I was all prepared to go off and do a big thing on how important anger is, but then I remembered somebody else already wrote a nice bit on it. So allow me to post some choice quotes from How to Deprogram Your Own Mind (which is an amazingly worthwhile read). Number 6 on their list goes:

[O]ne of the commonest crippling stunts that cults or churches pull on people is demanding that they not feel their feelings. “You must only feel Eternal Bliss” or “You must only feel Serenity and Gratitude”.

He then illustrates it with a quote from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, one of the essential treatises of Alcoholics Anonymous.

It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also. But are there no exceptions to this rule? What about “justifiable” anger? If somebody cheats us, aren’t we entitled to be mad? Can’t we be properly angry with self-righteous folk? For us in A.A. these are dangerous exceptions. We have found that justified anger ought to be left to those better qualified to handle it.

I know the temptation here is to say that the people he’s writing for are alcoholics with a problem, and they shouldn’t let themselves get angry because they can’t control it. Certainly there is such a thing as going too far with anger, but to tell somebody they can’t feel a certain way is essentially to dehumanize them, I think. Anyway, the author of the Deprogram article goes on:

Likewise, some churches or cults will tell you that you shouldn’t feel horny, or find the opposite sex attractive, or think about sex with them. Nonsense. You brain is hardwired to think about it and want it — That’s what keeps the human race going. We would be extinct if we could be logical and rational about sex and having children. “Too much bother; a big hassle; too expensive…” But logic has nothing to do with it, and that’s why we are still here.

Another common crippling stunt that cults pull on their members is demanding that members stop thinking critically — stop what they call “having doubts”: “If you are really holy, then you won’t have any doubts.”

Nonsense. Normal, sane, healthy people have lots of doubts when con-men and phony holy men try to foist a stupid illogical hoax on them. Those doubts are your remaining sanity warning you that something sounds fishy.

Similarly, cults and other mind-manipulators will tell you that you cannot trust your own mind and your own thinking (so you should let them do your thinking for you). If you buy into that idea, it will really cripple you. You won’t be able to think anything without also thinking that it must be wrong, because you thought it. (But then the thought that your thinking is wrong should also be wrong… So your thinking must be right…)

We see this elaborate game foisted on people all the time. You take something that everybody does, that everybody essentially has to do, and you make it wrong. That way everybody is a criminal. Everybody is a failure. Everybody breaks one of the Ten Commandments occasionally. Everybody sins somehow. Everybody travels over the speed limit from time to time. If you keep someone in a perpetual state of guilt or doubt over their actions, then they will gladly accept reprimanding when you randomly catch them. They know they are wrong. They know they are a sinner.

While I’m not particularly into Satanism per se, I think one of their strongest arguments is their principle of indulgence rather than abstinence. This way, you throw off the control systems built around self-denial. Of course, I think complete indulgence is just as much of a trap as well. As is running around constantly angry at everybody and focusing on that only as an antidote to avoidance.