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Areas › Anger › Righteous anger and perfectionism
This is not a case for caring less about fairness. It is about telling apart an injustice you could act on from the general refusal of life to be tidy. One is worth your energy and the other will take all of it and hand nothing back. Choosing a single thing to actually work on often settles the rest, because the anger finally has somewhere to go.
Be a community that calls for what is good, urges what is right, and forbids what is wrong (Quran 3:104). Caring about how things should be is given a job here, and a shared one, rather than left as a private grievance.
آل عمران
وَلۡتَكُن مِّنكُمۡ أُمَّةࣱ يَدۡعُونَ إِلَى ٱلۡخَيۡرِ وَيَأۡمُرُونَ بِٱلۡمَعۡرُوفِ وَيَنۡهَوۡنَ عَنِ ٱلۡمُنكَرِۚ وَأُوْلَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلۡمُفۡلِحُونَ
Be a community that calls for what is good, urges what is right, and forbids what is wrong: those who do this are the successful ones
Qur’an 3:104read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In two studies of how people responded to a wrong they believed their own country had committed, anger predicted willingness to protest while shame predicted pulling away. Which feeling is in charge shapes whether outrage turns into anything at all. This was survey and experimental work on political attitudes, so it speaks to the direction the energy takes rather than to what will settle you personally.
Iyer A, Schmader T, Lickel B. (2007). Why individuals protest the perceived transgressions of their country: the role of anger, shame, and guilt.. Personality & social psychology bulletin doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Anger with a job to do stops circling.
There is a steadiness worth aiming for: hearing someone disagree with you without either going off at them or going quiet and small.
When someone is in full flood, leaving is allowed. Getting out of the way of a person who is past listening is a skill, not a defeat.
Certainty feels good. That sudden clean sense of knowing exactly who is in the wrong is part of what keeps anger coming back, so it is worth noticing as a pleasure rather than as proof.