Anger and privilege
(Nimue)
How a person is able to handle anger can often reveal a lot about how much privilege they have.
A person who has great wealth and power is usually free to express anger in any way they like. At the extreme end, despotic leaders can imprison and execute people as an expression of anger. The more power you have, the more freedom you have to act on any anger you might feel. With power, you can take anger out on whoever it suits you to abuse, and you can express anger without any personal risk.
On the other side, if you have very little privilege it will not be safe for you to express anger. Your job, your home, your physical safety may depend on not making a fuss. When you have no power, you may have little choice but to swallow your anger, accepting oppressive treatment and whatever injustice comes your way. Speaking up can result in bad situations getting worse, when you have no power and are faced with a tyrant.
It is worth taking the time to sit with this one for a while. Most of us fall between those two extremes. Consider the situations in which expressing anger feels safe to you. Consider when it might not be safe to do that, and see what it reveals about what kind of power you have. How you express your anger will also show you a great deal about the kind of person you are. Do you respond to anger by tackling injustice, or by taking your frustration out on people who don’t have the power to resist you? Are you getting angry about big issues, or small, personal discomforts? What can your anger tell you about your expectations? How does it connect with feeling entitled, or not feeling entitled?
Anger when used well can be a very healthy and productive force. It is hard to use it well when you are working in an intrinsically unjust system. It is easy to end up using anger badly when you feel entitled. Our anger – along with whether or how we express it can teach us a great deal about our lives. If we’re able to choose how to express anger, then we must ask whether that aligns with justice, or we do it to vent our frustration. Do we get angry over trivial things and take that our on others, or are we able to be more patient and compassionate?
Justice is an important part of the Druid path. Anger can be a powerful tool for justice but it can as easily be a weapon of injustice, depending on how you wield it. Our relationship with anger can show us what we’ve internalised. This isn’t always comfortable, but it is vital work. You can’t deconstruct colonialism or dismantle patriarchy if that is living inside you. Looking inwards at your own anger, you can see what’s been internalised. For the person who wants to challenge unjust systems, this inner work is the place to start. Changing yourself is often the most powerful choice you can make.
One of the harder things here is dealing with being a person with little power who has opted to be complicit in injustice as a form of self protection. This is a huge area of consideration so I will come back to it at some other point.
