"At times it is only the angry who are in a position to apprehend the magnitude of some injustice. For they are the ones willing to sacrifice all their other concerns and interests so as to attend, with an almost divine focus, to some tear in the moral fabric. When I am really angry, it is not even clear to me that I can calm down—the eyes of the heart do not have eyelids—and the person making that request strikes me, to adapt a locution of Socrates’, as trying to banish me from my property, the truth. They are calling me “irrational,” but they seem not to see that there are reasons to be angry."

Agnes Callard, https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/anger-management-agnes...

Although I am not a violent person, I think some people only respond to violence. They cannot be reasoned with.

Non violence is made effective by the credible threat of a violent alternative

(NB: I was originally discussing anger, as distinct from violence, but as long as we're here...)

The most famous example of non violence is the Independence of India. If I squint, I guess I can see the nascent US as having provided the credible threat in that case, but there was still a decade to go between independence and suez.

Edit: modulo a few exceptions, the fall of the Soviet Union was also a stunning success for non violence, and one where the credible threat wasn't explicitly invoked and isn't immediately clear. (as far as I can tell a generation came into power who decided "you know, how the System works and how we were told it worked when we were Young Pioneers have significant differences; why should we keep doing this?" and the rest is history)

India gained its independence because the violence exerted by the Nazis and the Japanese empire exhausted the UK so much they saw no way to keep hold of India by force.

And one million people died in the subsequent partition.

There was a huge credible threat of violence in the independence movement of India

Those people are best dealt with by calm force. Or controlled aggression if that suits you better. Random violence is just stupid and wrong.

Anger is useful in a way, that it gives energy and overcomes paralyzing fear. When you are in a survival fight with no way to escape, anger can make all the difference - otherwise we would not have evolved it. But sure, it is way way better, to not be in a situation where anger is the last resort - and in all normal (social) situations, anger is dangerous. The idea is is to be in control of your body - and not your emotions controlling you.

So I am with the Inuit with this approach:

"When they're little, it doesn't help to raise your voice," she says. "It will just make your own heart rate go up."

When you meet anger with anger, the fire only goes stronger.

Children mainly learn by observing the elders. If they resolve their conflicts with anger - they will mimic it. If they see the elders being calm, that is what they will learn. And if they learn, that they will get what they want, if they throw a tantrum - then this is what they will do more in the future. Consequence is key here.

But I am very sceptical about the bad stories. They don't help I think.

What helps is channeling the anger with martial arts for example. There you can learn to feel the anger raising, after you get a hit - but not become blinded by it. You stay cool. And in control.

edit: what works best when my children have their heads hot - literally cooling them with a bit of water

The problem is that there's about equal amounts of malice as stupidity in the world, so you never really know why. Assuming stupidity by default doesn't always make you feel better and may still lead to an emotional reaction you don't want to have.

The better solution is to not care why, and do what ya gotta do. Usually that's creating distance from the source of problems and you and your work.

> The problem is that there's about equal amounts of malice as stupidity in the world

Also, they are often connected. People who don't know something often refuse to learn it or even to hear about it. Not knowing something is stupidity, but refusing to learn is a conscious decision to be stupid in harmful ways, and that is a form of malice.

Distance is the only solution I know of when the malice is significant and it is at an all time high right now in the USA.

on that subject, compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38268138

I always think twice about my revenge and definitely serve it cold. However thinking about it, Inuit are some of the coolest cultures out the here, right next to Japanese. Their commitment to stay cold-headed and be hard working is something to we should all aspire to achieve.

In Sanskrit literature, a term often used when describing heroes like Rama and Arjuna is jitakrodha, “one who has conquered his anger”. The idea is for you to be in control of your anger, rather than for anger to control you. Rather than anger arising in response to external circumstances and causing you to be carried away and doing things you may regret later, instead anger should be a tool, something you invoke or bring on, when you consciously decide that you need to do battle (or something requiring that energy) — like fire (something anger is frequently compared to), it is dangerous and destructive but a useful tool when one employs it deliberately.

"That's my secret, Cap. I'm always angry."

Anger is not at all useless, it is a powerful and extremely useful emotion. When we witness injustice, when our loved ones are threatened or harmed, when someone treats us with contempt or disrespect, anger is our signal that we must take action, and it gives us the energy and courage to do what must be done.

Understanding your anger and not letting it control your behaviour (ie not giving in to blind rage), is important. But there are no useless emotions, and of all the “negative” emotions, anger is among the most useful and important.

You are describing moral outrage. The other poster is talking about what academics associate with the fight or flight instinct.

I agree with the other poster anger and other extreme emotions are usually negatively correlated with long term success. Extreme emotions engages our primal brain which prevents our more advanced brain from engaging.

> You are describing moral outrage.

That's simply a fancy label for a particular kind of anger, as one might be able to tell from the literal definition of outrage: an extremely strong reaction of anger, shock, or indignation.

In my opinion there are few things quite as pathetic as people who twist themselves into pretzels to avoid acknowledging their emotions for what they are. Certain emotions are "bad" (anger, jealousy, etc), and so instead of addressing it when they feel those things, they just convince themselves that they aren't actually feeling them at all and that their reactions are driven by some higher logic or nobler emotion - all while still inflicting their emotional fallout on those around them.

I side with this school of thought.

Just call the emotions what they are, accept them in the form of not dressing them up and putting some spin on them to make people feel better about themselves (and ultimately dance around the actual emotion, via forms of denial, bypassing, etc.). And once you accept them for the simple, unadorned, and sometimes unflattering things that they are, you can then process them, and decide via understanding the root causes, contexts, and triggers, to then map out decision trees for how to respond to those feelings and emotions as the best course of action.

And like you mentioned, if you don't address the actual emotions and try to pretty them up, you're gonna leak out the actual emotions sideways, and cause unnecessary strain to those around you, and ultimately place your burden of being responsible for your emotions on others, and most likely throw up a big stink (in the form of projection, more denial, more bypassing, etc.).

Emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and responsibility are very difficult but necessary things, and they often times are unflattering. But like also many other things, there's no shortcuts to learning how to manage and deal with them in real situations with real stakes.

Hmm. I would argue addressing the root cause of our emotions requires the use of a more precise clinical analysis. Which is the opposite of extreme emotion.

> there are few things quite as pathetic

I very much agree with your overall point. But it's literally the opposite of pathetic to elide one's own pathos. I'm actually a bit sad that such as useful word as "pathetic" was literally reversed in meaning to become a disparaging epithet.

All personality types have their own blindspots.

> But it's literally the opposite of pathetic to elide one's own pathos

...a rather important part of the overall point is precisely that the people in question are not elid[ing their] own pathos.

Saying it's not really anger is at least the attempt to not consider it. But yes, verbal elidation is probably more correct.

"Engages our primal brain ... prevents our more advanced brain engaging"

That's not how that works.

Moral outrage is when I'm pissed off at someone else bc they don't fit my preconceived idea of how people ought to live or behave - it's not real anger, especially not in 2024.

Being pissed off bc of injustice to my family - that is for sure actual anger.

> anger and other extreme emotions are usually negatively correlated with long term success.

But historically when they did not result in negative long term success, they paid off big time.

Anger is not an extreme emotion. It's used all of the time to good purpose. You're thinking about rage. If the "other poster" failed to make this distinction then it's really important to make it now so that we don't start strawmanning or ad homineming based on a misunderstanding.

Personally Joy has been an extreme emotion that has done me bad. As when I experience Joy I start to stop paying attention. On one occasion I suffered a broken bone because of it.

> (...) and it gives us the energy and courage to do what must be done.

I don't think that's true. Anger, by definition, is a primal/emotional response that leads people to act abruptly without any semblance of reflection on the potential impact of their actions.

The expressions "acted in anger" does not mean "acted with courage to do what needed to be done". It actually means someone screwed up badly without thinking things through.

Anger does literally give a person energy and what can be labelled "courage" beyond their norm. That it is still up to the human being with a fully functional brain to figure out whether or not to use that energy (and, if yes, what exactly to do with it) doesn't change that fact.

> Anger does literally give a person energy and what can be labelled "courage" beyond their norm.

Getting angry is renowned for leading people to do very stupid things that they would otherwise never do, because even themselves are fully aware it's stuff only an idiot would do.

> That it is still up to the human being with a fully functional brain to figure out whether or not to use that energy (and, if yes, what exactly to do with it) doesn't change that fact.

The original claim was "do what needs to be done" and now you backtracked to claim that instead the idiot who gets angry needs to control himself to not do stupid stuff that angry people do. What point do you think you're making?

I don't know how else to tell you that anger very, very, very literally gives a person energy. Amongst other emotions (like fear as I have already mentioned, but also e.g. excitement), part of its arousal is your body being flooded with epinephrine et al, which provokes a significant boost in cardiovascular performance.

> The original claim was "do what needs to be done" and now you backtracked to claim that instead the idiot who gets angry needs to control himself to not do stupid stuff that angry people do.

The original claim (not by me, mind you) was that "When we witness injustice, when our loved ones are threatened or harmed, when someone treats us with contempt or disrespect, anger is our signal that we must take action, and it gives us the energy and courage to do what must be done."

Again, I don't know how else to tell you that this is a plain fact. This is something that anybody with even a surface-level understanding of neuroscience and psychology should know. Fear and anger are both emotions that are triggered by perceived danger/threats and that prepare a person to respond to said danger. Pointing out that it is still up to you as a person to choose when and how to use that elevated state of readiness is not "backtracking", it is basic emotional intelligence. If you aren't able to regulate your emotions - all of them, not just the ones labelled negative - then that's on you, not on the sheer existence of your limbic system.

But then again I can see how this would be a confusing concept for anyone stuck in an "anger = bad" thought-terminating loop.

(a) recall that I made a utility judgement, not a value judgement: "anger = useless"

(b) That an adrenaline dump provokes a significant boost in cardiovascular performance is true. We are neither fighting anachronistic saber-toothed tigers, nor are we in the wild west, we are in civilised countries in the 21st century. When should improved cardiovascular performance improve any outcomes?

I'm very happy for you that you're so privileged as to have never faced the threat of violence in your life, but consider sparing a thought for those who have.

And, again, if you don't have the emotional regulation to not fly off the handle at things that aren't actually dangerous or threatening, that's a you problem not a problem with the existence of your limbic system.

Regarding your assumption: I've been assaulted, battered, (both successful) and mugged (only attempted). Anger wouldn't have helped; applying a full nelson and dragging the miscreant into a shop did.

To be explicit: had I acted out of anger, I might've tried to fight the guy, and (especially if he had had friends), it would not have ended well. Having instead used my neocortex: his initial advantage lay in choosing the time, manner, and place; time there was nothing to be done about; manner I negated by switching first to grappling, then to grappling in a situation where I had the cardiovascular advantage; and place I negated by moving to a location where there were other people.

(in retrospect, if I'd just not tried to shortcut through an alleyway at night in a strange city, I would never even have had to make use of my normal cardiovascular capacity)

When was the last time you faced a threat of violence for which increased cardiovascular performance improved the outcome?

> Anger is not at all useless, it is a powerful and extremely useful emotion.

A while ago I had a loved one both harmed and threatened.

I called my insurance, who gave me a lawyer, who got the facts from my loved one and combined them with the law, giving the case to a judge, who gave us a court order which allowed us to both (a) remedy the harm, and (b) get law enforcement backup. For this outcome, very little energy, and no courage (at least on our parts), was required.

How would anger —or even moral outrage— have improved the situation?

It sounds to me like you were driven more by other emotions — perhaps feelings of care, concern or worry. That doesn't prove that anger is useless, simply that in that situation, it wasn't the primary emotion you were experiencing or that drove your behaviour.

But let's suppose that the same situation unfolded, except you were Black, and the treatment you received by the legal system was rude and dismissive in ways that you were familiar with, having experienced racism many times before. In that situation you might experience much more anger, and you might rely on that anger to give you the courage and energy to deal with the injustice you were experiencing.

> How would anger —or even moral outrage— have improved the situation?

If at any point the chain of actions had broken down, anger would have granted the motivation to pursue through the roadblock.

You do understand that this very system implicitly disadvantages those who do not have such straightforward access to it, right?

That's why I moved to a country where (a, specifically) the rule of law is accessible to all, and (b, generally) important things rarely break down.

Justice is depicted as blind in statuary for a reason.

Edit: upon reflection, even in the Old Country, where accessibility to the law is debatable, anger doesn't seem useful. Either someone has the power to gain remedy by extralegal means or they do not, and whether they are angry or not when they make that attempt has little —despite movie plots— to do with the actual state of their power.

To be more explicit: either one has the power to gain remedy via extralegal means or one does not. If one does, doing so angrily or not doesn't change much. If one does not, I claim that first gaining the necessary power ("sleep on brushwood and taste gall") is much more likely to be effective than rashly attempting something in the expectation anger should somehow magically augment one's initial lack of power.

(in fact the latter rash attempts are likely to be advantageous for one's adversary, hence the original "hollywood for proles" conspiracy theoretic hypothesis given above)

Emotions are motivation.

Here's a decent article on the anger spectrum: https://psychology.tips/levels-of-anger/

It uses five degrees of anger (one could easily quibble, and add or subtract, based on general or personal ideas of anger): Irritation, Frustration, Resentment, Rage, and Hatred.

Ask how anyone would be motivated to gain a legal or extralegal remedy if not feeling at the very least irritation.

It's a serious mistake to only equate anger to rage or hatred.

Aha, that's our problem: for me, anger is part of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response and so Irritation, Frustration, and Resentment aren't included because they don't necessarily involve that article's:

> Impaired Decision Making: When consumed by anger, rational thinking tends to take a backseat which could result in poor decision making.

(In fact, because my major interest is in good decision making despite high adrenaline levels, I lump Irritation, Frustration, and Resentment into a boring Dissatisfaction; I can appreciate that distinguishing these as well as linking them to the highly-limbic expressions of anger would be useful for people who are discussing non-adrenalised states, but for me the non-adrenalised/adrenalised boundary yields a clear qualitative distinction between dissatisfaction and anger)

I guess it might help if natural language agreed on emotional ranges at least to the extent that it agrees on colour names...

That makes sense, and sure.

I'm not overly familiar with this part of psychology, but I think a good distinction is between emotions and mood states. Adrenalized anger would probably be considered a mood state. I'm probably wrong about this though, as a quick search leads to distinctions between emotions, feelings, and moods. It looks like there are also "mood disorders" which seem to be extended affective complexes of particular emotions.

> I guess it might help if natural language agreed on emotional ranges at least to the extent that it agrees on colour names...

Probably the largest reason it doesn't is because while the majority of humans experience visual sensation similarly enough (white/blue dress notwithstanding), the emotions are something else entirely. We spend so much time in certain emotions compared to other people that it's like wearing colored wraparound spectacles all of the time.

How about this: because we are capable of the (potentially motivational) conscious feeling anger, relying on the unconscious emotion anger has questionable utility?

(affect and mood may be well defined within a discipline, but cursory googling seems to reveal substantial interdisciplinary inconsistency)

Given human variation I'm not quite willing to generalize that much. I'd say pretty much anything our minds do is of questionable utility when taken to an extreme. But this extreme will vary between people.

The Iliad is the greatest LGBT love story of all time and I will die on that hill - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_and_Patroclus

If you read the Iliad as a man losing his childhood lover, everything makes sense. Many in the classical greek period took this interpretation.

Painting the Iliad as a modern-day LGBT story is missing the forest for the trees. It encompasses so much more than the single-minded focus on physical attraction of today allows for: kinship, loyalty, adoration, piety, and veneration were all expressions of love to the ancient Greeks, and most of them existed without any physical component.

This is oddly topical considering how that Alexander docudrama just stirred this pot with Alexander and Haphaestion.

I haven't seen it but I read an article where the reviewer states something like "we've got to the point it's all right for 2 guys just to make out in a series made for the masses" he said something like he was pleased to realize that.

Your comment feels like you are seeing the forest but missing the trees. Yes, Greek masculinity seems better than modern masculinity, apparently they were far more comfortable conveying and displaying the forms of affection you identified, hence the universal acceptance of their deep friendship.

OP means they were actually f*cking tho and that does change motivation for the plot and subsequent events of the story considerably - perhaps even more adequately explaining the behavior and actions of Achilles than the traditional "best bro" interpretation.

That was the specific tree in the forest OP was referring to

Every day I become more convinced that Hanlon’s razor is an example of malice.

How so?

Obviously I have no evidence to back this up, but it seems to mostly be used on the Internet in an intellectually lazy way to avoid confronting the fact that many people really are malicious, and the effect of Hanlon's razor, in my experience, is to lower the quality of discourse (which is why I think its invocation is usually malicious even if it's not intended to be).

Edit (addendum):

> but then I remember to never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Even though there's plenty of evidence of malice in Hollywood. For an example that everyone agrees on, there's military propaganda in almost all movies and video games made about the military.

In retrospect, it's relatively easy to argue I was maliciously using Hanlon's Razor in the service of apophasis/praeteritio. Oops.