Living with Anger

The world is a shithole, yes. But I think the rage will help some of us survive it.

I often think that my depression is like an allergic reaction to the shit in the world. The world is a hideous place - full of greed, pain, suffering, war, violence, lies, domination, manipulation and worse. While these things are going on, while there are people out there suffering, of course we should expect a reaction. It makes total, complete and undeniable sense.

Those who go about their lives in ignorant bliss, they've got to be living in denial. Or plain out and out insanity.

But they are the people better equipped to go about their lives. Far better equipped than I am.

The solution, society's solution, is like taking paracetemol to mask a headache caused by a brain hemorrhage: medicate those displaying the symptoms.

I remember after the bombings in London several years back, people in government saying that the best thing is to go about your normal lives. Otherwise the terrorists have won. But who really wins by us burying our heads and not looking up? Who wins by keeping us asleep? Keeping us ignoarant? Supressing that anger, that disgust?

There are people afraid that society will wake up.

Afraid that society will go off their meds. Their televisions. Their drugs. Their beer. Their sport. That we'll wake up. And that, when we do, we're going to be angry. Really angry. Because we have every reason to be.

But here's the thing - those things that make us angry? We'll be able to do something about them. We'll be able to look at something, think that pisses me off, I'm going to make it better and then actually act on it. Make a difference. You can't act on anything while going about your 'normal life' because that living that life means shutting out all of that crap in the world. Pretending it doesn't exist.

Which is better - living a happy life pretending that everything is fine when it's not, or realising the world is full of shit, being angry about it and working to change it? If more people took the time to get angry, perhaps there would be less to be angry about.

Or maybe we'd just piss each other off. Nothing worse than a room full of angry people.

I'm wishing for a better world.