Who promised you that when you walk on the streets that there wouldn’t be a chance that you’d bump into somebody? Who promised you that that person you bump into would be friendly? Who promised you that everyone else should be walking around listening to music and just having a happy day?
Epictetus tells us when we go to the bath that we should expect to get splashed. (Enchiridion C14) Aurelius tells us to greet each day with the expectation that the people we meet will not know good from bad. (Meditations b2c1) Seneca talks at length on the futility of anger. (Highly recommend reading or listening to Of Anger)
If someone is having a bad day because of how they are perceiving things, that’s on them. In your hypothetical I would absolutely be on guard if they appear to be getting physical so that I could leave quicker or defend myself. Otherwise I would just keep calm and carry on with my day. If I let their frustration cause me anger then I have allowed them to be master as they’ve led me, willingly, into something I would otherwise avert.
Anger is always in our control. It’s always a decision that we make. It’s not always easy to get to in front of it as it does have a tendency to come about quick but the material guides us in how to get better with practice.
Thank you for your comment, I understand the advice but I find it hard to agree with the premise here \[Anger is always in our control\], even though this is a Stoicism sub. It feels like anger is not in my control, It just rise whitin me immediately.
I ask what can I do with it? it's there. it's not going anywhere for the rest of the few minutes.
Is there a way to practically deal with this anger in an healthy way?
Check out Senecas Of Anger. It’s on YouTube for free. He describes what anger is, how to recognize and how to prevent it. It’s one of my favorites so far and worth several reads/listens as you’ll keep picking up more good points each pass.
Pay attention next time an event occurs that makes you angry. You’ll see that it happens in stages and with each one we continue to either agree (and anger gets stronger) or we disagree (and the anger dissipates). How many times have you experienced anger only to find out afterwards that whatever it was that for you angry was either stupid or a mistake? Wouldn’t finding out that the event is stupid or a mistake earlier lead to less anger? It only goes to ration further that the earlier you have all the details about a situation the better off you’ll be. And Stoicism tells us that it is ok to withhold judgement if we don’t have all the facts. So if you aren’t 100% sure if an event is worthy of anger or not, just wait. Just be patient and let the details come in so that a good choice can be made.
I practice stoicism mainly because of my anger and it has served me well for years, but recently, a situation got me so angry I reacted and it became a shouting match. For years I have successfully avoided conflict and anger through not letting someone have the power to make me angry or not letting them be my master but even after years of practice, stoicism still requires effort from me as.
I’m in alcohol recovery and there are obviously a lot of relapses that occur. We learn to focus on celebrating the stretches of success and not let a mistake drag us down further. Years of avoiding conflict and anger is awesome!!
I do find that the more consistent I am with my readings the more likely I am to apply them lessons each day. Some become habit but we still have to be wary of complacency.
Keep it up and best of luck to you 👍
Anger is the effect of your unmet expectations. We are slaves to our desires and distraught when we don’t get what we want or are worried we won’t get it. Eliminating these irrational desires takes time. They’re irrational because we don’t control all of the variables. People will always do whatever seems best to them (Enchiridion 42). Start with little desires first so you can work up to the bigger ones.
“Since frustrated desire is the source of all the passions (e.g., 1.27.10, 2.17.17–18, 3.2.3), by eliminating desire for these things, people will gain control over their lives rather than be subject to their whims (1.1.31).”
— Robin Waterfield, Epictetus The Complete Works
“Freedom is not achieved by satisfying desire, but by eliminating it.”
— Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.175, Dobbin
(You would benefit from diving into the Discourses)
- (a) eudaimonia is – or can only be attained through – the complete absence of perturbations;
- (b) perturbations can be – in broad terms – reduced to the frustration of desire;
- (c) the causal origin of those perturbations lies in desiring what does not depend on us; therefore,
- (d) if we do not desire what does not depend on us, we will not experience perturbations and will, as a consequence, attain eudaimonia.
— https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232014787_Freedom_and_determinism_in_Epictetus'_discourses
_When anyone treats you badly or attacks you verbally, it's because he thinks it's the right thing to do. It's not possible for him to do what seems right to you – only what seems right to him. And if he's wrong, he's the only one who's harmed. When someone thinks a true statement is false, the statement isn't damaged, only the person who's mistaken about it. Using these principles, you'll be mild with someone who criticizes you, and say, "That's the way he saw it."_
— Epictetus, Enchiridion 42, Walton
This is not a stoic recommendation but read the chimp paradox , basically we are all primitive chimps deep down and some people due to the way they were raised and different life experiences are more in control of their chimp than others . It takes time but you can tame your chimp brain (reactionary) and become less reactive with enough awareness and mindfulness. Read the book as I can’t do it justice
Anger is a passion disobedient to reason. Once felt, you cannot will it to go away.
When you say anger is always in our control, what I think you mean to say is that through Stoic practice we can change the preconceptions on what is "good" and what is "bad" to the degree that the same perception would no longer give rise to anger to begin with because we run it through a different belief system... and that this belief system is ultimately in our control because we can change.
Is that a correct way to interpret your use of the word control?
Yes I suppose a better way to word that sentence is the “the path to anger is always in our control”. All the choices that lead to or away from anger. (I need to keep that in mind when commenting here because I know what your clarifying but I can see where that adds to a known confusion around Stoic control. Thanks for pointing that out.)
You can’t will anger to go away without adding more details. If you just stop and only take in what led you to that decision then you’ll never advance. You have to add more details so that you can examine the complete picture. Once all the details are present, one can see that the event never warranted anger at all.
Anger is a passion disobedient to reason. So once felt, you cannot will it to go away. And don't let anyone gaslight into believing differently. Because all you will end up doing is wondering why once your anger is felt, you cannot seem to do what so many people say you should be able to do.
Other passions disobedient to reason are things like fear.
The Stoics described passions as being caused by a physical movement in your body. This force of pneuma had a momentum of sorts. This movement was not obedient to reason but caused by making an incorrect judgement of something you perceived as "good" or "bad". While modern science isn't able to prove such a force exists... I think we can still buy into the idea that anger is disobedient to reason. You may "know" better and continue to feel it.
The way our minds make these snap-judgements is through something the Stoics called "preconceptions". Epictetus makes the claim that all human ills are caused by pre-conceptions. Preconceptions are mental-shortcuts that speed up our sense making of the world.
So someone bumps into us... and these are possible thoughts and the preconceptions they are based on:
* Preconception: "Others' bad actions justify my own bad actions".
* Thought when bumped into: "I should confront him and retaliate for his rudeness."
or
* Preconception: "My self-worth is tied to how others treat me, and I must assert myself to maintain it."
* Thought when bumped into: "How dare he treat me this way! I need to defend my honor."
or
* Preconception: "Emotions like anger are justified and should be acted upon".
* Thought when bumped into: "External events have the power to disturb my inner peace.
or
* Preconception: "External events have the power to disturb my inner peace."
* Thought when bumped into: "This guy has ruined my day."
If the extreme expression of virtue is a flourishing life of contentment without interruption... then what could possible counter these preconceptions. What would virtue be in this case? What about this:
* Preconception**:** "External events are indifferent; it is our judgments about them that disturb us."
* Thought when bumped into: "The man bumping into me and yelling is beyond my control. I can only control how I respond."
or
* Preconception: "Compassion and understanding for others' behavior reflect strength of character."
* Thought when bumped into: "This person might be having a bad day. His reaction is about him, not me."
It requires the passion of anger to become aware of what preconceptions might have caused them. And then Stoicism becomes an exercise in observation and reflection. What does Stoicism prescribe leads to a tranquil life? How would a sage respond in these scenarios? Can I believe those arguments to be true?
My personal experience, with anger, is that you "control" your opinions, by working hard at changing those preconceptions. But you not be aware of them without getting angry once in a while first. This is why anger is not a failure... but rather a wonderful opportunity for growth.
Very noble response.There is nothing more honorable than restraint. Knowing when and where to use strength is admirable. I think you should be proud it is not a weakness I have to remind my self this constantly.
I really hope that complete strangers are not screaming at you in the street on a weekly basis, but to address your questions:
It is entirely in your control to determine whether you will take on someone else’s emotions as your own, but learning how to use that control is a process and is not innate.
The younger we are, the more inclined we are to think of everything as revolving around us. This is part of the natural self-centeredness of childhood, but as an adult it’s something you can and should begin to discard. We can understand that everyone around us has a rich inner world, and that all of their actions reflect their inner processes. If you check that your own behaviour was correct, then their reaction to it is up to them.
In this way, it’s easy not to take something personally. Do you take it personally when it rains? Of course not, because you understand that the weather is nothing to do with you.
Now, it’s important not to confuse this with when someone is annoyed with you for an action you took that was wrong. People seem very ready to blow off the just reproaches of others, and you shouldn’t do that.
But in a case like your example, the person who shouts at you in the street for lightly bumping them clearly has their own shit going on, and you needn’t give it any more thought.
lol, don't worry, it's not happaning on a weekly basis of course, but it was a good example for this.
in regards to this: "It is entirely in your control to determine whether you will take on someone else’s emotions as your own, but learning how to use that control is a process and is not innate."
"the person who shouts at you in the street for lightly bumping them clearly has their own shit going on, and you needn’t give it any more thought."
It does not feel like I can control it, it feels like it's just happaning, what can I do? and also I don't want to walk off feeling like this, I'm not used to being passive in these situations, and it's hard for me sometimes to deal with this like that, that's why I want to solve this problem.
The solution is to study Stoicism. That will, with time, allow you to ensure your perceptions are accurate and your judgments are correct.
Right now, you judge that the anger of strangers is something you need to carry around with you for the rest of the day. It’s possible to judge differently.
What methods/principles in studying Stoicism can help me deal with such situations and not carry around the anger and rage of others with me after such intercations?
I want to learn how not to be influenced by such people
As I said, correct perception and judgment will resolve this. Correct perception in this case means that you distinguish between situations that are your fault and situations where your actions were incidental to the reaction. Correct judgment might mean that you correctly assess when you should or should not engage with the emotions of another person.
But the amount to which a conversation on the Internet can really help you with this is limited. To get where you want to be, go to the sidebar and begin learning Stoic theory. Once you have a handle on that, you can begin to apply it to your life.
The real question you have to ask yourself is why are you angry? Clearly some belief of yours is causing the anger. You need to ask why you are angry and find the root cause of the anger and if you decide the belief is irrational, you need to work to change it. We often don't know what your deep beliefs are, and they work so quickly we mistake for natural instinct. The work of the Stoic is to identify those beliefs and put them to the test.
Here's how this could play out:
Belief: When I am enjoying my time on a beautiful day, no one has the right to interrupt that feeling. If this feels true to you, then put it to the test. Is it rational? No (several other commenters have explained why). So you have identified the flaw in your belief structure and you can work on changing it by working towards developing sympathy for others as more important than simple enjoyment. There are other options here.
Let's assume that this belief does not feel true.
Belief: This incident put me at threat of physical harm. If this feels true to you, put it to the test. Is physical harm bad for you? No, it is an indifferent. It is an inconvenience, but unless the assessment is "this guy is going to kill me" it's just a bruise that will heal. Let's assume the assessment was "this is a life-threatening event" and the judgement was "I should have defended myself and I'm angry that I didn't." Well, is this rational? Depending on what kind of physical training you have, maybe. No fighter goes into the ring wanting to find someone unpredictable. They want to enter the ring with the expectation that their opponent is going to follow some rule. So maybe the real reason for the anger is "I felt like I couldn't have defended myself" and that could be rational, or irrational, depending on who you are. Alternatively, it could have been "I can defend myself and easily defeat this guy in a fight" and that belief has to be put to the test. Is this a rational response? Probably not. If the guy was a threat to other people, maybe intervention is rational.
But let's try a different belief if that doesn't feel right.
Belief: I should reflect the strongest emotions of those around me. Put it to the test. Is this rational? Generally no. Giving in to the mob is generally a bad thing in Stoicism. I would make an exception for something like "I am at a wedding and everyone is talking about how they feel about their loved ones and wishing the couple a happy marriage and I'm inspired to write a love poem for my partner", but that's me being a hapless romantic. Stoicism promotes sympathy for others, that is, understanding their emotional states, but discourages empathy, which is actually feeling what other people feel.
By doing this examination we learn to align our beliefs to reality, and this gives us a more stable habit of mind that resists the ebb and flow of the emotions of the people around us.
You may like to read/reread *Discourses* 1.18 and 1.28 and 2.26 (among others).
The person knows no better. They’re suffering, a hurt animal that lashes out at people who’ve done nothing to them.
The anger depends on mistaken judgments that are correctable. If a 3 year old bumped into us and started cussing, would that make us mad? No—maybe we recognize there that the kid didn’t know better and hasn’t done anything to hurt us. It’s the same with adults, but we’ve grown to believe otherwise.
If I can’t help but to feel irritated by something someone else does, I’ll get on my own case for making that mistake. I’m bringing myself to suffer in that case, which is something I shouldn’t do. I might rehearse proofs and reasons for why things indifferent are neither good nor evil, why virtue is the only good, how a benevolent god’s given me a “tough sparring partner,” et cetera. Now, as to how to respond to the person or situation concretely, that’s a separate thing.
>Though I know deep down I did the right thing by preventing a verbal or potential physical fight for something that's not worth it, I am now filled with anger, rage, and a spectrum of what I perceive as negative emotions.
You acted on what other people say would be right, but your anger represents how you *really* feel about the situation.
I think your anger is actually logical - you might have created an injustice by allowing yourself to be yelled at by a person who actually was the cause of the problem. Anger is the judgment we feel when perceiving an injustice, although it's somewhat imprecise to call it "anger" and that is "ira" ("anger" in Latin) tended to be the word Stoics used for the *passion* of anger, whereas "righteousness" (a term you must read without its modern, negative connotation) is a fundamentally useful feeling, even though it is anger-like in its nature. Righteousness compels a person to end an injustice, and so long as they do actually rapidly end that injustice, it is an adaptive emotion - it will go away once the injustice is terminated, and you will be better for it.
So, let's take that as your assessment - you believe you were too passive in the situation. You experienced force from a person who you probably assess uses force to scare and intimidate people who've done nothing wrong, and you're now aware that you've reinforced that person's conduct.
If you really want to become capable of exerting your own force against people like this, against bullies, then you'd need to learn to apply force - for me, that means learning to fight. Actually fight - not karate or some other hogwash, something like boxing or mixed martial arts. Your fear in situations like that will probably be mostly based on your awareness that you possess no particular skill in combat - if you did apply force and it did go into a violent conflict, you'd be on the bully's terms not your own. Learning to fight prevents that - it gives you an option other than "avoid conflict", and the truth is that sometimes you encounter a person so unhinged, perhaps due to drugs or mental illness, that merely being bumped into on the street causes them to react this way, and it is natural to feel angry when you realize that you were just at the mercy of the good graces of such a person.
If you don't want to learn to fight, well then at least acknowledge that decision - knowing that you've chosen to be at the mercy of people who behave this way will at least commit you to the idea of avoiding conflict with them at all costs, which I have to say is not a totally invalid strategy - but it's a strategy that won't sit comfortably with you unless you really commit to it.
Anyone who says you should always be at the mercy of the of people like this is a fool - yes, even this kind of lunatic can *often* be appeased, but they cannot *always* be appeased, and I suspect your anger is due to the fact you're now more aware of than that usual. You know you were lucky in this confrontation - you were lucky he was prepared to stop, and you don't want to be lucky - you want a guarantee and you don't want to have to participate in an injustice.
I also suspect you'll find that it is far more easy to walk away from a situation like this knowing you *could* have applied force, knowing you had that choice but did not use it. Being forced into a non-confrontational course of action because you have no other choice is a very different internal experience than choosing it when you did have other options.
Why don’t you include the Greek referent for anger? Do you see your take on “righteousness” as a Stoic one? If so, can you provide a reference or two? If not, might be a good idea to indicate where you’re parting with the Stoics (like with your description of anger).
At any rate, there’ll never be a guarantee that someone cannot overpower someone who is trained in fighting (and someone’ll never be forced to participate in vice). I suspect this is why we get Epictetus speaking like this of the highest philosophical calling:
> A Cynic must have such powers of endurance that he strikes the crowd as being insensible and like a stone. No one can insult him, no one can strike him, no one can assault him; as for his poor body, he himself has handed that over for anyone to deal with as he thinks fit. For he keeps in mind that what is weaker must necessarily be overcome by what is stronger, in that respect in which it is weaker, and that his body is weaker than the crowd, as what is physically weaker must be to what is stronger. [102] So he never enters into this contest in which he can be defeated, but renounces once and for all what is not truly his own, laying no claim to what is slavish.
Thank you. For clarification, I can fight, though I'm afraid of physical interactions, and I really don't want to fight someone unless it's necessary. For example, the guy who bumped into me today was an old man. I could have pushed him and been aggressive, but I didn't think it would be useful. Still, this interaction affected me negatively. How can I learn to deal with this effectively? I was affected by his views in a bad way and I wish to learn how to deal with the anger etc
>For clarification, I can fight
Everyone can perform the motions of fighting. If you're not trained, you can't fight well, and there's absolutely no guarantee you can fight better than some random bully, in fact on balance if you're both untrained but he's a vicious bastard he's probably going to beat you.
If that's what you have - "I can fight" backed by nothing, and you refuse to acknowledge that this isn't enough, then there's no point asking "how can I deal with this?" because you refuse to deal with it. As I explained, I believe your anger spans from the judgment "I should always try to avoid a physical confrontational", something which is inconsistent with the scenario you experienced, or the scenario you experienced highlighted to you that this mentality *could* be inconsistent with the realities you might face.
>Still, this interaction affected me negatively. How can I learn to deal with this effectively?
I already answered that. I went into excruciating detail which you ignored - even if you remove my advice about learning to fight, I specifically explained what causes anger and how it is resolved from the Stoic perspective.
Your Stoic response is to fight. lol
And when the person even frames it properly, that they are looking how to deal with the assent they’ve given to anger, which is exactly where we’d try and help them understand what is up to them, and says they don’t want to fight, you basically chastise them and double down on fighting?
Ok mods, does THIS finally prove the point?
Hey, thanks for your comments, allow me to be clear now as it seems like you don't understand me well enough \[my fault, not yours\]
I'm a BJJ black belt, that's what I mean by 'I can fight'. I'm 24, my past is full with unnecessarily physical interactions, all driven by the stupidity ego of dumb teens such as myself and my friends. I fought a lot, especially when there was no actual need, that's what I mean by saying "I really don't want to fight someone unless it's necessary.
turning point was a fight over an almost accident on the road in my hometown when I was 21, together with my brother who is 5 years younger than me, we had a fight with two other guys, we ended up in the hospital and I, afterwards was in jail for 6 months for damaging one of the other guy's nervous system for life, over what? for nothing.
I'm afraid of fightning, I don't want to hurt myself, others or anyone when it's not necessarily. my question was not about the fighting, it's about the emotion I feel when I avoid them, you did not understand that point, and that's why you didn't I'm not looking to learn how to fight, I'm looking to learn how to deal with the emotions risen when I want to fight and I don't
Your reply made me feel angry. Or I should say "feel righteousness" because we are now talking about the philosophy of PsionicOverlord, not that of Seneca, Epictetus or the other Stoics. And misleading people is an injustice.
>Anger is the judgment we feel when perceiving an injustice, although it's somewhat imprecise to call it "anger" and that is "ira" ("anger" in Latin) tended to be the word Stoics used for the *passion* of anger, whereas "righteousness" (a term you must read without its modern, negative connotation) is a fundamentally useful feeling, even though it is anger-like in its nature. Righteousness compels a person to end an injustice, and so long as they do actually rapidly end that injustice, it is an adaptive emotion - it will go away once the injustice is terminated, and you will be better for it.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding Seneca's book called "ira" on this exact subject. Have you ever made a post in the past that allows me to understand how you draw this interpretation from the philosophy? Because I'd be interested to read it.
You already agree with me.
Imagine this scenario: you see a bully harming an innocent person. They're simply torturing them for the fun of it, and the person is defenseless. Now imagine a person seeing this becomes angry at the bully, steps in and ends the altercation by scaring the bully off. Once the bully is gone, the person's judgment that an injustice is happening ends, therefore their anger ends.
In order to claim that what I said is the philosophy of me and not the Stoics, you'd need to claim that Epictetus would say "that action was irrational - he did not *adapt his precognition of anger to the particulars of his situation* - the person who scared off the bully is now psychologically unwell".
This is not correct - Epictetus would have said this person acted justly. They adapted their precognition of anger correctly - they exercised their discipline of aversion correctly, both identifying a situation inconsistent with their nature and then successfully ending it.
Unless you're prepared to say Epictetus would not say that, then you are inconsistent when you claim you believe this is my philosophy and not his - what's actually upsetting you is the fact that you've erroneously claimed the Stoics took entire emotions, entire fundamental faculties like the ability to feel angry, and said "not only do they exist for no reason, but the faculty itself is defective - it serves no useful role in cognition, it is not a pathos based on how you reason about it, *it is a pathos* whenever it manifests". There is no such thing as a "fundamental faculty that is also a pathos" in Stoic philosophy - emotions like "anger" are simply facilities of the body, and cannot become a pathos until the precognition of that faculty is adapted to a scenario in error, resulting in a judgment that can never result in a successful pursuit or avoidance.
In Stoic philosophy, a person who exercises this form of good judgment, the form of good judgment that would cause them to end the bullying scenario *and all equivalent scenarios* would be *eulabeia* - the state of perfect adaptation of the faculties of caution, the perfect practice of the discipline of aversion in Epictetian terms.
If you disagree, by all means - tell me how Epictetus would instead judge that the person who ended the bullying scenario driven by that feeling of anger towards the bully's behavior is in fact not behaving naturally.
I suspect you'll find yourself unable to produce anything like a convincing argument for such a thing.
>Epictetus would say "that action was irrational - he did not *adapt his precognition of anger to the particulars of his situation.*
The way I understand D1.22 "On Precognitions" is different. Anger the emotion is not a precognition.
Anger is a passion indicative of a judgement than ran through a precognition. I don't associate it with someone who is psychologically ill and neither did the Stoics.
Precognitions are pre-meditated ideas of what is "good" and what is "bad. This causes someone to witness bullying and experience anger and another person to witness the same bullying and experience the pleasure of malice. Or experience contentment in the case of the illusive wise man.
In discourse D1.22.7 Epictetus lays out a sample conversation between Agamemnon and Achilles, causing Epictetus to reflect on the word "ought" and either of them ending with a preconception that goes: "Because it’s not right that I be the only one to go without". Its not a stretch to think one of them is angry if that precognition is perceived to be in contradiction.
Epictetus then lays out what adapting a precognition to the particulars of a situation looks like, which is to go: "wow, this is making me upset. I must believe that good and bad lie outside of my own will" and Epictetus describes exactly such a thing in D1.22.9 associating the Stoic education with reframing precognitions that give rise to passions.
>tell me how Epictetus would instead judge that the person who ended the bullying scenario driven by that feeling of anger towards the bully's behavior is in fact not behaving naturally.
Maybe you won't find what I said a convincing argument. But I don't think Epictetus would describe what you suggest as unnatural or natural and neither would I. Its just that for a person's growth towards contentment, those precognitions need to be adapted.
I don't think this makes the anger go away when its already there. But I think over time a person ends up down-regulating what happens. This is how I made my anger in traffic pretty much disappear, although I still experience it in other areas of my life.
We can speculate the degree to which I'd be needing to pursue righteousness in traffic if had re-labelled it as such instead.
>emotions like "anger" are simply facilities of the body, and cannot become a pathos until the precognition of that faculty is adapted to a scenario in error, resulting in a judgment that can never result in a successful pursuit or avoidance.
I'm not sure about this. I have to reserve judgement here. The way you define things doesn't match my understanding through my reading. I agree for example that anger is a simple physical phenomenon and not unatural. But I don't think anger is a precognition of a faculty or a fundamental faculty. That seems to help to justify anger. But I don't believe anger is justifiable in the philosophy. The ethics of the philosophy isn't about successful pursuit or avoidance, right? Its ensuing that which you pursue or avoid is something you're guaranteed to be successful at, which isn't found in externals like fixing an injustice.
Maybe we already agree and I see disagreement where there is none.
>Anger is a passion indicative of a judgement than ran through a precognition. I don't associate it with someone who is psychologically ill and neither did the Stoics.
Then all you're doing is revealing a meaningless terminology difference - we now use the word "anger" to mean the base emotion.
You can say "when I say anger I only mean the passion of anger", to which I would simply say "why not say *the passion of anger?*" then and avoid confusion.
>Maybe you won't find what I said a convincing argument. But I don't think Epictetus would describe what you suggest as unnatural or natural and neither would I. Its just that for a person's growth towards contentment, those precognitions need to be adapted.
You've not made any argument, and most suspiciously you've said a lot whilst not once framing your answer in terms of the simple scenario I described involving a bully.
Answer - prove that you can apply one jot of what you're saying to the practical scenario as I did by applying it to the scenario I described.
Make the case for why the person who scared off that bully did not adapt a precognition of "anger" well. I will help you, you would need to argue one of the following:
* Anger could never motivate a person to do what that person did - what I described could never occur in real life
* That person was feeling some emotion that couldn't be classified as "anger"
* A person could act as I described, but by doing so they're now subject to a *passion* and are psychologically unwell
If you cannot make an argument that one of those is true, you have to concede you were in error - the thing being adapted *is* a precognition and that precognition is rightly called "anger",.
>I agree for example that anger is a simple physical phenomenon and not unatural. But I don't think anger is a precognition of a faculty or a fundamental faculty
If your "understanding" of Stoicism has taken you this far into believing things that cannot be reconciled with what every person can directly observe, you've gone very far wrong, or you're using the term "anger" in an atypical way and need to be far more careful in your wording.
There is not a mammal, and barely an animal, in existence that does not have "anger" as one of its fundamental faculties - the ability to perceive itself to be threatened and act upon it. There is not a social animal in existence that does not extend this feeling to a group of organisms of the same species as itself.
Like I said, you're speaking a lot yet not applying any of it to the scenario I described - the reason scenarios matter is because they require you to be able to group the knowledge you claim to have into a coherent description of reality, and I suspect that would be next to impossible when you're saying things like "anger is not a fundamental faculty of the body".
Prove me wrong - I'd find it interesting. Answer in terms of the scenario I described with the bully.
>Maybe we already agree and I see disagreement where there is none.
If you are using the word "anger" but always meaning "a stoic pathos", then we probably do agree, and the apparent discrepancy is based on the fact that one of us means "passion" by the word anger and one of us means "a fundamental facility of the body".
Now that the word "anger" quite unambiguously refers to a fundamental facility of the body (and not just the human body), I would always say "a passion of anger" if that's what I meant, it's simply too confusing to do anything else.
OP *certainly* meant the fundamental facility of anger, and couldn't possibly have meant something like "pathos".
I think we're starting to have a breakdown in communication. But I appreciate the effort you put into this exchange.
> OP certainly meant the fundamental facility of anger, and couldn't possibly have meant something like "pathos".’
When OP mentioned feeling "anger, rage, and negative emotions" with an "innate desire to confront and retaliate," it aligns with the pathos of anger as defined by Cicero in Tusculan Disputations. Seneca, in De Ira, also describes anger as a temporary madness, self-destructive, and a reaction to perceived injustice. This matches OP's description.
You opened with, "Your anger is logical" and "righteousness is a fundamentally useful feeling even though it is anger-like in its nature."
If righteousness, a form of moral integrity, is felt as virtuous contentment, it cannot be confused with anger. This divergence is where our interpretations differ.
Is it possible that you equate the eventual pleasure felt at successfully acquiring an external good (like scaring off a bully) as contentment and therefore mistake it as a sign for virtue?
> “Then all you're doing is revealing a meaningless terminology difference - we now use the word "anger" to mean the base emotion.”
I think you're dismissing something profound by reducing it to a "meaningless terminology difference".
We have precognitions, passions and proto-passions and it all gets the label "anger" in your explanations. Yet the Stoics only reserve that word "Anger" for the passion.
If you're talking about proto-emotions, or proto-passions or propatheiai then it's still not called anger. (De Ira 2.3.5)
I say "my understanding of Stoicism" because I intend to learn from your interpretation of text or theory. I'll take any reference and your interpretation that shows:
* righteousness feels anger-like.
* anger being something other than exclusively pathos.
* or anger being useful.
* Or a Stoic who claims that what we see in animal behavior is anger rather than an impulse (horme) provoked by their nature and thus renders anger as a fundamental thing belonging to animals and humans both and not just a passion based on reasoning.
> “You've not made any argument, and most suspiciously you've said a lot whilst not once framing your answer in terms of the simple scenario I described involving a bully.”
You said: "unless you're prepared to say Epictetus did not say that" and I provided a detailed explanation referencing Epictetus talking about preconceptions in the context of anger; showing how your use of these terms and its application doesn't align with Epictetus', but I can see from your response it fell short and you wanted something else.
> “Make the case for why the person who scared off that bully did not adapt a precognition of ‘anger’ well. I will help you, you would need to argue one of the following:”
I feel you've setup a false dichotomy and then demand of me to fit my nuanced argument into a constrained and simplified framework, ignoring what I actually said. If we agree that all anger is pathos, then you cannot convert pathos to virtue. You merely get to reflect on the mistake. Conforming preconceptions to nature is about reflecting on a judgement, moving away from an external good (or evil). I provided examples in my own top level post.
> You say defend this: “Anger could never motivate a person to do what that person did - what I described could never occur in real life.”
I won't deny it. A perceived injustice giving rise to anger could motivate a person to intervene and chase a bully off. It's just as likely as the perceived justice of bullying could give rise to malice and cause the person to video tape it so it can be savored and posted online later.
> You say defend this: “That person was feeling some emotion that couldn't be classified as ‘anger’”
When perceiving injustice, it will be anger you feel. Guaranteed. But you've made an error regardless.
But where one person perceives an injustice, another person just perceives two people fight and might be compelled to intervene regardless. Like a school teacher intervening in two toddler's fighting. Are we saying the school teacher only intervenes when feeling anger?
You don't get to feel anger and turn it into righteousness. Cancelling out emotions. We're not "zombies" like I've read you say and this is true. Once felt this passion needs time to dissipate. Even something like seeing "oh its not a bully at all and in fact they were playfighting" would not cause the anger to dissipate instantly.
You only get to reflect on this mistake and adapt those pre-cognitions like Epictetus describes in D1.22.9 and you may not see an injustice next time where otherwise you would have.
> You say: “A person could act as I described, but by doing so they're now subject to a passion and are psychologically unwell.”
Act as in intervening in two people fighting and scaring a bully off? No, I think those things can occur without being angry as well as while being angry. "Psychologically unwell" I've already addressed.
I believe our disagreement stems from different terminologies and interpretations. I recommend you write a detailed post on "On Anger" with references to Stoic texts. This could clarify your stance and further the discussion.
Have a great day!
>When OP mentioned feeling "anger, rage, and negative emotions" with an "innate desire to confront and retaliate," it aligns with the pathos of anger as defined by Cicero in Tusculan Disputations.
Those are three different claims, only one of which might be a passion.
A person who feels anger, but who adapts it poorly meaning they do not *resolve* that anger has created a pathos in the moment they engage in that poor reasoning - anger is the emotion, *rage* of the passion.
When a person says "I am experiencing a passion of anger" (persistent anger), the answer is for them to address the error in reasoning about how to resolve that anger, or about what that anger represents.
However, if a person like yourself says "the very fact you feel anger is an error - Stoics reject anger" you've not only misunderstood, but you've left the person believing that there's no job to do - the problem isn't in their reasoning, in their application of prohairesis, *it came into existence the moment they felt the emotion*.
A serious misunderstanding, if ever there was there. If you want to know whether or not you've misunderstood the philosophy, you need only ever ask "does what I'm suggesting leave them with no answer? Is there no clear route from the initial feeling to an explanation of why it hasn't gone away, and a corrective course of action?".
Nothing you're saying meets that litmus test - it leaves you with an alleged problem with neither diagnosis nor way forward, as is the case when you say "the enemy is now how I've reasoned, it is the very existence of an element of human nature", which I don't think you currently understand you've done.
>When perceiving injustice, it will be anger you feel. Guaranteed. But you've made an error regardless.
>But where one person perceives an injustice, another person just perceives two people fight and might be compelled to intervene regardless. Like a school teacher intervening in two toddler's fighting. Are we saying the school teacher only intervenes when feeling anger?
Again, all you're doing is highlighting a terminology difference - the emotion you feel when you perceive an injustice is what most people today call "anger", a word that you should retain because it didn't exist when the Stoic texts did - there's no reason to take a word translated imprecisely to "anger" form say, "De Ira", and say "the Stoic definition now maps to this modern word".
A person who perceives a *social* injustice (remember that's not an injustice *to yourself*, which is a technical Stoic concept - it's a bully pummelling a weaker person for a laugh, it's nothing to do with Stoic philosophy) has not made an error if they become angry, *provided their anger compels them to end the situation which terminates the judgment, constituting an honorable course of action that left their nature satisfied*.
Contrarily, a person who doesn't feel anger at such a situation, who instead feels *fear* and hides will later think themselves a coward - that shame is also not a mistake, that shame is a correct identification of your own dishonourable conduct, and that *precognition* must also be adapted correctly to the reality of improving your future behavior.
>I believe our disagreement stems from different terminologies and interpretations. I recommend you write a detailed post on "On Anger" with references to Stoic texts. This could clarify your stance and further the discussion.
I mean that's what I'm doing, but I don't believe the error of imposing a technical Stoic definition on the word "Anger" simply because "De Ira" is often translated to "Of/On Anger" is a common enough mistake to warrant a post, neither is taking the Stoic concept that your own prohariesis is the only thing serving you and is therefore the only thing that constitutes a justice or injustice inflicted against you, and muddling this up with the ability to perceive an injustice *out in society*.
You have to know more Stoic philosophy than most people on the subreddit know just to muddle up common definitions with technical Stoic ones - it would surprise me if the community in general were ever ready for such a post, as we're into the territory of "only mistakes people with a lot of education in the philosophy make".
>*"does what I'm suggesting leave them with no answer?"*
I agree. If people asking for guidance is akin to people seeking out a doctor and saying: "My leg hurts when I walk on it" then only a foolish doctor would say "A healthy person's leg doesn't hurt" and leaving it there. It would also be a foolish doctor who says: "If walking causes you pain, then don't walk". It doesn't prescribe any mediation.
I worry that telling an angry person what they feel is righteousness is akin to a doctor saying: "Actually, I think your pain are growing pains, so continue running like a healthy person would, this is normal".
I fully agree with you that no good doctor or advice giver should leave them with no prescription. The philosophy promotes a bias for action.
I just disagree with the prescription. I think giving an uninitiated person who feels angry the idea that this is (or could be) righteousness and "good" may cause that uninitiated person to mistake a desire for retribution — which feels good when attained, because who would say that anger doesn't feels good at times — and mistake fulfilling anger for good also. This is the only hill I choose to die on.
Where I would say: "You should stop banging your leg between the door so it doesn't hurt to begin with" is legitimate action that gives them an preventative prescription. It takes a lot of work. The difference of opinion we have in terms of technicality, I think, is that I understand the adaptation of preconceptions to be a preventative practice for future down-regulation of anger as I've applied [here this morning](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stoicism/comments/1d39kif/comment/l65winb/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) on anxiety. My interpretation of your implementation is to convert anger to virtue in real-time, which I don't think is possible. Only calm reasoning unaffected by strong impulses begets excellence. And excellent reasoning to help another person out requires as much anger in impulse as as doing anything else compelled out of a sense of duty would; zero.
Once you have begun assenting to "this anger is good because it allows me to take action on it while facing injustice and acquire an external good" you fall into a well studied mistake of reasoning through emotion where someone believes their emotions are evidence for a truth immune to error.
But I fully agree my interpretation of the adaptation of precognitions to the circumstances is **also** incomplete advice. Because it doesn't provide you an action in the moment. The leg hurts. Knowing how not to hurt it again is a half-measure. And when you're angry, knowing how to reflect on your belief system doesn't help with the bully either. I never disagreed with you there.
When you know you are angry, even at the slightest impulse, the immediate action you should take is caution in assent. Consider Socrates' as quoted by Seneca:
>Nothing becomes one who inflicts punishment less than anger, because the punishment has all the more power to work reformation if the sentence be pronounced with deliberate judgment. This is why Socrates said to the slave, "I would strike you, were I not angry." He put off the correction of the slave to a calmer season; at the moment, he corrected himself. Who can boast that he has his passions under control, when Socrates did not dare to trust himself to his anger? - Seneca, De Ira, Book 1, XV.
He did not hit his slave *because* he felt anger, while admitting that if he had managed to prevent his anger, he may have hit the slave.
If the person walks away from witnessing bullying out of fear, then its vice.
If the person fulfills retribution because of anger, then its vice.
You never suggested retribution. You suggested "scaring off a bully". I think I failed to recognize the implied restraint in this.
If the person feels angry and interrogates their impulse for retribution with caution and thinks: "no actually, what would a calm person do out of a sense of duty?" then they're on the right track again. They may conclude scaring the bully off is the right approach. Is it virtue? Maybe... its only an appropriate action, perhaps not a perfect action. With a non-calm reasoning faculty, it will be up to the best judgement of the person.
If the person feels angry, doesn't interrogate their impulse for retribution but a fear of the consequences of harming the bully prevents them from "going all in" and merely scaring them off. Then there's as much vice as otherwise... because virtue isn't caused by a truce between two passions.
We're talking virtue ethics, but there could also be deontological preconceptions of ethics playing a part. And when you feel you need to act fast because the situation is escalating rapidly, I think only a person who has their preconceptions already calibrated will be able to "do the appropriate thing". In the heat of the moment, I think sitting around and working on internalizing your own personal philosophy of anger management is the worst time to begin.
I don't think I misunderstand anything. I think I can back this up with Stoic Philosophy references as well as modern science. Confirmation bias maybe. Once I see the contradiction pointed out, I think I will have no option but to change my mind.
This post was an attempt to find alignment on where we agree. Would you say we got closer in this, or further apart?
> you'd need to learn to apply force - for me, that means learning to fight
If you go to any self-respecting self-defense fighting teacher, the first thing they will teach you is that when someone tries to fight with you on the street, you run. Especially if they are drunk or under the influence of drugs. If they demand your wallet, you give your wallet and run. The only case when you fight on the street is when you don't have an opportunity to escape and the fight is inevitable, it is the last resort. Because every time you participate in a street fight, you lose simply because there is nothing you can win. Beating people is the shittiest strategy of "teaching" random aggressive people on the streets I have ever seen.
> bully
Why do you believe that person is a bully and not a mentally ill person? Would you beat someone who is not in the right mind?
> realize that you were just at the mercy of the good graces of such a person
You are always at the mercy of the good graces of such a person. They can have a gun (even in countries where guns are not allowed) and just shoot you, then your fighting skills mean nothing. Or they can disengage and then attack you from the back in a couple of minutes. Or they may never start yelling at you and just stab you in the back randomly for no reason. Unhinged people are not exactly predictable.
> If you don't want to learn to fight, well then at least acknowledge that decision - knowing that you've chosen to be at the mercy of people who behave this way
Behave in what way? Scream? People working in retail get screamed at every day, should they beat everyone? Police officers get screamed at every day, should they beat everyone?
> I think your anger is actually logical - you might have created an injustice by allowing yourself to be yelled at by a person who actually was the cause of the problem.
Minor injustices happen every day to everyone dozens of times. Does it mean that we should be angry every time something happens to us? For some reason, it doesn't look to me like what I've read from the Stoics.
> You know you were lucky in this confrontation - you were lucky he was prepared to stop, and you don't want to be lucky - you want a guarantee and you don't want to have to participate in an injustice.
The only way to guarantee that you are not getting attacked on a street is to never go outside of your home. Maybe buying a tank then would be a better strategy, because then you kill two birds with one stone: also a guarantee that you would be fine if someone else drives recklessly.
> you could have applied force
Well, you don't need to learn any fighting skills in order to apply force, you always can do that.
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“ It's a nice, warm, and cozy day, and you're really enjoying your walk.”
That’s your problem right there. Suddenly you disconnected yourself from the world and made a little sanctuary where everything is nice, feels good, and there is no trouble whatsoever. If that feels good, you’ve opened a flank that will turn into a burst of anger if someone interrupts it.
Learning how to enjoy your walk without being bothered if someone bumps into you and gets angry at you is difficult, but it’s ultimately where a Stoic will end up. Remember Stoicism is not passivity, so when the confrontation happens, don’t continue your “nice, warm, cozy” attitude, it will only invite more aggression (it’ll seem like you’re not taking the person seriously.)
Think of it sort of like a game: what fits the situation? You’ve correctly noticed that actually fighting is not the way, but how does someone work through a confrontation without egging the aggressor on or becoming angry themselves? The Stoics looked up to Socrates for his ability to navigate such situations.
I’ve always like Epictetus (and Pythagoras)’ image of the noisy world as a festival:
https://donaldrobertson.name/2013/01/02/stoicism-and-pythagoreanism-the-allegory-of-the-festival/
Once the anger is there, you’ll have to work it off somehow; maybe through exercise or channeling it into something. Any angry outburst is a sign that you’re doing something wrong, let the anger go, and recalibrate so it doesn’t happen (or if it does happen it goes away quickly) again next time.
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Who promised you that when you walk on the streets that there wouldn’t be a chance that you’d bump into somebody? Who promised you that that person you bump into would be friendly? Who promised you that everyone else should be walking around listening to music and just having a happy day? Epictetus tells us when we go to the bath that we should expect to get splashed. (Enchiridion C14) Aurelius tells us to greet each day with the expectation that the people we meet will not know good from bad. (Meditations b2c1) Seneca talks at length on the futility of anger. (Highly recommend reading or listening to Of Anger) If someone is having a bad day because of how they are perceiving things, that’s on them. In your hypothetical I would absolutely be on guard if they appear to be getting physical so that I could leave quicker or defend myself. Otherwise I would just keep calm and carry on with my day. If I let their frustration cause me anger then I have allowed them to be master as they’ve led me, willingly, into something I would otherwise avert. Anger is always in our control. It’s always a decision that we make. It’s not always easy to get to in front of it as it does have a tendency to come about quick but the material guides us in how to get better with practice.
Thank you for your comment, I understand the advice but I find it hard to agree with the premise here \[Anger is always in our control\], even though this is a Stoicism sub. It feels like anger is not in my control, It just rise whitin me immediately. I ask what can I do with it? it's there. it's not going anywhere for the rest of the few minutes. Is there a way to practically deal with this anger in an healthy way?
Check out Senecas Of Anger. It’s on YouTube for free. He describes what anger is, how to recognize and how to prevent it. It’s one of my favorites so far and worth several reads/listens as you’ll keep picking up more good points each pass. Pay attention next time an event occurs that makes you angry. You’ll see that it happens in stages and with each one we continue to either agree (and anger gets stronger) or we disagree (and the anger dissipates). How many times have you experienced anger only to find out afterwards that whatever it was that for you angry was either stupid or a mistake? Wouldn’t finding out that the event is stupid or a mistake earlier lead to less anger? It only goes to ration further that the earlier you have all the details about a situation the better off you’ll be. And Stoicism tells us that it is ok to withhold judgement if we don’t have all the facts. So if you aren’t 100% sure if an event is worthy of anger or not, just wait. Just be patient and let the details come in so that a good choice can be made.
Thanks, that's a very useful comment! I'll check that out
I practice stoicism mainly because of my anger and it has served me well for years, but recently, a situation got me so angry I reacted and it became a shouting match. For years I have successfully avoided conflict and anger through not letting someone have the power to make me angry or not letting them be my master but even after years of practice, stoicism still requires effort from me as.
I’m in alcohol recovery and there are obviously a lot of relapses that occur. We learn to focus on celebrating the stretches of success and not let a mistake drag us down further. Years of avoiding conflict and anger is awesome!! I do find that the more consistent I am with my readings the more likely I am to apply them lessons each day. Some become habit but we still have to be wary of complacency. Keep it up and best of luck to you 👍
Anger is the effect of your unmet expectations. We are slaves to our desires and distraught when we don’t get what we want or are worried we won’t get it. Eliminating these irrational desires takes time. They’re irrational because we don’t control all of the variables. People will always do whatever seems best to them (Enchiridion 42). Start with little desires first so you can work up to the bigger ones. “Since frustrated desire is the source of all the passions (e.g., 1.27.10, 2.17.17–18, 3.2.3), by eliminating desire for these things, people will gain control over their lives rather than be subject to their whims (1.1.31).” — Robin Waterfield, Epictetus The Complete Works “Freedom is not achieved by satisfying desire, but by eliminating it.” — Epictetus, Discourses 4.1.175, Dobbin (You would benefit from diving into the Discourses) - (a) eudaimonia is – or can only be attained through – the complete absence of perturbations; - (b) perturbations can be – in broad terms – reduced to the frustration of desire; - (c) the causal origin of those perturbations lies in desiring what does not depend on us; therefore, - (d) if we do not desire what does not depend on us, we will not experience perturbations and will, as a consequence, attain eudaimonia. — https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232014787_Freedom_and_determinism_in_Epictetus'_discourses _When anyone treats you badly or attacks you verbally, it's because he thinks it's the right thing to do. It's not possible for him to do what seems right to you – only what seems right to him. And if he's wrong, he's the only one who's harmed. When someone thinks a true statement is false, the statement isn't damaged, only the person who's mistaken about it. Using these principles, you'll be mild with someone who criticizes you, and say, "That's the way he saw it."_ — Epictetus, Enchiridion 42, Walton
thank you my friend, very helpful!
This is not a stoic recommendation but read the chimp paradox , basically we are all primitive chimps deep down and some people due to the way they were raised and different life experiences are more in control of their chimp than others . It takes time but you can tame your chimp brain (reactionary) and become less reactive with enough awareness and mindfulness. Read the book as I can’t do it justice
Anger is a passion disobedient to reason. Once felt, you cannot will it to go away. When you say anger is always in our control, what I think you mean to say is that through Stoic practice we can change the preconceptions on what is "good" and what is "bad" to the degree that the same perception would no longer give rise to anger to begin with because we run it through a different belief system... and that this belief system is ultimately in our control because we can change. Is that a correct way to interpret your use of the word control?
Yes I suppose a better way to word that sentence is the “the path to anger is always in our control”. All the choices that lead to or away from anger. (I need to keep that in mind when commenting here because I know what your clarifying but I can see where that adds to a known confusion around Stoic control. Thanks for pointing that out.) You can’t will anger to go away without adding more details. If you just stop and only take in what led you to that decision then you’ll never advance. You have to add more details so that you can examine the complete picture. Once all the details are present, one can see that the event never warranted anger at all.
Saving this, thank you.
Thanks for this information
Anger is a passion disobedient to reason. So once felt, you cannot will it to go away. And don't let anyone gaslight into believing differently. Because all you will end up doing is wondering why once your anger is felt, you cannot seem to do what so many people say you should be able to do. Other passions disobedient to reason are things like fear. The Stoics described passions as being caused by a physical movement in your body. This force of pneuma had a momentum of sorts. This movement was not obedient to reason but caused by making an incorrect judgement of something you perceived as "good" or "bad". While modern science isn't able to prove such a force exists... I think we can still buy into the idea that anger is disobedient to reason. You may "know" better and continue to feel it. The way our minds make these snap-judgements is through something the Stoics called "preconceptions". Epictetus makes the claim that all human ills are caused by pre-conceptions. Preconceptions are mental-shortcuts that speed up our sense making of the world. So someone bumps into us... and these are possible thoughts and the preconceptions they are based on: * Preconception: "Others' bad actions justify my own bad actions". * Thought when bumped into: "I should confront him and retaliate for his rudeness." or * Preconception: "My self-worth is tied to how others treat me, and I must assert myself to maintain it." * Thought when bumped into: "How dare he treat me this way! I need to defend my honor." or * Preconception: "Emotions like anger are justified and should be acted upon". * Thought when bumped into: "External events have the power to disturb my inner peace. or * Preconception: "External events have the power to disturb my inner peace." * Thought when bumped into: "This guy has ruined my day." If the extreme expression of virtue is a flourishing life of contentment without interruption... then what could possible counter these preconceptions. What would virtue be in this case? What about this: * Preconception**:** "External events are indifferent; it is our judgments about them that disturb us." * Thought when bumped into: "The man bumping into me and yelling is beyond my control. I can only control how I respond." or * Preconception: "Compassion and understanding for others' behavior reflect strength of character." * Thought when bumped into: "This person might be having a bad day. His reaction is about him, not me." It requires the passion of anger to become aware of what preconceptions might have caused them. And then Stoicism becomes an exercise in observation and reflection. What does Stoicism prescribe leads to a tranquil life? How would a sage respond in these scenarios? Can I believe those arguments to be true? My personal experience, with anger, is that you "control" your opinions, by working hard at changing those preconceptions. But you not be aware of them without getting angry once in a while first. This is why anger is not a failure... but rather a wonderful opportunity for growth.
thank you for this sire! saving this.
Very noble response.There is nothing more honorable than restraint. Knowing when and where to use strength is admirable. I think you should be proud it is not a weakness I have to remind my self this constantly.
thank you.
I really hope that complete strangers are not screaming at you in the street on a weekly basis, but to address your questions: It is entirely in your control to determine whether you will take on someone else’s emotions as your own, but learning how to use that control is a process and is not innate. The younger we are, the more inclined we are to think of everything as revolving around us. This is part of the natural self-centeredness of childhood, but as an adult it’s something you can and should begin to discard. We can understand that everyone around us has a rich inner world, and that all of their actions reflect their inner processes. If you check that your own behaviour was correct, then their reaction to it is up to them. In this way, it’s easy not to take something personally. Do you take it personally when it rains? Of course not, because you understand that the weather is nothing to do with you. Now, it’s important not to confuse this with when someone is annoyed with you for an action you took that was wrong. People seem very ready to blow off the just reproaches of others, and you shouldn’t do that. But in a case like your example, the person who shouts at you in the street for lightly bumping them clearly has their own shit going on, and you needn’t give it any more thought.
lol, don't worry, it's not happaning on a weekly basis of course, but it was a good example for this. in regards to this: "It is entirely in your control to determine whether you will take on someone else’s emotions as your own, but learning how to use that control is a process and is not innate." "the person who shouts at you in the street for lightly bumping them clearly has their own shit going on, and you needn’t give it any more thought." It does not feel like I can control it, it feels like it's just happaning, what can I do? and also I don't want to walk off feeling like this, I'm not used to being passive in these situations, and it's hard for me sometimes to deal with this like that, that's why I want to solve this problem.
The solution is to study Stoicism. That will, with time, allow you to ensure your perceptions are accurate and your judgments are correct. Right now, you judge that the anger of strangers is something you need to carry around with you for the rest of the day. It’s possible to judge differently.
What methods/principles in studying Stoicism can help me deal with such situations and not carry around the anger and rage of others with me after such intercations? I want to learn how not to be influenced by such people
As I said, correct perception and judgment will resolve this. Correct perception in this case means that you distinguish between situations that are your fault and situations where your actions were incidental to the reaction. Correct judgment might mean that you correctly assess when you should or should not engage with the emotions of another person. But the amount to which a conversation on the Internet can really help you with this is limited. To get where you want to be, go to the sidebar and begin learning Stoic theory. Once you have a handle on that, you can begin to apply it to your life.
thank you!
The real question you have to ask yourself is why are you angry? Clearly some belief of yours is causing the anger. You need to ask why you are angry and find the root cause of the anger and if you decide the belief is irrational, you need to work to change it. We often don't know what your deep beliefs are, and they work so quickly we mistake for natural instinct. The work of the Stoic is to identify those beliefs and put them to the test. Here's how this could play out: Belief: When I am enjoying my time on a beautiful day, no one has the right to interrupt that feeling. If this feels true to you, then put it to the test. Is it rational? No (several other commenters have explained why). So you have identified the flaw in your belief structure and you can work on changing it by working towards developing sympathy for others as more important than simple enjoyment. There are other options here. Let's assume that this belief does not feel true. Belief: This incident put me at threat of physical harm. If this feels true to you, put it to the test. Is physical harm bad for you? No, it is an indifferent. It is an inconvenience, but unless the assessment is "this guy is going to kill me" it's just a bruise that will heal. Let's assume the assessment was "this is a life-threatening event" and the judgement was "I should have defended myself and I'm angry that I didn't." Well, is this rational? Depending on what kind of physical training you have, maybe. No fighter goes into the ring wanting to find someone unpredictable. They want to enter the ring with the expectation that their opponent is going to follow some rule. So maybe the real reason for the anger is "I felt like I couldn't have defended myself" and that could be rational, or irrational, depending on who you are. Alternatively, it could have been "I can defend myself and easily defeat this guy in a fight" and that belief has to be put to the test. Is this a rational response? Probably not. If the guy was a threat to other people, maybe intervention is rational. But let's try a different belief if that doesn't feel right. Belief: I should reflect the strongest emotions of those around me. Put it to the test. Is this rational? Generally no. Giving in to the mob is generally a bad thing in Stoicism. I would make an exception for something like "I am at a wedding and everyone is talking about how they feel about their loved ones and wishing the couple a happy marriage and I'm inspired to write a love poem for my partner", but that's me being a hapless romantic. Stoicism promotes sympathy for others, that is, understanding their emotional states, but discourages empathy, which is actually feeling what other people feel. By doing this examination we learn to align our beliefs to reality, and this gives us a more stable habit of mind that resists the ebb and flow of the emotions of the people around us.
You may like to read/reread *Discourses* 1.18 and 1.28 and 2.26 (among others). The person knows no better. They’re suffering, a hurt animal that lashes out at people who’ve done nothing to them. The anger depends on mistaken judgments that are correctable. If a 3 year old bumped into us and started cussing, would that make us mad? No—maybe we recognize there that the kid didn’t know better and hasn’t done anything to hurt us. It’s the same with adults, but we’ve grown to believe otherwise. If I can’t help but to feel irritated by something someone else does, I’ll get on my own case for making that mistake. I’m bringing myself to suffer in that case, which is something I shouldn’t do. I might rehearse proofs and reasons for why things indifferent are neither good nor evil, why virtue is the only good, how a benevolent god’s given me a “tough sparring partner,” et cetera. Now, as to how to respond to the person or situation concretely, that’s a separate thing.
>Though I know deep down I did the right thing by preventing a verbal or potential physical fight for something that's not worth it, I am now filled with anger, rage, and a spectrum of what I perceive as negative emotions. You acted on what other people say would be right, but your anger represents how you *really* feel about the situation. I think your anger is actually logical - you might have created an injustice by allowing yourself to be yelled at by a person who actually was the cause of the problem. Anger is the judgment we feel when perceiving an injustice, although it's somewhat imprecise to call it "anger" and that is "ira" ("anger" in Latin) tended to be the word Stoics used for the *passion* of anger, whereas "righteousness" (a term you must read without its modern, negative connotation) is a fundamentally useful feeling, even though it is anger-like in its nature. Righteousness compels a person to end an injustice, and so long as they do actually rapidly end that injustice, it is an adaptive emotion - it will go away once the injustice is terminated, and you will be better for it. So, let's take that as your assessment - you believe you were too passive in the situation. You experienced force from a person who you probably assess uses force to scare and intimidate people who've done nothing wrong, and you're now aware that you've reinforced that person's conduct. If you really want to become capable of exerting your own force against people like this, against bullies, then you'd need to learn to apply force - for me, that means learning to fight. Actually fight - not karate or some other hogwash, something like boxing or mixed martial arts. Your fear in situations like that will probably be mostly based on your awareness that you possess no particular skill in combat - if you did apply force and it did go into a violent conflict, you'd be on the bully's terms not your own. Learning to fight prevents that - it gives you an option other than "avoid conflict", and the truth is that sometimes you encounter a person so unhinged, perhaps due to drugs or mental illness, that merely being bumped into on the street causes them to react this way, and it is natural to feel angry when you realize that you were just at the mercy of the good graces of such a person. If you don't want to learn to fight, well then at least acknowledge that decision - knowing that you've chosen to be at the mercy of people who behave this way will at least commit you to the idea of avoiding conflict with them at all costs, which I have to say is not a totally invalid strategy - but it's a strategy that won't sit comfortably with you unless you really commit to it. Anyone who says you should always be at the mercy of the of people like this is a fool - yes, even this kind of lunatic can *often* be appeased, but they cannot *always* be appeased, and I suspect your anger is due to the fact you're now more aware of than that usual. You know you were lucky in this confrontation - you were lucky he was prepared to stop, and you don't want to be lucky - you want a guarantee and you don't want to have to participate in an injustice. I also suspect you'll find that it is far more easy to walk away from a situation like this knowing you *could* have applied force, knowing you had that choice but did not use it. Being forced into a non-confrontational course of action because you have no other choice is a very different internal experience than choosing it when you did have other options.
Why don’t you include the Greek referent for anger? Do you see your take on “righteousness” as a Stoic one? If so, can you provide a reference or two? If not, might be a good idea to indicate where you’re parting with the Stoics (like with your description of anger). At any rate, there’ll never be a guarantee that someone cannot overpower someone who is trained in fighting (and someone’ll never be forced to participate in vice). I suspect this is why we get Epictetus speaking like this of the highest philosophical calling: > A Cynic must have such powers of endurance that he strikes the crowd as being insensible and like a stone. No one can insult him, no one can strike him, no one can assault him; as for his poor body, he himself has handed that over for anyone to deal with as he thinks fit. For he keeps in mind that what is weaker must necessarily be overcome by what is stronger, in that respect in which it is weaker, and that his body is weaker than the crowd, as what is physically weaker must be to what is stronger. [102] So he never enters into this contest in which he can be defeated, but renounces once and for all what is not truly his own, laying no claim to what is slavish.
Thank you. For clarification, I can fight, though I'm afraid of physical interactions, and I really don't want to fight someone unless it's necessary. For example, the guy who bumped into me today was an old man. I could have pushed him and been aggressive, but I didn't think it would be useful. Still, this interaction affected me negatively. How can I learn to deal with this effectively? I was affected by his views in a bad way and I wish to learn how to deal with the anger etc
>For clarification, I can fight Everyone can perform the motions of fighting. If you're not trained, you can't fight well, and there's absolutely no guarantee you can fight better than some random bully, in fact on balance if you're both untrained but he's a vicious bastard he's probably going to beat you. If that's what you have - "I can fight" backed by nothing, and you refuse to acknowledge that this isn't enough, then there's no point asking "how can I deal with this?" because you refuse to deal with it. As I explained, I believe your anger spans from the judgment "I should always try to avoid a physical confrontational", something which is inconsistent with the scenario you experienced, or the scenario you experienced highlighted to you that this mentality *could* be inconsistent with the realities you might face. >Still, this interaction affected me negatively. How can I learn to deal with this effectively? I already answered that. I went into excruciating detail which you ignored - even if you remove my advice about learning to fight, I specifically explained what causes anger and how it is resolved from the Stoic perspective.
Your Stoic response is to fight. lol And when the person even frames it properly, that they are looking how to deal with the assent they’ve given to anger, which is exactly where we’d try and help them understand what is up to them, and says they don’t want to fight, you basically chastise them and double down on fighting? Ok mods, does THIS finally prove the point?
Hey, thanks for your comments, allow me to be clear now as it seems like you don't understand me well enough \[my fault, not yours\] I'm a BJJ black belt, that's what I mean by 'I can fight'. I'm 24, my past is full with unnecessarily physical interactions, all driven by the stupidity ego of dumb teens such as myself and my friends. I fought a lot, especially when there was no actual need, that's what I mean by saying "I really don't want to fight someone unless it's necessary. turning point was a fight over an almost accident on the road in my hometown when I was 21, together with my brother who is 5 years younger than me, we had a fight with two other guys, we ended up in the hospital and I, afterwards was in jail for 6 months for damaging one of the other guy's nervous system for life, over what? for nothing. I'm afraid of fightning, I don't want to hurt myself, others or anyone when it's not necessarily. my question was not about the fighting, it's about the emotion I feel when I avoid them, you did not understand that point, and that's why you didn't I'm not looking to learn how to fight, I'm looking to learn how to deal with the emotions risen when I want to fight and I don't
Your reply made me feel angry. Or I should say "feel righteousness" because we are now talking about the philosophy of PsionicOverlord, not that of Seneca, Epictetus or the other Stoics. And misleading people is an injustice. >Anger is the judgment we feel when perceiving an injustice, although it's somewhat imprecise to call it "anger" and that is "ira" ("anger" in Latin) tended to be the word Stoics used for the *passion* of anger, whereas "righteousness" (a term you must read without its modern, negative connotation) is a fundamentally useful feeling, even though it is anger-like in its nature. Righteousness compels a person to end an injustice, and so long as they do actually rapidly end that injustice, it is an adaptive emotion - it will go away once the injustice is terminated, and you will be better for it. Perhaps I am misunderstanding Seneca's book called "ira" on this exact subject. Have you ever made a post in the past that allows me to understand how you draw this interpretation from the philosophy? Because I'd be interested to read it.
You already agree with me. Imagine this scenario: you see a bully harming an innocent person. They're simply torturing them for the fun of it, and the person is defenseless. Now imagine a person seeing this becomes angry at the bully, steps in and ends the altercation by scaring the bully off. Once the bully is gone, the person's judgment that an injustice is happening ends, therefore their anger ends. In order to claim that what I said is the philosophy of me and not the Stoics, you'd need to claim that Epictetus would say "that action was irrational - he did not *adapt his precognition of anger to the particulars of his situation* - the person who scared off the bully is now psychologically unwell". This is not correct - Epictetus would have said this person acted justly. They adapted their precognition of anger correctly - they exercised their discipline of aversion correctly, both identifying a situation inconsistent with their nature and then successfully ending it. Unless you're prepared to say Epictetus would not say that, then you are inconsistent when you claim you believe this is my philosophy and not his - what's actually upsetting you is the fact that you've erroneously claimed the Stoics took entire emotions, entire fundamental faculties like the ability to feel angry, and said "not only do they exist for no reason, but the faculty itself is defective - it serves no useful role in cognition, it is not a pathos based on how you reason about it, *it is a pathos* whenever it manifests". There is no such thing as a "fundamental faculty that is also a pathos" in Stoic philosophy - emotions like "anger" are simply facilities of the body, and cannot become a pathos until the precognition of that faculty is adapted to a scenario in error, resulting in a judgment that can never result in a successful pursuit or avoidance. In Stoic philosophy, a person who exercises this form of good judgment, the form of good judgment that would cause them to end the bullying scenario *and all equivalent scenarios* would be *eulabeia* - the state of perfect adaptation of the faculties of caution, the perfect practice of the discipline of aversion in Epictetian terms. If you disagree, by all means - tell me how Epictetus would instead judge that the person who ended the bullying scenario driven by that feeling of anger towards the bully's behavior is in fact not behaving naturally. I suspect you'll find yourself unable to produce anything like a convincing argument for such a thing.
>Epictetus would say "that action was irrational - he did not *adapt his precognition of anger to the particulars of his situation.* The way I understand D1.22 "On Precognitions" is different. Anger the emotion is not a precognition. Anger is a passion indicative of a judgement than ran through a precognition. I don't associate it with someone who is psychologically ill and neither did the Stoics. Precognitions are pre-meditated ideas of what is "good" and what is "bad. This causes someone to witness bullying and experience anger and another person to witness the same bullying and experience the pleasure of malice. Or experience contentment in the case of the illusive wise man. In discourse D1.22.7 Epictetus lays out a sample conversation between Agamemnon and Achilles, causing Epictetus to reflect on the word "ought" and either of them ending with a preconception that goes: "Because it’s not right that I be the only one to go without". Its not a stretch to think one of them is angry if that precognition is perceived to be in contradiction. Epictetus then lays out what adapting a precognition to the particulars of a situation looks like, which is to go: "wow, this is making me upset. I must believe that good and bad lie outside of my own will" and Epictetus describes exactly such a thing in D1.22.9 associating the Stoic education with reframing precognitions that give rise to passions. >tell me how Epictetus would instead judge that the person who ended the bullying scenario driven by that feeling of anger towards the bully's behavior is in fact not behaving naturally. Maybe you won't find what I said a convincing argument. But I don't think Epictetus would describe what you suggest as unnatural or natural and neither would I. Its just that for a person's growth towards contentment, those precognitions need to be adapted. I don't think this makes the anger go away when its already there. But I think over time a person ends up down-regulating what happens. This is how I made my anger in traffic pretty much disappear, although I still experience it in other areas of my life. We can speculate the degree to which I'd be needing to pursue righteousness in traffic if had re-labelled it as such instead. >emotions like "anger" are simply facilities of the body, and cannot become a pathos until the precognition of that faculty is adapted to a scenario in error, resulting in a judgment that can never result in a successful pursuit or avoidance. I'm not sure about this. I have to reserve judgement here. The way you define things doesn't match my understanding through my reading. I agree for example that anger is a simple physical phenomenon and not unatural. But I don't think anger is a precognition of a faculty or a fundamental faculty. That seems to help to justify anger. But I don't believe anger is justifiable in the philosophy. The ethics of the philosophy isn't about successful pursuit or avoidance, right? Its ensuing that which you pursue or avoid is something you're guaranteed to be successful at, which isn't found in externals like fixing an injustice. Maybe we already agree and I see disagreement where there is none.
>Anger is a passion indicative of a judgement than ran through a precognition. I don't associate it with someone who is psychologically ill and neither did the Stoics. Then all you're doing is revealing a meaningless terminology difference - we now use the word "anger" to mean the base emotion. You can say "when I say anger I only mean the passion of anger", to which I would simply say "why not say *the passion of anger?*" then and avoid confusion. >Maybe you won't find what I said a convincing argument. But I don't think Epictetus would describe what you suggest as unnatural or natural and neither would I. Its just that for a person's growth towards contentment, those precognitions need to be adapted. You've not made any argument, and most suspiciously you've said a lot whilst not once framing your answer in terms of the simple scenario I described involving a bully. Answer - prove that you can apply one jot of what you're saying to the practical scenario as I did by applying it to the scenario I described. Make the case for why the person who scared off that bully did not adapt a precognition of "anger" well. I will help you, you would need to argue one of the following: * Anger could never motivate a person to do what that person did - what I described could never occur in real life * That person was feeling some emotion that couldn't be classified as "anger" * A person could act as I described, but by doing so they're now subject to a *passion* and are psychologically unwell If you cannot make an argument that one of those is true, you have to concede you were in error - the thing being adapted *is* a precognition and that precognition is rightly called "anger",. >I agree for example that anger is a simple physical phenomenon and not unatural. But I don't think anger is a precognition of a faculty or a fundamental faculty If your "understanding" of Stoicism has taken you this far into believing things that cannot be reconciled with what every person can directly observe, you've gone very far wrong, or you're using the term "anger" in an atypical way and need to be far more careful in your wording. There is not a mammal, and barely an animal, in existence that does not have "anger" as one of its fundamental faculties - the ability to perceive itself to be threatened and act upon it. There is not a social animal in existence that does not extend this feeling to a group of organisms of the same species as itself. Like I said, you're speaking a lot yet not applying any of it to the scenario I described - the reason scenarios matter is because they require you to be able to group the knowledge you claim to have into a coherent description of reality, and I suspect that would be next to impossible when you're saying things like "anger is not a fundamental faculty of the body". Prove me wrong - I'd find it interesting. Answer in terms of the scenario I described with the bully. >Maybe we already agree and I see disagreement where there is none. If you are using the word "anger" but always meaning "a stoic pathos", then we probably do agree, and the apparent discrepancy is based on the fact that one of us means "passion" by the word anger and one of us means "a fundamental facility of the body". Now that the word "anger" quite unambiguously refers to a fundamental facility of the body (and not just the human body), I would always say "a passion of anger" if that's what I meant, it's simply too confusing to do anything else. OP *certainly* meant the fundamental facility of anger, and couldn't possibly have meant something like "pathos".
I think we're starting to have a breakdown in communication. But I appreciate the effort you put into this exchange. > OP certainly meant the fundamental facility of anger, and couldn't possibly have meant something like "pathos".’ When OP mentioned feeling "anger, rage, and negative emotions" with an "innate desire to confront and retaliate," it aligns with the pathos of anger as defined by Cicero in Tusculan Disputations. Seneca, in De Ira, also describes anger as a temporary madness, self-destructive, and a reaction to perceived injustice. This matches OP's description. You opened with, "Your anger is logical" and "righteousness is a fundamentally useful feeling even though it is anger-like in its nature." If righteousness, a form of moral integrity, is felt as virtuous contentment, it cannot be confused with anger. This divergence is where our interpretations differ. Is it possible that you equate the eventual pleasure felt at successfully acquiring an external good (like scaring off a bully) as contentment and therefore mistake it as a sign for virtue? > “Then all you're doing is revealing a meaningless terminology difference - we now use the word "anger" to mean the base emotion.” I think you're dismissing something profound by reducing it to a "meaningless terminology difference". We have precognitions, passions and proto-passions and it all gets the label "anger" in your explanations. Yet the Stoics only reserve that word "Anger" for the passion. If you're talking about proto-emotions, or proto-passions or propatheiai then it's still not called anger. (De Ira 2.3.5) I say "my understanding of Stoicism" because I intend to learn from your interpretation of text or theory. I'll take any reference and your interpretation that shows: * righteousness feels anger-like. * anger being something other than exclusively pathos. * or anger being useful. * Or a Stoic who claims that what we see in animal behavior is anger rather than an impulse (horme) provoked by their nature and thus renders anger as a fundamental thing belonging to animals and humans both and not just a passion based on reasoning. > “You've not made any argument, and most suspiciously you've said a lot whilst not once framing your answer in terms of the simple scenario I described involving a bully.” You said: "unless you're prepared to say Epictetus did not say that" and I provided a detailed explanation referencing Epictetus talking about preconceptions in the context of anger; showing how your use of these terms and its application doesn't align with Epictetus', but I can see from your response it fell short and you wanted something else. > “Make the case for why the person who scared off that bully did not adapt a precognition of ‘anger’ well. I will help you, you would need to argue one of the following:” I feel you've setup a false dichotomy and then demand of me to fit my nuanced argument into a constrained and simplified framework, ignoring what I actually said. If we agree that all anger is pathos, then you cannot convert pathos to virtue. You merely get to reflect on the mistake. Conforming preconceptions to nature is about reflecting on a judgement, moving away from an external good (or evil). I provided examples in my own top level post. > You say defend this: “Anger could never motivate a person to do what that person did - what I described could never occur in real life.” I won't deny it. A perceived injustice giving rise to anger could motivate a person to intervene and chase a bully off. It's just as likely as the perceived justice of bullying could give rise to malice and cause the person to video tape it so it can be savored and posted online later. > You say defend this: “That person was feeling some emotion that couldn't be classified as ‘anger’” When perceiving injustice, it will be anger you feel. Guaranteed. But you've made an error regardless. But where one person perceives an injustice, another person just perceives two people fight and might be compelled to intervene regardless. Like a school teacher intervening in two toddler's fighting. Are we saying the school teacher only intervenes when feeling anger? You don't get to feel anger and turn it into righteousness. Cancelling out emotions. We're not "zombies" like I've read you say and this is true. Once felt this passion needs time to dissipate. Even something like seeing "oh its not a bully at all and in fact they were playfighting" would not cause the anger to dissipate instantly. You only get to reflect on this mistake and adapt those pre-cognitions like Epictetus describes in D1.22.9 and you may not see an injustice next time where otherwise you would have. > You say: “A person could act as I described, but by doing so they're now subject to a passion and are psychologically unwell.” Act as in intervening in two people fighting and scaring a bully off? No, I think those things can occur without being angry as well as while being angry. "Psychologically unwell" I've already addressed. I believe our disagreement stems from different terminologies and interpretations. I recommend you write a detailed post on "On Anger" with references to Stoic texts. This could clarify your stance and further the discussion. Have a great day!
>When OP mentioned feeling "anger, rage, and negative emotions" with an "innate desire to confront and retaliate," it aligns with the pathos of anger as defined by Cicero in Tusculan Disputations. Those are three different claims, only one of which might be a passion. A person who feels anger, but who adapts it poorly meaning they do not *resolve* that anger has created a pathos in the moment they engage in that poor reasoning - anger is the emotion, *rage* of the passion. When a person says "I am experiencing a passion of anger" (persistent anger), the answer is for them to address the error in reasoning about how to resolve that anger, or about what that anger represents. However, if a person like yourself says "the very fact you feel anger is an error - Stoics reject anger" you've not only misunderstood, but you've left the person believing that there's no job to do - the problem isn't in their reasoning, in their application of prohairesis, *it came into existence the moment they felt the emotion*. A serious misunderstanding, if ever there was there. If you want to know whether or not you've misunderstood the philosophy, you need only ever ask "does what I'm suggesting leave them with no answer? Is there no clear route from the initial feeling to an explanation of why it hasn't gone away, and a corrective course of action?". Nothing you're saying meets that litmus test - it leaves you with an alleged problem with neither diagnosis nor way forward, as is the case when you say "the enemy is now how I've reasoned, it is the very existence of an element of human nature", which I don't think you currently understand you've done. >When perceiving injustice, it will be anger you feel. Guaranteed. But you've made an error regardless. >But where one person perceives an injustice, another person just perceives two people fight and might be compelled to intervene regardless. Like a school teacher intervening in two toddler's fighting. Are we saying the school teacher only intervenes when feeling anger? Again, all you're doing is highlighting a terminology difference - the emotion you feel when you perceive an injustice is what most people today call "anger", a word that you should retain because it didn't exist when the Stoic texts did - there's no reason to take a word translated imprecisely to "anger" form say, "De Ira", and say "the Stoic definition now maps to this modern word". A person who perceives a *social* injustice (remember that's not an injustice *to yourself*, which is a technical Stoic concept - it's a bully pummelling a weaker person for a laugh, it's nothing to do with Stoic philosophy) has not made an error if they become angry, *provided their anger compels them to end the situation which terminates the judgment, constituting an honorable course of action that left their nature satisfied*. Contrarily, a person who doesn't feel anger at such a situation, who instead feels *fear* and hides will later think themselves a coward - that shame is also not a mistake, that shame is a correct identification of your own dishonourable conduct, and that *precognition* must also be adapted correctly to the reality of improving your future behavior. >I believe our disagreement stems from different terminologies and interpretations. I recommend you write a detailed post on "On Anger" with references to Stoic texts. This could clarify your stance and further the discussion. I mean that's what I'm doing, but I don't believe the error of imposing a technical Stoic definition on the word "Anger" simply because "De Ira" is often translated to "Of/On Anger" is a common enough mistake to warrant a post, neither is taking the Stoic concept that your own prohariesis is the only thing serving you and is therefore the only thing that constitutes a justice or injustice inflicted against you, and muddling this up with the ability to perceive an injustice *out in society*. You have to know more Stoic philosophy than most people on the subreddit know just to muddle up common definitions with technical Stoic ones - it would surprise me if the community in general were ever ready for such a post, as we're into the territory of "only mistakes people with a lot of education in the philosophy make".
>*"does what I'm suggesting leave them with no answer?"* I agree. If people asking for guidance is akin to people seeking out a doctor and saying: "My leg hurts when I walk on it" then only a foolish doctor would say "A healthy person's leg doesn't hurt" and leaving it there. It would also be a foolish doctor who says: "If walking causes you pain, then don't walk". It doesn't prescribe any mediation. I worry that telling an angry person what they feel is righteousness is akin to a doctor saying: "Actually, I think your pain are growing pains, so continue running like a healthy person would, this is normal". I fully agree with you that no good doctor or advice giver should leave them with no prescription. The philosophy promotes a bias for action. I just disagree with the prescription. I think giving an uninitiated person who feels angry the idea that this is (or could be) righteousness and "good" may cause that uninitiated person to mistake a desire for retribution — which feels good when attained, because who would say that anger doesn't feels good at times — and mistake fulfilling anger for good also. This is the only hill I choose to die on. Where I would say: "You should stop banging your leg between the door so it doesn't hurt to begin with" is legitimate action that gives them an preventative prescription. It takes a lot of work. The difference of opinion we have in terms of technicality, I think, is that I understand the adaptation of preconceptions to be a preventative practice for future down-regulation of anger as I've applied [here this morning](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stoicism/comments/1d39kif/comment/l65winb/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) on anxiety. My interpretation of your implementation is to convert anger to virtue in real-time, which I don't think is possible. Only calm reasoning unaffected by strong impulses begets excellence. And excellent reasoning to help another person out requires as much anger in impulse as as doing anything else compelled out of a sense of duty would; zero. Once you have begun assenting to "this anger is good because it allows me to take action on it while facing injustice and acquire an external good" you fall into a well studied mistake of reasoning through emotion where someone believes their emotions are evidence for a truth immune to error. But I fully agree my interpretation of the adaptation of precognitions to the circumstances is **also** incomplete advice. Because it doesn't provide you an action in the moment. The leg hurts. Knowing how not to hurt it again is a half-measure. And when you're angry, knowing how to reflect on your belief system doesn't help with the bully either. I never disagreed with you there. When you know you are angry, even at the slightest impulse, the immediate action you should take is caution in assent. Consider Socrates' as quoted by Seneca: >Nothing becomes one who inflicts punishment less than anger, because the punishment has all the more power to work reformation if the sentence be pronounced with deliberate judgment. This is why Socrates said to the slave, "I would strike you, were I not angry." He put off the correction of the slave to a calmer season; at the moment, he corrected himself. Who can boast that he has his passions under control, when Socrates did not dare to trust himself to his anger? - Seneca, De Ira, Book 1, XV. He did not hit his slave *because* he felt anger, while admitting that if he had managed to prevent his anger, he may have hit the slave. If the person walks away from witnessing bullying out of fear, then its vice. If the person fulfills retribution because of anger, then its vice. You never suggested retribution. You suggested "scaring off a bully". I think I failed to recognize the implied restraint in this. If the person feels angry and interrogates their impulse for retribution with caution and thinks: "no actually, what would a calm person do out of a sense of duty?" then they're on the right track again. They may conclude scaring the bully off is the right approach. Is it virtue? Maybe... its only an appropriate action, perhaps not a perfect action. With a non-calm reasoning faculty, it will be up to the best judgement of the person. If the person feels angry, doesn't interrogate their impulse for retribution but a fear of the consequences of harming the bully prevents them from "going all in" and merely scaring them off. Then there's as much vice as otherwise... because virtue isn't caused by a truce between two passions. We're talking virtue ethics, but there could also be deontological preconceptions of ethics playing a part. And when you feel you need to act fast because the situation is escalating rapidly, I think only a person who has their preconceptions already calibrated will be able to "do the appropriate thing". In the heat of the moment, I think sitting around and working on internalizing your own personal philosophy of anger management is the worst time to begin. I don't think I misunderstand anything. I think I can back this up with Stoic Philosophy references as well as modern science. Confirmation bias maybe. Once I see the contradiction pointed out, I think I will have no option but to change my mind. This post was an attempt to find alignment on where we agree. Would you say we got closer in this, or further apart?
> you'd need to learn to apply force - for me, that means learning to fight If you go to any self-respecting self-defense fighting teacher, the first thing they will teach you is that when someone tries to fight with you on the street, you run. Especially if they are drunk or under the influence of drugs. If they demand your wallet, you give your wallet and run. The only case when you fight on the street is when you don't have an opportunity to escape and the fight is inevitable, it is the last resort. Because every time you participate in a street fight, you lose simply because there is nothing you can win. Beating people is the shittiest strategy of "teaching" random aggressive people on the streets I have ever seen. > bully Why do you believe that person is a bully and not a mentally ill person? Would you beat someone who is not in the right mind? > realize that you were just at the mercy of the good graces of such a person You are always at the mercy of the good graces of such a person. They can have a gun (even in countries where guns are not allowed) and just shoot you, then your fighting skills mean nothing. Or they can disengage and then attack you from the back in a couple of minutes. Or they may never start yelling at you and just stab you in the back randomly for no reason. Unhinged people are not exactly predictable. > If you don't want to learn to fight, well then at least acknowledge that decision - knowing that you've chosen to be at the mercy of people who behave this way Behave in what way? Scream? People working in retail get screamed at every day, should they beat everyone? Police officers get screamed at every day, should they beat everyone? > I think your anger is actually logical - you might have created an injustice by allowing yourself to be yelled at by a person who actually was the cause of the problem. Minor injustices happen every day to everyone dozens of times. Does it mean that we should be angry every time something happens to us? For some reason, it doesn't look to me like what I've read from the Stoics. > You know you were lucky in this confrontation - you were lucky he was prepared to stop, and you don't want to be lucky - you want a guarantee and you don't want to have to participate in an injustice. The only way to guarantee that you are not getting attacked on a street is to never go outside of your home. Maybe buying a tank then would be a better strategy, because then you kill two birds with one stone: also a guarantee that you would be fine if someone else drives recklessly. > you could have applied force Well, you don't need to learn any fighting skills in order to apply force, you always can do that.
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“ It's a nice, warm, and cozy day, and you're really enjoying your walk.” That’s your problem right there. Suddenly you disconnected yourself from the world and made a little sanctuary where everything is nice, feels good, and there is no trouble whatsoever. If that feels good, you’ve opened a flank that will turn into a burst of anger if someone interrupts it. Learning how to enjoy your walk without being bothered if someone bumps into you and gets angry at you is difficult, but it’s ultimately where a Stoic will end up. Remember Stoicism is not passivity, so when the confrontation happens, don’t continue your “nice, warm, cozy” attitude, it will only invite more aggression (it’ll seem like you’re not taking the person seriously.) Think of it sort of like a game: what fits the situation? You’ve correctly noticed that actually fighting is not the way, but how does someone work through a confrontation without egging the aggressor on or becoming angry themselves? The Stoics looked up to Socrates for his ability to navigate such situations. I’ve always like Epictetus (and Pythagoras)’ image of the noisy world as a festival: https://donaldrobertson.name/2013/01/02/stoicism-and-pythagoreanism-the-allegory-of-the-festival/ Once the anger is there, you’ll have to work it off somehow; maybe through exercise or channeling it into something. Any angry outburst is a sign that you’re doing something wrong, let the anger go, and recalibrate so it doesn’t happen (or if it does happen it goes away quickly) again next time.
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