Gabor Mate

"If you look at the emotional circuitry of the brain we're wired for anger, all mammals are wired for anger because anger is a boundary defense. When two animals enter each other's space they don't have to fight because the anger display will actually protect them from having to fight very often so anger is a boundary defense. There's such a thing as healthy anger and it doesn't need to be transformed. In fact the suppression of healthy anger, which happens to a lot of people growing up in ordinary homes, is a risk factor for mental illness and physical illness, autoimmune disease and so on because mind and body are inseparable and anger is a boundary defense, so is the immune system. 

When you repress healthy anger you're also messing with your immune system. I mean, it's not that simple, I could go into great detail but that's how it works, healthy anger is important, healthy anger simply maintains a bond and says: no you can't do this to me. It's essential on the political level because on a political level things are being done to people all the time. There's unhealthy anger which is unbridled rage that takes over the brain and you actually lose control and I've experienced that in my life, it's not healthy for me or anybody else around me. We have to make a distinction between three manifestations of anger there is the healthy anger of: no more, you will not do this to me both on individual and the political level. There's the repression of anger which undermines physiological health and it enables political control and then there is rage where suppressed anger just breaks out of you and that's damaging to you and everybody else as well.

When it comes to resistance - resistance is a form of healthy anger, it says no you will not do this to me and furthermore resistance on a political level is breaking out of the individualistic isolated mindset that capitalism imposes on people. Resistance and activism says that I'm not suffering alone, my suffering is part of a larger suffering and to break out of it I have to join with other human beings. And actually when you look at how human beings evolved it was not as the individualistic isolated competitive creatures against one another but as communal creatures. We lived for hundreds of thousands of years as communal creatures and activism on the political level restores that communalism of belonging to something greater which immediately gives you more meaning in life''.

Gabor Mate