{"id":5493,"date":"2026-06-04T13:26:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T13:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrateidea.com\/?p=5493"},"modified":"2026-06-04T13:26:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T13:26:16","slug":"leonard-cohen-on-the-antidote-to-anger-and-the-meaning-of-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrateidea.com\/?p=5493","title":{"rendered":"Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Leonard<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. <\/p>\n

We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in such times another reflex is the longing for an authority figure selling certainty, claiming the fist to be a helping hand. It is a touchingly human impulse, primal and pacifying — children turn to the parent to remove the overwhelm and uncertainty of a world they don’t yet understand and cannot carry. It is also a dangerous impulse, for it pulsates beneath every war and every reign of terror in the history of the world. <\/p>\n

Leonard Cohen<\/a> (September 21, 1934–November 7, 2016), who thought deeply and passionately<\/a> about the cracks in democracy and its redemptions, shines a sidewise gleam on this eternal challenge of the human spirit in a couple of pieces found in his Book of Longing<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) — the collection of poems, drawings, and prose meditations composed over the course of the five years he spent living in a Zen monastery.<\/p>\n

\"Leonard<\/figure>\n
Leonard Cohen (courtesy of Leonard Cohen Family Trust)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a timeless passage that now reads prophetic, he writes:<\/p>\n

\n

We are moving into a period of bewilderment, a curious moment in which people find light in the midst of despair, and vertigo at the summit of their hopes. It is a religious moment also, and here is the danger. People will want to obey the voice of Authority, and many strange constructs of just what Authority is will arise in every mind… The public yearning for Order will invite many stubborn uncompromising persons to impose it. The sadness of the zoo will fall upon society.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In such periods, he goes on to intimate, love — that most intimate and inward of human labors, that supreme instrument for magnifying the light between us<\/a> and lighting up the world — is an act of courage and resistance.<\/p>\n

Cohen takes up the subject of what resistance really means in another piece from the book — a poem titled “SOS 1995,†that is really an anthem for all times, a lifeline for all periods of helplessness and uncertainty, personal or political, and a cautionary parable about the theater of authority, about the price of giving oneself over to its false comfort. He writes:<\/p>\n

\"Leonard<\/figure>\n
\n

Take a long time with your anger,
\nsleepyhead.
\nDon’t waste it in riots.
\nDon’t tangle it with ideas.
\nThe Devil won’t let me speak,
\nwill only let me hint
\nthat you are a slave,
\nyour misery a deliberate policy
\nof those in whose thrall you suffer,
\nand who are sustained
\nby your misfortune.
\nThe atrocities over there,
\nthe interior paralysis over here —
\nPleased with the better deal?
\nYou are clamped down.
\nYou are being bred for pain.
\nThe Devil ties my tongue.
\nI’m speaking to you,
\n“friend of my scribbled life.â€
\nYou have been conquered by those
\nwho know how to conquer invincibly.
\nThe curtains move so beautifully,
\nlace curtains of some
\nsweet old intrigue:
\nthe Devil tempting me
\nto turn away from alarming you.<\/p>\n

So I must say it quickly:
\nWhoever is in your life,
\nthose who harm you,
\nthose who help you;
\nthose whom you know
\nand those whom you do not know —
\nlet them off the hook,
\nhelp them off the hook.
\nYou are listening to Radio Resistance.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Complement with Thich Nhat Hanh’s poetic antidote to anger<\/a> and Erich Fromm’s psychological antidote to helplessness and disorientation<\/a>, then revisit Leonard Cohen on the constitution of the inner country<\/a> and what makes a saint<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in such times another reflex is the longing for an authority figure selling certainty, claiming the fist to be a helping hand. It is a touchingly human impulse, primal and pacifying — children turn to the parent to remove the overwhelm…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":5492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[386],"tags":[405,404,391,403,377,392,331,402,62,329],"class_list":["post-5493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-brainstorming","tag-anger","tag-antidote","tag-brainstorming","tag-cohen","tag-creativity","tag-ideation","tag-innovation","tag-leonard","tag-meaning","tag-resistance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrateidea.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrateidea.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrateidea.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrateidea.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrateidea.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrateidea.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrateidea.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrateidea.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrateidea.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrateidea.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}