He killed his innocent dog.
The Welsh tell a story about how a prince, Llywelyn, returned home from hunting only to find his infant son’s cradle messy and overturned. He rushes outside and meets his hound Gelert running toward him with blood around his mouth.
Knowing what has happened, he’s overcome with vengeance and puts a dagger into the dog — only to hear his dear boy crying under the bed. Nearby lies the cold body of the wolf that Gelert fought off to protect his child.
Poor dog!
This is the tragedy of our human nature. We interpret events as this and that, cover them with certainty, then the force of our emotions rush to animate our beliefs- not caring if the reality we see and the facts we’ve concluded are true or not.
A Brief Madness
Seneca calls anger brevis insania, a brief madness. He means to illustrate that in the heat of the moment, anger clouds your judgement and makes you cold- even to the people you love.
You raise your voice and choose an ammunition of words to shoot a person’s esteem down. Your face flushes, your breathing becomes hysterical and suddenly every event becomes a motive. Mistakes become carelessness. Disagreement becomes an effort to undermine your authority. And even genuine affection becomes manipulation.
Then later you say I don’t know what came over me.
The Moment of Assent
What most people don’t know, or if they knew don’t apply- is that there’s a space. A moment that helps you buy time before you explode in anger and everything becomes a shell of your former life.
The impulse to retaliate and tell people what’s what, is normal- but it’s not everything. You may feel words about to pour out before you tap into your higher faculties, but you must stop yourself and deliberate.
This is the practice the Stoics advocated for where before impression- phantasia- and assent- synkatathesis- you deliberate and seek an explanation for what has happened. This to say that, the conclusion you’ve reached to doesn’t have to be the end of everything- even if those things have happened.
You have the power to interrupt the story and decision you make from whatever happens. You have power over your mind. You don’t have to go with the flow.
The Usefulness of Anger
Aristotle said that anger can help serve courage and justice- in that if you’re harmed, anger can provide force to the consequences you can exert. Seneca argued otherwise- he said anger is too volatile an emotion to remain a loyal servant of Reason.
It’s like trying to tame a runaway horse, putting it in a chariot and assuming you’re still in control.
If you’ve seen yourself angry you know how you tend to exaggerate the insult, reinterpret ambiguity in the worst manner possible and become certain about motives you’d never prove and call it good judgment.
This is why Seneca advises you to strip apart the confidence you have of other people’s intentions. It could be true that someone acted from malice. But it might also be true that, particularly if you know them well, this is a manifestation of fatigue, insecurity, carelessness, confusion, incompetence, fear, or a gross coincidence.
I’m not saying you excuse bad behavior or not set your boundaries. What I want you to understand is you know less than you think when caught in the spell of anger. A glass that someone knocks off a table requires a different interpretation to the glass someone throws at you.
The Remedy
Seneca tells us to think like a physician to solve anger. You can’t be angry that a feverish person is sweating. You view it objectively- as a clinical sign of a deeper illness.
Case in example, the cruel person just misunderstands what doing the right thing is. The arrogant one is just wrong about status and the greedy one is misinformed about wealth.
This means you can handle a situation without injecting the toxins of anger to create an outcome. If you’re a leader you can dismiss someone without humiliating them. You can end a relationship without turning cruel.
You can speak with force, without anger.
This leads to a simple but not easy prescription from Seneca.
Delay
Don’t make the call or send the text when anger flushes. Don’t spit out the immediate sentence that forms in your head. Don’t make a decision you’ll regret when your body is clearly ready for combat.
This does not dilute your judgement that something is wrong. After the walk or run or sleeping it off- you can still confront the person, discipline the employee or leave the relationship.
If your decision about an event survives the emotion, you get to trust it even more.
It’s also wise to reverse your physiological response. Unclench your hands, sit down, lower your voice and slow down your speech. Basically do the physical opposite of what you do when angry.
It also helps to have a set of rules ready beforehand whenever you feel anger rising. This can be a person you call, a period you wait for before action, some dishes you wash or laundry you fold, or a rule you have for yourself- like to put on your shoes and take a walk around your neighborhood.
However, knowing that is useless if we don’t identify the triggers we’re unusually sensitive to, the interpretations we usually turn to when we get into an argument, or the dark satisfactions we get from reacting.
This is why Seneca and modern psychology advocate for self-awareness, where you can see anger coming a mile away. This then helps you to start creating your boundaries or set counter measures early on. The point being that if you know what makes you tick, it makes anger less likely to manipulate you and lead to undesirable actions.
The questions below are designed to help you notice anger so that you’re ready to implement the remedies we’ve talked about before your next argument, mistake you find out or provocation arrives.
September 27 - Seneca on the Deconstruction of Anger
Seneca, On Anger
“Anger is undoubtedly produced by an impression received of an injury; but whether it follows immediately upon the impression and breaks out without the mind’s assent, or whether it moves with the mind’s consent, is what we are asking... The first movement is involuntary—a preparation for passion, a threat of sorts. The second movement occurs with volition, when reason accepts that an injury has occurred and that vengeance is proper.”
— Seneca, De Ira, 2.3.1–2
Socratic questions for a better life,
What story did your mind tell you in your last serious episode of anger? What hurt you the most in this narrative? Was what you…