I had a girl say to me once, "Outrage is not a bad emotion." She and her colleagues believed that a person was allowed to demonstrate their anger at will - in other words to rant and rave and bully in order to get their way, to solve things by exhibiting bad temper.
A recent episode on a cable "news" show showed two normally congenial people - and friends - really going at each other in order to "defend" their views. This was considered "good television", as much as over-dramatic acting is known as "good theatre".
Let's get something straight here. Hate is learned. Hate is a bad habit. Using argument and temper to try to overwhelm your opposition is playing into their hands. No one wins in that scenario.
One philosopher said that you do not shovel out the darkness, you simply turn on a light - meaning that hate only exists in the absence of love, of appreciation.
The argument then goes, that if the sun burnt out, then darkness would indeed cover all. However, my friend, why is it easier to make a child laugh than to make it cry? Why do we all rush to find what's wrong when that baby does start crying?
Why do we remember - and seek to retell - a truly funny story?
You have to learn hate in order to maintain it in your life. You have to practice it. It is too easy to fall into a bad temper because someone set this as an example to you. It is too easy to simply cry and carry on because you learned this got attention when you wet yourself as a baby.
We are not babies. We are responsible for the effects we create around us. There is no mother-figure which goes through our lives cleaning up our messes, wiping our nose (or butt) and generally fixing things for us.
We have to lie in the bed we made, strange politicians and all.
Our life, and the society around us, is of our choosing and our habitual wont.
If you don't like being told bad news, quit hanging around those people. Or turn off the "news". And probably keep the TV off entirely, unless you are watching comedic DVD's.
You can choose to have good in your life, you can choose to live with love.
On the farm, in Nature, one is taught this constantly. If you "train" a dog with beatings, they become very wary of you - something that isn't easily overcome. Dogs, as pets, instinctively seek your love. They want food, but this is an extension of the love you show for them. Many dogs will die of hunger rather than leave your side.
I've proved this to myself in raising all sorts of domesticated and wild animals. While the instincts may be savage, they constantly exhibit their preference for love over viciousness.
All negative thought is conquered through applying love - and its variant, understanding.
Those who seek a world where there is definable black and white, evil and good - they live in a constant world of struggle. Evil only exists in the absence of Good. You have to work at casting good out in order for evil to continue.
Most people abide by the laws. Laws are actually created in order to keep criminal behaviour in check. They are not created to "idiot-proof" society, to make it safe for the stupidest of us. Given a model world, people would live together peaceably and by common sense would co-exist happily. The first law had to be written down when some individual wouldn't obey common sense - or thought they could "get away" by violating that custom (which was built on common sense). And so penalties had to be created to out-weigh "breaking" that custom.
Practically, you don't ever "break" a custom. What you say or do to another comes back to you, sooner or later. (The Golden Rule cuts both ways.) It is arguable that locking up a person is humane. I've heard the Quakers were the first to put a person into solitary confinement, his only companion a Bible. The Quakers themselves would relent after awhile, since so many went insane from too long of this.
If the natural law says that you will get as you give, then all a prison does is to deny fate it's chance to rectify things. Or does it? Why do prisoners seldom improve - why are there such stories of violence in prison?
Where people are improving in prisons is through education. Give them books which enable them to improve their lives, to correct their poor decisions in the past, to straighten out their logic errors which then became habit.
One basic therapy of the ancient Polynesian belief-system Huna was to first forgive yourself. The rationale is that the only reason you continued to "feel bad" about something you did is that you hadn't let go of that action - that your subconscious kept bringing this up to you as there was some lesson you hadn't learned yet. And so you were "haunted" by something you considered a mis-deed in your past.
And that is the crux behind Easter, and the whole Christian religion - that you can forgive yourself, that you don't have to live with your sins for the rest of your life.
The bottom line is that by practicing feeling good, behaving responsibly, you can change your life and develop the good habits which will bring all manner of success, wealth, good health, and happiness toward you for the rest of your life.
Anger, temper, cursing - all these are habits which can be changed. The difference between a sunny and surly disposition is a continual choice. Optimists are that way by choice - they've observed that looking for the bright side is an easier route, as well as being more profitable.
All you have to do is start today. Start smiling. Soon you'll find a reason to smile, even to laugh at the world around you. Clean up your room, your cubicle, your world - put order into things. People will want to be with you as you are putting light into their lives.
Norman Vincent Peale, William James, Dale Carnegie - all these and more philosophers said that your attitudes, your emotions are completely under your own control. You only have to act happy to become happy, act courageous and become courageous.
"As the twig is bent, so grows the tree." Our past thoughts have determined our present habitual state of mind. And the twig can be straightened and grow up tall and straight, with hardly a trace of the bend you earlier put into it.
You have a choice in life to constantly forward the hate around you - or let it go and seek the light.
My advice: turn off the TV, smile - and really enjoy the basic goodness you are.
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