Tag Archives: constructive force

The world is simultaneously infinitely horrible and infinitely wonderful

The world is simultaneously infinitely horrible and infinitely wonderful – a short quote to promote this great online book on “Trauma and nonviolent social change” – power up “power-under.

Oppression is a social toxin which, through the mechanism of trauma, literally makes people sick. It is a sickness that causes massive personal suffering, and when left to its own devices it is self-perpetuating and severely impedes efforts to achieve social change. We need to understand how groups of people who have been traumatized by oppression can harness our traumatic experience in ways which enable us to build effective social change organizations and movements. We particularly need to find ways to transform traumatic rage into a constructive force – one which can serve both individual recovery and societal transformation.
I will propose the concept of constructive rage as a framework for addressing this challenge. I attempt in this chapter to present strategies for how to contain the destructive potentials of traumatic experience and power-under, and how to harness the power of traumatic rage as a force for liberation.