The Philosophy of Anger

I think the article goes the wrong direction as well, but for different reasons. We should look to the field of modern psychology for answers about our emotions, not philosophy. We understand the brain a lot better now than we did in Aristotle's time.

Anger's neurological function is to motivate action. It originates in the unconscious parts of the brain, and like all emotions it can arise involuntarily. It sounds like your girlfriend was putting her anger to use in a way that it's neurologically well adapted for (though absolutely in an immoral and unhealthy way).

Most individuals possess some degree of ability to consciously regulate their emotions (brain damage reduces this ability, many other factors like genetics or past trauma can too). So after you experience anger you can influence what you do next.

Modern psychology generally recognizes that like most emotions, anger has value but how you process it is key. Rationally examining the roots of your anger can defuse or redirect it and is the principle behind cognitive behavioral therapy and similar modern therapies.

Repression isn't a healthy way of handling anger, it only builds up, becomes internalized, and resurfaces later in ways that are harder to understand. I think it's better to express your anger (there are limitations of course, we don't get a free pass to run around punching people, but venting to a friend is healthy).

In my opinion as someone who buried his anger for 20 years, the key to handling it is to understand where it really comes from, and then harness the energy it generates to act in a way which addresses the root cause. To use the article's example of theft, if you get really angry because someone stole from you, maybe your emotion originates from a history of financial distress. If so then you may be able to change your actions, channel that energy into building financial security, and not experience this distress in the future. Anger in this situation becomes a force for clarity, good and purpose because you acknowledged, channelled and examined it. I think as a society we're in a place where we allow ourselves to be angry all the time, but couch it in superficial righteousness instead doing the uncomfortable processing work and owning our own role in it.

I was like you for a long time, but in the last few years, I've learned that in small controlled doses, in some circumstances, anger can be beneficial, and you should learn to harness it. Anger is probably our most dangerous emotion. But we are not robots, and no matter how rational we try to be, we still have to interact with people who are not.

I notice that you keep describing people's actions, not their internal emotional state. Seeing how irrational and terrible angry people could be was why I tried eradicating anger. You can still let yourself experience anger without being a monster though. It is possible to be in touch with your anger without being enraged or being bad.

How is anger good? I don't have time to find the sources now, but I read that people in a state of anger are more capable of discerning if they are being deceived or treated unfairly, which I have found to be true. Letting yourself experience anger can enable you to assert yourself.

If you spend most of your time around reasonable people you trust, you should almost never get angry. But unfortunately sometimes you encounter people who deserve your anger.

I can think of many instances where I was taken advantage of, and I regret that I had trained myself to completely suppress anger. And I can think of many more recent times when my anger has given me agency that I would not have otherwise had. The important thing is to treat your sense of anger as a call to action, and when you start to resolve your problem, your anger can quickly fade.

> I would imagine if someone at the office started claiming your work at your own you would probably experience something rather analogous to anger.

I'd be more incredulous than angry. The vast majority of my work is well tracked in VCS and easily shown to be my work - such claims of... what, insecurity? Greed? Fear? Are typically self-defeating, easily disproven, transparent, and rather pitiable. They merely invite closer scrutiny and undermine themselves, the value of their word, and destroy the trust people have in them. They're probably not even smart enough to claim just my work as their own, but probably that of several people. It's worth speaking up to try and nip the problem in the bud, but everyone probably already knows they're an untrustworthy braggart.

They're not hurting me, they're hurting themselves, and they're often too trapped in their maladaptive coping patterns from previous toxic relationships and environments where such actions were perhaps not only effective - but perhaps even necessary to succeed within those environments - to stop.

Maybe they'll recover.

Maybe they'll get fired.

Maybe they'll be able to get stuff done while being rendered harmless. Yes bob, good job doing the entire project A while simultaniously fighting off both godzilla and mothra (eyeroll). By the way, you can do project B all by yourself, right? Since you're so awesome? No no - we're sure you can handle it. I wouldn't want to step on your toes.

Maybe I'll get a better job.

> It might also be your life situation is such that people don't really try to take advantage of you or mistreat you very often.

You can control that life situation a lot.

If someone consistently mistreats you, remove them from your life, because you can do better than that. Repeat to taste.

If your "customer is always right" job tells you to smile in response to verbal abuse, find another that lets you ban them from the store instead. Where anger might focus on "getting even", instead focus on "preventing this from becoming a pattern."

If you can't quit your job yet, discount their verbal lashing out as the angry adult temper tantrum that it is. Discount their tirades as the worthless ventings that they are - targeted at the world, not you specifically - and pity them for their failure to become a worthwhile adult. Or perhaps they're screaming because their dog just died, and they don't know how to process that. Perhaps they just learned they have cancer. Perhaps they don't know about their brain tumor yet. Perhaps they fear. That doesn't justify their frothing spittle, but one can pity and sympathise with a person unable to properly express their emotions in a constructive and healthy way - because we've all been there, and so many of us are fortunate enough to not live there like some of these poor bastards do.

Which isn't to say it's never worthwhile to get properly angry, but often the biggest victim of the angry and the cruel is themselves. They push away friends, family, coworkers, opportunities, and kindness - and are often left with only mindless hedonism and misery themselves. No wonder they're such a miserable prick.

I also realize much of this is easier said than done.

For me, anger is usually something internal. And in moments of anger, I can often get emotional insights that I might not otherwise have gotten. I think that eradicating anger can actually blind you to important signals your subconscious is trying to tell you.

Without anger, I might never have the agency to quit a job that makes me miserable, or put up with emotional abuse.

It is often easier to excuse or not even see unfair treatment. You matter too, and pushing back against unfairness or injustice does not make you a bully. Sometimes you have to raise stand tall and raise your voice.

It is a real challenge to harness anger but also not take it too far, and I think you are just giving up if you forgo anger completely.

This article goes into some more detail about this: https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/value-of-anger-16-reasons-i...

> If the tribes are not equally powerful, the powerful one will kill most of them and take all the resources and the women.

This simply doesn't describe humanity, nor many species of animals.

Yes, humanity is selfish and will do many things for self preservation. But we also have a large capacity for empathy and collaboration. Not everything traces back to those either even if you try to just say the modern world is a more complex version of this. Love is a classic example people point to of selflessness being instinctually in humans.

At its core, you are getting downvoted because you have a very negative view of humanity that is both inaccurate and harmful if applied. To extend that "no morality, nothing belongs to anybody" mindset just ends up with a worse world for no reason. This "you follow those rules because otherwise the elites will come for you" idea also just seems like conspiracy type handwaving, and I say this as someone who's plenty anti-imperialist and the like myself.

Would you also not be concerned to be around someone who implies they would do whatever they please even it it harmed you but the thing stopping them is society? To me, that seems like someone who is neither empathetic or social and I, as a social and empathetic person, would avoid that and hope they don't harm others. You may not have meant to imply that, but it kinda reads that way.

When you ask questions like:

> What if the thing you're stealing from me today was something I stole from you yesterday? Would it still be "immoral"? What if my great grandfather stole from your great grandfather many years ago and you steal it back today? What if the transactions aren't that simple? What if the stealing happened in a much more complicated structure throughout many generations in a network of billions of people?

You aren't showing that morality doesn't exist, you're pointing out its complexity. Moral questions are at the center of nearly all social and political debate. It's hard to get agreement!

But going back to your latest post:

> You could argue such cost benefits between families in tribes or individuals in families from the same framework.

Okay, why don't we? What about the tribe of all humanity, or of all living things? One big flaw in your logic is that life is not a zero sum game, and that's one thing that makes collaboration worthwhile.

Why do you think so many people would be guilty after killing someone? Because again, humans have empathy and other capacities that make them care about certain things. Yes, some humans like sociopaths/psychopaths can lack this, but that doesn't invalidate that its present in most, though it can create a wrinkle in the rules being so straightforward.

> You could argue that the very set of rules which make for an optimal balance between individual, family, tribal and inter-tribal interests is in fact "morality"

See, I actually more or less agree here. I think that set of rules is more or less an objective set you can derive from human psychology (see moral psychology above) and that if you change what humans are, you also change morality. Most renditions of human civilization and history support that - we didn't all, across the globe, just magically agree that senseless murder is bad - it was baked into humanity.

> but when the resources and the power balance changes, whatever "morals" people thought existed will disappear and will be replaced by new set of "morals"

You're mixing law and morality here. Laws can change or come and go, but morality (at least an objective view of one) is true or false regardless of the circumstances it exists in (again, beyond changes to human nature). That's one option. Some ascribe to subjectivism instead, which you might. But that's still morality!

This is a decent basic overview starting point of meta-ethics (what grounds ethics/morality) if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOoffXFpAlU

PS: Sorry about talking about you but not engaging. It was frankly hard to tell if it was an actual belief or a troll at first, and addressing all of this takes some energy. I don't mean to condescend either so know that's not my intention if it reads like that!