Morning Update: Rage in the machine

Good morning. Rage is the new Canadian mood. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, if we know what to do with it. More on why we must carefully tend the fire in our bellies, along with Mark Carney’s energy ideas and Ukraine’s energy reality.

Today’s headlines

• Canada’s aviation safety investigator has released a preliminary report about the Delta plane crash
• The discovery of a secret list of suspected Nazi war criminals in Canada is raising questions about government secrecy
• Are U.S. tariffs a threat to Canadian health sciences innovators – or a golden opportunity?

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Canadian mood

The art of anger

Hi, I’m Erin Anderssen, The Globe’s happiness reporter, but today I’m talking about rage.

You might be feeling it yourself at this moment: Canadians are angry, and we’re not sorry. You only have to spend a few minutes with your Facebook friends to feel the heat of outrage about some American politician’s mean-spirited swipe at Canada’s sovereignty/limited value/lack of thankfulness. The trade war – with its next major skirmish slated for April 2 - has taken the nice out of Canada and left a fuming sense of betrayal in its place.

Anger gets a bad rap. It’s more often associated with violence and aggression than it is for solving problems. According to recent science, chronic anger harms our health. Philosophers and theologians have been debating the utility of anger for thousands for years.

But we aren’t always talking about the same anger, as I learned while researching and conducting interviews on humanity’s most troublesome emotion. There’s the anger distorted by conspiracy that seeks revenge and retribution, often because of a threat to an individual’s status.

And then there’s the anger that aims to correct a larger injustice, such as an attack on freedom and democracy. And in the latter case, it’s good that we get mad. Otherwise, the risk is that we disengage, as Canadian research has found.

This story also felt personal for me.

I’d been stewing in my own anger while the rhetoric about our Prime Minister being a “governor” piled up. But my tariff rage definitely spiked while tying a Canadian flag to my front porch on Flag Day. I realized this was the first time in three years that I’d felt comfortable flying my own country’s flag in Ottawa, knowing I would not be associated with the convoy that closed the capital’s downtown for weeks in early 2022, ostensibly to protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

I’m a military brat, and the Maple Leaf has been a source of pride all my life – despite Canada’s flaws, many of which I have highlighted and investigated during my career.

Yet, proudly hanging the red and white last month felt more like Take Back the Flag Day. Part of what made me angry was why we ever allowed one group to co-opt the flag in the first place. And is this how you might lose a country: slowly, imperceptibly and apathetically until one day you’re just not hanging the flag any more?

To seek answers on how to sustain and manage this political anger, I found wisdom in the words of historic and contemporary Black activists and philosophers, such as Audre Lorde, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Myisha Cherry, who has written an eloquent book exploring anger’s role in fighting racism, called The Case for Rage.

I am mindful not to conflate the struggle for safety and equality with the early days of a trade war: We are choosing Canadian ketchup and not taking a U.S. vacation; civil rights activists were being beaten up and killed. But I wanted to understand how others have used political anger, and Ms. Lorde and Dr. King, who is the subject of the new book The Emotions of Nonviolence by Queen’s University philosopher Meena Krishnamurthy, had much to say.

As Dr. King argues, productive anger that seeks justice for everyone should simmer along with empathy, kindness and purposeful action. Sitting with what he called “righteous indignation” can clarify our values, and what it means to be Canadian. If I feel so angry about threats to my country’s existence, how can my choices now safeguard those values for the future?

Anger can be thoughtful and truth-seeking, but also manufactured and manipulated. Angry voters, studies show, are loyal voters. Just give them a common enemy, real or not. A clever politician can push the anger button with fear of change, threatened status or strange danger, and we’re breathing fire.

One way to tell the difference, philosophers such as Dr. Cherry say, is to consider what’s driving your anger. Do you want vengeance for yourself on another person? (If so, that’s not anger the world needs.) Or do you want to change the system, gain recognition for an injustice or fix a larger wrong? Then you’re on the right anger track.

Sustaining the anger we feel now for the long term is the challenge. We will, as Brett Ford, an anger researcher at the University of Toronto advised, need to rest. Anger is a hard workout.

We should stay focused, as I learned from Dr. Cherry, on the goals we want our anger to accomplish, and quell rage that becomes self-serving and bitter. Don’t police the anger of others, Ms. Lorde cautioned. Showing rage in general is more risky for people with less power. (And in our current situation, buying expensive domestic products will also be harder for low-income Canadians.)

But perhaps most importantly, I learned to stop stewing alone. Productive anger needs community and allies to support shared action, to call us out when our anger becomes destructive and to keep us in the fight.

More than ever, we need to watch out for each other.

As Dr. Krishnamurthy told me, “There’s nothing wrong with anger. What matters is what you do with it.”

The Shot

“Someone has to be here, so we are here”

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After years of Russia’s attacks on Kyiv’s Soviet-era energy network, Ukrainians have had to get inventive to keep the lights on. Some are looking to solar panels as an example of how to become self-sufficient. Read more here.

The Wrap

What else we’re following

At home: Mark Carney is set to unveil a new approach for energy-infrastructure development at his inaugural meeting with provincial and territorial leaders today.

Abroad: At least 91 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in Israeli air strikes across Gaza yesterday, officials said, after Israel effectively abandoned the two-month ceasefire.

Tabled: Quebec is planning to expand the province’s ban on religious symbols to everyone who interacts with students.

Toppled: Finland was again ranked the happiest country, while Canada tumbled three spots in the World Happiness Report.