Simple Stoic Advice
On Anger
On Anger
The beautiful thing about Stoic philosophy is the advice contained within it is just as applicable today as it was when it was first written all those many years ago. We can learn a great deal from interpreting the advice provided and using it to our advantage as we go throughout our own lives.
Today’s quote comes to us courtesy of Seneca from his essay, On Anger, translation under the title How to Keep Your Cool:
Quote
“Other things can be hidden away and in secret, but anger announces itself and comes out onto the face; the greater its degree, the more openly it seethes.”
Advice
Seneca believed that anger was the worst of all emotions that arise within us. He compared it to a building that collapses; once it begins, there is no stopping the building from destroying itself and everything in its path.
This is an important concept to Seneca because he believes that once anger has taken a hold of us, reason goes out the door and we are acting, and reacting, from a place of emotion rather than through our guiding wisdom. He uses examples of how individuals can become angry at inanimate objects for something going wrong:
“We get angry either at those we can’t be hurt by or else by those we can. In the former category are certain things that lack sensation, like a book that we’ve often thrown down because its lettering was too small, or torn up because it had mistakes; or like clothing that we’ve shredded because it didn’t please us. How foolish, to get angry at things that neither merit our anger nor feel it!… To get angry at things that are not alive is the mark of a madman, just as it is to get angry at dumb animals that do us no wrong.”
The Stoics believed that we did not want to rid ourselves of emotions, rather, we wanted to become comfortable enough with our emotions and our perspectives of situations to allow emotions to wash over us and leave us untouched. Nassim Taleb calls Stoicism “a domestication of emotions.”
Similarly, Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself in Meditations:
“To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.”
Being emotionless or having a “stiff upper lip” as the word “stoic” has often been used for, is not what the philosophy of Stoicism was about. It was about understanding when and how these dangerous emotions, such as anger, arose within us and took over our ability to properly use reason.
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