Can we live without anger?
Anger is a nasty emotion. It can cause, among other things, yelling, breaking things, and hurt generally. Anger is a destructive emotion and brings distress. Nearly all of us have it, though. It was naturally selected for, so it must have been useful for survival.
Anger does have its uses, there's no denying that. An example, people sometimes don't do inappropriate things to you because they know you will get angry. In other words, anger can be an emotional threat that sometimes prevents other people from overstepping their boundaries.
Suppose a brain scientist could turn off the anger part of brain. How would we function? What would prevent other people from overstepping their boundaries. Could positive emotions such as feelings of self worth come into play? Standing up for yourself surely doesn't entail and angry response, does it? You don't have to see the wrongdoer as the enemy and get angry at him. Rather just focus on defending yourself against a problematic person. Defending doesn't entail anger, though attacking usually does.
To the question can we live without anger, I would say yes, we can live without anger, and it's better for the sake of everyone. Feelings like self-respect can take the place of anger when wrongdoers would do you wrong. Even attacking, as well as defending, can come not out of anger, but out of necessity.
What do you think?
Anger does have its uses, there's no denying that. An example, people sometimes don't do inappropriate things to you because they know you will get angry. In other words, anger can be an emotional threat that sometimes prevents other people from overstepping their boundaries.
Suppose a brain scientist could turn off the anger part of brain. How would we function? What would prevent other people from overstepping their boundaries. Could positive emotions such as feelings of self worth come into play? Standing up for yourself surely doesn't entail and angry response, does it? You don't have to see the wrongdoer as the enemy and get angry at him. Rather just focus on defending yourself against a problematic person. Defending doesn't entail anger, though attacking usually does.
To the question can we live without anger, I would say yes, we can live without anger, and it's better for the sake of everyone. Feelings like self-respect can take the place of anger when wrongdoers would do you wrong. Even attacking, as well as defending, can come not out of anger, but out of necessity.
What do you think?
Comments (11)
I will defend myself by saying that I don't think I wrote anything that I deserve to be cursed at.
That's where it gets terminologically semantic. Anger is an emotion described and viewed upon by us, it's a word recognized by a linguistic community: humans. But that doesn't elucidate the causes of anger, we just recognize it as an emotional response. Just like every emotional, inner sensation, the causes of it is in regards to the structure of the human brain.
When a certain, intrinsic disposition of the brain is triggered, like anger, we choose to label it together as a linguistic community. Anger as we see it, has specifically something to do with our adrenaline rush, our distorted emotions, and scientific psychology. WE discovered Anger's roots by our research, but that's not the same as how us humans, identify anger and other abstract concepts intuitively.
Without anger, our descriptions of the world will not be as how it is today, the natural phenomena occurring behind that is relative to existences today.
Quoting Purple Pond
Emotions fuel the way we act, it's very powerful and controlling. Think of the Platonic tripartite theory. The constructed tripartite theory consists of three things: the rational aspect, the emotional aspect, and the appetitive aspect. Mutually, these three aspects support each other in synergy.
Our rationality and emotions fuel our appetitive desires like protecting ourselves, and having to eat. Likewise, our appetitive aspect reminds the other aspects of our bodily needs.
Conclusion
Therefore, anger is, necessary.
In aggressive anger we throw things, shout , destroy , etc. But the basis of anger isn't evolutionary mechanisms, and it isnt eliminated simply by not acting out.
Let's get to the origin of anger. Anger is the manifestation of a cognitive appraisal. This appraisal is two-pronged. It begins with a disappointment pain, loss. That experience is followed up by the assessment that the entity which was responsible for one's loss , pain or disappointment knew better than to do what they did. They violated our expectation of them, or of what we assumed someone in their situation would have done. Anger is the belief that someone knew what they did would cause us pan and disregarded our feelings. Our anger seeks the other's apology, contrition, repentance, punishment. In anger we want to teach the thoughtless other a lesson.
To answer your question. the only way to avoid anger is to rethink the other's behavior as either unintentional or as a sincere judgement on their part that we deserved to be hurt. We can avoid shouting or throwing chairs, but we will still feel anger as long as we assess situations with other people as I outlined above. The real danger of anger is that it prompts us to want to reject, punish, censure the perpetrator. This is the basis of most cultural violence. A great majority of situations in which we judge the other to be culpable is the result of our failure to see the world from their perspective and understated why they believed they were justified in doing what they did, They may have been in error, but that is different from saying that they thoughtlessly disregarded our feelings.
Anger is a necessary sensation that warns us about a problem. What matters more is not that FEEL anger it is how we address it. I am not one for either ignoring anger or pretending I can subdue into submission, nor I am one for allowing anger to override every other aspect of my emotional narrative.
With children especially telling them things like “anger is bad” is of little help. What we should generally say to children is “anger exists and you need to understand it”. Sometimes it helps to simply say “it’s okay to be angry” rather than telling people to “stop being angry” which could have a very detrimental effect as it will resurface again.
When someone is angry it also gives us the chance to address ourselves as being a possible provocateur or as failing to address an underlying anger we display in a comedic manner - comedy is a great way to defuse situations.
As a little aside; I remember an interview with Derren Brown about how he dealt with an aggressive drunk. The man approached him looking for a fight ... “What you looking at!?” He looked him calmly in the eye and said “The wall in my back garden is only four feet tall, yet in other gardens walls are six feet tall.” The man asked him to repeat in confusion, and he simply said the same thing again as if it was the normal thing to say in the world. Derren then describes how he could almost physically see the adrenaline drain from the mans demeanor. He ended up sitting down and talking to the guy about a big fight that he had had with his girlfriend that night.
This is a Philosophy Forum.
One...you were not "cursed" at. "Curse" should have a specific meaning in a Philosophy Forum. If Sush had said, "Damn you"...that would be cursing. He merely threw a vulgarity at you.
Two...you should more carefully consider the words "humor response."
ASIDE: I laughed out loud when I read the response.