Yes, indeed, Eric. Righteous anger is not necessarily corrosive. I was talking about your second kind, with elements of the first, played out over forty years and more. But now we disagree on what righteous anger is and how it plays out. None of your examples advocated killing anyone to right the wrongs. None advocated violence to save the victims of the wrongs. All had a more nuanced vision of the complexities involved in identifying the sources of the problem and the possible solutions than you display in your harangues against 'terrorists.'
Ursula in North Bay --------------------------- Eric Yost wrote:
Ursula: Emotions cause physical changes. Anger corrodes and long term anger corrodes absolutely. I see it every day in someone close to me.
Eric wrote:
It could be that we are discussing several different types of anger. There's the DSM-IV explosive personality type anger. There's the anger that comes from unaddressed personal dissatisfaction, which may either be short term or chronic. Both of these are undoubtedly debilitating.Then there's the type of anger I am advocating. Because you disagree with my politics you don't see it as a positive thing, but let me translate it into something acceptable, like "anger at social injustice."This last kind of anger is very productive. Consider Teddy Roosevelt's anger at the conditions of the urban slums, Margaret Sanger's anger at the reproductive fealty of women, or Malcolm X's anger at the state of black Americans in his time. In all three cases, anger was a justifiable response to social injustice and motivated these individuals to seek change and effect it.
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