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David Adams
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Posted: May 11 2013,12:43 |
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As I say in my book review of Lennie Yannielli's memoirs about his :against the Vietnam War, this is an enjoyable book for all CPNN readers. Each reader will find something different in the book, as it is told very honestly with a "down to earth" style.
Personally, I was interested in a particular aspect of the book: to what extent was Lennie's anger against the injustice of the war an important factor in his psychological development as a peace activist?
This interests me especially because I wrote a psychology book some years ago about the stages of consciousness development in peace activists, using autobiographies of great peace activists like Martin Luther King, Eugene Victor Debs, Nelson Mandela, etc. I found that most of them described how their anger mounted against injustice to the point that they had to take their first anti-war action.
In Lennie's book, there are abundant references to the theme of anger as a motivational force for action. Here are some of them.
When he was called to appear before his draft board: "What they got from me was not only my indignation. It was the wrath of my generation."
When he learned that the US had just killed thousands of Vietnamese civilians by "carpet-bombing": " I could feel an extra dose of acid trickling in my stomach."
When looking at a photo of a mother fleeing the flames of war with her babies: "Every time I gaze upon that picture, it gets my juices flowing. It speaks to me. Do something. Write. Get off your rear end. Help explain the causes of war to young people."
With retrospect about why he and others had to take action: "Inaction was antithetical to the times, especially for young adults. . . There was much churning in our stomachs and in our minds. To have our daily lives so out of sync with our thoughts and convictions would have been intolerable. Such dishonesty became unthinkable and undoable. . . We were constantly in battle, so to speak. . . A friend, Merrilee Milstein, said it succinctly. The challenge in organizing is to keep a healthy outrage at injustice while maintaining an inner peace."
In the conclusion of my book, Psychology for Peace Activists , I state that a new psychology is needed. "Many see the rise in anger as a sign for despair, but the new psychology will see it as a force to be harnessed. However, anger is not only ignored as a positive force, but it is actively discouraged by contemporary American psychology textbooks. It is treated as if it were pathology and disease, and it is blamed for the ills of society including war and crime, while the true economic and political roots of these phenomena are hardly discussed.
"It will not be enough for the new psychology to "authorize" anger. Anger is a skill that needs to be harnessed so that it is used constructively rather than destructively (footnote 14). When I say that "anger is the personal fuel in the social motor that resolves the institutional contradictions of history," I imply that anger is useless unless it is put into the "social motor." The new psychology must help engage people in today's "social motor," which is the peace movement, teaching them that their anger takes on constructive value within that social context. At the same time, it must guard against the harnessing of anger into reactionary social movements such as fascism."
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