had help of course, but he realized that it was his privilege and capacity for violence that was destroying him. He is now a committed pacifist. His anger is intact, but he has focused his energies and intelligence so that he can better serve the purpose of humanity. As he sees it.

Anger

I had been intending to write about anger here, even before the latest posts from Jim and Anthony.

I am currently - though not for much longer - working as a local radio journalist. The week before last, on the sixth consecutive day of working unpleasantly early shifts and not sleeping enough, I went to an ATM at 6am and found I hadn't been paid. Since I've been at the hand-to-mouth phase of my economic cycle, this meant walking to work instead of taking the bus. I was already feeling burned out by work which, despite its other satisfactions, I wouldn't do if it wasn't for the money. Then there was the ninety minutes in total of phone calls to various offices and call centres it took to clear up the situation and its knock-on effects. In between which, I had to deal with a colleague whose lack of commitment to his work had, for the second day in a row, sabotaged good stories which I had found and set up for him. Finally, I went out to do the story he'd failed to do - and it turned out to be a story of a bureaucratic nightmare that seemed the mirror image of the maze of call centres in which I was stuck.

The result of this cocktail was a virtuoso performance of sustained anger, directed at faceless people on the other ends of phones, witnessed by my colleagues. It was skilfully measured, in as much as I never quite overstepped the legalistic boundaries of my being "in the right". And it was at once satisfying and toxic - an anger bender, binge fury. I went home, slept for two hours and woke feeling hungover and ashamed.

In the conceptual toolkit of Transactional Analysis, there is the idea that different people (and families) collect different "trading stamps", which can be cashed in for the right to a particular behaviour. As a child, I learned to collect "anger" stamps. It's a habit, a kind of addiction - and if I go on putting myself through days like that, one which will damage my health.

So, how to handle this? Clearly, I have a lot to figure out! But, reading Anthony's last post, I wonder if I'm drawn to others who have had a similar relationship to anger? Because "anger" is also an important subject for several people whose writing and thinking matters to me. Here is Alan Garner, writing about the source and use of his own anger:

The trouble was that within me were two people. One was the son of a family of rural craftsmen. They had shaped the place in which I had grown; everywhere I turned, their hands showed me their skills; yet my hands had no cunning; with them I could make nothing, and my family despaired of me. The other...was the first to be taught...and had long had one ambition: the Chair of Greek at Oxford...

I had left the Army swearing never again to oblige anybody to do anything against their will...

...I felt an anger, at once personal, social, political, philosophical and linguistic. I knew...that to express that anger directly would be negative and destructive; and I came from a family of makers, not breakers. The anger had to be a creative act.

What can we make out of our anger?

Gentleness and anger

[Jim: As for gentleness... I would say there are times to be gentle and times not to be. My mind begins to wander and I cast about among the events of the day. I am Iraqi. My house has been destroyed by an American bomb and I have lost all my children. My country is occupied by powerful foreigners. Try as I may - and despite all the good wishes of people watching from afar - gentleness is a little out of my reach right now. Anger, yes. Sorrow, confusion, panic. But I may very well metamorphose into something more dangerous and who would you be to criticize?]

Hi Jim, and thanks for posting. These are things we have chatted about before, and will again, I'm guessing :)

There are a few things that come to mind ...

A basic principle for me is that I am working to reduce the power of coercion, violence, domination, and oppression (CVDO) in my experience. Adopting an attitude of gentleness is my way to do that. It is important for me not to assume that gentleness is sometimes an inappropriate political response or that it ever equals political inaction. For me, gentleness is all about appropriateness-to-context, all about working for ways of relating to people that might be more appropriate, i.e, helpful, for transforming relations of CVDO. Being gentle, for me, would mean being politically engaged at a highly calibrated level of appropriateness-to-context, working with a keen awareness of what is actually going on, cutting through the sh*& that my heightened passions often ply me with.

I believe that the more I distance myself from an attitude of gentleness (the more I allow myself to succumb to the gravities of anger, for example), the less appropriate my actions will become because anger tends to blind me. It most crucially tends to blind me to the long term or broader consequences of my own participation in a situation.

I think for me it is important not to assume that gentleness and reactive anger are incompatible. Sometimes I get angry. It's important for me to acknowledge and respect that. Reactive anger, to the conditions of a particular situation.

But I do not desire to remain angry, I do not find anger helpful, and if I get angry I will try to work afterwards so that I am less likely to become angry next time something similar happens.
I grew up in a country where people often killed each other in meditative, stewing anger. I have no desire to make anger my friend. An acknowledged companion occasionally, but not someone I want to make an effort for. I do not want anger to be important to me.

I had a terrible temper when I was younger. I contributed to a lot of hurt and harm in the lives of people around me in ways that still resonate. At whatever time, people do what they do in ways that make sense to them, so I will acknowledge and respect that I was often exploding boy, and move on. I am glad I am not there any more, and I am glad that I didn't 'solve' my anger by trying to bottle it up. I am also glad that I get opportunities to treat people with a little more respect now. I don't get angry much any more, usually just when some of my older buttons get pushed, when some of my remaining 'old protections' get breached. Anger is always a possible response for me, one of many, just not a desirable one. If reacting in anger feeds the dynamics of CVDO, and if I am trying to work to reduce the power of CVDO in my own life, then it makes no sense for me to desire anger. I do not desire anger.

I think that maintaining or feeding that anger beyond an immediately reactive response will likely make any thing I do less rather than more appropriate. For me anger can be an opportunity, an opportunity to ask 'what's going on here?', and 'what I can I do that might helpfully transform this situation?' And also, to ask, 'how can I become less angry now, without becoming less aware of my part in all of this?' At other times I may have the opportunity to ask, 'where is my anger coming from?'

For me, there are many situations that provoke anger, but there is no situation that necessitates anger as a direct cause and effect response. (Working with the idea that nothing is fixed, nothing is necessary, and nothing has to be the way it is).

It is not my place to judge or criticize people for experiencing anger. People do what they do, feel what they feel. But it is my place as a human being to seek to understand whether or not anger may or may not be helpful in my own life, and to invite others to consider that, not only are there ways other than anger, but that sustained anger may be one of the least helpful, least appropriate ways of making the world a better place. Also, to invite others to consider the black-hole gravity of anger, the nourishment it provides for unhelpful thinking, and unhelpful relationships. So if someone's anger metamorphoses into something more dangerous then, yes, what they do and how they think becomes the focus of critique for me, but primarily for the purpose of working out more helpful responses to whatever I encounter in my life.

Sustaining, feeding, or capitulating to anger also, for me, makes it more likely that I might think other people's thoughts and assume that they are entirely my own. It makes me more likely to live my life in the service of doctrine, of absolutes, of unquestionable truths. It makes me more likely, I believe, to assume a position of arrogance, or imposition, or denial, or hate. All things the power of which I work to try and reduce in my life.

[Jim: At times "gentleness" seems like a luxury.]

For me, sometimes I wish gentleness were a luxury. I find nothing more challenging, politically and personally. I think it's important maybe for me to make a distinction between 'acts of gentleness' and 'an attitude of gentleness'. In the Christian/Catholic traditions that I was raised in, the emphasis tended to be on acts of gentleness, on doing things that would be seen to be gentle, outwardly visible. 'This is what gentleness looks like,' was the general impression I got. 'Acts of kindness', similarly. This allows lots of room for the gentleness and kindness of colonial power or compassionate conservativism. "Look, I'm being kind to you, dammit! Can't you see that?" I'm not interested in espousing Anita Roddick's 'aggressive kindness' or in prescribing what gentleness looks like.

I am interested, though, in attitudes of gentleness. For me, gentleness is our baseline, the attitude that grounds us in being politically and personally present. I have thought about how to think most helpfully about this, and I'm still working at it, but what I have found most helpful most far is to not seek to identify what gentleness looks like or prescribe it in any way. Rather, I find it more helpful to think about what draws us away from gentleness.

At base, for me an attitude of gentleness simply happens (in whatever way it happens to happen) when our thinking, doing, feeling is not dominated by the expectation that uncertainty can be or should be eliminated. What I mean by that is a long conversation, and part of the purpose of this blog for me, and I've already posted a bit on it in the archives. But, as I see it, it's for me to work out how that works in my own life and I find it's a pretty good yardstick thus far. I invite others to see if it works for them.

[Jim: And of course, there's the standard example of the armed robbers coming into your house and putting a gun to your child's head. Should you be gentle?]

Gentleness for me in such a circumstance would mean operating as appropriately as possible, working to reduce the emotional intensity of the situation (the job of professional hostage negotiators, every good one a master of gentleness as I understand it), working to not make the situation worse. If I rush the guys with guns I increase the chance that both my child and I get killed, or worse. No matter what I do, they may still shoot and kill, but how can I engage in a way that makes that less likely?

But we don't need an old chestnut example to think about this. ;) I encounter situations every day where I have an opportunity to contribute helpfully or unhelpfully, appropriately or inappropriately (in view of my broader commitment to reducing CVDO). I am always able to dominate others, to belittle others, to treat others like inhuman monsters, to treat people like dirt, to hurt, to harm, to offend, to disrespect, to be arrogant, self-righteous, and bullying. I also frequently encounter situations where people are acting in these ways (thankfully, less so in my current situation). In any situation, am I helping? or am I making things worse? How can I gauge that? How can I guide my thinking and doing in relation to that?

Gentleness for me means being smarter about what's happening, being more aware of consequences, priming myself for more helpful contributions in any circumstance. Being more appropriately political. For me, opposition doesn't tend to be a helpful form of defence, if helpfulness is thought of in terms of reducing the possibilities of coercion, violence, domination, and oppression.

[Jim: What I am suggesting is that all of the situations that we find ourselves in have their own vocabulary and their own set of primary concerns. We need to be flexible and realistic.]

Precisely what I believe espousing gentleness is about. :)

[Jim: Decisions and answers are a part of life. Yes, there is a correct answer, but it will change as soon as it is found because the question will change.]

Personally, I don't think there are correct answers, as answers invite the question 'according to whom?' and often it's not according to the person answering. I think there are helpful and unhelpful approaches, and if an approach isn't working it isn't working. If it isn't working, I think we can acknowledge, work to understand a little better, and try again or move on.

[Jim: So many people seem to be afraid of answers and decisions. They are real. Don't be afraid of them.]

I'm not afraid of either answers or decisions. I just don't think they're as necessary as a lot of people expect me to think they are ;) (and I think so many of them are self-generated by me on the basis of fuzzy thinking). Fewer of both has made my life a lot more liveable and interesting :)

Cheers :)

(Jim, you are missed over here, by the way. Sandino's is now down the road from where I work. If you can make it here I'll buy you a pint! :)

Event Specific Vocabularies

Hi Anthony
Hello Shelly - I don't think I know you....
I live in Seattle.

Anthony invited me to join this and so I did a week or so ago but didn't do anything. I have my own blog to take care of and a lot of other things. And I only type with two fingers so its a big deal to me... Anyway I read the last several posts and I have a few observations to make.

About the concept of one word. I think that's kind of narrow. I mean life is pretty big, right? We go through a lot of dramas in our lives. For instance, if I were stranded in the Death Valley and it was 135 degrees my one word might be "water." If someone found me and gave me a drink my word might change to "thanks." If I had a deep spiritual revelation due to my experience there might be no word at all. And when I woke up from my recuperation I might just say, "hello."

As for gentleness... I would say there are times to be gentle and times not to be. My mind begins to wander and I cast about among the events of the day. I am Iraqi. My house has been destroyed by an American bomb and I have lost all my children. My country is occupied by powerful foreigners. Try as I may - and despite all the good wishes of people watching from afar - gentleness is a little out of my reach right now. Anger, yes. Sorrow, confusion, panic. But I may very well metamorphose into something more dangerous and who would you be to criticize? At times "gentleness" seems like a luxury. And of course, there's the standard example of the armed robbers coming into your house and putting a gun to your child's head. Should you be gentle?

What I am suggesting is that all of the situations that we find ourselves in have their own vocabulary and their own set of primary concerns. We need to be flexible and realistic. Having a vision is one thing, divorcing it from reality is something else.

Decisions and answers are a part of life. Yes, there is a correct answer, but it will change as soon as it is found because the question will change. "How do I get out of here?" There is a correct answer. Then the question might become, "Where do I go now?" Or, "What's for dinner?" Know what I mean? So many people seem to be afraid of answers and decisions. They are real. Don't be afraid of them. Life goes on even if you screw up.

What's the word right now? How about a couple of words for one idea? Right now mine would "clean the garage."

What ish my words?

I think one of my most important words is still 'gentleness', as it's something that I will never stop trying to learn. For me, it represents my greatest challenge, if only because it issues that challenge to me in every moment of my life, in every aspect of my life, in every relationship I become aware of. But I don't like to think of there being only one word, as I think it's also important for me to work on a principle of what I think of as 'multiple vocabularies'; by hanging out with as many different words as I can that associate with what I want to think about, engage with, talk about, do, I sort of gather a helpful cloud of shifting meaning around myself that keeps me thinking that the words may still (and ever) be less important than the attitude. Words like '(unhelpful) elimination of uncertainty', 'colour', 'tone', 'invitation', 'participation', 'attitude', 'fluffy bunny rabbit', are some of them.

I find that certain words come and go from my little cloudeen, to the extent that some may jar in particular circumstances, and I occasionally recalibrate as I go along. I was talking to someone yesterday and they said something to the tune of, "*sharp intake of breath* You'd better be careful with some of those words. They can cut, some of those words, I don't know what half of them mean, and you're swishing them around like samurai swords!" It was said half in jest, but I take such noticings quite seriously, and I will be a little more vigilant next time perhaps. I'll work it out as I go along, and, as my attitude shifts, certain words, certain ways of phrasing, certain approaches will seem more or less appropriate to me depending on circumstance, I suppose.