There are so many reasons to be angry. We live in a culture that makes idealism its goal
and a world that makes idealism impossible. There is so much wrong—with
others, with our self, with the way things are. We reside somewhere inside a brain,
watching and feeling its fervent, insatiable efforts to try and make the world go its way;
and every day, with as little as the sound of a car horn or a lost set of keys,
we are reminded that this is an impossibility, that we are stuck between the awareness of a
god and the temperament of an animal. Often anger just makes a lot of sense.
Of course, there are different types of anger, different instances and sources,
different temperaments with different propensities toward it. And arguably, in many cases, anger can
be a very useful emotion. It can be a source of insight into when we’ve been wronged, when things
are going poorly, when we want change. It can be a source of character, of creativity, of motivation,
of strength. But in other cases, arguably far more often, it can also be a source of foolishness,
of miscalculation, of regret, of resentment, of detachment—from others and from ourselves.
We so often take personally what the world does without us in mind. Certainly we can
be wronged in ways that are unjust, targeted, correctable, or preventable. And in these cases,
anger can and likely should be used as a source of motivation and force to recognize this, stand up,
and defend ourselves. But arguably, more often we are wronged by the world in ways where no
amount of angered force will help correct or solve it. Human existence is so unbelievably
absurd and chaotic and strange, it is a wonder it works in our favor at all any of the time.
We are lodged inside a clump of soft tissue that we don’t even understand, experiencing a reality
made of particles that we can’t perceive, all made and governed by a universe that operates
in chaotic contradiction to the meaningful order we so desperately desire, the very
same desire the universe forced onto us. We were setup, destined to have everything fall over and
over. We can tend to resist and reject any sort of softer acceptance and sadness in repones to this,
and instead, many of us can become callused over with a sort of brute and frequent anger. This has
its place and purpose, but at a certain point, like a callus on the hand, we can become numb and
unfeeling, less able to properly know and deal with the truer conditions of our circumstances.
Those who are often angered reveal to be a strange sort of optimist, still in denial of
the tragedies of this life and the death of their youthful innocence—the belief that life can be
what it can’t. Despite all evidence, we are, if we are this, in some non-traditional way,
still hopeful—hopeful that things should and will go well in our favor most of the time, and thus,
we are constantly angered by life’s incongruency. We become angry about everything because we
refuse to let ourselves be sad about somethings. A theory in psychology known as appraisal theory,
initially developed by psychologist Magda Arnold, suggests that our emotional responses are in large
part created by our conscious evaluations of events—how we view, interpret, and label stimuli
rather than the stimuli themselves. In other words, in between our primary experience of an
event and our emotional experience of an event, there is a filtering process that occurs through
and based on our cognitive faculties. In this space, what we think based on our experiences,
perceptions, views, and values determines what we feel. For example, if we have a fondness for
cats and believe cats are sweet and harmless, seeing or holding a particular one will likely
be a favorable emotional experience. However, for someone who believes cats threatening or devious,
this experience will likely be a negative one. The emotional responses will be completely different
while the stimulus remains the exact same. Of course, since our emotions are so wide-ranging,
complicated, and partly rooted in consciousness, a topic largely uncracked by science,
a comprehensive understanding of our emotions is still yet to be seen,
and this model remains a theory. And even in the case that this theory is correct,
some of our appraisals will still likely be more unconscious and immediate than others, making them
harder if not potentially impossible to get into and control—and perhaps sometimes for good reason.
However, it is still fair to argue that in many cases, often the more common cases, the concept
suggested by appraisal theory has immense value and practical use. Especially when we are angered
frequently or remain angered for long drawn-out periods of time, there is likely large opportunity
to change out our mental filter in favor of better, more productive emotional experiences. In
the words American author, David Foster Wallace, “Learning how to think really means learning how
to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough
to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because
if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in…life, you will be totally hosed.”
This idea also coincides with principles central to the philosophy of stoicism.
For the stoics, events in the world are objective and neutral, and our qualitative
emotional experiences are merely a product of the narratives we tell ourselves. “It doesn’t hurt me
unless I interpret it’s happening as harmful to me. I can choose not to,” wrote Marcus Aurelius.
Perhaps what we need, then, during those moments of opportunity to reflect mindfully on events and
determine our evaluations, is to inject healthy but sufficient doses of a sort of pessimism and
compassion. When we believe the world is congenial and manageable in some just way, when we think we
are at the center of all things and all events in the world that happen to us happen at us,
when we neglect to consider that suffering and ignorance are fundamental to all people,
anger can and likely will eat us alive. Rather, if we realize that the world has not singled us out,
that most people are good people trying their best, that ignorance is far more often behind
the curtain and not malice, that our emotions are not the result of being made victim by others
but by us not taking ownership of them ourselves, that life is inherently
difficult and suffering is fundamental to everyone, we can perhaps, at least at times,
more accurately evaluate if what we are angered by is worthy of being angry about, and how.
Of course, none of this is to say that we should be or live an agreeable life in which our anger
is always denied of its expression. Nor is it to say that we shouldn’t have expectations and make
effort to control and react to circumstances to the best of our ability. But it is to say
that often anger comes from a place that isn’t angry about the thing we seem to be angry about,
that anger is often a liability and not an asset, and that we aren’t locked in to falling victim to
it by always letting ourselves think that we have personally been made victim by the world.
In the words of Marcus Aurelius, “Understand at last that you have something in you more
powerful and divine than what causes the bodily passions and pulls you like a mere puppet.”
All of this might sound perfectly reasonable, useful, and insightful,
but of course, that is until you get angry. It is then that all of this likely sounds impossible,
nonsensical, cheep, or trite; but perhaps it is then and for this reason especially,
that these ideas matter so much—the fact that we can become so detached from our faculties
of reason and wisdom and that anger can take us so far from what we truly think and want.