Temporary Insanity

Hadrian was the Roman emperor who preceded Marcus. In one of his angry spells, Hadrian poked out the eye of a poor slave. Once he came back to his senses, Hadrian asked the slave if there was anything he could do for him. The slave said, “All I want is my eye back.”

Though anger is just another emotion, the Stoics singled it out because of the damage it can do, and that often cannot be undone.

Marcus writes, “How much more harmful are the consequences of anger… than the circumstances that aroused them in us.”

The venom generated by anger, when allowed to spill into others, is always followed by regret. We get angry because we feel we’ve been harmed – anger is an emotional shortcut to communicate our frustration. However, if your goal is to be master of yourself, anger is the easiest way to derail that goal as you give an outsider free rein to run your kingdom.

Seneca calls anger “temporary insanity.” When we are angry, we temporarily lose control over what we say and what we do. We lose the ability to think clearly. We hurt people – often people we love. I cannot stand the angry version of myself. When I am angry, I feel like an imposter has taken over my body.

There is also another anger. At times we deliberately use anger as an expedient shortcut to secure a desired result. For instance, we use anger to express our discontent with the rental car company that screws up our reservation, hoping that will lead to an upgrade. Seneca, in his book, On Anger, argues that you should not use anger in this way: “The best plan is to reject straightway the first incentives to anger, to resist its very beginnings, and to take care not to be betrayed into it: For if once it begins to carry us away, it is hard to get back again into a healthy condition, because reason goes for nothing when once passion has been admitted to the mind and has by our own free will been given a certain authority. It will for the future do as much as it chooses, not only as much as you will allow it.”

In other words, anger is like a wild beast that ultimately you cannot control. You think you can, but every time you intentionally use anger as a tool you give up a little bit of control, and eventually the beast turns on you.

Seneca also argues: “Anger has no ground to stand upon, and does not rise from a firm and enduring foundation, but is a windy, empty quality, as far removed from true magnanimity as foolhardiness from courage… anger brings about nothing grand or beautiful.”

Anger is a negative emotion, but it is a negative emotion on steroids. If a garden-variety negative emotion is a wave, anger may reach the proportion of a tsunami. Stoics saw the distinction and addressed anger separately. Seneca wrote a full book dedicated to it, entitled On Anger.

The EJR framework may or may not be useful when anger threatens to strike, depending on the time available for judgment between event and reaction. If you manage to conquer yourself and have time for judgment, then you may be able to treat anger just like any other negative emotion. You also have the dichotomy of control framework (and other frameworks we have discussed) at your disposal – you cannot control the outside world, but you can control how you respond to it.

Seneca believes that doing nothing is the best course when you are possessed by anger. He writes, “While you are angry, you ought not to be allowed to do anything. ‘Why?’ you ask? Because when you are angry there is nothing that you do not wish to be allowed to do.” Marcus agrees: “The best answer to anger is silence.”

A good thing about anger is that you usually don’t stay angry for long. When we are angry, we just need to buy time. Count to… whatever it takes.

Twenty-five years ago, I would not have needed to write this, but in the 1990s, if you were angry at someone, you had to use a landline to make a phone call, and you might or might not have reached that person. It took time, often enough time for you to calm down. Today, everyone has a mobile phone in their pocket, and you are a few seconds away from letting the beast destroy a relationship.

Today, you can also destroy your career and reputation by replying to an email or posting on digital media while angry. I have a rule not to respond to emails, texts, phone calls, or posts on social media while angry.

Once you come off the peak of anger, Marcus has a lot of advice for you.

In Meditations, Marcus provides a number of strategies to deal with anger. In How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, a wonderful book, Donald Robertson, a psychologist by training, unwraps them for us.

We are social animals designed to help each other. We should accept meeting people who we know will push our buttons. If it were not for them our lives would be boring – we should look at these interactions as our

“Stoic quizzes.” I often remind myself that one of my values is to leave the world a better place than I found it. My reacting angrily to people I don’t especially like or agree with doesn’t help with that.

Consider a person’s character as a whole. Imagine people that offend you living their daily lives – eating dinner, driving their cars, sleeping in their beds, etc. Once you consider them as a whole it is harder to get angry with them. If it’s a person you know well, a person close to you, remind yourself of the good moments you’ve had with that person.

Nobody does wrong willingly. Marcus writes, “You should view others’ actions in terms of a simple dichotomy: Either they are doing what is right or doing what is wrong. If they are doing what is right, then you should accept it and cease to be annoyed with them. Let go of your anger and learn from them. However, if they are doing what is wrong, then you should assume it’s because they don’t know any better.”

Marcus says that whenever you believe someone has wronged you, you should first consider what underlying opinions they hold about what’s right and wrong. Once you really understand their thinking, you’ll have no excuse for being surprised at their actions, which should naturally weaken your feelings of anger.

Nobody is perfect, yourself included. Remind yourself how many times you were wrong. When someone cuts me off while driving, before I get out my weapon of choice (the middle finger), I remind myself that I too am guilty of bad driving at times. If I allow myself to express anger at that person, I should be angry at myself first for all the times I did the same thing to other people.

It’s madness to expect others to be perfect. Do we really expect to go through life and only meet perfect individuals living in perfect bliss? Life happens. We should not be surprised that we’ll meet good people on their bad days or bad people on their average days. That’s life; we should be prepared for it. Marcus believed that in reality someone who is capable of exercising gentleness and kindness in the face of provocation is stronger and more courageous than one who gives in to their anger.

We cannot be certain of other people’s motives. Start with the assumption that people are not evil and go from there. Anger assumes an unwarranted certainty about the motives of other people. Donald Robertson explains that cognitive therapists call this the fallacy of “mind-reading” – leaping to conclusions about other people’s motives although they are always somewhat veiled from us. You should always remain open to the possibility that the other person’s intentions are not in the wrong. Consider that other plausible interpretations of their actions exist. Keeping an open mind will help you dilute your feelings of anger.

My wife is an eldest child; she has a younger sister and brother. Her father always wanted to have a son, but he got two great daughters first and then, when he got a son, the kid was treated like a little prince. My wife always harbored a slight feeling of jealousy towards her brother, as he was spoiled rotten by their father.

Ten years or so ago, our house was being repainted and we moved into my in-laws’ house while they were on vacation. My wife and I were staying in her parents’ bedroom. The first day we were there, I walked into the bedroom and found my wife sitting on the bed very upset, on the verge of crying. What happened? I asked. She said, “See this painting on the windowsill? My brother painted it when he was eight. It is not a very good painting. I painted so many paintings that are better than this, and I don’t see any of them here.” I told her that her parents love her dearly. How could they not? I set the painting on a nearby dresser.

A few hours later we went to sleep. I was awakened by a light shining right into my face. Then I realized what had happened. When it gets dark, the streetlight comes on and shines right through the window. That painting by my wife’s brother was on the windowsill to block the light from the street. I don’t think my in-laws even paid attention to what painting it was and who painted it; they just needed a large object to block the light. After I told my wife about my revelation, we had a good laugh.

Don’t assume the worst.

Remember, we will all die. Remind yourself that you and the person you are angry with will eventually die. This will put your anger in the right, temporal, transitory perspective.

It is our judgment that upsets us. Here we go again with Epictetus’s dichotomy of control. Marcus writes, “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but due to your estimate of it, and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Anger does more harm than good. Buddha said, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.” Marcus reminds himself that the vice of another man cannot penetrate your character unless you allow it to do so. Ironically, anger does the most harm to the person experiencing it, although he has the power to stop it.

Nature gave us virtues to deal with anger. This one is my favorite. When someone sends me an email that offends me, once the anger inside me subsides, I smother that person with kindness and politeness, often disarming him and myself. It is very difficult to be angry at another person when you are extra nice to him. I really look at such moments as Stoic quizzes, and it is amazing to see how kindness transforms both the other person and you.

I’ll wrap up with this recommendation from Warren Buffett: “You can always tell someone to go to hell tomorrow.”