Our 'Age of Anger'

[Music] the fury has arrived at the very perimeter of the white house anger rage fury protesters opposing multiple government policies clashed with police in the french capital it seems like everywhere you look right now you see rising temperatures smoldering resentment blood boiling and floods of emotion do it live i can i'll write it and we'll do it live from trump to brexit hindu nationalism to black lives matter from hollywood me too to pandemic protests isis to white nationalists ukraine to fox news to my ongoing conflict with my unreasonably slow computer it seems as the historian pankaj mishra has argued like we're living in an age of anger the atlantic has written that the politics of outrage is fast becoming a political norm mother jones has pinned responsibility for our age of rage on fox news others have blamed social media racism inequality turn on the television scroll through social media and you'll quickly discover that the globe is red with rage and that's before we get personal below the political wrath there's bar fights mass shootings domestic violence road rage and my irritation that the pizzas turned up cold again every year gallup produces a global emotions survey asking 160 000 people around the world about their emotional experiences last year the world was sadder more stressed and angrier than any time since the reports began 15 years ago one in four people around the world reported feeling angry at some point the day before but what is anger does it have a point or would we be better off without it if we could eliminate it completely i'm going to explore the history of anger how it's been thought about by people like the stoics buddhists christians and enlightenment philosophers and of course modern psychologists i'm going to look at its effects throughout history a little bit of neuroscience sprinkled in while trying to look at it personally too i think we'll come to some surprising conclusions in many ways when you think about it the entirety of the history of civilization has been at least in part an attempt to overcome anger the judicial system was developed to replace revenge politics is meant to be a replacement for the force of brute strength religion arose from the anger of the gods culture music and art a way to come together or to channel our base instincts into something more productive anger is likely contained in some way in every great work of literature and much of philosophy homer's iliad the founding myth of the western canon has as its first line sing goddess achilles rage black and murderous and i have to admit that i myself am an angry man i rage at slow internet my blood boils as i scroll through twitter i'm endlessly irritated by politicians i'm provoked by what i perceive as injustice all around me i think i'm hard done by i ask why it's always me i shout in traffic i got in scraps at school as a teenager i've become infuriated by my video editing software exasperated by the weather i am an angry stressed overworked frustrated self-involved petty man because while i'm well aware that anger is dangerous exhausting unnecessary i've always had the suspicion that it also has its uses that anger has also been used as a fuel a motivator something to fight injustice and i wanted to see if that was true when was the last time you were angry what was it about do you think it was justified do you think it's always negative to be resisted or can anger be practical let's take a look at rage i'll kick your ass out of here too and then you expect me to be chipper for five straight hours it's miserable that man over there is a fact the man in that white house is a fascist and it's shameful it's shameful that they're protecting him dividedness that's what we see anger is complicated to investigate because it's difficult to pin down its triggers vary the experience of it changes from person to person culture to culture and studies and understandings of anger and its causes vary and have an effect on the anger itself anger is a continuum from mild irritation to red-blooded murderous furious rage from stubbing your toe to psychological warfare social media email and phones in general have meant we have new ways to be angered to express anger we have new triggers and new norms technology shapes the way anger manifests and on top of this for some anger can even be righteous god's righteous anger anger at injustice and for others it's debilitating and healthy or just never justified at all so with all that in mind let's start at the beginning the banishing of anger anger is fascinating historically because it's at the heart of the emergence of civilization the buddhist tradition started around the 4th to 6th centuries bce and the stoics the 3rd century bce and they were both suspicious of the external world rejecting the idea that we should respond to things outside of us outside of our control it's significant that many of these ideas were arising at the same time as the first large institutions greek democracy or the mahajanapadas the kingdoms of india in the greek playwright aeschylus's play oristia the goddess athena decides to introduce courts to replace the cycle of revenge bloodshed and warfare that was plaguing athens introducing a judicial system was a way to weigh evidence to bring in third parties and juries athena the goddess of wisdom and war comes into conflict with the furies the gods of revenge the furies are depicted as dog-like creatures but they're not exiled in fact athena comes to an agreement with them they're to be incorporated into the system the legal system must tame the passions of the people of ancient greece athena promises that the furies will be respected honored and become a constructive force instead of a vengeful one commenting on this the philosopher martha nussbaum writes that the law gives a double benefit it keeps us safe without and it permits us to care for one another unburdened by retributive anger within influentially nusbaum argues that anger is always problematic emphasizing the significance the greeks placed on taming it in their myths for buddhists a continent away there were three poisons that caused our misery hatred desire and delusion we hold on to these things as if they're justified as if things outside of us external events caused them but in reality it's the poisons themselves in us that cause our unhappiness if we just let them go if we live without attachment without suffering without desire for things that are material and fleeting if we let go of our hate we'll find nirvana the stoics of ancient greece took a similar path for the stoics the problem with anger is that it corrupts our reason distorts our judgment that we should take the world for how it is not for how we want it to be the greek stoic seneca said that some wise men have said that anger is a brief madness for it's no less lacking in self-control forgetful of decency unminded of personal ties unrelentingly intent on its goal shut off from rational deliberation stirred for no substantial reason unsuited to discerning what's fair and true just like a collapsing building that's reduced to rubble even as it crushes what it falls upon for buddhists anger poisons for stoics anger distorts for both it has no uses whatsoever this idea as we'll see has influenced a long long tradition and the idea that anger is irrational is probably still the dominant interpretation today the idea that anger is to be avoided completely has been found in some surprising places throughout the 20th century the semi of malaysia were described by anthropologists as a culture that put a premium on avoiding anger and violence and the anthropologist jean briggs called her study of the arctic utku never in anger because of their emphasis on never displaying anger in the harsh conditions they lived in but i think the buddhists and the stoics have plenty of good advice seneca for example said that the wise man carmen even-tempered in the face of error not an enemy of wrongdoers but one who sets them straight leaves his house daily with this thought in mind i will encounter many people who are devoted to drink many who are lustful many who are ungrateful many who are greedy many who are driven by the demons of ambition i find it useful to remind myself of this too before i get in the car and go on a stressful journey i live in london this happens quite a lot but i've always been suspicious that while they have their uses stoicism and buddhism are philosophies of resignation they shut us off from the external world resign us to the status quo accepting what is for what is for example the greek stoic epictetus wrote that it is impossible that happiness and yearning for what is not present should ever be united anger in a way is a yearning that what just happened was not present that it didn't just happen the key to happiness then is to yearn for what isn't present the cure is to be indifferent to the world take it as it comes accept the negatives as part of life but what happens when anger is triggered by injustice what if anger motivates us into action of some kind what if yearning for something to be different is a powerful fuel for change to begin to think about this we need to ask what is anger feeling angry is a natural thing just as natural as feeling glad or sorry but angry feelings are disagreeable they make you act and look as well as feel unhappy [Music] anger like all emotions is difficult to define it's both near universal a basic emotion as the psychologist paul ekman has influentially argued and cultural social geographically and historically varied and determined that's to say that the way anger is triggered experienced understood and discussed differs from persons person and place to place depending on whether you're a spartan or a 20th century priest a king or a woman in the workplace but there are some near universals we often say things like anger washes over me or someone was overcome with fury went ballistic incandescent and flooded with rage when the experience of and causes of anger vary so much when we have to describe a biochemical process with imprecise language metaphors are a good place to start there's an interesting reason why the feeling of anger is often described with words like flood overcome fire washes over or has been described as a fuel it's likely because our amygdala that almond-sized part of our brain that deals with emotion does literally flood our body with chemicals that trigger a range of processes it releases hormones adrenaline quickens the heart signals norepinephrine to trigger the release of glucose to ramp up our energy levels sends oxygen around the body and tenses muscles ready to fight or flight in short anger readies us for action the problem is that our amygdala is not a precise instrument sometimes it often turns the tap on in the wrong situations it's often mistaken stress is a short-term reaction to a scenario that has long-term health consequences and anger despite raising our energy levels is meant to feel bad of course because as the philosopher baruch spinoza noted it's a sign that we're in a bad position that the scenario we're in might not be good for us for our body for our future health our well-being in this sense it's a predictor we can already see from the physiology that anger has its uses seeing injustice police brutality bullying racism a physical threat ramps up our body ready to fight it both physically and mentally and anger doesn't just fuel us in the moment importantly the amygdala also encodes memories why is this important because if the amygdala sees something that makes us angry fearful happy or sad we want to remember that so that we can use that information in the future i bet you can think of many times you've been angry a long long time ago in ways that aren't really relevant anymore because evolutionarily speaking we want to remember something negative happening to us so that we can learn how to avoid it next time okay so that's the biochemistry what about the psychology psychologist jerry deffenbacher mapped out this influential model of anger in 1996 there's an event that sparks the anger the precipitant i got beep tapped in the car my computer froze i got a parking ticket but there's also the pre-anger state i was tired frustrated in a rush hungry anxious sad then there's the appraisal the way we think about what's happened then the feelings in the body and the mind then the way we express that psychologist ryan martin talks about the precipitants of anger tending to come from three different categories injustice poor treatment and gold blocking let's run quickly through what might happen the precipitant a tweet for example hits your brain and amygdala which then sends signals to your hypothalamus a small p-shaped section at the base of your brain triggering your sympathetic nervous system otherwise known as fight or flight your hypothalamus then sends signals to the rest of your brain and body to start doing that ramping up energy is diverted from elsewhere in the body but at the same time a signal is sent from the amygdala to another part of the brain the prefrontal cortex the part responsible for planning decision making advanced cognition reason and what's called executive function all of this happens in a split second we then start thinking appraising the situation ruminating sometimes we often think about how unreasonable the situation is how wrong it is what words or actions we can use to respond how to express the anger whether to suppress the anger and what's interesting is that some of this seems to happen automatically and at other times it feels very purposive like we're doing it like we're in charge seneca agreed with this model he thought the first impression the precipitant wasn't anger because it could be calmed down that there was an important controllable rational gap between the precipitant the tweet and the appraisal this is unjust he said suppose that someone has reckoned he was harmed wants to take revenge and then immediately calms down when some reason urges against it i don't call this anger i call it the movement of a mind still obedient to reason anger is something that leaps clear of reason that snatches reason up and carries it along he thought that anger was a judgment and so could be controlled that it would yield to reason if we were patient with it he said we must struggle against the passion's first causes the cause of anger is a belief that one has been wronged to which one ought not lightly give credence one shouldn't immediately ascend even to what is clear and obvious for some things that are false look like the truth one must always take one's time the passage of time makes the truth plain the great cure for anger he thought was delay nussbaum agrees but while rejecting the usefulness of anger she does acknowledge that i also recognize a borderline case of genuinely rational and normatively appropriate anger that i call transition anger whose entire content is how outrageous something should be done about that but if anger really is so common so universal so biologically ingrained and evolutionarily useful if as ryan martin says it's a response to being treated unfairly to seeing injustice or to a goal we have being blocked are there not instances when anger is justified how could we interpret when anger is right or wrong [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] rather than dismissing them completely aristotle was one of the only ancient thinkers to take the middle road and accept emotions as part of being human emotions he thought weren't simply irrational they were judgments about things that could be right or wrong he said that the trick with anger was to get angry at the right times with reference to the right objects towards the right people with the right aim and in the right way mostly though he advised his readers to try to be unperturbed and to seek khan for the good tempered man is not revengeful but rather tends to forgive the christian tradition generally inherited a synthesis of the stoic and aristotelian views in the 4th century the christian monk of agrius ponticus warned that there were eight destructive thoughts that came from demons and led to vices they were gluttony lust avarice sadness anger boredom vainglory and pride monks he advised were supposed to battle these demons in their souls later abbotts like john cassian had monks fight these demons one by one he compared the vices to companies attacking in an army once one company had been defeated another would inevitably come it was important to always be on guard always be training for the fight but the christian world view led to a contradiction if sin came from the devil was it not okay to be angry with that sin and what about god's anger in the book of numbers it's reported that the lord's anger burned against israel and he made them wander in the wilderness 40 years until the entire generation of those who had done evil in the sight of the lord was destroyed these contradictions began to be synthesized in christianity the medieval priest and philosopher thomas aquinas built on aristotle's theories also arguing that emotions could be good he said it's right to rise up against things contrary and harmful and wrote that he who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral because anger looks to the good of justice and if you can live amid injustice without anger you are immoral as well as unjust the christian tradition took a nuanced view on anger because on the one hand a good christian is forgiving and turns the other cheek while on the other sin is to be battled against and certain types of anger are righteous john warren a puritan minister in england said that we should be angry at the sin not the sinner that sin is the proper formal object of anger god's anger is only at sin but the unprecedented eruption of violence during the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries renewed the european concern with anger take this painting by pieter brugel the elder from 1557 there's a concern not just with anger as a personal sin but with its effects as it's unleashed across europe through warfare [Music] the reformation that started in germany in 1517 and led to the wars of religion open an important question who has the right to interpret god's will the church the priests the ordinary men and women at home with the bible who has the right to decide what makes god happy and makes him angry the idea that there's such a thing as righteous anger leads to another question what is the right anger and more importantly who is right to get angry when theologians began to justify anger a pandora's box opened the philosopher peter singer has talked about an expanding circle of rights throughout history once the rights of man were declared by american and french revolutionaries it was inevitable that someone like mary wollstonecraft would ask why those same rights didn't extend to women and in the same way once anger has been characterized as right in some instances it was inevitable that the circle would expand from the limits of the righteous anger of gods kings and priests the philosopher peter slottagic has argued that the just avenging god of judaism and christianity left the west a quote treasury of rage to draw from in other words once you open that door to some rage being allowed in the same way some are allowed right people start to question why am i not allowed to be angry too psychologist ryan martin writes that one clear and consistent finding across the anger research literature is that not everyone gets the same right to be angry while some people may be rewarded and praised for their anger others are told to be civil to calm down and even lose credibility it's in this way that anger is an explicitly political emotion being told to calm down and be rational can be used as a tool used by the powerful to sanitize the emotional and temperamental complaints of the powerless or oppressed and to paint the one who has the luxury to be calm and reasonable as well calm and reasonable take the trope of the angry black beast in the 19th century or the deluded woke eco warrior today or take one study that found that african-american women are three times more likely to be sentenced to anger management than white women and of course if anger is a response to slights on status to goal blocking to injustice then the treasury of rage that peter slottagic talked about is more likely to be experienced by people in poverty who face injustice who have their goals blocked by the difficulties of everyday life douglas jacobs has noted in the new york times how many studies have linked discrimination to long-term health problems like increased blood pressure heart difficulties increased mortality in fact 700 studies have made this link in short the likelihood of experiencing anger is mapped out unevenly across the world it's interesting that powerful and comfortable figures like seneca and as we'll see descartes could discuss their emotions rationally and calmly and deliberatively through their writing while those who don't have the luxury to do that usually experience their anger in the immediate somatically experientially is it any wonder then that philosophical writing becomes much more well philosophical taking a dim view on anything experienced out in the world by those busied and troubled and caught up in the problems of day-to-day life when anger and reason are separated by philosophers up in their ivory towers is something else going on [Music] the enlightenment philosophers didn't quite know what to do with the motions rationalists like descartes and spinoza tended to classify them as bodily so that they could be controlled in some way by reason descartes and spinoza were both influenced by the stoics but descartes believed that emotion was sent around the body by the animal spirits which quote moved the body in all the different ways it is capable of but ultimately he argued they were answerable to our rational thinking soul spinoza took a different view emotions could be controlled but they weren't simply bodily they were in the mind too they were both mental and physical but he did have a relatively dim view of the emotions unless they were used calmly and followed the command of reason of anger he said anger is the desire by which we are impelled through hatred to injure those whom we hate others during the enlightenment took the emotions more seriously david hume and adam smith both argued that emotions were essential to humans in fact we needed them to be moral we needed to feel anger or pity or shame in order to judge right from wrong hume said that we recoil from the person guilty of cruelty and we feel a stronger hatred than we are sensible of on any other occasion this leads us towards moral action ethical action and most famously john jack rousseau argued that the passions were a part of being human he said that he could be wrong about facts but i cannot go wrong about what i have felt or what my feeling has led me to do and while the philosophies of rationalism and reason had the most influence rousseau sparked a counter-revolution he influenced the romantics and the french revolutionaries who placed an emphasis on feeling for the romantics it was important to consult the inner voice the impulse the intuitions within the german romantic novalis said that the heart is the key to the world and life during the enlightenment on the one hand there was a great culture of progress of new urban life of optimism of science and discovery of excitement about possibility and change while on the other there were those that felt left behind serfs the dispossessed the unaccounted for who often tended to identify with rousseau's prescription to feel to feel anger jealousy rage historian pankaj mishra in the age of anger writes that what makes rousseau and his self-described history of the human heart so astonishingly germane and eerily resonant is that unlike his fellow 18th century writers he described the quintessential inner experience of modernity for most people the uprooted outsider in the commercial metropolis aspiring for a place in it and struggling with complex feelings of envy fascination revulsion and rejection the frustrated men and women who felt left out from the processes of modernization began to organize new ways of seeing the political world nationalism socialism anarchism terrorism fascism in counter-cultures anger was often justified as a way of rebelling a way of fighting a way of advocating for freedom of different types or even conformity for the first time in history anger became a political right for anyone not just for gods kings and priests [Music] mishra writes that during the french revolution the place of anger in french discourse swelled markedly a sample of many of the materials produced during that period shows a notable increase in the use of the term claire the french equivalent of the english word anger as well as related words resentment rage fury and so on the french revolutionary mirabeau for example wrote that from the mountaintop they should godlike launch amid thunderbolts the eternal decrees of justice and the will of the people the hour of justice and of anger has arrived another representative said in a speech that the french people bent over under the yoke of the most hateful slavery worn out by the crimes and vexations of tyrants and their accomplices rose altogether on july the 14th 1789 broke their chains and in their just anger stormed the bastille the english conservative edmund burke admonished the revolutionaries in france warning that pride ambition avarice revenge lust sedition hypocrisy ungoverned zeal and all the train of disorderly appetites lead to destruction to fury outrage and insult again reprimanding of anger could be used as a political tool painting the colonized the native the other the woman as angry irrational emotional there was a fine line between the defense of emotion as a potent political tool and the excesses of anger leading to mass violence futurists and fascists of the early 20th century glorified violence the first line of the futurist manifesto written in 1909 as an unapologetic call to modernization read we intend to glorify the love of danger the custom of energy the strength of daring italian author giovanni papini wrote that the future needs blood it needs human victims butchery internal war and foreign war revolution and conquest that is history blood is the wine of stronger peoples and blood is the oil for the wheels of this greater machine which flies from the past to the future the futurists would get their wish with the first world war but is it true that it's only anger that's responsible for the excesses of the french revolution for warfare and genocide why not other emotions why not other motives why not greed profit nationalism love of country even fear love and jealousy can lead to violence as much as anger and psychopaths are known as cold killers answers to questions like this don't come easily but what's undeniable is that social movements rely on emotion against the rationalists and the idea of a liberal ordered reasonable logical world freud and nietzsche challenge the dominant view inherited from the enlightenment they argued that under the surface people were motivated were moved to act by forces they didn't really understand couldn't comprehend whether by the passions of the unconscious or by the resentments and histories of their ancestors according to freud and nietzsche there was a hidden undersides to man's history their ideas became popular after world war one as europe struggled to come to terms with the storm of twisted steel and incomprehensible death that had been unleashed across the continent and today demagogues still appeal to anger to resentment to jealousy and fear erdogan in turkey modi in india marine le pen in france trump in america brexit in the uk they've all shown how under the surface there is that treasury of rage to be drawn from and it's not going anywhere if history is anything to go by the trick then must be to mobilize that emotion for good [Music] today psychologists usually reject the view of people like descartes and the stoics that the emotions are just part of the body irrational unwieldy a burden on our logic and reason instead most think of emotions as purposive as a way of engaging with the world of doing something of appraising something by the 1960s cognitive psychologists began to recognize that emotions were part of our cognition mr arnold the founder of this view writes that to arise in emotion the object whether a thing or an event or a situation must be appraised as affecting me in some way affecting me personally as an individual with my particular experience and my particular aims emotions began to be thought of as intelligent that there was no real clear divide between passion and reason emotions can be right or wrong psychologist daniel kahneman has argued that emotions are a way of thinking quickly their instincts shortcuts they ramp everything up ready to go without too much deliberation which comes after and the neuroscientist antonio dimazio has argued that emotional memories can serve as markers to access information in the brain quickly which is why the amygdala deals with emotion and memory if we see a bear fear a bear run from a bear see what to do in a bear attack on television we want to be able to remember and access that information quickly in the future this idea that emotions are intelligent leads to a more nuanced view of them like any other type of information in the brain they can be right or wrong we often say things like he was right to get upset or wrong to get angry in other words we've adopted a mixed view righteous anger is justifiable sometimes within limits culturally we tend to accept that people can be rightly angered but usually only if that anger is delivered in a controlled way martin says that i think of anger as a fuel it energizes us to do the things we need to do he continues anger is a normal and often healthy response to a variety of situations anger can be understood managed and used in a way that is healthy positive and pro-social so how do we separate the good from the bad how do we channel the bad into the good if we accept that there's such a thing as good anger righteous anger the next question to ask might be whether any anger we're thinking about ours or others is useful instrumental in achieving a goal of some kind anger might energize but it also can of course over energize it can obsess it can ruminate it can cause long-term health problems it can cause issues with personal relationships of course it's clear there's a fine line between using anger and being abused by anger argues that there are two mistakes in anger one is that it's a road to payback but the payback does nothing to address the actual issue like revenge it's the idea that it supposedly restores balance in some way she says it's mistaken this does nothing to improve the position of the person that was wronged whether you or someone else the other mistake is that anger is the road of status and again she argues that getting angry at someone who has slighted you or embarrassed you made you feel like your status has been lowered or has gotten in your way mischaracterized you does nothing to improve the position you're in in both cases she says addressing the problem is better approached by different means it doesn't mean you have to ignore it the rational response is to focus attention on whatever improves the problem she writes to put my radical claim succinctly when anger makes sense it's normatively problematic focused narrowly on status when it's normatively reasonable focused on the injury it doesn't make good sense and is normatively problematic in that different way in a rational person anger realizing that soon laughs at itself and goes away but does anger if brief and controlled really provide the fuel for solving a problem does it alert the reasonable part of your brain that something must be addressed does it cement the injustice in our memory so it's more likely to be remembered the question is whether anger provides this initial fuel i think most everyday occurrences of anger don't pass this test that road rage attacks on status rudeness computer problems are better shrugged off and dealt with stoically but there's one area that anger has seemed to have had to positive effect and provided the fuel for action injustice [Music] the french revolutionaries used anger i'm angry watching putin talk right now even during indian independence which is remembered as peaceful the british feared the increasing anger of organizations within india the british knew that the game was up that the indian people wouldn't accept colonial rule anymore and we can see the disagreement about the uses of anger in the contrasting positions of martin luther king and malcolm x during the civil rights movement king famously preached calm and restraint he wrote that his speeches tried to be militant enough to keep my people aroused to positive action and yet moderate enough to keep this further within controllable and christian bounds malcolm x took a different view when traveling around africa he'd noticed that where countries achieved their independence someone had gotten angry of the famous march on washington in 63 malcolm x wrote whoever heard of angry revolutionists or harmonizing we shall overcome some day while tripping and swaying along arm-in-arm with the very people they were supposed to be angrily revolting against but despite these seemingly contrasting positions malcolm x said that he never lets himself get over emotional and angry and likewise king had said that segregation almost makes him angry so again where's the line how do we find it the stoic philosopher epictetus divided the world into internals things you have control over and externals things you have no control over he said it only made sense to focus our attention on the things we have control over the weather is not worth getting angry about but injustice we might often have no control over it directly but we certainly have control over how much we contribute towards bringing awareness to it discussing it and fighting it take this painting guernica by picasso it's one of the most famous anti-war paintings in history and picasso produced it because of his outrage at the bombing of guernica by fascists during the spanish civil war anger injustice has clearly affected change whether it's necessary more powerful than calm able to be tamed or is productive in the long term i think varies from person to person situation to a situation but if we can learn when anger is detrimental to us and when we might use it as fuel for engagement with the world then we can mold our anger utilize it control it tame it for the good turn it into a creative act like picasso because as the cognitive psychologists of the 60s recognized if anger is intelligent it can be cognitive factual right or wrong so it is a tool in a similar way anger is never distinct it's never simple it can be mixed with empathy passion sadness even joy in some ways in that way for picasso it produced a powerful piece of art a term that comes up often is channeling or transition martin writes that anger is alerting you to a problem channel your anger into identifying and solving that problem creating art literature poetry and music and nussbaum says transition anger does not focus on status nor does it even briefly want the suffering of the offender as a type of payback for the injury it never gets involved at all in that type of magical thinking it focuses on social welfare from the start saying something should be done about this it commits itself to a search for strategies but it remains an open question whether the suffering of the offender will be among the most appealing i think transition anger mixes anger with creativity with logical thinking with mobilization and coherent arguments and focuses on the issue that made you angry and i think and i can only speak for myself here that if anger at injustice is a universal then transition anger or channeling anger is an existential impulse of some kind it's always going to be there it defines our relationship with our own biology it's part of being human and we can't help but engage with it in some way historian barbara rosenwein has written that if anger is natural if it's part of the human condition if it's a part of human nature then there's no point in imagining that we may reject it there is not even much sense in endowing it with ethical value whether good or bad if anger is natural then the best thing we may do is understand it where it resides how it's produced how it works how we might control it i've learnt a lot about anger here i've learnt a lot from the stoics from psychologists from history i've learnt a lot of practical advice i like trying to think reasonably about emotion but overall i really like aristotle's take when human beings are angry they feel pain but when they avenge themselves they feel pleasure those who fight for such reasons like that are warlike yes but they are not courageous for they do so not in the sake of what is good or in the manner dictated by reason but rather out of emotion instead he said that anger must be made reasonable anger is necessary nor can any struggle be carried to victory without it it must fill the mind and kindle the spirit but it must be employed as a foot soldier not the general and the great philosopher robert solomon tells us that we cannot forget that we live our lives through our emotions and it is our emotions that give our lives meaning what interests or fascinates us who we love what angers us what moves us what bores us all of this defines us gives us character constitutes who we are thanks so much for watching everyone and don't be mad i have a little favor to ask if you click that channel button watch another video it will really help the algorithm i've got ones on spinoza why the internet hasn't fixed democracy the problem with zuckerberg's metaverse the psychology of racism and if you're feeling really generous and really enjoyed this video which was maddening to make in parts but i've really really enjoyed it then please please go to my patreon below and support me for as little as a dollar and remember click subscribe and the bell and follow me on twitter and all the rest of that stuff most of all thank you so much for getting through that monster video to the end leave a comment tell me what you think and see you next time

Channel: Then & Now

Views: 130,698

Keywords: age of anger, pankaj mishra, philosophy, history, rage, angry, what is anger, anger management, politics, why anger, anger management techniques, age of anger review, what is anger in psychology, seneca, aristotle, christianity, enlightenment, neuroscience, annoyed, angry politics, stoics, stoicism, ryan holiday, epictetus, jesus, god, righteous anger, mental health, age of anger book, pankaj mishra age of anger, philosophy of life

Id: xZiV5WBygQs

Length: 53min 31sec (3211 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 11 2022