Ugly and Savage
How anger controls our lives if unchecked and how to prevent it
Welcome to another week of Monday Meditations!
A few housekeeping items before we dive into this week’s Meditation.
NOTES
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This week’s Meditation at a glance:
Stoicism is often criticized for having a “stiff upper lip” or being a philosophy that tells one to bury their emotions. This is not only wrong, but dangerous. This week, we look at the emotion of anger and how the Stoics taught to prevent, control, and overcome anger.
Anger is an often misunderstood emotion. There are individuals who think anger is bad and should never be used, that we should live a happy life and not let anger get in our way, and there are others who think anger is a good thing, a driving force, a way to prove others wrong and not allow others to push us around.
According to the Stoics, neither is a correct way of thinking about anger.
Anger is an emotion that if not properly checked, can destroy one from living the good life. If we cannot control anger, we cannot have control over our lives.
Seneca writing to his brother in his long essay De Ira (On Anger) describes the destruction that comes from anger, the “ugliest and most savage of all emotions”:
“Look at the foundation stones of the noblest cities, now barely visible: anger toppled them. Look at the wastelands that stretch empty for many miles, without an inhabitant: anger stripped them clean. Look at leaders preserved in memory as examples of evil fate: anger stabbed this one in his own bed, struck that one down amid the sacred rites of the table, mangled another as the courts and the crowded forum watched; ordered one to offer his blood to his son's parricide, another to bare his royal neck to a slave's hand, another to split his limbs apart on the cross.”
Early into his essay, Seneca quickly tries to put to rest the idea that anger can be manipulated and used as a way to grow. He advises his brother that anger cannot contribute to greatness, it is but “mere swelling, just as a disease, in bodies distended by an excess of unhealthy fluid, is not "growth" but a noxious overflow..”
Anger does not lead to greatness because it has no solid foundation to be built from, and it uses an exhaustive source of energy. Once anger takes hold, we exert emotional energy not only being angry, but trying to then overcome that anger.
“From that point on it will do what it wants, not what you allow... once it has entered and made its way through your gates, it takes its prisoners and grants no terms.”
The Origins of Anger
So where does anger come from? According to Seneca, anger originates in two ways: the first is that we seem harmed, something happens and we interpret that action as having harmed us. We then lash out in anger because someone has done something to us to cause us harm.
The second is that we feel we have been unjustly harmed.
“People deem things unjust if they ought not to have suffered them, or, in some cases, if they did not expect to. We think things undeserved if they were unanticipated, and so those that happen contrary to our hopes and expectations disturb us most of all…”
Seneca reminds his brother that we all have self-love for ourselves and therefore we think we should be safe from “harms done by our enemies.”
“Each of us has the spirit of a king inside us: we want total freedom to be granted to us but not to those acting against us. It's either our ignorance or our arrogance that makes us prone to anger…”
Three Tactics for Controlling Anger
Delay
“Delay is the greatest remedy for anger. Ask of your anger, at the outset, not to grant forgiveness but to exercise judgment.”
The first step in controlling anger according to Seneca is to delay the anger. If we react when anger first arises within us, then we are like a match placed to paper, we will destroy it and anything else that stands in our way.
But if we instead stop and recognize that we are angry, and before responding give ourselves space and time, then when we go to respond, we are more likely to do so from a place of reason and logic versus pure vitriolic emotion.
As the Holocaust survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl once wrote:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Reflect and understand yourself
“It is useful for each of us to recognize our own illness and to suppress its strength before it spreads. We should consider what irritates us most of all.”
One of the biggest ways of reducing anger is to understand oneself and to investigate why something has made you angry to begin with. This requires deep work and time for reflection. The first answer we respond to the question “why am I angry?” is usually just a surface level answer—deeper within lies many layers of why we became angry to begin with.
Seneca tells his brother toward the end of the essay that every night he reflects on his his day and “leaves no stone unturned.”
“People are not all wounded in the same spot. It behooves you to know what part of you is vulnerable so you can protect it most of all.”
Conquer it
We have power over our emotions. We have power to use reason and logic to talk with ourselves, to reflect, to investigate why we are angry to begin with, what within us allowed this emotion to grab hold with such force.
But it is not just our minds that can help to control anger but also our bodies. Seneca recommends involving the body and doing the opposite of anger’s desire to help temper the flames of fury.
“Let's change all its manifestations to their opposite: relax the face, soften the voice, slow the step; bit by bit, inner feelings will conform to outer signs.”
Through exercising different aspects of the body, the mind will begin to relinquish anger’s hold, and will allow the emotion to run its course quicker.
But if we allow anger to go just go unchecked, then there is no telling what it will do to something in its path, and when that happens, we are no longer in control of our lives.
Three Bullet Summary:
Anger is the ugliest and most savage of all emotions according to Seneca
Anger arises within us from feeling we have been harmed or harmed unjustly.
We can overcome anger by way of delaying our response to it, reflecting on what triggers our anger, and by changing our mental approach and body when we become angry.
Thank you again for reading and I hope you found this useful. Please feel free to heart, comment, or ask questions about this post. Suggestions are always appreciated and considered.
Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo
A wise man once told me that there are only two causes of anger: someone has insulted me, or someone or something is interfering with my goals. I find that when I am angry, it helps to figure out which category applies, which gives me a path to take to defuse the anger. Not that it always works.
Dear D.A.
Thank you for sharing this insightful post.
With profound humility, your post reminds me of the expression:
"Anger stems from fear"
And, when angry, ask myself, "What am I afraid of here?"
Curious how you see it.
Humbly,
Rodrigo