Enraged in the Magic Kingdom
Sweet Bites for April 19, 2024
Hi all,
Welcome to another edition of Sweet Bites, Mind Candy’s bite-sized newsletter with thought-provoking finds to send you into the weekend with.
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This week we explored the emotion of anger and how to control it.
Any of the below bites resonate? Hit the reply button and let me know.
📖 Story
Enraged in the Magic Kingdom: A Story of Emotion, Frustration, and $280 Million
The juggernaut that the Walt Disney Co. is today has not always been as such. After the passing of Walt Disney in 1966, the studio found itself in a bit of a slump after having spent several years fighting off corporate takeovers.
In the 1980s, after a successful stint at Paramount, Disney brought in Michael Eisner to help reinvigorate the studio. Eisner brought with him his friend and right-hand man, Jeffrey Katzenberg, to run the studio.
The changes Eisner and Katzenberg were able to implement brought fresh breath into a dying brand. The 1990s were filled with Disney powerhouse animation films such as The Lion King, Little Mermaid, and Aladdin.
With Katzenberg running the studio and Eisner directing the company’s direction, it seemed like Disney had finally been restored to its golden years. It had turned a corner and had re-established itself not only as a movie studio but as the preeminent blockbuster threat.
But after a freak helicopter accident killed Frank Wells, Eisner’s second in command, a “vacuum in the Hollywood hierarchy” was created, with Eisner and Katzenberg at the center of an enormous power-struggle.
As the story goes, Katzenberg claimed Eisner promised him second-in-command should Wells ever not be in the picture. Eisner rejected this memory and said Katzenberg had misunderstood their conversation.
A rift between the two grew. Anger flowed in both directions. Rather than promote Katzenberg, Eisner subsumed Wells’s responsibilities. Even after having a heart attack and needing to be hospitalized, he refused to relinquish any control to Katzenberg.
Finally, the rift tore and Eisner fired Katzenberg, sending shockwaves through Hollywood.
Katzenberg sued for breach of contract. The suit went on for years.
Before the trial began, executives at Disney had worked to secure a settlement with Katzenberg for $90 million. But Eisner rejected this, telling them Disney held no obligation for settlement and Katzenberg was owed nothing. In Eisner’s eyes, it was he and not Katzenberg who had revitalized Disney and Katzenberg was owed nothing (Katzenberg’s contract said otherwise.)
As Kim Masters wrote, because Eisner refused to settle, Disney would be forced to bleed through the nose with a payout of close to $280 million.
This would be the beginning of the end for Eisner. He would have another large settlement shortly after to the star agent turned Disney executive Michael Ovitz who had been with the company for all of 14 months.
As time went on, Eisner isolated himself more and more, trusting very few, and believing only he could turn things around, just like he had done in the past.
Within a few short years, he would be forced to step down and would be replaced with Bob Iger who would turn Disney into the juggernaut it is today.
Katzenberg would go on to start DreamWorks SKG with David Geffen and Steven Spielberg. Katzenberg’s oversight of animation at DreamWorks would go on to produce some of the most memorable hits of the last 30 years with Shrek, Madagascar, and Kung Fu Panda, all of which went on to have a variety of sequels.
You see, two of the worst attributes that feed anger are the dreaded Es: Envy and Ego.
Envy keeps us comparing ourselves to others, desiring what they have, never happy unless we’re better than them.
Ego blinds us from the truth, buries options and tells us only we can do it, only we can be the best, can right the ship, can win the improbable fight.
As Robert Greene writes in The Laws of Human Nature:
“We normally have a self-opinion that is somewhat elevated in relation to reality. We have a deep need to feel ourselves superior to others in something…”
This tendency is what leads many to have an inflated ego of themselves, living in delusional realities that put them at the center, framing all achievements as their accomplishments. It rejects the notion that we’re not self-made and ignores the role luck and chance play in our good fortunes.
But these illusions are just fodder for the overriding emotion of anger.
Envy feeds anger by reminding ourselves we’re not as good as we want to be, or we don’t have what others do.
Ego feeds it by having competition, by people doubting, by needing to—as contradictory as it may sound—do it alone.
You see, when we allow anger to run our lives, when we hand over control to the emotion, we burn many bridges along the way. We lose friends, alienate family, and even cost ourselves potential partnerships.
Anger leads to many things, few of which are good.
“For not many men... can love a friend who fortune prospers without envying; and about the envious brain cold poison clings and doubles all the pain life brings him. His own woundings he must nurse, and feel another's gladness like a curse.”
🛠️ Tactic
In the video below, Tim Ferriss discusses with Dr. Gabor Maté how one can work to control rage. Dr. Maté describes the difference between healthy anger (keeping boundaries, protecting oneself) and unhealthy rage (when we suppress anger and it grows, explodes out, and continues growing).
The video is only seven minutes and incredibly powerful.
“Healthy anger is in the moment, it protects your boundaries, then it’s gone. It is not necessary anymore. However, if your boundaries were infringed upon as a child and you couldn’t express it, it doesn’t disappear. It gets suppressed. It becomes almost like a volcano that is gurgling and bubbling inside you but it has no expression.”
📚 This Week’s Newsletter
🦉 Wisdom
“People sometimes manipulate their own moral emotions, such as anger, to enhance and maintain their impressions of themselves as morally good.”
Justin Tosi / Brandon Warmke
Source: Grandstanding
✏️ This Week’s Wednesday Wisdom
As a reminder, I have been posting Wednesday Wisdom’s via Substack Notes for our trial this month.
You can download the app below if interested and follow all the Notes I post.
📰 Article
I will be the first to admit that I often write about and advocate for the limits of anger as much as possible in daily life. I often oscillate between whether or not anger is ever useful (such as utilizing anger as a motivating factor to enact change).
This article does an excellent job of not just explaining anger, but also explaining why we become angry and how we can prevent that in the future.
Ryan Martin also wrote a book on the topic, Why We Get Mad, which I plan to now read (If you already have, let me know down in the comments). And I just learned he also started a Substack called
for anyone interested.Favorite quotes:
“Anger emerges from three interacting factors: a provocation, the person’s interpretation of the provocation, and their mood at the time.”
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“The goal here, though, shouldn’t be to lie to yourself and pretend things are fine when they’re not. The goal should be to embrace thoughts that are accurate and representative of what’s actually happening around you.”
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“One of the most valuable ways to understand, manage, and use your anger is to keep a mood log. A mood log is a cognitive-behavioural therapy tool, used for identifying the relationships between your feelings, thoughts and situations. They’re often used to help people explore the thoughts they’re having and how to modify those thoughts – but you can also use one to understand how you tend to think and behave when you’re angry. Specifically, they can help you track anger-provoking situations, pre-provocation moods, and the thoughts and behaviours that follow.“
📖 Book Recommendation
Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders by Aaron T. Beck
I have long been a fan of Aaron T. Beck and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). It has not only had a tremendous impact on my life but it is also rooted in the ancient teachings of Stoicism (Beck was heavily influenced by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius).
“The complex system of environmental stimuli controls us only to the extent that it meshes with its internal psychological counterpart. Our inner workings can shut out or twist around the signals from the outside so that we may be completely out of phase with what is going on around us.”
Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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