I know I have been hurt by people and circumstances throughout my life and I know that this hurt can often manifest itself as anger, either anger directed at those who have hurt me or anger misdirected at others whom one might want to call innocent bystanders.
But what is the psychological basis of this? I don’t think it can be summed up by a word we already know or by a phrase or an explanation with which we are already familiar.
Anyone interested in looking at this?
For example : experience and behaviour is conditioned? Violence (towards weaklings) has become engrained in us as a valid and instinctive reaction - via repeated succes (at improving my status as a fertile procreator).
So if this summation is insufficient, how might we proceed? (maybe we can ask why facts are insufficient?)
My look inward suggests that anger comes from not getting what you want.
But have we yet touched or been touched by a fact? What is the fact of violence? The idea and the memory of it are both fairly obvious. But the fact, what is that fact?
That’s the strange thing about all this: I really don’t know what I want. I am sure that if I knew exactly what it was that I wanted, by now I would have it tenfold.
The fact is : We are violent (eg. in order to get what we want) - violence feels valid (when faced with apparent weakness). Hopefully we can agree.
Probably somewhat - but we move on - probably because we do not feel that the fact is worth facing (for more than a few minutes)
Maybe the wanting is what matters?
Bystanders are rarely innocent. They happily take part in the bystander effect.
Violence by weaklings is pretty common when they know they are protected by the mob. Like when you use your verbal violence on someone who hasn’t even provoked you. Like when you become violent because another member of the mob was slighted.
“what is the basis of anger?” “Anyone interested in looking at this?”
find out why you are hurting and you find the basis.
When anger arises, is it different than me or is it something else apart from me which I am now going to control? I think this is a huge part of why we are angry, why its sustained.
After I turned 30 I started to experience some real anger. It felt like my 20’s would last forever so I didn’t get angry often, it always felt like I had more time. After 30 something changed, I started getting mad.
I decided to ask myself the question I started with when I saw the anger coming up. If I let myself be angry and don’t tell myself it shouldn’t be there, it began to change.
We are not violent right now. How do we look at our own violence without bringing in a memory or an idea? The fact is I have been violent and I shall very likely be violent again. But the actual fact of this is nowhere nearby. Therefore why call it a fact? It is a distant memory only. The fact has escaped me.
I want peace and security. Yet only a corpse has peace and security. Maybe my anger is much more life-affirming than I thought.
Which is what? What have you found out?
The anger seems to be alive whereas the urge to control it seems to come from a different place altogether. The urge to control seems to be like a dead and automatic reaction.
Maybe the ego is like a parent focused singlemindedly on the safety and happiness of its child?
So if violence is not a fact, if you are not violent, we might as well drop the subject - seems like a waste of time.
Hi Maheshji
You want me to tell you? Will my findings help you?
I have never really found anger a particularly interesting question worthy of much deeper contemplation, but i can see its acute effects on many. Maybe they will benefit from an open discussion rather than silently watching waiting for the best moment to unleash their anger.
Consider my other two refutations as a contribution towards clarity on the subject. Maybe i should bow out now.
Too many maybes methinks.
Except that time is probably at the root of all this. With nothing going on right now, without a trace of violence, anger or hurt in our immediate psychological environment, why do we seek to find examples of these things in our own memories? Is it because we have nothing else to talk about?
It depends what you have found out. It’s a bit of a risk to share cold solutions because they may be useless to another. But if we are in the middle of something right now that hurts us both then that’s bound to be different. That’s going to be a lot hotter.
Maybes are all we’ve got in the Realm of Thought. (Maybe?)