Anger is one of the most destructive forces in nature. Just as it can tear us apart from within, like a fire it seeks to spread and harm those around us. Anger doesn’t care whom it harms; it is selfish in nature, demanding recompense for perceived wrongs against us. The impulse is natural but its aims are futile—throwing anger back at the source is usually useless and self-defeating, only causing more pain in the end.
The Stoic philosopher Seneca has a long-form treatise entitled On Anger, which offers an in-depth look at a Stoic response to anger. This, and its connection to the modern mindfulness movement, have been detailed in my essay On Emotions— essentially, anger comes in three parts: activation, perception, and response. Activation is the initial jolt, when your body reacts to a stimulus and hormones flush throughout your system. Perception follows, where your mind makes a choice on how to perceive this stimulus. Responses proceed from there.
This operates on two levels: micro-anger and macro-anger. Micro-anger is person-to-person, day-to-day anger that arises from everyday occurrences. A family member says something erroneous and insensitive, your boss at work puts too much on your plate, you step on one of your children’s toys— this is specifically the kind of anger that Seneca was talking about.
The examples above start the process— they are the activating actions. From there, it sometimes seems like the sentence has already been delivered. “Action caused pain/discomfort, I perceived that I do not deserve this pain/discomfort, now I am going to lash out.” But, as philosophy and mindfulness both teach, this is not a foregone conclusion. We can train our brains to select other responses. Through grounding techniques and analyzing these processes critically, we can wrest control from the emotional response centers in our brains and reengage our cool, reasoning frontal lobes. We can disrupt and reroute the process during the “perception” phase and determine that we weren’t harmed after all, or that anger will be ineffectual to construct change.
Macro-anger is trickier. This is overarching anger that simmers in the background of life: consistent disappointment in our peers/managers/governments, impotence in the face of crumbling democracy, outrage over systemic injustice and crony capitalism— the larger-than-life issues that affect us all. Seneca’s description of anger, on this level, is not nearly as functional, nor is mindfulness— you can’t meditate away systemic racism. Those solutions are for you to regain control in your present moment, not for dealing with humanity’s collective struggle.
How do you deal with these things, then?
You do your best. You utilize the tools that have been given to you to reduce your stress and anger on the day-to-day. Remembering the common humanity that we all share is a good practice to keep you level-headed. “What is bad for the hive is bad for the bee,” Marcus Aurelius reminds us— we are all interconnected, and in that shared spirit we can see ourselves in each other.
Out of the management of the micro will come the change of the macro. Doing your duty, taking courageous steps. These are the paths to lasting change, but they start from the smallest level. They start within you and flow outward.
Change is possible, but we must all do it together.
Edited by Jeremy Harr and Abigail McKay Cherry
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