4 ms·

There's no emotion we ought to think harder about than anger

60 points by privong 2y ago

mhertenberger 2y ago
Your article is insightful. Anger is not a solution. Yet, you write as an individual who has no idea about the actual motivations of the headline character you involve in this narrative. Mandela was a terrorist. Plain and simple. In his “struggle” he concocted plans to harm innocent individuals in bombings - what about their anger of their family members? In his career as a politician, he initiated a systemic destruction of society and order in South Africa, the effects and repercussions of which are in evidence today. What a lazy and convenient use of a figurehead you have chosen to make your points!
tibbar 2y ago
The article strongly equates anger with a desire for revenge. That's a bit confusing to me - for me, anger is just an emotion that's not particularly linked to any plan. Heck, I can even be angry at myself, in which case revenge doesn't even make sense. I think anger is most closely associated for me with "painful reflection on something that happened to me that felt unjust". As an aside, while being easily angered is not good, I also think it's equally bad ritually suppress anger, because (a) that takes a toll over time that you eventually won't be able to suppress and (b) if you don't provide "feedback" to whatever it is that's angering you, it will probably happen again.
- interroboink 2y ago
  Yours is a good point — and something that took me a long time to understand about some people I care about. Personally, my anger is usually "directed," though more in the sense of furiously/forcefully wanting to correct some perceived wrong, rather than revenge. The notion of "directionless anger" was kinda alien to my mind. But some people definitely have an "angry at the world" or "angry in general" feeling. And if you swoop in with a "let's fix the problem that's causing this" attitude, it may completely miss the mark for them. Ask me how I know (: For some people, a good outlet for anger is venting, and doing something is not helpful. And for others, it's the opposite. People are complicated. We use simplistic words like "anger" which mean different things to different people in different contexts, and misunderstandings ensue.
  - jorgesborges 2y ago
    > my anger is usually "directed," though more in the sense of furiously/forcefully wanting to correct some perceived wrong, rather than revenge. This is the exact definition of revenge. While revenge carries connotations that we tend to separate ourselves from today -- sounds too barbaric? -- it's fundamentally about justice, and as such is justified and even noble given the right context and expression.
    - interroboink 2y ago
      I suppose I lightly disagree with that. Revenge, to me, holds a significant connotation of "spite." I.e. making someone feel bad/hurt because they made you feel bad/hurt. It's about the hurt, as much as (or more than) correcting the situation. But words are sloppy, I totally get what you're saying too (:
      - jorgesborges 2y ago
        Interesting, yeah that makes sense to me too.
  - tibbar 2y ago
    Very interesting. I definitely feel like my anger is directed - I'm usually angry about something specific, and it would feel good if someone genuinely tried to help fix the problem - but I just don't think about revenge too much. I think it takes most of my energy to try to understand what happened and why, and I don't generally stay angry that long about specific events.
- sitkack 2y ago
  > can even be angry at myself, in which case revenge doesn't even make sense I have seen lots of people, myself included, where self revenge would make the most plausible explanation for behavior. I no longer see people as homogeneous or discrete. Anger serves a useful tool, but it can also be an extremely powerful way to manipulate and be manipulated.
  - tibbar 2y ago
    Fascinating, can you describe some of these cases? I suppose self-harm could fit this description, but let's say I'm angry at myself for making a bad decision that hurt someone else, what would revenge on myself look like? It would be hard to make things up to the victim by sabotaging myself.
    - sitkack 2y ago
      Bad self talk where one tears oneself down is a common one. There is also regressive punishment, in the case where someone else has been wronged, not writing the wrong and letting it linger is also a form of self harm. I now have the philosophy that if I were to see someone else treating someone the way one treats themselves, and they take note of it, then the internal behavior is not appropriate.
    - jononor 2y ago
      Denying oneself something nice/good (but unrelated). Or doing something that provokes a punishing response from someone/something else. Like picking a fight, or "failing" to pay bills, gambling. Neither will help a victim of course, but self-sabotage never help (almost by definition).
- claytongulick 2y ago
  The article states that Aristotle and many modern philosophers agree that a desire for payback is a fundamental part of anger. I questioned it too, thinking through a bunch of different scenarios. The biggest counter example that popped into my head was being angry at my kids for doing typical kid stuff. I'm not trying to get "payback" or revenge, right? When I paused and reflected on it, I'm not so sure. Why do I raise my voice? I want them to feel bad, theoretically so that they learn to not do whatever it was they did. Is me wanting them to feel bad wanting payback? I guess you could argue that it is. Whenever I get angry, it's very action-oriented. I stew on what I'm going to do in response to whatever made me angry. After I calm down, I can recognize how irrational most of those thoughts are. My brain doesn't function well when I'm angry. The thing that I've learned, and it's been a hard lesson at times, is to not react. Those feelings of revenge and payback etc... make everything worse. Especially when I really look back on whatever situation made me angry. Once I'm calm, I'm able to see what part of the situation was my fault. A lot of times, it's an embarrassingly large part, and the fact that I was a jerk in some way is hard to admit. It's a lot easier to just externalize it all, get mad at someone else, and contemplate ways to "get even".
  - tibbar 2y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out. As I reflect on it, I think anger is maybe just really confusing to me. I'm pretty hardwired to believe that if something went wrong, either it's my fault or there's some explanation for the other person's behavior. Anger causes some dissonance. I might burn a lot of cycles having a mental argument over the possible justification for what happened, and then of course I calm down eventually. I suppose that when I've been quite confident in injustice of a situation before I've calmed down, I've moved to thinking of revenge.
    - claytongulick 2y ago
      My thoughts of "revenge" aren't things that I would do to a person, for example, I don't think about slashing tires or calling their boss or anything like that. It's much more internal, like "let's see how they like it when I'm gone". "They'll never find another guy like me". "This company will never survive without me". Stuff like that. When I get very angry, I shut down. My move is to leave. I've acted on this many times when I was younger to my regret. I've learned to never make big decisions when I'm tired or angry, because a lot of the time they are vengeance driven, rather than what's best for me.
- aaplok 2y ago
  The claim in the article di that anger is associated with a desire for payback, of which revenge is one manifestation. This is subtle, but I think that in an article like this subtle differences matter. The author also claims that this is backed by psychology studies, though some sources for this claim would have been welcome. The author does go on to focus on revenge only, and I'm with you on being skeptical that this implies that anger is an emotion that should be repressed. It seems to me that the authors equates a bit too quickly payback with a negative or a frivolous desire. The focus on Mandela's South Africa, of all things, is pretty curious since there definitely was a change in status for the white community after he took power. When you're angry with yourself (or perhaps when you are angry at a situation in which you are by your own fault) the payback would be to not let that situation happen again. Or maybe the payback is to change yourself to address the character flaw that your anger is targeted at.
  - tibbar 2y ago
    I love this distinction, thank you for capturing it. In this framing, what forms of payback besides revenge, if any, exist when one is angry with other people?
    - aaplok 2y ago
      Proving them wrong. Or undoing the negative situation they created. This can in fact be quite a powerful driver. When I was younger a hurtful comment by a teacher led me to start getting good marks in their subject. This was definitely fueled by the anger I felt at the dismissive remarks, as teenager me had no other motivation. Another payback could be to increase your status to their level (not decrease theirs) so you can do things differently and make things right. What Mandela did basically. Maybe making them feel remorseful or regret their initial action, but to me this is a byproduct and ends up not mattering that much. In the situation I described I didn't really care what the teacher felt or what effect there was on them (likely none at all). Though there was some satisfaction in proving to myself they were an idiot.
      - aaplok 2y ago
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
Anger is the mind perceiving something it finds wrong (or undesirable), and then feeling it must do something to change it. Feeling anger isn't a bad thing; it's what inspires us to right wrongs. The problem is when we let the feeling dictate when we act and how. Feel your feeling of anger - and then stop, and ask yourself if this thing really is wrong, if you personally need to right this wrong, if you need to do it right now, and how you can right it in a way that creates more good than harm.
- speed_spread 2y ago
  Anger at the world is a motivation for many engineers. "That shit ain't right, I know how it could be better. See me fix it".
wewewedxfgdf 2y ago
The evolutionary purpose of anger is to coerce others / control the behavior of others.
- jorgesborges 2y ago
  Or its role is to react toward perceived injustices within a social group in order to strengthen and reinforce cooperation.
- adammarples 2y ago
  I think Martha Nussbaum thinks that it signals that our status has been negatively affected. That seems right to me.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
voidhorse 2y ago
Anger is also learned. I grew up in a household in which rage was accepted and permitted. It took me quite a lot of time and interaction outside of my family to realize that I had learned patterned reactions of anger that were entirely unjustified and that this anger was altogether harmful, unproductive, and pointless. If you are responsible for taking care of others, keep in mind that the way you act will stick with them. What you do today may be encoded and burned into them such that it determines their behavior tomorrow.
- wewewedxfgdf 2y ago
  Me too. >> I grew up in a household in which rage was accepted and permitted. Accepted, permitted and encouraged: "Show your anger! Let them know! Bring it out! Don't accept that from that person! Get angry!" Righteous indignation was exactly the right way to feel when you have "been wronged". It's amongst the greatest disservices my parents could have done to me (there were more, plenty more). I eventually managed to undo much of the damage to my personality by asking a simple question whenever I start to feel anger: "Does this matter?" If it really matters, get angry - get REALLY angry if you need to. I found that almost nothing matters and I basically never get angry. Getting angry destroys relationships and friendships pretty much instantly - and the angry person is typically unaware of this. I saw a woman in a carpark get super angry because someone else took her parking spot that she was waiting to back into. She got out of her car and yelled into their window and stomped around and she was clearly furious. I thought "that woman has no mechanism to determine if this situation matters enough to get angry." I also never learned explicitly from my parents what "kindness" (the inverse of anger) is - it puzzled me when it started to become clear in my 20's that this is an important concept and I did not understand it and needed to.
- claytongulick 2y ago
  When I worked in psychiatry, I was taught that emotion isn't learned, but behavior is. I don't know if I buy that. I think that many of our emotions are driven by our expectations, and expectations are definitely learned. Hand a wealthy person an imperfect fruit, and they'll react with anger. Hand the same fruit to a hungry person, and you'll get gratitude.
amriksohata 2y ago
From anger, complete delusion arises, and from delusion bewilderment of memory. When memory is bewildered, intelligence is lost, and when intelligence is lost one falls down again into the material pool. https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/2/63/ https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/2/63/
jordwest 2y ago
As an anger repressor, I believed anger was a problem that should be set aside at all costs. Now that I'm a lot more in contact with anger, it's clear that that was counterproductive. Anger has a legitimate biological purpose - that is to set boundaries. Look at any animal [1], if you push their boundaries they will bite, scratch or bark at you. But they will also very quickly let it go once the boundary has been set. We humans tend to be taught to let our boundaries be pushed, weakened or outright crossed in order to do what others think is right. We are taught to repress our very biological instinct because we are bad, because we believe our primal instincts are just violent. But the body knows that our boundaries are being violated, millions of years of evolution aren't irrelevant. To me, this explains why we hold onto anger so much today and see outbursts of it online. What we think of as primal instincts to harm people is actually our own repression of our primal instincts. Lord of the Flies is a propaganda film - perhaps even the secularization of original sin. Research has shown time and again that humans left alone in a group tend to work together, not kill each other [2]. When I see people deeply angry at society, at politicians, or at me, I see somebody who has had their boundaries crossed, again and again, and has been taught that they are not allowed to set them. This energy has to go somewhere. Personally, the more I've allowed my own anger and set personal boundaries, the less angry I am at the world. The less my anger seems to manifest in harmful outbursts. Anger comes, and if expressed, it passes very quickly in a way that may be assertive but that doesn't harm others. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99tkJbKFa4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99tkJbKFa4k [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acali https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acali
- watwut 2y ago
  > When I see people deeply angry at society, at politicians, or at me, I see somebody who has had their boundaries crossed, again and again, and has been taught that they are not allowed to set them. Aggressive angry people were frequently enabled whole their lives. They were not taught to control or suppress anger they were taught everyone else is at fault. That is frequent real world situation. Likewise, people who feel wronged and treated unfairly because they are subject to the same rules as others are a thing. Their boundary of "only I matter, you dont" was crossed, but is not legitimate at all. The typical dynamic is that bully is enabled, because it is easier. And typically victim is pushed to more submission, because it is easier. And bully grows angrier and more aggressive. And it is the same in politics.
conartist6 2y ago
> The central puzzle is this: the payback idea does not make sense. Whatever the wrongful act was – a murder, a rape, a betrayal – inflicting pain on the wrongdoer does not help restore the thing that was lost. My understanding is that the "tit for tat" algorithm explains why anger can make sense as a game theory strategy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM
- ahartmetz 2y ago
  I mean sure. Anger (revenge) is purely destructive in one isolated interaction, but its possibility may prevent actions against you next time (or at all). Its "irrationality" makes such a response more likely even if you might rationally (or out of timidity etc) decide against it, which increases its scope of protection. It all makes a lot of sense.
jkmcf 2y ago
Today was Plato's Academy's seminar on The Philosophy and Psychology of Anger The video should be posted, I think. Most of the talks were very good. https://platosacademy.org/ https://platosacademy.org/
- jkmcf 2y ago
  Love the downvote. Here's the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAWE3qfbANU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAWE3qfbANU
fmxsh 2y ago
I feel the article takes a widely useful human capability and isolates it to a set of negative, socially contingent actions. Revenge is a social thing. Anger is not necessarily social. I can get angry at the mess and thus promptly put things in order. It seems to me Nelson Mandela used his anger strategically. It wasn't that he wasn't angry, and that the derivatives of non-anger were the golden solution. After all, as the article mentions—but here in my phrasing—his strategy collapses into violence when non-violence won’t work, and then virtuously claims it is based in non-anger (the favored party always uses violence "correctly" and instrumentally as a last resort, while the opponents are seen as just angry and violent). Mandela was angry, but he used it under the disguise of a set of virtues he deemed superior to those he hated. He likely idealized himself as a non-violent person, but was deeply angered—and, in my view, there's nothing wrong with that. His strategy being a long-term one. I do not know too much about Mandela, and these are my speculations grounded mostly in psychological observations, which makes me not easily believe things are as they appear. Anger is highly productive in an often harsh evolutionary framework.

60 points by privong 2y ago

Your article is insightful. Anger is not a solution. Yet, you write as an individual who has no idea about the actual motivations of the headline character you involve in this narrative. Mandela was a terrorist. Plain and simple. In his “struggle” he concocted plans to harm innocent individuals in bombings - what about their anger of their family members? In his career as a politician, he initiated a systemic destruction of society and order in South Africa, the effects and repercussions of which are in evidence today. What a lazy and convenient use of a figurehead you have chosen to make your points!

tibbar 2y ago

The article strongly equates anger with a desire for revenge. That's a bit confusing to me - for me, anger is just an emotion that's not particularly linked to any plan. Heck, I can even be angry at myself, in which case revenge doesn't even make sense. I think anger is most closely associated for me with "painful reflection on something that happened to me that felt unjust". As an aside, while being easily angered is not good, I also think it's equally bad ritually suppress anger, because (a) that takes a toll over time that you eventually won't be able to suppress and (b) if you don't provide "feedback" to whatever it is that's angering you, it will probably happen again.

interroboink 2y ago
Yours is a good point — and something that took me a long time to understand about some people I care about. Personally, my anger is usually "directed," though more in the sense of furiously/forcefully wanting to correct some perceived wrong, rather than revenge. The notion of "directionless anger" was kinda alien to my mind. But some people definitely have an "angry at the world" or "angry in general" feeling. And if you swoop in with a "let's fix the problem that's causing this" attitude, it may completely miss the mark for them. Ask me how I know (: For some people, a good outlet for anger is venting, and doing something is not helpful. And for others, it's the opposite. People are complicated. We use simplistic words like "anger" which mean different things to different people in different contexts, and misunderstandings ensue.
- jorgesborges 2y ago
  > my anger is usually "directed," though more in the sense of furiously/forcefully wanting to correct some perceived wrong, rather than revenge. This is the exact definition of revenge. While revenge carries connotations that we tend to separate ourselves from today -- sounds too barbaric? -- it's fundamentally about justice, and as such is justified and even noble given the right context and expression.
  - interroboink 2y ago
    I suppose I lightly disagree with that. Revenge, to me, holds a significant connotation of "spite." I.e. making someone feel bad/hurt because they made you feel bad/hurt. It's about the hurt, as much as (or more than) correcting the situation. But words are sloppy, I totally get what you're saying too (:
    - jorgesborges 2y ago
      Interesting, yeah that makes sense to me too.
- tibbar 2y ago
  Very interesting. I definitely feel like my anger is directed - I'm usually angry about something specific, and it would feel good if someone genuinely tried to help fix the problem - but I just don't think about revenge too much. I think it takes most of my energy to try to understand what happened and why, and I don't generally stay angry that long about specific events.
sitkack 2y ago
> can even be angry at myself, in which case revenge doesn't even make sense I have seen lots of people, myself included, where self revenge would make the most plausible explanation for behavior. I no longer see people as homogeneous or discrete. Anger serves a useful tool, but it can also be an extremely powerful way to manipulate and be manipulated.
- tibbar 2y ago
  Fascinating, can you describe some of these cases? I suppose self-harm could fit this description, but let's say I'm angry at myself for making a bad decision that hurt someone else, what would revenge on myself look like? It would be hard to make things up to the victim by sabotaging myself.
  - sitkack 2y ago
    Bad self talk where one tears oneself down is a common one. There is also regressive punishment, in the case where someone else has been wronged, not writing the wrong and letting it linger is also a form of self harm. I now have the philosophy that if I were to see someone else treating someone the way one treats themselves, and they take note of it, then the internal behavior is not appropriate.
  - jononor 2y ago
    Denying oneself something nice/good (but unrelated). Or doing something that provokes a punishing response from someone/something else. Like picking a fight, or "failing" to pay bills, gambling. Neither will help a victim of course, but self-sabotage never help (almost by definition).
claytongulick 2y ago
The article states that Aristotle and many modern philosophers agree that a desire for payback is a fundamental part of anger. I questioned it too, thinking through a bunch of different scenarios. The biggest counter example that popped into my head was being angry at my kids for doing typical kid stuff. I'm not trying to get "payback" or revenge, right? When I paused and reflected on it, I'm not so sure. Why do I raise my voice? I want them to feel bad, theoretically so that they learn to not do whatever it was they did. Is me wanting them to feel bad wanting payback? I guess you could argue that it is. Whenever I get angry, it's very action-oriented. I stew on what I'm going to do in response to whatever made me angry. After I calm down, I can recognize how irrational most of those thoughts are. My brain doesn't function well when I'm angry. The thing that I've learned, and it's been a hard lesson at times, is to not react. Those feelings of revenge and payback etc... make everything worse. Especially when I really look back on whatever situation made me angry. Once I'm calm, I'm able to see what part of the situation was my fault. A lot of times, it's an embarrassingly large part, and the fact that I was a jerk in some way is hard to admit. It's a lot easier to just externalize it all, get mad at someone else, and contemplate ways to "get even".
- tibbar 2y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out. As I reflect on it, I think anger is maybe just really confusing to me. I'm pretty hardwired to believe that if something went wrong, either it's my fault or there's some explanation for the other person's behavior. Anger causes some dissonance. I might burn a lot of cycles having a mental argument over the possible justification for what happened, and then of course I calm down eventually. I suppose that when I've been quite confident in injustice of a situation before I've calmed down, I've moved to thinking of revenge.
  - claytongulick 2y ago
    My thoughts of "revenge" aren't things that I would do to a person, for example, I don't think about slashing tires or calling their boss or anything like that. It's much more internal, like "let's see how they like it when I'm gone". "They'll never find another guy like me". "This company will never survive without me". Stuff like that. When I get very angry, I shut down. My move is to leave. I've acted on this many times when I was younger to my regret. I've learned to never make big decisions when I'm tired or angry, because a lot of the time they are vengeance driven, rather than what's best for me.
aaplok 2y ago
The claim in the article di that anger is associated with a desire for payback, of which revenge is one manifestation. This is subtle, but I think that in an article like this subtle differences matter. The author also claims that this is backed by psychology studies, though some sources for this claim would have been welcome. The author does go on to focus on revenge only, and I'm with you on being skeptical that this implies that anger is an emotion that should be repressed. It seems to me that the authors equates a bit too quickly payback with a negative or a frivolous desire. The focus on Mandela's South Africa, of all things, is pretty curious since there definitely was a change in status for the white community after he took power. When you're angry with yourself (or perhaps when you are angry at a situation in which you are by your own fault) the payback would be to not let that situation happen again. Or maybe the payback is to change yourself to address the character flaw that your anger is targeted at.
- tibbar 2y ago
  I love this distinction, thank you for capturing it. In this framing, what forms of payback besides revenge, if any, exist when one is angry with other people?
  - aaplok 2y ago
    Proving them wrong. Or undoing the negative situation they created. This can in fact be quite a powerful driver. When I was younger a hurtful comment by a teacher led me to start getting good marks in their subject. This was definitely fueled by the anger I felt at the dismissive remarks, as teenager me had no other motivation. Another payback could be to increase your status to their level (not decrease theirs) so you can do things differently and make things right. What Mandela did basically. Maybe making them feel remorseful or regret their initial action, but to me this is a byproduct and ends up not mattering that much. In the situation I described I didn't really care what the teacher felt or what effect there was on them (likely none at all). Though there was some satisfaction in proving to myself they were an idiot.
    - aaplok 2y ago

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

Anger is the mind perceiving something it finds wrong (or undesirable), and then feeling it must do something to change it. Feeling anger isn't a bad thing; it's what inspires us to right wrongs. The problem is when we let the feeling dictate when we act and how. Feel your feeling of anger - and then stop, and ask yourself if this thing really is wrong, if you personally need to right this wrong, if you need to do it right now, and how you can right it in a way that creates more good than harm.

speed_spread 2y ago
Anger at the world is a motivation for many engineers. "That shit ain't right, I know how it could be better. See me fix it".

wewewedxfgdf 2y ago

The evolutionary purpose of anger is to coerce others / control the behavior of others.

jorgesborges 2y ago
Or its role is to react toward perceived injustices within a social group in order to strengthen and reinforce cooperation.
adammarples 2y ago
I think Martha Nussbaum thinks that it signals that our status has been negatively affected. That seems right to me.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

voidhorse 2y ago

Anger is also learned. I grew up in a household in which rage was accepted and permitted. It took me quite a lot of time and interaction outside of my family to realize that I had learned patterned reactions of anger that were entirely unjustified and that this anger was altogether harmful, unproductive, and pointless. If you are responsible for taking care of others, keep in mind that the way you act will stick with them. What you do today may be encoded and burned into them such that it determines their behavior tomorrow.

wewewedxfgdf 2y ago
Me too. >> I grew up in a household in which rage was accepted and permitted. Accepted, permitted and encouraged: "Show your anger! Let them know! Bring it out! Don't accept that from that person! Get angry!" Righteous indignation was exactly the right way to feel when you have "been wronged". It's amongst the greatest disservices my parents could have done to me (there were more, plenty more). I eventually managed to undo much of the damage to my personality by asking a simple question whenever I start to feel anger: "Does this matter?" If it really matters, get angry - get REALLY angry if you need to. I found that almost nothing matters and I basically never get angry. Getting angry destroys relationships and friendships pretty much instantly - and the angry person is typically unaware of this. I saw a woman in a carpark get super angry because someone else took her parking spot that she was waiting to back into. She got out of her car and yelled into their window and stomped around and she was clearly furious. I thought "that woman has no mechanism to determine if this situation matters enough to get angry." I also never learned explicitly from my parents what "kindness" (the inverse of anger) is - it puzzled me when it started to become clear in my 20's that this is an important concept and I did not understand it and needed to.
claytongulick 2y ago
When I worked in psychiatry, I was taught that emotion isn't learned, but behavior is. I don't know if I buy that. I think that many of our emotions are driven by our expectations, and expectations are definitely learned. Hand a wealthy person an imperfect fruit, and they'll react with anger. Hand the same fruit to a hungry person, and you'll get gratitude.

amriksohata 2y ago

From anger, complete delusion arises, and from delusion bewilderment of memory. When memory is bewildered, intelligence is lost, and when intelligence is lost one falls down again into the material pool. https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/2/63/ https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/2/63/

jordwest 2y ago

As an anger repressor, I believed anger was a problem that should be set aside at all costs. Now that I'm a lot more in contact with anger, it's clear that that was counterproductive. Anger has a legitimate biological purpose - that is to set boundaries. Look at any animal [1], if you push their boundaries they will bite, scratch or bark at you. But they will also very quickly let it go once the boundary has been set. We humans tend to be taught to let our boundaries be pushed, weakened or outright crossed in order to do what others think is right. We are taught to repress our very biological instinct because we are bad, because we believe our primal instincts are just violent. But the body knows that our boundaries are being violated, millions of years of evolution aren't irrelevant. To me, this explains why we hold onto anger so much today and see outbursts of it online. What we think of as primal instincts to harm people is actually our own repression of our primal instincts. Lord of the Flies is a propaganda film - perhaps even the secularization of original sin. Research has shown time and again that humans left alone in a group tend to work together, not kill each other [2]. When I see people deeply angry at society, at politicians, or at me, I see somebody who has had their boundaries crossed, again and again, and has been taught that they are not allowed to set them. This energy has to go somewhere. Personally, the more I've allowed my own anger and set personal boundaries, the less angry I am at the world. The less my anger seems to manifest in harmful outbursts. Anger comes, and if expressed, it passes very quickly in a way that may be assertive but that doesn't harm others. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99tkJbKFa4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99tkJbKFa4k [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acali https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acali

watwut 2y ago
> When I see people deeply angry at society, at politicians, or at me, I see somebody who has had their boundaries crossed, again and again, and has been taught that they are not allowed to set them. Aggressive angry people were frequently enabled whole their lives. They were not taught to control or suppress anger they were taught everyone else is at fault. That is frequent real world situation. Likewise, people who feel wronged and treated unfairly because they are subject to the same rules as others are a thing. Their boundary of "only I matter, you dont" was crossed, but is not legitimate at all. The typical dynamic is that bully is enabled, because it is easier. And typically victim is pushed to more submission, because it is easier. And bully grows angrier and more aggressive. And it is the same in politics.

conartist6 2y ago

> The central puzzle is this: the payback idea does not make sense. Whatever the wrongful act was – a murder, a rape, a betrayal – inflicting pain on the wrongdoer does not help restore the thing that was lost. My understanding is that the "tit for tat" algorithm explains why anger can make sense as a game theory strategy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM

ahartmetz 2y ago
I mean sure. Anger (revenge) is purely destructive in one isolated interaction, but its possibility may prevent actions against you next time (or at all). Its "irrationality" makes such a response more likely even if you might rationally (or out of timidity etc) decide against it, which increases its scope of protection. It all makes a lot of sense.

jkmcf 2y ago

Today was Plato's Academy's seminar on The Philosophy and Psychology of Anger The video should be posted, I think. Most of the talks were very good. https://platosacademy.org/ https://platosacademy.org/

jkmcf 2y ago
Love the downvote. Here's the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAWE3qfbANU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAWE3qfbANU

fmxsh 2y ago

I feel the article takes a widely useful human capability and isolates it to a set of negative, socially contingent actions. Revenge is a social thing. Anger is not necessarily social. I can get angry at the mess and thus promptly put things in order. It seems to me Nelson Mandela used his anger strategically. It wasn't that he wasn't angry, and that the derivatives of non-anger were the golden solution. After all, as the article mentions—but here in my phrasing—his strategy collapses into violence when non-violence won’t work, and then virtuously claims it is based in non-anger (the favored party always uses violence "correctly" and instrumentally as a last resort, while the opponents are seen as just angry and violent). Mandela was angry, but he used it under the disguise of a set of virtues he deemed superior to those he hated. He likely idealized himself as a non-violent person, but was deeply angered—and, in my view, there's nothing wrong with that. His strategy being a long-term one. I do not know too much about Mandela, and these are my speculations grounded mostly in psychological observations, which makes me not easily believe things are as they appear. Anger is highly productive in an often harsh evolutionary framework.