The power of sacred anger and hard love

[...] As it stands, all of us are victims of an extremely unhealthy culture. In a culture of conquer-control-consume-repeat we are endlessly conquered, controlled, consumed and forced into repeating and facilitating this diabolical process to no end. We’re like a bunch of spoiled-rotten, whiny children, taking our vexations out on each other and the environment when we should be digging down deep and transforming our comfortable inertia into courageous action. The question is: how do we break the cycle. One answer may be through sacred anger and hard love.

Here’s the thing: life was not meant to be comfortable. Sure, discover comfort where you can, but you’ll never grow if you don’t get uncomfortable every once in a while. Just like our culture will forever stagnate and degenerate if we don’t challenge how comfortable and contained it keeps us, especially when those comforts are systematically destroying the world. [...]

In our culture, anger is seen as politically incorrect. But deep, focused anger can be a boon of sacred energy if we can learn to use it wisely [...] Such anger is sacred precisely because it instills in us an unstoppable courage.

We should not be expected to remain calm and happy in the face of ecocide, rape, misogyny, slavery, and greed. [...] We should be obliged to help victims become warriors, screaming from the rooftops, “Take the Goddamned red pill for Christ’s sake! Become a freedom unto yourself! You are your own hero! Allow yourself to be worthy. Allow yourself to be extraordinary! Get angry! Get really pissed off! Then grab the bull by the horns and pin that bastard to the ground!” Like Gloria Steinem said, “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.”

But when push comes to shove, we are just too damn comfortable to care, and too damn polite to speak out. 

We need to get uncomfortable. We need to rediscover sacred ruthlessness, divine anger, and holy rage, leaving nothing to the inertia of chance and everything to the responsibility of choice; otherwise we fail to be responsible with our power. We cannot consume our way to sustainability. We cannot pillage our way to balance with nature. We cannot lie, cheat, steal, or trap our way to freedom. We cannot tyrannize our way to equal rights. Something has to give. And that something is our overindulgent comfort and complacent inertia.

[...] Hard love is ruthless love. It teaches even as it destroys outdated worldviews. It educates even as it shatters obsolete mental paradigms. It tutors even as it crushes parochial perspectives...

Gary Z McGee