0:02 - Introduction to Anger
0:46 - Understanding Anger
1:13 - Hierarchical Nature of Anger
3:05 - The Role of Anger in Relationships
5:29 - Frustration and Its Importance
9:16 - Purpose of Anger
13:21 - Anger and Society
16:10 - Directional Anger
25:02 - Anger as a Response to Harm
28:32 - Consequences of Anger
35:13 - Resolution Through Anger
38:42 - Self-Criticism After Anger
In this episode, I delve into the complex and often misunderstood emotion of anger, prompted by a listener's request for guidance on how not to become angry. The conversation begins with a reflection on the nature of anger, which I characterize as hierarchical and directed. Drawing on personal experiences, I illustrate how societal structures often dictate who can express anger and in what context—parents can reprimand their children, but children must remain submissive to adult authority.
Building on this hierarchy, I assert that requests to suppress anger can lead to a form of subjugation, suggesting that learning to quell feelings of anger might equate to embracing vulnerability in exploitative relationships. This theme of reciprocity resurfaces as I recount an encounter with a bank where I felt wronged, paralleling the emotional responses of frustration and anger to situations where fairness is disregarded.
As I explore the role of anger in our lives, I argue that it serves as a critical alert system for recognizing when we are being exploited. Anger is not merely a negative emotion; it has a purposeful function. When I encountered unfair practices in business, my frustration transformed into anger—an emotion that propelled me to seek resolution and justice. I emphasize that persistence without anger can lead to unhealthy scenarios, reinforcing the idea that anger is a crucial part of maintaining one's integrity and advocacy for self.
The discussion continues to dissect the dichotomy between anger and rage, distinguishing between win-win aspirations versus win-lose relationships. Through anecdotes, I explain that effective anger can lead to constructive dialogues aimed at resolving conflicts, while oppressive rage only serves to dominate and coerce. I illustrate this with examples where frustration catalyzed a need for assertiveness, leading me towards necessary confrontations, whether with an individual or an institution.
Ultimately, I posit that anger can be a pivotal force for good, ensuring that our needs are met and our boundaries respected. I encourage listeners to view anger not as an enemy but as an ally, one that helps facilitate change and personal growth when justice is not served. By allowing oneself to feel and express anger appropriately, we free ourselves from exploitative contexts and foster healthier relationships.
In closing, I emphasize the importance of self-reflection post-conflict, encouraging a review of one's experiences to learn how to navigate future situations better. Cultivating an environment filled with respect and understanding can significantly reduce instances of anger, and when faced with wrongdoing, anger can be transformed into a pathway to assertive solutions that enhance our well-being and relational dynamics.
[0:00] All righty. Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
[0:02] Stefan Molyneux from FreeDomain, FreeDomain.com. Your help is most gratefully, deeply, and humbly appreciated. Thank you for your support. As we cruise into, boy, it's coming up for 20 years, not all too long away. It's less than a year until 20 years. It's just wild. Man, 2005, I published my first article on Lou Rockwell. Dot com, the Stateless Society and Examination of Alternatives. And that was my entree, my debut, my debutante ball into the testicular manslaughter of social discussions of morals.
[0:46] Anyway, so got a message. A listener asked me, I need, he said, I need a show on how not to become angry? How not to become angry? It's a great question. Anger is a very, very interesting topic as a whole. Now, I've got a show, which I did in the past, called The Joy of Anger, which you should check out, fdrpodcast.com. But let's talk about anger as a whole.
[1:14] So, the first thing to understand is that anger is hierarchical and directed.
[1:24] Anger is hierarchical and directed. And if this doesn't help you understand what COVID is all about, I don't know what will. So, when I say anger is hierarchical, I want you to, of course, think about when you were a kid in school, the teacher could get angry with you, right? But you could not get equally angry at the teacher. The teacher could snap at you, and that was discipline. You snapping at the teacher was rude, and you got in trouble. I mean, I don't know if anyone gets in trouble in school these days, but back in the day, you used to get in trouble.
[2:04] So, anger is hierarchical. Your parents can get angry at you, and that's just and fair discipline that's caused by your bad behavior, if they're dysfunctional parents, right? But you cannot get angry at your parents. That's being disrespectful. It's having attitude that needs to be adjusted, right? So, their anger is good, right, moral, just, healthy, and virtuous. Your anger is disrespectful, bratty, whiny, complaining, negative attitude, and needs to be fixed. I hope I'm not shocking you with any giant spoilers, but anger is hierarchical. And so, not getting angry is a mark of subjugation. The slave cannot be angry with the master, or at least cannot express that anger. The master can be as angry as he wants at the slave, right? I think we understand all of this, right? Nothing too shocking about any of this.
[3:06] So, if you say, Stef, you got to teach me how to not be angry, what you're asking for is to be taught how to be a slave, how to be subjugated. It's also, of course, hypocrisy, moral hypocrisy in particular, is hierarchical.
[3:26] I mean, I remember when I worked in Thunder Bay, I deposited one of my paychecks and the bank lost it. So I had to go and it took a while and I had to go and find my deposit slip and go back and so on. And I demanded a hundred dollars because I said, look, if I write, this took me quite some time to solve. And if I do things that cost you money, you charge me, right? Like if I write a bad check or, you know, things that cost you time and money, you charge me all the time. Now, you made a mistake. I have the deposit slip. You lost the deposit. So now you owe me money. I can't remember if it's 50 bucks or 100 bucks or something like that. But I had to spend quite a bit of time rooting around to try and find the deposit slip. And then, you know, I had to identify it. I had to go in and talk to them. They had to say, we need your deposit slip. I had to go back. I had to find this. It took me a couple of hours.
[4:20] And I said, if I did something that cost the bank a couple of hours, you would hit me with service charges up the way I do. And I passed along a list. I said, here's a list of all of your service charges for all the things that I can do that cost you time and therefore money. And now you've made a mistake that has cost me time and therefore money. And so let's be reasonable here, right? And I had to take it all the way up to the, I think it was the branch, like it wasn't just this branch manager, it was the regional manager and they wouldn't give me my money back. So I closed down my entire account and I said, I'm never doing business with your organization ever again. And I never did, even in the business world. And let's just say that probably over the years, they've missed out on more than 50 bucks. But that was just, because then it's just a power thing, right? Then it's like, it's not a principle that if you cost someone time and money that you owe them money, but that's their principle with me. But if that's not my principle with them, then it's an exploitive relationship.
[5:20] So, and what was I, 20? 19, 20, something like that. But yeah, I guess I've always been into reciprocity and all of that.
[5:30] So, when it comes to anger, if you say, I need to find a way to not become angry, then you are ripping out the heart of your moral, intellectual, mental, mental health, and sanity defense system. Because you need anger to know when you are being exploited or violated. You need frustration, which is a component of anger. You need frustration to know when it might be worth walking away from a task, right? It might be worth walking away from a task. Persistence in the face of all obstacles is not healthy. It's not right. Because that in which you're most successful in life is probably going to come the easiest and the most pleasurable. The stuff that has really worked for me in life, programming, public speaking, reasoning, this sort of spontaneous speaking, and so on, this is all stuff I did for years and years and years for free, sometimes decades, before I ever got paid for it. And I really enjoy it. I really enjoy it. It doesn't feel like work. It feels like a sport. I mean, don't get me wrong. Sometimes it's not that much fun, but for the most part, it's very enjoyable. I miss it when I don't do it, and I'm happy to do it.
[6:50] So if you're dealing with someone who is just not going to change then frustration is your sign to find an alternate way of dealing with the situation so when i was talking to the bank teller and i wanted the 50 or 100 bucks and she said no i said i want to talk to the manager and then to the branch manager and then i kind of gave up because then i was like okay this is an organization that is cheap and chisely and rips off people with one-sided approaches to business and value.
[7:22] So, frustration is an important emotion, because it can signal to you that you are not going to be able to get your needs met in a situation. I mean, one of the reasons I found it quite frustrating to learn other languages. Now, I did have to learn to translate French for my master's degree, and I knew that that was not a thing that I was particularly great at. I'm not too bad at accents, of the accent, but I'm not particularly good. And that's because my facility with English is so high that when I think about the amount of effort it would take for me to become proficient, like there's no point becoming like restaurant French or, you know, whatever, like, you know, like, this is not where I want to be. So knowing how good I am at English, when I look at another language and I say, how long is it going to take me? 10,000 hours. Well, 10,000 hours is 5,000 philosophy shows. Would I rather be good at French or have 5,000 philosophy shows? Or to put it another way, is the world better off if I learn French or is the world better off if I do 5,000 philosophy shows? Well, I know the answer to that. There's lots of people who speak French, but not a lot of people who could do really good philosophy in a generally consumable fashion.
[8:46] So I looked at that. I didn't even feel, I felt frustration at my resistance to learning another language, but I had to do it for my degree. But I felt a sort of weariness, kind of a despair and, oh God, forget it, right? Oh, forget it, right? Whereas learning another computer language can often be fun because they follow the same structure. I mean, I know that human language does as well, but it's a lot of memorization with human language. So, it's not, should you get angry, should you not get angry?
[9:17] It's, what is the purpose of anger?
[9:21] And how can anger be effective at making your life better? Now, of course, since anger is about asserting your preferences in the face of resistance, anger, like almost by definition, anger is inconvenient or negative to exploiters, right? Which is why, I mean, can you imagine like the teacher says you can't use violence to get what you want and you say, but your entire paycheck is funded by coercive taxation. This entire system, the whole school, everything's built, everything's run on coercive taxation. Who on earth are you to say, don't use aggression to get what you want, right? Well, I mean, that would be absolutely unacceptable, right? So people who want to exploit you don't want you to get angry. Of course, right? Of course. So anger is inconvenient to exploiters.
[10:17] Rage is win-lose, anger is aiming for win-win. So, rage is when you just terrify someone in order to dominate their will and frighten them through the implied or explicit threats of escalation. It's when you seek to remove someone's free will and have them simply subjugate themselves to your will. So, you model rage, you scream, you yell, you hit, you whatever, right? And you do that because that's win-lose. So, the person who's raging wins. But with anger, it's actually aiming for win-win, and anger occurs when you realize that win-win is not possible. And then you're tempted to rage, to assert your will over the other person, but that entangles you in a win-lose relationship, which is a bad place to be, and it's a bad thing to have in your life, a win-lose relationship. Try to avoid, almost at all costs, try to avoid getting entangled in win-lose relationships.
[11:21] So, I was frustrated when the bank would not reciprocate the principle of, if you cost me time, you owe me money, right? I said, they made the mistake. Well, it's not in our policies. Well, you know, it's not how we do things. Well, blah, blah, blah, right? And I said, but it is a principle of fairness, isn't it? Well, but it's not written down and blah, blah, blah. Okay, so I don't have any particular respect for positive law doctrines, right? Just because it's not written down. I mean, there's a principle of morality, right? You don't sign a contract to return the shopping cart, right? You don't sign a contract to do that, but you do it. You don't sign a contract. Well, you know, I didn't sign a contract to pay for my meal when I walked in and sat down and ordered my meal, right? I didn't sign a contract to do that. So this letter of the law stuff is exploitation writ large.
[12:13] You know, if some woman cheats, your girlfriend cheats on you, right? And then she says, well, we didn't sign a contract. There's nothing written. We didn't notarize anything. We didn't get a lawyer to countersign it that that wasn't going to happen. I mean, maybe we had some conversations about it, but it wasn't formal. Okay, well, then just legalese is a way of avoiding the conscience. All that is not explicitly contracted is permissible. And and of course it's a lie right because all that that's just do whatever you want to then complain it's the other person's fault for not being clear about their preferences or requirements, so yeah so anger is hierarchical in that the urge to not become angry is to say i will be the lose in this win-lose relationship but at least i'll maintain the pretense of a relationship right this is sort of foundational to often dysfunctional parents and so on. I'm going to be the lose in the win-lose relationship, but at least this allows me to maintain the illusion of a relationship.
[13:22] So, anger is not something that a society can live without, because anger needs to be directional. And what that means is that the rulers don't want you to be angry at the rulers, but they always need you to get angry or to be able to get angry at the rulers' enemies. So, the king doesn't want you to get angry at the king, but the king always wants you to get angry at the king's enemies, right? So, I mean, we saw this under COVID, right? People didn't, like the rulers, didn't want the population to get angry at the rulers for, you know, funding, creating, gain of function, restriction of rights, and imposition of medical treatments. Like, so the rulers don't want you to get angry at them, but the rulers desperately need you, need you to get angry at the rulers' enemies.
[14:34] So, the ruler does not want you to get angry at him for starting the war, right? The ruler does not want you to get angry at him for starting the war. But the ruler desperately wants or needs you to become angry at your supposed enemies in the war or at the people who are opposing the war, right? So, if the rulers make horrible mistakes and start a war, the rulers can't be having their population enraged at the rulers for screwing things up and starting a war.
[15:19] What they need the population to do is to get enraged at the enemy soldiers and domestic critics. Enemy soldiers and domestic critics. And of course, we saw this in the pandemic, right? Nobody was allowed to get angry at the people who had, in my view, of course, created and spread the virus, funded, created, and spread this gain-of-function stuff. You weren't allowed to get angry at them, and you weren't allowed to get angry at the rulers, but you were directly encouraged, to get angry at the people who had questions about what was going on, the people who were hesitant to take the vaccines. Now, those people you could get angry at.
[16:11] So, anger is both hierarchical and must be directional. And what I mean by that is societies that weren't able to figure out or didn't evolve to allow anger to be hierarchical and directional probably didn't last very long in the, you know, hurly-burly, nature-reddened tooth and claw of our evolution, right?
[16:31] The general purpose of anger is to appeal to the conscience of another person. The purpose of anger is to appeal to the conscience of another person. And anger is the sort of flip side of hurt, right? So if somebody does something mean or bad or whatever, then you are hurt. And hopefully, the hurt is enough to have the other person treat you better, right? But if hurt isn't enough to be upset, isn't enough, then anger is a way of saying, you have not noticed or care about my hurt. So, the last resort is anger, right? So, let's say, an anger, sorry, anger is when you realize it's not accidental, right? So, let's say that you are in a business relationship. Let's take a sort of typical example that you read over and over again, like I think two guys from Bad Finger killed themselves over this, if I remember rightly, but it happened to Elton John, happened to Billy Joel, happened to Sting, happened to Queen, of course, Death on Two Legs, where you're a musician and you get ripped off. I'm sure it happened to Led Zeppelin too with the giant bags of money.
[17:54] So, if someone doesn't pay you what they owe you, it could be negligence, it could be confusion, it could be misunderstanding, it could be forgetfulness, it could be any number of things, right? So, if somebody owes you 10% of something and they don't pay you, then you're upset, you're hurt, you're hurt or you're upset. You don't necessarily immediately go to anger, because it could just be a misunderstanding or a difference of opinion or you could be in the wrong right in that you didn't read the fine print correctly and you're not owed this money for whatever reason right so let's just say it doesn't necessarily mean hurt or sad but you're upset right so when the bank missed or lost my deposit i was annoyed i was upset right i mean not a huge deal. So, if you think you're owed $1,000 in a business transaction, and you don't get the $1,000, then you're bothered, right? It bothers you, and it should, right? Of course, right? It should bother you. So, you say to the person, I'm bothered because I think you owe me $1,000.
[19:10] Now, if the person says, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, you're absolutely right, it absolutely slipped my mind. Here's $1,000. I remember once when I was a roommate, I was doing okay financially, but I had a check that bounced. I think the one time in my life I've bounced a check, right? Bounced a check is when you write a check. For the younger people, you write a check, and there's not enough money in the account to cover it. And so it was like the third or fourth month, and I kited a check, I bounced a check, and so I showed the guy my bank book, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I wrote it on the wrong account, I'm so sorry, here's the account with all the money, and I wrote him the check for my.
[19:58] Rent and I threw in an extra $100 because he was charged an insufficient funds fee and there was hassle in time. So I made a mistake. I did something that inconvenienced someone. So I wrote them the check and I said, you want to get it certified, which is where the monies are automatically deducted from your account already. So I made it up to him, right? Because that's fair, right? So, on the other hand, it could be somebody who has no intention of paying you and is just going to try and last out as long as he can without paying you, and then you're in for a big, bad, ugly battle, right? So, you think someone owes you $1,000, and it bothers you that you didn't get paid, right?
[20:44] So, what do you do? Well, you say, you call the person up and you say this, and if they're like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, you're absolutely right to call me, you know, this completely slipped my mind, it wasn't put into the right place, and whatever, right? And then they cut you a check, like, right away, and then you're like, okay, well, things happen, right? And maybe they throw in a little extra for your concern, but, you know, whatever, right? I mean, even if they don't, they're just, oh, sorry, right? So, you're bothered, but not angry, right? You're bothered, like, hey, what's this money, right? And you call the person up, and if they're like, no, no, no, right? Now, if they say no, the 10, like, let's say you think you're owed 10% of 10 grand. And so you wrote a thousand bucks. And then the person says, I don't think I owe you the thousand because at least yet, because I'm only, only supposed to start paying you after three months. And if you look at the contract and you bring up the contract and maybe you missed something that the payments don't start until after three months, right? Okay. Well then, then you're like, oh, so sorry. I didn't mean to imply that you weren't paying me. I understand, and all of that, right?
[21:53] It could be any number of things. It could be that you misread it, you get paid $100, you thought you were owed $1,000 because you're in 10% of whatever transaction, but you misread $1,000 to $10,000, they send you $100, and you're like, hey, man, where's all my money? You owe me $900. And they say, no, no, no, because we're paying you 10%, it was $1,000. Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. I misread that as $10,000. My apologies, totally. Because you generally, if you think someone has not paid you and you confront them on it, And in a sense, I mean, and the harder you come across, like, hey, where's my money kind of thing, right? You're ripping me off, right? This is why you go in with, you know, this is what I think, I just want to double check it with you. And like, because you don't want to be accusing people, right? You want to make sure, like, you don't want to be innocent until proven guilty, right?
[22:41] So you're upset and then you call the person up and if the person does in fact owe you the money but is evasive about it yeah yeah yeah i'll get it to you blah blah blah you know it's like okay by when friday man yeah so if they you know and whatever maybe they get it by friday whatever right but they're already on the back foot they're already sus right they're already suspect because they didn't call you and say listen i'm supposed to pay you this money i have had a cash flow issue I will have it Friday, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So what happens is you end up going from just being upset to being angry when you begin to realize it's not accidental, it's not unintentional, it's not confusion, it's not a mistake, then they don't want to pay you, right? They owe you and they don't want to pay you. I think I've only had one business transaction in my life like this. Where I just wasn't paid. And it's, you know, I mean, it's fine. It's fine. It's still worth it.
[23:51] Should you not get angry, right? When someone doesn't pay you, maybe it's a mistake, maybe it's confusion, maybe it's a misunderstanding, maybe you have different perspectives or opinions, or maybe there's a fine print you don't remember. So you call up and you say, you know, I'm expecting this, I could be wrong, blah, blah, blah, right? So you're upset, maybe a little hurt, a little frustrated, but open to the possibility that you're in the wrong. Now, if somebody just keeps promising to pay you and then doesn't pay you, then it's not. They've already acknowledged that they owe you the money. They tell you you'll have it Friday. They don't pay you. They keep putting you off. They don't answer their phone. They don't return emails, right? Then you're being ripped off. So then you get angry. So anger is when something that is negative to your interest is being consciously done to you by somebody who has already admitted fault. Somebody who's already admitted fault, and they owe you the money, and they're not paying you, right?
[24:53] So anger is when you are in the presence of intentional harm. It's not an accident, right?
[25:02] That, you know, it's the old line, please forgive me that I have shot, this is from King Lear, I think, please forgive me for I have shot, that I have shot an arrow. No, no, this is, sorry, this is Hamlet's hilarities. How could I not remember this? I know I don't have the line exactly, but It's like, forgive me, brother, that I have shot an arrow over the house and hit my brother, right? Just accident, right? Accident. You know, when kids and adults play fight every now and then, there's an elbow to the eye or something like that, right? And it's an accident, right?
[25:34] So, when someone harms your interests and interests, annoyed, hurt, upset, a little bit, right? Just because, you know, there seems to be something wrong. When you have confirmed that they know that they've done wrong and they will not make it right, then you go to anger. And anger prepares you for conflict. It may not be conflict early on, right? You may just have misunderstood or there's a three-month waiting period or whatever, right? You may misread the number or miss the fine print. So you're not in conflict. If you're interested to being harmed, as you perceive, right? You're not in a conflict situation right away.
[26:11] So let's say that somebody walks into you sort of shoulder to shoulder, right? Somebody walks into you, it could just be an accident. They're watching their phone, they're doing all of that, and it's just an accident. And they hear you, hey, and oh, sorry, man, sorry, sorry, right? But then if they come back and glare at you and then hit you in the shoulder again, well, now you're in a conflict. bad situation, right? You're in a fight or flight situation, right? So it's not an accident, right? It's not an accident. I mean, I'm sure everyone remembers if you were around on 9-11, as I was in at work when I was chief technical officer, and I was working on the code base, and a friend of mine I worked with came in, it said a plane just hit the World Trade Center. I'm like, oh my god, I remember that a plane had flown many decades prior, had flown into the Empire State Building. And it's like, oh, that's bad, right? So you think, oh, gosh, how could that happen? That's a very strange accident and so on, right? And then, of course, you know, when fairly shortly after a second plane hit the World Trade Center, then you're like, okay, well, like, then it's not an accident, right?
[27:22] It. So anger is to get you ready for combat. And if someone has ripped you off, right? I mean, I remember many years ago, putting a deposit down on a place that I could move into with a then girlfriend. And I was like, but if she, you know, she's not here, if she doesn't like it, can I get my deposit back? Oh, yeah, no problem, right? And so anyway, I ended up not getting my deposit back. So I had to take the guy to court. And so then you're in a combat situation, right? or conflict, not necessarily a combat conflict situation, and anger is needed for that, right?
[27:57] So, the first pass of appealing to someone's conscience is to be upset. The second pass is to not so much appeal to their conscience and their empathy as to consequences, right? So, if someone steps on your foot and it hurts you, you're like, ow, and he's like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, then he doesn't want to hurt you and you say, but if he keeps stepping on your foot, you're going to get angry. And you say, listen, man, if you step on my foot one more time, we're going to have a serious problem. So then the fact that he hurt you is not enough to get him to change his behavior.
[28:33] So when people don't have empathy, their behavior is restrained through consequences, right? So the reason we don't steal from a store is UPB and how would you like it if you were trying to run a store and people kept stealing from you, and if you steal, the store's not going to be there and you won't have any access to these goods, or at least as easily. And so, you know, there's basic morality, then there's basic empathy. But then you stop stealing for fear of consequences. Like if morals and UPB and thou shalt not steal and empathy, if none of that works, then you will not steal because you'll be prosecuted, and you'll have a record, and you'll have inconvenience, and you'll have a fine, and whatever, right? So, anger, so first being hurt is like, well, does it bother you that I'm hurt, right?
[29:28] If you do something to hurt someone, then it should, I mean, if you care about the person and it's a moral relationship, then you should be troubled that you hurt someone and you should try to make it right because you have virtue, morals, compassion, empathy, all of that kind of good stuff, right? But if someone hurts you or upsets you and doesn't fix it, in other words, they don't have empathy, they are exploitive and manipulative and immoral and so on, well then it's like okay well listen on so with the guy it was like 900 bucks right for the deposit right, so i said well i'd like to my money back and he never got back to me and then i said listen i mean you you did promise right i'm sure you're as good as your word like you need to do the right thing here give me the money back blah blah blah and then he still avoided me wouldn't give me the money back and then i just called him i left a message and i said okay well i'll see you in small claims court right and then he tried to fight it in small claims court but i had proof and so he had to give me the money back and costs. So I was angry with him because he was avoiding me, right?
[30:37] And so anger, it's like, okay, then I'll get the money. I was hoping to get the money back from him. Like, okay, I don't want to go to court. Here's your money. But we ended up having to go to court and he ended up paying up a lot more than the 900 bucks. So that's just sometimes how things have to go. So anger is well you're not going to do the right thing based on virtue conscience empathy care concern affection a sense of pride in your own morality and so on so you like so so you're not going to do the right thing based on morality and empathy so now hopefully hopefully you'll do the right thing because of negative consequences and the negative consequences have to be inflicted, with empathy to the person's conscience, not to their will, right? So, if you're inflicting negative consequences on someone who's doing a bad thing, you're trying to, in a sense, jumpstart or, you know, those electrical paddles, defibrillators, you're trying to jumpstart their conscience with negative consequences. And even if you can't jumpstart their conscience, if, like, for whatever reason, they don't have a conscience, really, then at least they can be a, quote, slightly better person through fear of consequences.
[31:53] And so anger is when you try to reach someone's conscience or give them a better path through the infliction of negative consequences. And that's healthy, right? I mean, if you were abused by, I mean, I made this case a million times, right? If you were abused by your parents, then I think you should be honest with them. If you're still in a relationship with them, you should be honest with them. And if you're angry at how they mistreated you, you should be angry. And that hopefully will help. It will help you become more real to them so that they can have some chance of gaining and having and enacting empathy. And then what happens is, after anger, what happens after anger, right? So, you inflict the negative consequences, right? Whatever they are, right? You inflict the negative consequences. Well, and it could be violence, right? I mean, if somebody is assaulting you and you're in genuine fear of grievous bodily injury or death, then you can use up to lethal force in many jurisdictions. I'm no lawyer, so consult with your local jurisdictions, but my understanding is in many jurisdictions, if you are about to be killed by a criminal, you can use up to lethal force to protect yourself.
[33:10] That's, well, you shouldn't be beating me up. The fact that it hurts me obviously is not a concern for you. In fact, you're beating me up in order to hurt me, so that's not a concern for you. So, the fact that you are beating me up, clearly my pain is not a concern for you. Clearly, you don't have empathy because you've initiated the use of force against me, and so all I have is negative consequences.
[33:33] So, anger is when you are stimulated to a fight or flight scenario, right? To a fight or flight. So anger means, anger doesn't mean not running away. Anger is when you realize that empathy and negotiation won't work. You're in a situation where empathy and negotiation won't work. If it's a situation of violence, in general, get out if you can. Just run away, get away. It's really not worth it. Violence is a very dangerous genie to uncork. And if you can avoid the situation, if you can get away, then get away. Okay, so anger kicks in when you realize negotiation isn't going to work. I mean, the guy wasn't getting to be the $900 back, so I had to move to a different venue or environment, right, where he didn't have a choice to not negotiate, right? He can choose not to negotiate with me, but he can't really choose not to negotiate with the court.
[34:29] Anger, well, you win or you lose, right? You win or you lose. I took the guy to court, either I was going to get my $900 back or I wasn't, right? So you win or you lose. Now, if you win, then your anger dissipates, right? I wasn't angry with the guy anymore. I thought it was kind of a waste of time, but no big deal. It was an interesting experience and so on, right? So I barely thought about him in the 40 years since, right? No, 35 years, 35, 30, 35 years since. So yeah, I barely you thought about it? Because the anger has done its purpose. I was harmed and I tried to negotiate and it didn't work. So I escalated, I got what I wanted, and then I moved on, right? So anger had served its purpose. You don't stay angry, right? When anger has served its purpose.
[35:13] So then what is the purpose of anger? Well, the purpose of anger is to put you in a state of conflict readiness. And again, conflict doesn't mean combat, right? And just conflict. It's what what kicks in when negotiation no longer works.
[35:29] Like if you say to your parents, you did these harmful things to me, and they just gaslight and lie and manipulate and avoid and insult, then clearly empathy isn't working. The fact that they hurt you doesn't seem to matter to them relative to them protecting their own ego. So then you're going to get angry because you're now in a situation of conflict, because trying to appeal to their empathy hasn't worked. Trying to appeal to their virtue, honor, dignity, like whatever, right? It hasn't worked. Affection, parental bonds, hasn't worked. So then you're in a situation of conflict. And that's what anger is for. And then anger is there to help you to resolve the conflict, right? Anger is there to help you to resolve the conflict. Now, the conflict could be leaving the situation. The Conflict could be an escalation to get what you deserve. It could be any number of things, right?
[36:28] And then the anger is there to help you resolve the situation, right? I mean, if you have a girlfriend and she cheats on you, you're hurt, you're angry, and you have a conversation with her. And generally, I mean, if she cheats on you, generally, the solution is to leave the relationship. I mean, it's just a girlfriend, right? So you leave the relationship. So your anger at having been mistreated and lied to, well, that is solved by leaving the relationship. And then after the anger, after the anger comes the self-criticism, and it should. So after the anger, right, so you've got hurt, upset. If that's not enough to get a person to behave better, you move to anger. And if anger, anger will resolve the situation one way or the other. And then you have self-criticism. So the question then is, how did you end up in that situation to begin with, right?
[37:24] A kid and you're, or let's say you're a teenager and you're out. I mean, I would cross train bridges at night with friends, right? And that was really stupid and dangerous, right? So I was on a train bridge. The train was coming across. It was very dangerous and very bad. Could have gone, I was like 300 feet off the ground. It was very bad. And so I get a fear. I can't run. I get fight or flight, which heightens my perspectives. I do what's needed to survive that. And then I get the self-recrimination works, which is how stupid could you be to put yourself in that situation? And I never did it again, right? So, it's the self-criticism, right? If you've been ripped off in business, then you have the challenge of saying to yourself, okay, so let's say I move heaven and earth and we go to court or whatever, resolve the situation in some way or another. And then your question is, okay, well, how did I get into the situation to begin with? right? So that you can avoid having to get in that situation.
[38:24] And if you've been excessively criticized, then you lack the more rational course correction of self-criticism, right? You need that rational course correction of self-criticism. And a lot of people will just defend themselves, right? You know, the woman who cheats or the man who cheats might justify it and explain it away and so on, right?
[38:42] So in terms of don't get angry, well, that's not healthy. It's like saying don't have an immune system. Well, you're in the world. People are going to mistreat you. Like it's going to happen. People are going to mistreat you.
[38:56] And the purpose, of course, is to act back against people who mistreat you. And then afterwards, have the post-review, right? The, you know, review after, right? The review after and say, well, what could I have done to have avoided this situation in the future? right? And do we say that's anger with the self? Well, it depends, right? It depends. But being angry at the self can be very helpful in terms of shocking you out of dangerous or complacent behavior. So, in terms of don't get angry, yeah. I mean, have people around you who treat you well and you won't get angry. I mean, honestly, I literally, literally cannot remember the last time I was angry with my wife. I have no memory of, I mean, I'm sure I've been annoyed, as has she, over the 22, 23 years. But I honestly cannot remember. Because, you know, you just have people in your life who are good and reasonable and care about you. And if there's a wrong done, it's accidental. And so, yeah, I mean, get angry for sure. And let anger get you to a place of safety and security by having you not repeat the behaviors that end up with you being harmed or hurt. So, anyway, I hope that helps, and I really do appreciate your time, care, thoughts, and attention. Freedemand.com slash donate if you find these and other conversations to be helpful. Thank you.
Support the show, using a variety of donation methods
Support the show
