<p>Prompt:
When we witness an injustice or the violation of a principle, anger can give us the courage to act, not react. Productive anger can be a guide to appropriate, powerful, and healing action. All the political and social movements of our time are rooted in anger, including the struggle against apartheid, the fight for civil rights, and many environmental and animal protection initiatives. The founders of these movements experienced healthy anger against conditions they considered to be unjust and unacceptable.
Adapted from The Ultimate Guide to Transforming Anger,
by JANE MIDDELTON-MOZ, LISA TENER, AND PEACO TODD
(Health Communications, 2004)
Assignment:
Can anger be used for positive results? Organize and compose an essay that establishes your viewpoint on this issue. Substantiate it with examples and evidence derived from what you have read, studied, experienced, or observed.</p>
<p>Essay: </p>
<p>Anger is a common emotional comeback to any violation or abuse of our principles and thinking. Whenever something does not conform to our thoughts or ideas, or mentally hurts us, we resort to being angry. However, by the Kholberg's Stages of Moral Development, doing actions out of anger is very low on the scale and is used earlier on in life when our thinking is not yet fully developed. As can be seen by the history of racial abuse that African Americans suffered and the dilemma of a soldier who fought in the Civil War, being angry could be seen as justifiable. However, both Martin Luther King in the Civil Rights Movement and Henry Felming from The Red Badge of Courage show that anger cannot really be used for positive results and peaceful introspection about the dilemma at hand generally results in a better outcome. </p>
<p>Martin Luther King Jr. was the king of the Civil Rights Movement in America. He organized rallies and gave speeches on how the African Americans should have equal rights as any other common American man. He based his theory of nonviolence off of Mohandas Gandhi who also staged a similar revolt in India against the British. Both these humans tried to tackle a colossal problem that had lasted for centuries using nonviolence and peace to try and make the world understand their viewpoints. Martin Luther King even went to jail many times and had just a good of reason as any to start violent protests like a more vicious party, the Black Panthers, that was started by Mohammed Ali at the same time. Despite the perfectly good reason to become angry, King sustained heavy verbal abuse from the public but still peacefully continued on giving his speeches and trying to inform the government and the public of the U.S.A. that African Americans should have the same rights as any other human being. </p>
<p>In the book The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, a homesick American civil war soldier is depicted fighting for the Union. His main fear is that he will end up getting scared and then run away from the battlefield in the heat of a battle. Although in the first battle, he does feel the need to break the Union line and follow his inner instinct to flee, in latter battles he uses anger to overcome his emotions. At one time he is found shouting verbose insults at a non-existent enemy after their little unit has won a skirmish because of the heat of the battle. However, this anger although appropriate at the time was very harmful to the United States of America in the long run. Not only did anger cause the whole country to be split in half but it also individually separated families and pitted brothers against brothers all for the cause. This cause was at first preserving the way of life in the North and the South but later turned to slavery. This was a good reason for being upset or angry, but instead if the general populous of America had thought things over with a cooler head, Bleeding Kansas would not have turned into a Bleeding America. </p>
<p>The book The Red Badge of Courage and the real life incidents of Martin Luther King show clearly that although sometimes anger can seem justifiable, it is always better in the long run to think things through peacefully. By being angry, humans usually intend to hurt others but most often end up hurting themselves as well. The Black Panthers in the Civil Rights Movement got a bad name for themselves for their violent threats and rebuilding U.S.A. after the Civil War was a very challenging task. Therefore, it is always better to envision things through with a calm demeanor instead of using anger to fuel the outcome.</p>