The emotion standing in the way of peace

The war between Hamas and Israel, with its carnage and hostage taking, has evoked profound, even primal feelings. We could call it accelerated action: a rapid journey from discovery to reaction, from shock to horror, from judgment to anger, from fury to rage.

There’s a liminal moment between anger and rage. Anger can be a constructive emotion, stirring us from distraction or self-absorption to an acute awareness of wrongdoing, leading us to a process of restitution or reparation. When directed away from our own pride and toward another’s well-being, anger can be a means to a healthy end, like a ladder we can kick away once we’re truly engaged in seeking the good.

But rage is something different. Rage names the moment we lose all rational faculties. The red mist descends. We find ourselves incandescent, untrammeled by any restraint. We lose sight of the original wrong done in our rampaging quest for destruction and vengeance. In our rage we tell ourselves we can and should destroy all in our path, for only then can justice be restored and fury satisfied.