Again for me the fact that X can lead to Y is being generalized to X always leads to Y, by both you and James. I often experience anger as precisely the opposite: clarifying.
A good example, for me anyway, is when I am dealing with, pardon my Anglo-Saxon, a mind fucker. I may be picking up in myself an array of small frustrations as you say, but not really understanding what is happening to me - they are that good. (and I can be a member of that set ‘they’ and good people I love can be also.) At a certain point anger arises (or fear, but that’s not the focus here) and in the midst of the anger I gestalt the whole. I get the pattern. It may also happen after I angrily push back - note, not physically. Emotions are precisely unifying patterns in the body. They mobilize the whole body. They take what may be disparate and gather and focus it. (Which is why they are often call motivators.) Moving somewhere else, using tactical, rational discompassionate communication even internally with myself, actually tends to muddy everything. First in losing the forest for all the trees - but you said X and then yesterday… type stuff - but also precisely in the internalization which is being utilized by the mind fucker. Often their strategy - not necessarily conscious - is to get you to split inside yourself, to have emotions, but thoughts that make you doubt them. To make you shut yourself down. To make you doubt and mull over yourself, rather than allowing a more gut reaction that is in fact appropriate.
I have had situations, often with women, where they have snapped at me. I have pissed them off and they cannot even articulate why, but it is in response to something I have done or said. In some of these situations, I could immediately feel that there had been a facet of what I was doing I was not conscious of, and something feels off about it. Later through discussion we have BOTH together come to what was happening and I am glad they got pissed.
They could have tried to explain. They could have argued. They could have tried to dissolve their anger. But in fact the expression of anger snapped us out of a pattern and me in particular. It broke the pattern, got air in there, gave me motivation to look at what I was doing and heightened the energy to where I was instantly able to.
(other times of course it took longer or they were simply projecting or whatever. I shouldn’t have to say it, but here I will formally say
I am not saying that all anger is good, all expressions of anger are good. Not remotely. But in response to blanket condemnation of anger - presented by Bob with a lot of compassion, including self-compassion - I am going to focus on the positive.=
I don’t think that I have generalised in the way you are suggesting. I am describing what I have experienced, which may not be exhaustive. I agree that X can lead to Y, rather than it always does - I am the best example of that. However, at a fundamental level there is this progression that, until I become aware of it, does invariably follow a certain path. But this may be me, how I am wired and geared up to work.
I have thought about the possibility of clarification coming from anger, and I have come to the conclusion that anger, experienced by me as a non-rational emotional experience, very seldom clarifies anything than the fact that I am angry. Professionally, anger is something which gets in the way.
Well, this experience is something that I have been fortunate/unfortunate enough to not have experienced. I have reviewed what I have written and found that our experience is obviously different.
This is an interesting take on anger, since as my own emotion remains for me something that clouds my mind, but on the other hand, if I am subjected to anger, it can be clarifying for me. But again, that does have to do with self-analysis. The clouding of my mind can also happen without anger, and may be because of some issue which eludes me, and it is clarifying if someone confronts me with anger, jolting me back into reality if you like, and then I see it. It is just that this clarification seldom comes through my own anger.
And also, if judgments of anger are in place, these affect what happens when anger appears. I suppose I am also suggesting that a learning process, given our society’s ideas about anger and often subcultural and family ideas and judgments, means that the seeming loss of control confirms these judgments. Like how falling in the deep end as kid can seem to confirm that being in the water is a dangerous thing, period.
Often it is accepted that so called positive emotions, which are also non-rational, can motivate and organize a person in ways that clarify, while so called negative emotions are seen as detrimental because they are non-rational. This can of course have to do with the goals of the person evaluating. I see it generally as limiting to only organize the self around a subset of emotions.
OK.
Sure, I am nto saying, self-analysis bad, anger good, or emotions good, reasoning introspection bad. But I will place a lot of onus on positions judging the range of emotions we social mammals have.
Then we are different. But it is interesting that someone else’s anger can help you clarify. Does this not imply that your anger might be clarifying in certain situations for others. And if so, how could it not, given the added information to the relationship or situation lead to clarification even for you, just not immediately.
The non-rational emotions, which would be all of them, do not fit in as logical steps in an analysis. They shift the frame, they motivate, they grab at wholes, they make choices between a variety of interpretations. They often respond to patterns of interaction, rather than the content of the last verbalized sentence. Reasoning tends to focus on truth values and epistemology and the mind relooks at remembered experiences and tries to get things in deductive series. The emotions are connected to intuition and as such a part of a set of skills that are non-rational. I don’t want to limit my set of tools. It is not that I want to get rid of reason, nor that I think all my intuitions are correct.
I appreciate your framing your take as based on yourself and leaving open the possibility that it might not be universal. I do think there are different temperments and skill sets and what is right for me might not be right for you. And I can imagine that I would not get angry in your profession to the same degree, at least with the clients. Perhaps some relatives and potentially some staff, but the overall context would tend me in other emotional directions. Not to be a good person, not from a top down decision, but simply given my own reactions to the context of your work.
And my point is not to universalize my position, though my language use may at times betray me. Mainly I want to resist the universalization: anger is bad (or whatever evaluation has, really, something like ‘bad’ inside it.
Moreno, as an analogy, I think that you are talking about the uses and benefits of wood and lumber whereas I am talking about the DNA of cellulose. All trees have a degree of similarity in their DNA causing their tree form. Every type of tree has a little bit of distinction in its DNA. I haven’t been asking about the general DNA of trees, but rather your particular distinct DNA that grows your particular type of tree of anger. And whether the consequential wood or fruit bearing tree is beneficial is yet another topic.
I think that Bob not only understood what I have been asking, but has also touched upon the abstract, general nature that defines the DNA of all anger. The abstract cause (“DNA”, “spell”) of every tree of anger, the question that I wasn’t asking about, is simply:
Anger Instigation ≡ the perception of a stubborn or persistent instigator of discomfort or disfavor.
Note that it is the perception, not necessarily the real existence, of a stubborn, not easily persuaded, instigator of discomfort or unfavorable condition. Cast that upon any living creature, even an insect, and anger will result. Callus aggression, “anger”, is the naturally developed intelligent response for survival against a stubbornly persistent adversary. A more advance sentient creature tempers the natural urge toward callus aggression with clever wisdom, thus resulting in very few incidences of actual anger being manifest.
The most important thing to note is that it is all initiated by Perception, not direct reality. And that is how it is used to create manipulated and often unnecessary conflict, “false-flags”. The perception can be generated either by psychological or medical means with or without any real instigator of discomfort being present … except for the spell itself of course.
My question has only been one of asking what do you personally sense down deep as “stubbornly instigated discomfort”. And when I say “stubbornly instigated”, I don’t mean occasional or accidental, but rather seemingly (whether really or not) intentionally or resiliently instigated, resisting efforts to absolve.
See to me you are rigging it by adding the adjective callous and then calling anger an urge to callous aggression. Sometimes we get angry. Someone risks my life while driving near me - and they can do this without feeling any anger at all - and I get angry. No callous aggression on my part, even if a very intense rage is present. Callous aggression is an act of some kind. And oddly, callous, would speak of a lack of feeling a hardened outside. It need not be a stubborly persistant adversary either. It can be a passing one. It can be someone who is not an adversary.
And so are love and compassion. So is grief. So often is curiosity. As long as these are appropriate responses, I see no problem. And since we are not perfect, going through the inappropriate ones is the only way to a real intimacy. Inappropriate here meaning to me where their is projection, or conversion of fear or grief to anger and other common mistakes. I am not talking about beating people or rape etc.
It certain can do this.
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Me personally: I suppose what seems to be stubbornly instigating is a hatred of life. (not feelings of anger about how hard life can be, but a real distaste for life in its fullness) Something a bit like Freud’s death urge but aimed at others in general, thus encompassing me, or aimed at me. This can come in many forms from the physical to the conceptual to even vibe and judgement and bureaucratic type controls.
I am not quite sure if this answered your question. I took it as something like ‘what is it that seems to cause Moreno to react with anger if we look at instances in general and then go to the root of these that they have in common?’
I look at this section in a post of yours in response to Bob…[my emphasis added]
For me calling anger a method is a category error. Anger is an emotion - and emotional reaction.
So let me shift this as a challenge to myself. OK, so anger is not a method, but is it the best emotion to have. And to me there is problem with the question. When asked as a generality, iow not simply in situation X, or as a habit, or ‘instead of feeling fear’, it implies that a facet of the life in me is something I should choose not to have from a tactical perspective. Methods I can vary, but the emotional body is not something I want to limit. I do, of course, want it to evolve - though frankly a great deal of the evolving of the emotional body I have found is through accepting it rather than contorting it with judgments. For my priorities, which you could say are vitalist, I do not want to limit my emotional responses. I want to be the full complete organism I am. Yes, we have evolved facets of the brain or mind that other animals do not have, but I see no reason to replace, since I can have the full limbic system and the neocortex. I do have to side with one over the other - though this judgment is deeply ingrained in all offical religions and also in humanist circles also. The problem for me is that the question implies that some of my nature is wrong.
So I have this category objection and then the objection to the injunction that I limit myself and my nature, both in range and in strength.
Another way to put this is that I think, sure, there can be short term gains, if we reduce anger in many situations, even what I am calling appropriate anger. But this is at a loss of the full self, and further long term losses must follow, for me at least. And once all of the self gets looked at instrumentally, with the limited perspective of the conscious mind and its goals, something huge is lost. Just as when nature - as in things like the woods - is looked at as merely resources for industry and tourism.
I agree entirely which is why I have made peace with my demons rather than deny their existence. Because that is the
worst thing one can do since this is precisely how they grow stronger. Ignorance in this case is most definitely not bliss
Again, you are speaking merely of the aftermath feeling or action, the “wood or tree”, whereas I am speaking of the make of that feeling, the “DNA of the cellulose”.
In English, each of the emotions are referred to as a conscious feeling, an unconscious urge, and an action, using the same identifying word. Love and hate are feelings. They are also urges toward specifically directed actions. And they are also specific actions. Each are the same concept, merely expressed in different realms.
The fact that you did not respond to the urging such as to manifest the action, does not take away the fact that the urging emotive of the same name was there.
It is interesting how word play effects feelings. Here is one. A guy goes to confession, and says to the priest, ‘my only sin is that I hate people’ The priest thinks for a moment, than replies, ‘You’re absolved, my son, for I too have a confession to make, I do too.’
You can be mad at the world, in a general sense, as Moreno indicated, or, deny that , and reverse course, and become mad at your self in a specific sense.
Anger is only specific outward, toward someone other then yourself. Anger derides generality, it is focused, but is always grounded in some specific realized feature of some one. One can say, that ‘I am angry at myself’, but it is always with knowledge of a
feature, such as, for instance, for forgetting things.
A nicety on people’s part, is to modify ‘mad’, in reference to very disturbed people, who seem unhinged and near a break with reality. They see anger, where others perceive madness. Anger is not reflexive as madness is, there is only an outward manifestation, whereas 'madness,'may reflex from
‘being mad’. Can a strong and sustained anger cause one to go mad? Yes, if it is not projected to a specific feature , of an individual, or a group.
The perhaps trivial point I am making is, that, such shadings of expression, may cover vast labyrinths of feeling. Such feelings are defined within the contexts of dynamic shifts of meaning, and usage covers the inflexible or reflexive quality of the expression. Meanings can hide feelings, even to one, who does not understand his own emotions, or where they come from.
I think we have to distinguish what we are talking about. I can see anger as a “mover”, something that “gets something done, dammit!” It can be utilised to get over those things which numb us into passivity or frustration, but that would be an intentional action. What we are talking about is the “serpent”, as we have chosen to call it, that rises silently until it explodes completely uncontrolled. There may be several causes, but we are inquiring as to whether it is one cause that we have in common.
I appreciate you worrying that anger could get a stigma of being something evil or inappropriate, but it depends upon the degree of control we have.
The other emotions,which you are talking about, generally have something constructive about them. In this way they would be positive emotions, as against emotions which cause havoc and damage. It isn’t the non-rational aspect, but the degree in which they are made unable to cause such problems, which makes them negative or positive.
And yet, emotional reactions can be acknowledged, but they don’t have to remain uncurbed. Just because we have a range of emotions doesn’t mean that it is alright to let them flow, because we might learn something from them. We might learn that we have just lost the last chance of putting something right.
But we have to make a compromise, if we are going to remain social animals. This “serpent” we are talking about is callous, and tosses aside other opportunities in order to be lived out. It only wants to get out, regardless of what damage it does.
It especially in my work that I see that anger as something which I can utilise if I see staff behaving in an inappropriate manner, but the same reaction would be unsuited if residents were to act inappropriately. That is why I can’t let rip. So we’re both resisting generalisation.
I see anger as a feeling of, well, anger. Lot of things can happen when one is feeling this emotion. Love can even be the initiator of this feeling. Not just self-love but love of the other. Most parents have experienced that.
Sure, I think I got that.
If I go back to the first posts in the thread it did not seem to depend on anything. It simply was inappropriate. I likely disagree about the issue of control, though that is another issue.
Well calling anger negative - I think it is fair to deduce this from the above is part of the problem I am arguing against. And note again, the implicit generality. Emotions that cause havoc and damage.
You use the metaphor contructive. Most creation requires disassembly or breaking things down or eliminating problems - in other words, what I am doing is taking the morally charged words havoc and damage and replacing them with words that are more neutral and might be seen by others as parts of useful processes. Pretty much every job on earth has facets that are destructive. But we tend to appreciate the positive destruction and use other words for it. Heck, even eating is a very aggressive activity. Certainly learning demands one take apart into pieces.
Love can be destructive when you keep loving something evil or damaging you or your kids.
Likely I will then be told that this is then not really love. Well, generally where I see problems with anger, it is often fear converted into aggression. So both sides of this issue can come up with a this isn’t really X argument.
I specificially mentioned the other so called positive emotions because one of the arguments against anger was that it was non-rational. If its non-rationality is not the problem but rather the results, then, well, it is not a problem that it is non-rational.
I think we can let them flow and learn. Though I do think it is best to keep them hidden from people who do not respect them.
Perhaps that is because it was damned to the dungeon for so long.
Though really I do not know what you mean by the serpent. It could be you seeing parts of yourself that have been banished and judged and are thus contorted and frustrated into the violence you project on it. Or it could be some facet of us that I also think is problematic. I can’t be sure yet.
I have dealt with the dying, though not in any way as much as you have, and I consider it very unlikely that I would let it rip much, as you put it. But I have not had to control myself. Freeing emotions, frees the whole batch, at least that’s how I experience it. Empathy, fear of doing damage to a weak and scared person, have also been present, and these complexify irritation and anger amd make some outburst of rage unlikely. But I have also experienced that expression of anger was appreciated since it normalized things. I am not arguing that one should get angry at dying people, but rather that treating them as alive rather than dying, which the expression of anger can imply, is not necessarily negative. I have also seen this with people who were supposed to be dying - cancer patients with death prognoses - as actually healing. It fit the model they had that the death sentence they had been given was premature. My loved one is not treating me like a tragic figure, perhaps I am not one. AGain, not recommending this as a strategy let alone as a universal one, just noting with hindsight that trying to be kind and sympathetic can contort one in unnecessary ways.
I suppose one of the main points I am making is that we are dealing with a situation in which anger (and grief and fear) have all been judged very harshly (grief perhaps the least). These judgments are deeply ingrained culturally, within religion, inside ourselves. In that situation the very nature of the emotions is tainted. I would suggest that people try to see what is actually the nature of the emotion and what is the result of all this hatred of emotion. Treat a child with distaste throughout its childhood and that child will seem to conform to the judgments of it. See, we were right, that child is evil, is a serpent.
It is no longer my experience that anger is an evil child. Or that one must choose between fear and love.
Why do people have sex? Is there a reason behind it? Or is it simply a need?
What’s wrong with a mere need?
Focus on balance. Make sure that no instinct is over-expressed and no instinct is under-expressed. Do not eliminate, trim. That should be your priority.
What is a mistake from this point of view? Imbalance. And that can be reason just as much as anger.
Rationality is relative to a goal. If we have different goals then what is rational to you will appear irrational to me and vice versa.
This is not to say that goals are equal. Deep-rooted goals are superior, and thus more “rational”, than shallow-rooted ones.
Finally, because we share a common ancestor, and because deep root means far into the past, humans tend to converge on their goals.
The aforementioned act of balancing ensures that one remains true to one’s past, and that means, to our ancestors’ goals.
It’s okay to be angry, you just have to know how to do it, when to do it and when not to do it.
Knowing why isn’t always necessary.
The reason behind it is fear, of course, and that’s in no way, shape or form a bad thing as love-obsessed fagots would like you to think.
James wants to socially harmonize, this is his underlying motive, so he wants to believe that humans are fundamentally conflict-averse.
He wants to believe that a balanced man does not create conflicts.
And that, my friends, is one knee-deep fagotry.
James pictures a man of balance in a manner that is ahistorical and arrhythmical. A man of balance, for him, is a balance of physical forces in the present time leading to inactivity and peacefulness.
Stupid.
Man is a pattern of change, not a pattern of no change. Man is balanced insofar he strives to remain true to his pattern of change (= habits.) Deviating from this pattern is imbalance.
I do not see anger as referring to an action. I don’t see that in English. Certain one can do things angrily, but one can often do the same things with other adverb modifiers.
To me the necessary action is often merely to express the emotion. Angry growl, sad cry, afraid shake, run, or make the sounds of fear. I do see people are so used to converting emotions into a very limited range of actions, especially if they have bottled them up for a long time . which is endemic -, but otherwise I do not see them as dictating actions. Of course sometimes the actions that people think must go with anger are appropriate, but seldom, unless you are in a very harsh environment. Today people are so shut down emotionally they do not have much vantage on what it is to have feelings and to express them. There is tremendous pressure to be not affected, iow to pose as such, except for those politically correct outlets - which depend on what your political correctness is. Childhood is very much about shutting down the emotional body toward a stiff poker face ideal. Over this yes, people are trained to put out a bunch of fake emotions.
People honestly reacting emotionally is very rare. And when it happens they tend to stuff in a lot of words. Simply crying in a public place loses your points, let alone at work say. And that is the least judged so called negative emotion.
We seem to be rather heavily ashamed of being social mammals for some reason, so we pretend we are something else and that something else is much deader than necessary. Rather than being something in addition to the other social mammals, we pretend we have no overlap.
NO that is what makes me angry in others. When they want to stifle or shut down or otherwise diminish life. I can also react with fear depending on the context. And given how common this is today, I can also react with grief.
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Yes, it is strange that so many have such a fundamental distrust and hatred of the fullness of life, often built into belief systems and not noticed as hatred as such. For confused, but generally loving people, the move towards that belief system can be rooted in fear, which in turn is set in motion by what has been experienced before, but also judgments in the mind. IOW some choose systems of belief that have a hatred of life not out of hatred but becuase they are, at root, afraid. They are easier to deal with though the philosophy ends up quite similar. Those who truly hate life are much harder to deal with and, of course, have a great deal of power. (note: they do not want to die, they are afraid of that also, but they want life to be deadened and controlled and dimished. A kind of taxidermy with robotic efficiency. But these beliefs are not limited to the one in control today.)
Since you took what was setting off my anger as being IN me rather than outside me, perhaps I was supposed to say what is at root in me that this hatred of life is triggering. I think at root it is a love of life in its fullness. My own but also in general. (not that I am flawless in my reactions. I bring in the past. I project. I misassume. I miss the context. And so on. Just going at what is at root.)
Sometimes it IS the actions of a person which we cannot agree with, condone, which we despise that ccause anger and frustration withn us and sometimes those actions are simply the catylyst which shines the light on what is really “eating us” - the thing which we deny about ourselves. If we have the courage to look at it honestly and see it for what it is, we begin the healing process by shedding the skin to see what lies there.
But then - pray tell, how do we know when it is time to move on to cure - with making the cure a simple ineffective placebo?
Maybe so, but if you knew this within the context of his personality you would see how this instance is in relation to his fagot tree. You didnt hear the full story, the whole buildup of semen behind this
You are managing to get me angry because you are not contributing but only attacking James, which quite honestly is not only ad hominem (forbidden), but could also be a sign that your ignorance on the subject is overbearing.
Please get off the subject or write something which could give me the idea that you are intelligent.
I think that we have to stress the fact that we are talking about something that is part of our primitive make-up, but which is not wholly under control when we live in a social environment. It isn’t a question of good or bad, but rather whether it helps in the way it is very often intended to. Is it appropriate or inappropriate?
We seem to be the opinion that anger which we can’t control is not helpful and therefore inappropriate for the means intended. Others seem to think that emotions, which are curbed or controlled, can’t give us the lessons we need, and that uncontrolled anger could, in actual fact teach us something. This indicates that these sides of the argument have varying experiences, or they do not understand each other.
