Mary Harrington recently wrote about the newest offerings of mass-marketed therapy culture, something called “rage rituals.” For women with enough cash to burn, pampering retreats are out, and guided struggle-sessions are in. Rage rituals include traveling to a remote location, summoning up the combined anger of your life’s every injustice, and then screaming and beating the ground with rocks and sticks. Purging yourself of this “sacred rage” allows you, in this telling, to pave “the path for personal and collective paradise.”
However extreme this example may be, the idea that the path to personal and collective happiness travels through the valley of righteous anger is pervasive and surprisingly bipartisan — becoming an unspoken axiom of both social justice activism on the left and populism on the right. While many of the goals and grievances to which these movements give voice are rooted in painful realities, practical solutions are too often drowned out by the steady dictum that someone, or something, is maliciously holding you back.
As David Brooks summarized earlier this year, it’s the “belief that society is broken, systems are rotten, the game is rigged, injustice prevails, the venal elites are out to get us.” Which systems are rotten, and who stands on the receiving end of elite injustice, is a red-or-blue question. Do we storm the capitol or create “encampments” on the quad?
Whereas anger in the political arena tends to be explosive, there are other slow-burning resentments fixated on others’ expectations. For instance, we can witness one kind of self-care ethos, in which women are depicted as perpetually at odds with people and communities seeking to deprive them of their time, autonomy and ambitions.
Social media is awash in this kind of tough-girl talk, where “you aren’t responsible for” other people’s feelings and “no one has a right to” impose their needs or desires on you. One parody account jokes, “Stop breaking yourself into bite-sized pieces for people, they can choke on your personality.”
According to this ethos, the suggested remedy is vigilance and assertive boundary-ing. While some boundary setting is healthy, the tenor of these messages suggests that being strong means being defensive and implacable, as evidenced by comments sections filled with digital versions of “rage rituals.”
In other words, in order to do some good in the world and increase your own happiness, you first have to get mad. In this vein, outrage is not only cathartic and empowering, it defines the true believer in a cause. Righteous anger is the mark of conviction and the proof of injustice, whether that means screaming at trees or looting a small business.
Perhaps that’s why it’s so easy to overlook messages like the one recently given by Latter-day Saint Relief Society General President Camille Johnson at BYU Women’s Conference. President Johnson’s message left no clear enemy to fight nor did it rally to a crusade against some external obstacle to power or peace.
In her talk “Lessons Learned in Inviting Christ to Author My Story,” she describes a fulfilling life as a mother, wife and attorney, anchored and ordered by the priorities of her faith. She declares it “a glorious day” to be a woman in the church, despite the “uphill climb” of the very real challenges we face in mortality, sometimes prolonged over “days, months and years.” She shares how she learned to balance multiple roles, such as mother and attorney, by trusting in God.
We’ve become so accustomed to the steady downpour of indignation and woundedness from talking heads and influencers that it’s hard to believe someone so un-aggrieved could really “get it.” Brooks puts it this way: “If your analysis is not apocalyptic, you’re naive, lacking in moral urgency, complicit with the status quo.”
In my own battles with feelings of despair or unfairness, I’ve wondered at times myself whether the optimism of church leaders was just the gloss of a life not beset by real tragedy or injustice. It’s tempting to view cynicism and defeatism as the bona fides of someone who understands real suffering, and to dismiss the positivity in messages like President Johnson’s as naive pollyannaism.
But that assessment is difficult to square with the reality of church leaders who have lost children, endured prolonged and painful illnesses, faced racial injustice or fled war-torn countries as refugees. Taking this into account, we encounter a more nuanced reality: that their buoyancy in spite of real suffering is part of the message. Likewise, their “peaceable walk” despite the contemptuous and aggrieved nature of public discourse is the evidence of their connection to Christ and the kind of power He gives. From this unique vantage point, bitterness and anger is not proof of suffering as much as proof that you haven’t yet learned where to find relief.
President Johnson certainly strikes me as someone who knows how to find relief.
She readily acknowledges the myriad responsibilities women face and the attendant difficulties of juggling them, sharing at the conference: “Maybe you are pursuing your education, bearing children, nurturing and caring for children, earning a living, serving in the church or caring for your parents. Maybe you are doing many of those things at the same time. I did.”
President Johnson candidly observes that life is not easy. “This isn’t about comfort,” she stresses, “it’s about growth, change, embracing our divine nature and becoming like the Savior.” Her reluctance to dwell on grievances doesn’t strike me as glib denialism, but a determination to fulfill her responsibility to point people to the source of peace, if they will have it, and to let Him prevail in the details of their lives.
Johnson’s story is not about what others take from us, but what God gives. Her story is not about overcoming her enemies, but about serving those in need. Her story is not about wresting power from oppressors, but rather about being empowered through seeking God’s will first. And through that same relationship finding the strength to help others.
She demonstrates how to find happiness by describing how her faith in Christ gave her contentment amidst questions and trials and by speaking sincerely of love, meaning, mercy and miracles. But she also demonstrates by example, and that means bypassing the outrage.
In a media landscape where everyone seems to be reaching for the fire alarm, the mode of her message is as much an olive branch as the message itself. President Johnson knows a path to happiness that skips the valley of anger and its detours through cynicism, anger, bitterness and fear, because she is walking it.
When I listen to the story about life that informs President Johnson’s message, I don’t find myself with more enemies than when I started. Her story doesn’t have any use for fear, blame, cruelty or cynicism. In this story, even obstacles are opportunities as we draw grace and power through our covenantal connections to God and one another.
I am hard pressed to think of a message that is more needed today.