n: I fail to see how directing my anger inward is going to change anything?[/quote]
M: I can understand that. There is a paradox at the core of human nature, the lack of understanding of which creates misunderstandings.
Simply put we were put down as children and made to feel worthless. Nobody can survive with those feelings conscious all the time. Our memories were repressed and forgotten, pushed out of conscious awareness. But the hate that was directed at us, we internalized. We hate ourselves. That hate can only be allowed to express itself now in the form of projection onto others. We are deeply angry at ourselves but we are only conscious of, only permit ourselves to feel that rage externally.
That anger can come out, as I suggested, in the nutty opinions expressed in this thread, three strikes for corporations etc. One can be seduced by such nonsense much more easily if one is under the delusion that what angers us is out there rather than old wounds. The point of self awareness is to free us from the insanity of reactive unconsciousness. If you know you feel worthless and attack anything that actually suggests that to you, you will only be a robot, a mechanical anger machine.
But if you know you feel worthless and anybody who tells you that will set off that rage, when it is set off you have an option. You can react like a fool and or see that the attack simply stimulated feelings you already have and to which, since you already feel them, you needn't defend yourself against them.
Consciousness brings choice. Also, if you have a therapeutic situation you can go into, you have an opportunity to actually see where those feeling lead and where they may have come from.
Finally, if and when you step off this hideous wheel of karma, you can actually do something to redress things that piss you off, things that may actually be real evils. If you can keep your own madness out of your reactions you can maybe do something sane, like apply pressure on your elected officials to start demanding that white crime get a just sentences. Politicians respond to pressure when that pressure threatens their jobs, no?