Reflections

Living in Guatemala - an often troubled land of volcanoes - I have developed respect for the most destructive energies in nature and in human beings.

The growling menace of Volcan De Fuego and the currently sleeping giants of Agua and Acatenango volcanoes form three points of a triangle of angry destructiveness that may one day destroy my home - the jewel of colonial architecture that is Antigua.

These three cantankerous fire gods have a record of city-killing. A 1541 mudslide from Volcan de Agua destroyed what was the previous Spanish capital of Guatemala (and which is now a small town called Ciudad Vieja). Having claimed the scalp of one capital city, nature allowed the most beautiful and powerful city in Central America to be built nearby as a replacement - before destroying what is now known as Antigua (the “old” capital) in the cataclysmic earthquake of 1773.

Yet the devastating rages periodically unleashed by nature can create as well as destroy - spectacular beauty and fertile soil being other legacies of this region’s violent natural energies. A similar paradox applies to sudden expressions of human emotional plate tectonics, in particular the instinctive threat response that we know as anger. Our most violent emotion has a terrifying capacity to destroy what is precious and beautiful. Yet it is also possible to use the painful legacy of this explosive energy to carve pathways to the maximum version of ourselves.

The analogous attributes of natural and human destructive power is captured both in our language - “volcanic rages” and “furious eruptions” - and in our stories. The Guarani Indians’ creation myth about the Iguacu Falls that span Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay is an example of such a story. The Guarani explain the origin of one of our planet’s most beautiful treasures as a violent act of rage by the river god M’Boi, a giant serpent made vengeful after being denied a blood sacrifice. As a metaphor it captures the essential truth that something on the scale of Iguacu can only be created out of large scale destruction - the geological force behind the falls being a series of enormous lava eruptions.

Using a related metaphor, Nietzsche called the “frightful energies” we are capable of as the “architects and road-makers of humanity.” Anger is often the only force powerful enough to carve our life’s course through some otherwise impenetrable barriers. Without anger we are destined to merely tread the paths that others have created for us.

Yet if anger is the dynamite we carry with us on our life’s journey, it therefore contains an explosive ability to destroy ourselves and those around us. The savage destructiveness, pointless waste and needless pain caused when anger is expressed as violence is all too familiar a tale in the recent history of Guatemala. Yet conversely zen-like calm is hardly an appropriate response to the political and economic injustices that blight the lives of Latin America’s poor, disabled and victims of crime. Some change requires us to find and use the fires within us.

People take differing paths to how they engage with their anger. Lago De Atitlan in Guatemala is regarded by many as one of the most beautiful and tranquil places on Earth. It is therefore no surprise that it has become a home to fluid communities of people seeking inner peace through strategies that range from yoga and meditation to consumption of large quantities of illicit drugs.

Viewed from one perspective these visitors to Atitlan are seeking to replicate the journey of the landscape they inhabit - formed through the most violent of natural energies, the lake and surrounding volcanoes now are at peace. Yet there is also a discordant note - for some of these seekers of calm, particularly those using narcotics as guides, their journey appears as escapism from, rather than engagement with, the violent energies of their being.

Young travelers in places like Atitlan remind me of their peers in Douglas Coupland’s Generation X. Chilling out far from home they perhaps find un-challenging, low stress work that pays them just enough to sustain long stays by the lake. Anger at the state of the world out-there can be safely expressed without having to contend with it. These protected periods of escape and ease probably form very beneficial time-outs in the short term. However, in these same lakeside refuges are the middle-aged counterparts of these young wanderers, still sheltering from conflict ten or twenty years after first finding their safe oases. One of the most depressing conversations I have overheard was on the shores of Atitlan between an aging hippy and a young acolyte, comparing notes on how wasted they had got the night before. There was a total disconnection between the life they were leading and a local natural heritage that had harnessed turbulent energies to create something beautiful.

For many the Holy Grail of self-knowledge is learning to understand and constructively use the powerful destructive energies within us. A friend recently told me that he considered one of the best elements of growing into his thirties was having a greater palette of emotions to draw on, with anger being perhaps the most helpful. I found this insight to be refreshing - generally we are afraid of anger, all too aware of what the philosopher Montaigne described as “the ugliness of this passion.” Yet this fear of anger can be lead to a damaging avoidance of dealing with it - through unhealthy obsessions, the surrender of our ambitions or, perhaps most tragically, Ned Flanders-esque blandness (the serial conflict-avoidance of one of The Simpson’s tragic heroes eventually causing a spectacular mental breakdown).

A real measure of personal growth should be that rather than retreat from our anger, we learn to understand it and construct something positive from it. Creating something beautiful from such a destructive energy is not easy - a bit like being asked to sculpt with dynamite. Yet some people manage it - most visibly in the arts, where anger can be a robust defense against terminal blandness. Performers such as the late Bill Hicks and Henry Rollins are known for inspiring comedy-laced sermons that are born of an anger that their audience can relate to - raging against stupidity, lack of artistic integrity and casual violence. As author Philip Roth says in The Counterlife, “people are unjust to anger, it can be enlivening and a lot of fun.”

We tend to get angry when something of what we most love and value - our life, our family, our most cherished beliefs - becomes wounded or threatened. The almond shaped parts of our brain called the amygdala represent the fear and anger centre of our being - dictating our most instinctive responses to perceived threats to what we value. The honest display of that response can reveal a lot about what we care for. Although anger is dangerous territory on which to build connections to other people, it can remind us of our shared sense of what we most love.

My own journey in Latin America has been partly dedicated to learning how to sculpt with dynamite. Seeking to understanding one’s internal fires whilst neither being consumed by them nor running from them is a journey as challenging as any expedition by land, air or sea. Confronting violent-transcendent paradoxes such as Iguacu, Atitlan or the currently erupting Pacaya Volcano are markers in both terrestrial and psychological journeys. Nature as ever, is a powerful role-model.