De Ira (On Anger) by Seneca has been the most life impactful ancient Stoic writing for me hands down. It basically said to me:
Stop rationalizing your anger!
Step back and think; don’t rush to judgement.
A much more calm, controlled, and compassionate and pleasant disposition has been the result. It has very much been worth the effort for me.
“One cannot be happy AND angry”, I share with others.
Problems don’t need to elicit anger to be fixed, they just need to be recognized as problems to be fixed. As the Buddha said (fake quote alert), “Let that shit go!”🙏☺️
When this topic comes up I am reminded of the technique of Non-Violent Communication (NVC) and that changing how we communicate can also change how we think (and vice versa).
Briefly, NVC involves 4 steps:
Observation ("When I see/hear ...") A factual account of something that happened, without judgemental language. ("A mouth opening and closing and air moving" if you will, although not outwardly expressed in those terms perhaps)
Feelings ("... I feel ...") A statement of what feelings arose. I think of this as similar to the stoic acknowlegement of an impression.
Needs ("... because I need/value ...") Tying your feeling (or impression) to a universal human need that was or wasn't met (Examples are safety, respect, harmony, etc). These often represent the cardinal virtues to me.
Request ("Would you be willing to ...") A (sometimes optional) request for a action that would help fulfill the need just expressed. This can either be accepted or refused (which is outside of your control), but can lead to further dialogue ("I hear you are unwilling to do X because you feel Y. Is that because you value Z?")
In the spirit of thanking your teachers while you are able, Thank you Massimo for all you've done in the furtherance of a more philosophical way of life.
Nate, thanks for the comment, very englithening! NVC as you describe it also reminds me of the Socratic method as articulated in the excellent book by Ward Farnsworth.
Now, I’m really angry 😠 with my second read! 😂 What’s with the undergraduate 🐁 test subjects? Of course, they’ll solve those puzzles lickety split. You just pissed them off taking their phones away from them! But wait. We’re not finished. “Toxic positivity?” What?! 🙄 You mean to say there are actual real, live, living, breathing people out there, where everything is absolutely, perfectly all right and dandy? Where?! 😆 Stay away from them! They have to be highly contagious. 😂
As for rage, my ability to control my own varies enormously. At work, never a problem. When cycling in town, always a drama. There seems to be a need to scream for your life three times a day (but then again, it's too cold and I haven't biked to the office yet in 2024),.
At home, the benefits from just postponing a reaction in potentially explosive situations are just so big; and postponing one's reaction by only minutes deflates just about everything.
Maurits, you may want to consider whether it's worth it to bike if it constantly enrages you. It may be good for your physical health, but not necessarily for your soul.
Yes on all counts! Doesn't the Law even recognize how anger can turn homicidal? Crimes of Passion (and the passion is always anger/rage) are treated differently than premeditated violence. It used to be that way in NYC, but sometimes laws change so it might be different now.
DD, yes, I think those laws are changing, but the underlying concept remains. "Passions," in the Stoic negative sense of irrational emotions, can lead to violence.
I think anger is the most helpless state a person can be in. Seneca gives great examples in his essay of military leaders who won important battles against great odds just through patience and refusing to give in to passionate emotions
Tommy, yes, helpless! Another example is fighter, in boxing or martial arts: the most effective ones are those who keep their cool and manage to make their opponent angry. Anger may make you more aggressive, but also less guarded and precise.
It took me a while & now I clearly see your point. I have always felt that anger based on honest realistic convictions & expressed assertively was stress reducing. This helped initially but lead to bad relationship & I realized that it’s best not to get angry as life is to short to upset anybody.
A contrary view is that anger is a core emotion which needs to be felt in order to be metabolized so that the mind can return to its more rational state. Repressing anger and other core emotions via our defenses causes shame, anxiety, and guilt.
Andy, I did try that for a while but found that treating anger as a core emotion so easily let to indulging anger which would lead to horrible consequences. 🤦♀️
Andy, but the idea is not to repress anger, it is to engage in dialogue with it and get to the root of why we get angry. After which we engage in behavior modification so that we can act more rationally.
Anger of the type we are talking about, which has a strong cognitive component, is not a core emotion. The core emotion is what Seneca calls the first movement of anger, that is the initial rush of adrenalin. That one we simply need to accept as inevitable and use as an alarm bell that full fledged anger is coming.
In the last few years, I've read many books and articles on Stoic understanding of anger. I went through agreeing with Seneca to being angry (ha!) with Seneca and back to reading and agreeing with him again. 😂 it has been quite a roller coaster ride.
At the moment, I think the Stoic reasonings (largely drawn from Seneca) around anger are mostly correct and logical in that anger is a secondary emotion, it leads to nothing good and can theoretically be eradicated.
However, one must accept that carrying out such sounding theories (I don't use the word theory very lightly) in practice takes a lot of time, trial and error and most importantly, dedication.
When our trial and error has failed many times (and more), it is easy for us to go back to questioning the theory instead of reflecting upon our methods and environment (something I suspect the NYT writer did). I definitely had moments that I thought "this Stoic emotion crap is totally bs, dreamt up by some do-nothing rich dude next to a tyrant emperor." 😂 but that way of thinking was no more than a 3 year old throwing a tantrum. In fact, there are so many flaws in that way of thinking that I suggest that the readers should not bother spending emotions on it - think about how you'd deal with a 3 year old!
Victoria, I hear you! Though to be fair, it's not just a rich guy who was advising a tyrant, Epictetus says the same kind of things.
Yes, we fail, and the bar is high. But it's good to have a bar! It works the same in other areas of life, right? I'm never going to go to the Olympics, but going to the gym makes me healthier. I'm never going to win the Nobel Prize, but I can strive to be a decent scholar and teacher. And so on.
Massimo, believe it or not, I actually purposely left that "hole" on Epictetus for you to pick on, to further prove that the original statement is such a narrow and flawed argument and one should treat it no more than a 3 year old argument sitting in the middle of a zebra crossing is appropriate.
You are absolutely right! We can try our best and it's good to try our best towards a high bar! 🙂
That's not a particularly convincing argument, for two reasons. First, some things evolve not because they are adaptive, but as a byproduct of something else. Gould's famous "spandrels." Second, something may have been adaptive in the Pleistocene and yet not today.
My favorite example is xenophobia: yes, probably adaptive in the Pleistocene. A major cause of trouble in today's world.
The reasoning that something that has evolved must give you an edge has a third problem. Not only the byproduct and the advantage under other circumstances/in other times.
The problem is also that some evolved thigs are useful to their owner but not to a group of people. Your anger or strong arm may be useful for you in a fight but once everybody is angry and has strong arms, our fights are longer and bloodier. We'd be better off if everybody were less angry, had less strong arms etc.
(or think of cars: I need a heavy car to protect myself against the SUVs around. So does everybody else. And we're driving in 3 tons of steel, consuming lots of fuel etc while we could all drive a small one instead)
I think I covered that possibility by taking Gorillas as an example. Still even for us anger may help us become an 'alpha' a get more mates, but that's hardly the stoic idea of the good life.
Arthur, gorillas live in the same environment as they did hundreds or thousands or millions of years ago. Not so humans. That, as you know, is one of the major problems with evolutionary psychology.
Does anger help us become "alpha" in the modern world? Well, that's an empirical question, but my hunch is no. I don't see women falling all over for angry men.
Writing as a retired clinical psychologist, I want to offer a couple of comments on anger. I have two disclaimers. First, I have been retired for over a decade, so I do not claim to represent the best, most current thinking on the subject. Second, I am responding to Massimo’s post, and haven’t yet read Christina Caron’s article.
My comments are as follows. First, many people may hold what we used to call a hydraulic theory of anger. Recall people say it’s important to let the anger out, to accept your anger or it will build up, like water pressure. What actually seems to happen is that if you indulge your anger, you just tend to get more angry. After all, when you indulge your anger, you are in a sense practicing it, and it will increase. Second, anger tends to be a secondary emotion. Massimo’s comments about how to respond to anger reminded me of this. When we’re angry with someone, we focus on the anger, not really on what is our own primary emotion of feeling threatened or put down, for example. We focus on the other person, rather than on why it bothers us so much. It’s hard for us to recognize our sense of hurt and to do something about that when we are focused on how bad the other person it.
The second comment relates to Stoic ideas about the proper use of impressions, I think. A flash of anger may indeed be a natural reaction to harsh criticism, for example. But a rational evaluation of that flash of anger might lead us to reject over reaction to the harshness or nastiness, while recognizing what we might learn from some part of the criticism that might be useful to us. We might learn, for example, that our self esteem is too tied up in acceptance of the ideas we present or in our feeling that these ideas should be obvious. Even while reflecting on why we react so strongly to the criticism, nothing prevents us from pushing back against an overbearing critic, if it might lead to a more constructive interaction.
Having just read Dick Scott's comment, I thing my second comment is related to his point.
Randall, thank you! The feedback of a professional is always welcome. I think I agree with all the points you make, which seem to me perfectly compatible with the Stoic take.
Have struggled with this, my whole life. I'm 74, and still do. As a young person, I did not"see" it as a problem; thought it gave me an 'edge'. At least I have come to think otherwise... That's at least something. Anger is always counterproductive.
Give yourself a bit more credit: having changed your thinking about anger is a lot, not just something. It means you are aware of the problem and are actively trying to do something about it. Which is more than most people do.
I was listening to Eric Topol interview Katarina Kariko. She says anger is fear, as the antivaxine are like early hear of x rays, fearful of what we don’t understand in her career she persevered without anger at those who treated her badly. As scientist, always think how to do it better. Falls in line with Seneca. Used to be a phrase don’t get angry, get even, not a good way to approach life. My late father in law was a sixty day wonder and a lieutenant at Bastogne. He led his men through a mine field. Anger is not he
Paul in that time, concentration and perseverance.
Massimo, I’ve thought long and hard on this for many months since I last commented in one of your posts--I wholeheartedly agree now. There is no need for it--ever. Without getting into the examples, reasons, or why, I want to give a comparison between anger and alcohol. A few years back I quit drinking and was asked by others, “Mike, what about the health benefits?” “What about them?,” I replied after years of research, “There are none.” The ethanol molecule has been shown to have no benefit to health whatsoever, and, in fact, has been shown in the most minute intake to restructure DNA. Even the New York Times last wrote of the danger of one drink. But such writing is going up against a trillion dollar industry and culture. (And most of us aren’t French with a fresh baguette 🥖 under arm, a hot meal, and a three-hour sleep and a Cabernet🍷 in the middle of the work day, not to mention other activities.) Anger is the rationalization that it contains “power” to get things done. Nope. If anything, you likely acted in haste, and didn’t make the best decision. Sharpen your thinking, and you’ll get faster, and better at choosing the best decision. I go back to life under my landlord as a tenant, and how Stoicism helped me manage and make the best decisions I could make in my control. The landlord is a man with a temper, and now his anger is making him undersell this building in act of desperation because a tenant left without notice. In the 25 years I’ve watched his behavior, he wanted so much control over this little “tenant universe.” I analyzed his behavior, and he had it wrong in comparison to other property owners. He thought he was smarter. Emotion (especially anger) has no place in business, but it’s in the equation too much of the time. I see the logic that anger can be eliminated. Like the failure of the Michelson-Morley experiment, there is no need for an ether. It actually was one of history’s greatest successes in understanding the universe. Oh, you can enjoy the high of the drug called alcohol, and you can enjoy the rush of hormones being angry. But when you say something stupid when drinking, or punch a wall angry, ask yourself if it was worth the price? You are only damaging yourself in both instances, not the universe. 😊
Mike, thanks for the very thoughtful comment! I still enjoy a glass of Montepulciano in the evening. (After all, Diogenes Laërtius says that Stoics drink, though they don't get drunk.) But I understand your comparison.
I attend a Stoic discussion group and I regularly have the majority of the group saying that anger can be good. A motivator.
I pretty much say that anger is the loss of control. And although it may be part of your nature the less you allow it to control you the better.
But people really do get angry about it.
So Greg, the majority of your Stoic group disagrees with the Stoic take on anger?
Yes they do.
Odd. They're a bunch of Aristotelians!
Greg, amazing, isn’t it?
De Ira (On Anger) by Seneca has been the most life impactful ancient Stoic writing for me hands down. It basically said to me:
Stop rationalizing your anger!
Step back and think; don’t rush to judgement.
A much more calm, controlled, and compassionate and pleasant disposition has been the result. It has very much been worth the effort for me.
“One cannot be happy AND angry”, I share with others.
Problems don’t need to elicit anger to be fixed, they just need to be recognized as problems to be fixed. As the Buddha said (fake quote alert), “Let that shit go!”🙏☺️
I'm in complete agreement! Let that shit go! 😃
When this topic comes up I am reminded of the technique of Non-Violent Communication (NVC) and that changing how we communicate can also change how we think (and vice versa).
Briefly, NVC involves 4 steps:
Observation ("When I see/hear ...") A factual account of something that happened, without judgemental language. ("A mouth opening and closing and air moving" if you will, although not outwardly expressed in those terms perhaps)
Feelings ("... I feel ...") A statement of what feelings arose. I think of this as similar to the stoic acknowlegement of an impression.
Needs ("... because I need/value ...") Tying your feeling (or impression) to a universal human need that was or wasn't met (Examples are safety, respect, harmony, etc). These often represent the cardinal virtues to me.
Request ("Would you be willing to ...") A (sometimes optional) request for a action that would help fulfill the need just expressed. This can either be accepted or refused (which is outside of your control), but can lead to further dialogue ("I hear you are unwilling to do X because you feel Y. Is that because you value Z?")
In the spirit of thanking your teachers while you are able, Thank you Massimo for all you've done in the furtherance of a more philosophical way of life.
Nate, thanks for the comment, very englithening! NVC as you describe it also reminds me of the Socratic method as articulated in the excellent book by Ward Farnsworth.
Now, I’m really angry 😠 with my second read! 😂 What’s with the undergraduate 🐁 test subjects? Of course, they’ll solve those puzzles lickety split. You just pissed them off taking their phones away from them! But wait. We’re not finished. “Toxic positivity?” What?! 🙄 You mean to say there are actual real, live, living, breathing people out there, where everything is absolutely, perfectly all right and dandy? Where?! 😆 Stay away from them! They have to be highly contagious. 😂
😆
In another post Massimo contrasted anger with rage. I believe the current post deals more with rage (gorillas, martial arts etc.) within that context.
O
As for rage, my ability to control my own varies enormously. At work, never a problem. When cycling in town, always a drama. There seems to be a need to scream for your life three times a day (but then again, it's too cold and I haven't biked to the office yet in 2024),.
At home, the benefits from just postponing a reaction in potentially explosive situations are just so big; and postponing one's reaction by only minutes deflates just about everything.
Maurits, you may want to consider whether it's worth it to bike if it constantly enrages you. It may be good for your physical health, but not necessarily for your soul.
Yes on all counts! Doesn't the Law even recognize how anger can turn homicidal? Crimes of Passion (and the passion is always anger/rage) are treated differently than premeditated violence. It used to be that way in NYC, but sometimes laws change so it might be different now.
DD, yes, I think those laws are changing, but the underlying concept remains. "Passions," in the Stoic negative sense of irrational emotions, can lead to violence.
I think anger is the most helpless state a person can be in. Seneca gives great examples in his essay of military leaders who won important battles against great odds just through patience and refusing to give in to passionate emotions
Tommy, yes, helpless! Another example is fighter, in boxing or martial arts: the most effective ones are those who keep their cool and manage to make their opponent angry. Anger may make you more aggressive, but also less guarded and precise.
It took me a while & now I clearly see your point. I have always felt that anger based on honest realistic convictions & expressed assertively was stress reducing. This helped initially but lead to bad relationship & I realized that it’s best not to get angry as life is to short to upset anybody.
Im in complete agreement, Naresh. We can do better than get angry at people, with the limited time we have.
A contrary view is that anger is a core emotion which needs to be felt in order to be metabolized so that the mind can return to its more rational state. Repressing anger and other core emotions via our defenses causes shame, anxiety, and guilt.
https://www.hilaryjacobshendel.com/what-is-the-change-triangle-c18dd
Andy, I did try that for a while but found that treating anger as a core emotion so easily let to indulging anger which would lead to horrible consequences. 🤦♀️
Yes, because "core" sounds a lot like "inevitable."
Andy, but the idea is not to repress anger, it is to engage in dialogue with it and get to the root of why we get angry. After which we engage in behavior modification so that we can act more rationally.
Anger of the type we are talking about, which has a strong cognitive component, is not a core emotion. The core emotion is what Seneca calls the first movement of anger, that is the initial rush of adrenalin. That one we simply need to accept as inevitable and use as an alarm bell that full fledged anger is coming.
In the last few years, I've read many books and articles on Stoic understanding of anger. I went through agreeing with Seneca to being angry (ha!) with Seneca and back to reading and agreeing with him again. 😂 it has been quite a roller coaster ride.
At the moment, I think the Stoic reasonings (largely drawn from Seneca) around anger are mostly correct and logical in that anger is a secondary emotion, it leads to nothing good and can theoretically be eradicated.
However, one must accept that carrying out such sounding theories (I don't use the word theory very lightly) in practice takes a lot of time, trial and error and most importantly, dedication.
When our trial and error has failed many times (and more), it is easy for us to go back to questioning the theory instead of reflecting upon our methods and environment (something I suspect the NYT writer did). I definitely had moments that I thought "this Stoic emotion crap is totally bs, dreamt up by some do-nothing rich dude next to a tyrant emperor." 😂 but that way of thinking was no more than a 3 year old throwing a tantrum. In fact, there are so many flaws in that way of thinking that I suggest that the readers should not bother spending emotions on it - think about how you'd deal with a 3 year old!
Victoria, I hear you! Though to be fair, it's not just a rich guy who was advising a tyrant, Epictetus says the same kind of things.
Yes, we fail, and the bar is high. But it's good to have a bar! It works the same in other areas of life, right? I'm never going to go to the Olympics, but going to the gym makes me healthier. I'm never going to win the Nobel Prize, but I can strive to be a decent scholar and teacher. And so on.
Massimo, believe it or not, I actually purposely left that "hole" on Epictetus for you to pick on, to further prove that the original statement is such a narrow and flawed argument and one should treat it no more than a 3 year old argument sitting in the middle of a zebra crossing is appropriate.
You are absolutely right! We can try our best and it's good to try our best towards a high bar! 🙂
Anger must have evolved, so it must have some utility w.r.t. reproductive success. It appears to work well for Gorillas.
That's not a particularly convincing argument, for two reasons. First, some things evolve not because they are adaptive, but as a byproduct of something else. Gould's famous "spandrels." Second, something may have been adaptive in the Pleistocene and yet not today.
My favorite example is xenophobia: yes, probably adaptive in the Pleistocene. A major cause of trouble in today's world.
The reasoning that something that has evolved must give you an edge has a third problem. Not only the byproduct and the advantage under other circumstances/in other times.
The problem is also that some evolved thigs are useful to their owner but not to a group of people. Your anger or strong arm may be useful for you in a fight but once everybody is angry and has strong arms, our fights are longer and bloodier. We'd be better off if everybody were less angry, had less strong arms etc.
(or think of cars: I need a heavy car to protect myself against the SUVs around. So does everybody else. And we're driving in 3 tons of steel, consuming lots of fuel etc while we could all drive a small one instead)
Maurits, precisely, the Stoics would argue that anger not only is bad for a person's character, but it leads to anti-social consequences.
I think I covered that possibility by taking Gorillas as an example. Still even for us anger may help us become an 'alpha' a get more mates, but that's hardly the stoic idea of the good life.
Arthur, gorillas live in the same environment as they did hundreds or thousands or millions of years ago. Not so humans. That, as you know, is one of the major problems with evolutionary psychology.
Does anger help us become "alpha" in the modern world? Well, that's an empirical question, but my hunch is no. I don't see women falling all over for angry men.
Writing as a retired clinical psychologist, I want to offer a couple of comments on anger. I have two disclaimers. First, I have been retired for over a decade, so I do not claim to represent the best, most current thinking on the subject. Second, I am responding to Massimo’s post, and haven’t yet read Christina Caron’s article.
My comments are as follows. First, many people may hold what we used to call a hydraulic theory of anger. Recall people say it’s important to let the anger out, to accept your anger or it will build up, like water pressure. What actually seems to happen is that if you indulge your anger, you just tend to get more angry. After all, when you indulge your anger, you are in a sense practicing it, and it will increase. Second, anger tends to be a secondary emotion. Massimo’s comments about how to respond to anger reminded me of this. When we’re angry with someone, we focus on the anger, not really on what is our own primary emotion of feeling threatened or put down, for example. We focus on the other person, rather than on why it bothers us so much. It’s hard for us to recognize our sense of hurt and to do something about that when we are focused on how bad the other person it.
The second comment relates to Stoic ideas about the proper use of impressions, I think. A flash of anger may indeed be a natural reaction to harsh criticism, for example. But a rational evaluation of that flash of anger might lead us to reject over reaction to the harshness or nastiness, while recognizing what we might learn from some part of the criticism that might be useful to us. We might learn, for example, that our self esteem is too tied up in acceptance of the ideas we present or in our feeling that these ideas should be obvious. Even while reflecting on why we react so strongly to the criticism, nothing prevents us from pushing back against an overbearing critic, if it might lead to a more constructive interaction.
Having just read Dick Scott's comment, I thing my second comment is related to his point.
Randall, thank you! The feedback of a professional is always welcome. I think I agree with all the points you make, which seem to me perfectly compatible with the Stoic take.
Thanks. I'm trying :)
Have struggled with this, my whole life. I'm 74, and still do. As a young person, I did not"see" it as a problem; thought it gave me an 'edge'. At least I have come to think otherwise... That's at least something. Anger is always counterproductive.
Give yourself a bit more credit: having changed your thinking about anger is a lot, not just something. It means you are aware of the problem and are actively trying to do something about it. Which is more than most people do.
I was listening to Eric Topol interview Katarina Kariko. She says anger is fear, as the antivaxine are like early hear of x rays, fearful of what we don’t understand in her career she persevered without anger at those who treated her badly. As scientist, always think how to do it better. Falls in line with Seneca. Used to be a phrase don’t get angry, get even, not a good way to approach life. My late father in law was a sixty day wonder and a lieutenant at Bastogne. He led his men through a mine field. Anger is not he
Paul in that time, concentration and perseverance.
Massimo, I’ve thought long and hard on this for many months since I last commented in one of your posts--I wholeheartedly agree now. There is no need for it--ever. Without getting into the examples, reasons, or why, I want to give a comparison between anger and alcohol. A few years back I quit drinking and was asked by others, “Mike, what about the health benefits?” “What about them?,” I replied after years of research, “There are none.” The ethanol molecule has been shown to have no benefit to health whatsoever, and, in fact, has been shown in the most minute intake to restructure DNA. Even the New York Times last wrote of the danger of one drink. But such writing is going up against a trillion dollar industry and culture. (And most of us aren’t French with a fresh baguette 🥖 under arm, a hot meal, and a three-hour sleep and a Cabernet🍷 in the middle of the work day, not to mention other activities.) Anger is the rationalization that it contains “power” to get things done. Nope. If anything, you likely acted in haste, and didn’t make the best decision. Sharpen your thinking, and you’ll get faster, and better at choosing the best decision. I go back to life under my landlord as a tenant, and how Stoicism helped me manage and make the best decisions I could make in my control. The landlord is a man with a temper, and now his anger is making him undersell this building in act of desperation because a tenant left without notice. In the 25 years I’ve watched his behavior, he wanted so much control over this little “tenant universe.” I analyzed his behavior, and he had it wrong in comparison to other property owners. He thought he was smarter. Emotion (especially anger) has no place in business, but it’s in the equation too much of the time. I see the logic that anger can be eliminated. Like the failure of the Michelson-Morley experiment, there is no need for an ether. It actually was one of history’s greatest successes in understanding the universe. Oh, you can enjoy the high of the drug called alcohol, and you can enjoy the rush of hormones being angry. But when you say something stupid when drinking, or punch a wall angry, ask yourself if it was worth the price? You are only damaging yourself in both instances, not the universe. 😊
Mike, thanks for the very thoughtful comment! I still enjoy a glass of Montepulciano in the evening. (After all, Diogenes Laërtius says that Stoics drink, though they don't get drunk.) But I understand your comparison.