Leonard Cohen on Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance – The Marginalian

One of the most common and debilitating situations is to react with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political life.

We live in a time of extraordinary helplessness and uncertainty, which affects all aspects of our lives, and in such times another mentality is to yearn for an authority figure who sells certainty, saying that the fist is a helpful hand. It is a human impulse that is touching, important and comforting – children turn to a parent to relieve the frustrations and uncertainties of a world they do not yet understand and cannot bear. It is also a dangerous impulse, because it erupts under every war and every reign of terror in the history of the world.

Leonard Cohen (September 21, 1934–November 7, 2016), who thought deeply and passionately about the cracks of democracy and its emancipation, shines a side light on this eternal challenge of the human spirit in several parts found in his book. A Book of Longing (public library) – a collection of poems, drawings, and prose meditations composed during the five years he spent living in a Zen monastery.

In a timeless passage that now reads prophetically, he writes:

We are entering a period of confusion, a curious moment when people find light in the midst of despair, and vertigo at the height of their hopes. It's religious time again, and here's the danger. People will want to listen to the voice of the Authority, and many of the strange things that make up what the Authority is will appear in every mind… The public's longing for Regulation will invite many stubborn and uncompromising people to enforce it. The plight of the zoo will fall upon the community.

In such moments, he continues to be close, love – that which is closest and most internal to human activities, that highest tool to increase the light between us and illuminate the world – is an act of courage and resistance.

Cohen takes up the topic of what resistance really means in another fragment of the book – a poem entitled “SOS 1995,” which is a hymn for all times, a lifeline for all times of helplessness and uncertainty, personal or political, and a warning parable about the theater of authority, about the value of surrendering to its false comfort. You write:

Take a long time with your anger,
sleepy head.
Don't waste it with riots.
Don't mix it up with ideas.
The devil won't let me speak,
you will only allow me
that you are a slave,
Your misery is a deliberate policy
to those among whom you suffer,
and who is supported
unfortunately for you.
Cruelty that exists,
internal defects here –
Happy with a better deal?
You are pressed down.
You are raised by pain.
Satan binds my tongue.
I'm talking to you,
“the friend of my written life.”
You have been defeated by them
those who know how to conquer the invincible.
The curtains go very well,
lace curtains others
old sweet intrigue:
Satan tempts me
to turn your back on you.

So I have to say it right away:
Anyone in your life,
those who hurt you,
those who help you;
those you know
and strangers –
let them go out,
help them separate.
He is listening to Radio Resistance.

Complete with Thich Nhat Hanh's poetic antidote to anger and Erich Fromm's psychological antidote to helplessness and confusion, then revisit Leonard Cohen's constitution of the inner world and what makes a saint.