There's no emotion we ought to think harder about than anger

As an anger repressor, I believed anger was a problem that should be set aside at all costs. Now that I&#x27;m a lot more in contact with anger, it&#x27;s clear that that was counterproductive.<p>Anger has a legitimate biological purpose - that is to set boundaries. Look at any animal [1], if you push their boundaries they will bite, scratch or bark at you. But they will also very quickly let it go once the boundary has been set.<p>We humans tend to be taught to let our boundaries be pushed, weakened or outright crossed in order to do what others think is right. We are taught to repress our very biological instinct because we are bad, because we believe our primal instincts are just violent. But the body knows that our boundaries are being violated, millions of years of evolution aren&#x27;t irrelevant. To me, this explains why we hold onto anger so much today and see outbursts of it online.<p>What we think of as primal instincts to harm people is actually our own repression <i>of</i> our primal instincts. Lord of the Flies is a propaganda film - perhaps even the secularization of original sin. Research has shown time and again that humans left alone in a group tend to work together, not kill each other [2].<p>When I see people deeply angry at society, at politicians, or at me, I see somebody who has had their boundaries crossed, again and again, and has been taught that they are not allowed to set them. This energy has to go somewhere.<p>Personally, the more I&#x27;ve allowed my own anger and set personal boundaries, the less angry I am at the world. The less my anger seems to manifest in harmful outbursts. Anger comes, and if expressed, it passes very quickly in a way that may be assertive but that doesn&#x27;t harm others.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=99tkJbKFa4k" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=99tkJbKFa4k</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Acali" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Acali</a>

The article strongly equates anger with a desire for revenge. That&#x27;s a bit confusing to me - for me, anger is just an emotion that&#x27;s not particularly linked to any plan. Heck, I can even be angry at myself, in which case revenge doesn&#x27;t even make sense. I think anger is most closely associated for me with &quot;painful reflection on something that happened to me that felt unjust&quot;.<p>As an aside, while being easily angered is not good, I also think it&#x27;s equally bad ritually suppress anger, because (a) that takes a toll over time that you eventually won&#x27;t be able to suppress and (b) if you don&#x27;t provide &quot;feedback&quot; to whatever it is that&#x27;s angering you, it will probably happen again.

Anger is also learned. I grew up in a household in which rage was accepted and permitted. It took me quite a lot of time and interaction outside of my family to realize that I had learned patterned reactions of anger that were entirely unjustified and that this anger was altogether harmful, unproductive, and pointless.<p>If you are responsible for taking care of others, keep in mind that the way you act will stick with them. What you do today may be encoded and burned into them such that it determines their behavior tomorrow.

Anger is the mind perceiving something it finds wrong (or undesirable), and then feeling it must do something to change it. Feeling anger isn&#x27;t a bad thing; it&#x27;s what inspires us to right wrongs. The problem is when we let the feeling dictate when we act and how. Feel your feeling of anger - and then stop, and ask yourself if this thing really is wrong, if you personally need to right this wrong, if you need to do it right now, and how you can right it in a way that creates more good than harm.

I feel the article takes a widely useful human capability and isolates it to a set of negative, socially contingent actions. Revenge is a social thing. Anger is not necessarily social.<p>I can get angry at the mess and thus promptly put things in order.<p>It seems to me Nelson Mandela used his anger strategically. It wasn&#x27;t that he wasn&#x27;t angry, and that the derivatives of non-anger were the golden solution. After all, as the article mentions—but here in my phrasing—his strategy collapses into violence when non-violence won’t work, and then virtuously claims it is based in non-anger (the favored party always uses violence &quot;correctly&quot; and instrumentally as a last resort, while the opponents are seen as just angry and violent). Mandela was angry, but he used it under the disguise of a set of virtues he deemed superior to those he hated. He likely idealized himself as a non-violent person, but was deeply angered—and, in my view, there&#x27;s nothing wrong with that. His strategy being a long-term one. I do not know too much about Mandela, and these are my speculations grounded mostly in psychological observations, which makes me not easily believe things are as they appear.<p>Anger is highly productive in an often harsh evolutionary framework.

&gt; The central puzzle is this: the payback idea does not make sense. Whatever the wrongful act was – a murder, a rape, a betrayal – inflicting pain on the wrongdoer does not help restore the thing that was lost.<p>My understanding is that the &quot;tit for tat&quot; algorithm explains why anger can make sense as a game theory strategy. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM</a>

Today was Plato&#x27;s Academy&#x27;s seminar on The Philosophy and Psychology of Anger<p>The video should be posted, I think. Most of the talks were very good.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;platosacademy.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;platosacademy.org&#x2F;</a>

From anger, complete delusion arises, and from delusion bewilderment of memory. When memory is bewildered, intelligence is lost, and when intelligence is lost one falls down again into the material pool.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vedabase.io&#x2F;en&#x2F;library&#x2F;bg&#x2F;2&#x2F;63&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vedabase.io&#x2F;en&#x2F;library&#x2F;bg&#x2F;2&#x2F;63&#x2F;</a>

The evolutionary purpose of anger is to coerce others &#x2F; control the behavior of others.

Your article is insightful. Anger is not a solution. Yet, you write as an individual who has no idea about the actual motivations of the headline character you involve in this narrative. Mandela was a terrorist. Plain and simple. In his “struggle” he concocted plans to harm innocent individuals in bombings - what about their anger of their family members? In his career as a politician, he initiated a systemic destruction of society and order in South Africa, the effects and repercussions of which are in evidence today. What a lazy and convenient use of a figurehead you have chosen to make your points!