[Moontanman]

CraigD, on 28 September 2010 - 06:46 AM, said:

Anger, morality, and fear

Depending on its context, the feeling and expression of anger may be a demonstration of moral rectitude (righteousness).


No.

Although precisely how to act righteously is intensely debated – differences in religion are fundamentally reflected in their differing definitions of righteous behavior – the concept of rectitude is ancient and uncontroversial. It refers to intentionally living in accord with ones chosen morals.

If your morals dictate that you should feel and demonstrate anger in some situations – for example, when confronting people who don’t share your morals, or share them but unrighteously don’t act in accordance with them – then feeling and showing anger demonstrated (signifies) your righteousness. If your morals dictate that you should feel calm compassion in such situations, then feeling and showing anger demonstrates that you are not acting righteously.

Most modern religious favor calm and compassion over anger. This difference is arguably the essential difference between the Old and New Covenants of the Judeo-Christian religious traditions – consider these contrasting KJV Bible passages dictating moral behavior in a situation where your have been severely offended:

Deuteronomy 21:18-21:
If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Matthew 18:21-22:
Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?
Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.

Other religions dictate similarly that moral rectitude is best demonstrated by calm, forgivness, and compassion, not anger. Traditions such as Buddhism train their adherents to, ultimately, feel anger in no situation.

Another technique common in Buddhism is to recognize that anger is, as a rule, an expression not of confidence and strength, but of fear. Thus, when confronted by an angry person, it’s better to understand and seek to quell their fear than to seek to intimidate and overpower them, because angry people already feel intimidated and overpowered, despite their facade of fearlessness and strength. Thus, I disagree with the statement (and agree with Vox's reply to it)

IMO, precisely the opposite it usually true. When you are (or believe yourself to be) the biggest, baddest human wolf in the room, you’ve no need for anger (AKA a “threatening display”) – you just take what you want, confident that none of the lesser wolves dare challenge you. It’s when you’re the little (or outnumbered) wolf that you must get your hackles up and snarl, sending the message “You may win a fight with me, but I’ll hurt you enough that you’ll wish you hadn’t.” This applies, I think, not only to individuals, but to nations: it is weak nations believing themselves in peril of being calmly crushed by their strong neighbors, or even strong nations that feel threatened (eg: the US following the 11 September 2001 attacks), not strong nations that believe themselves unassailable, that act angrily and aggressively.

Hehehe, the mouse that roared? i think there is a big difference between righteousness and self righteousness. Self righteousness is negative emotion often brought on by feelings of inadequacy or fear of the unknown, righteous anger is the idea that one person has the right to be angry if someone does something they believe to be wrong, this may or may not be true by any definition other than their own...

[Kriminal99]

What is anger?

Anger represents the belief that you are more powerful than your opponents, in a situation where you feel you must prevent them from doing something that harms you (which by extension can mean ideas you believe in). If we were still animals, then we would get angry simply because we were bigger than our opponent. In fact many larger people still have this attitude to some degree, probably until they have contact with the police.

However as an intelligent species, power is no longer controlled solely by size. Nor is it controlled solely by cleverness or ingenuity, although it helps. The reason why is because even the most formidable opponent cannot take on the world.

Angry for justice and balance

Power resides in numbers, and in order for the majority of people to be on your side there has to be a reason or motivation. Thus ideas hold the power among intelligent beings. If your idea is something that everyone would agree with if they understood, then you perceive yourself as powerful relative to your opponents. As intelligent beings, you may have this perception even if a "local majority" is against you. This means that if you know you are right, then a potentially infinite number of people in the future will agree with you. Or maybe you are just in the presence of dissenters but when your own camp is actually larger but not present.

Anyways, because of this model, anger can be perceived as a sign that the angry person believes strongly that they are right. Aka conviction. The person may also be willing to sacrifice themselves to combat a "local majority" to fight for future balance - the balance that results when the things that people believe are all true. If a person lacks conviction, it may be perceived that he/she does not believe strongly in what they are saying.

Feigned conviction

However these concepts are horribly abused in places where actual violence is not allowed like the US court system. For instance an ignorant petty insecure dishonest coward can feign conviction with the knowledge that no violence can ever take place in the courtroom, thus their feigned conviction will never actually be tested. In those instances where any chaotic events do take place in the courtroom, you might expect the same people to hide under a desk, cry and wet themselves.

Thus preventing violence altogether can incite dishonesty, confusion and chaos. Ignorant people will feign conviction to have their poorly formed ideas taken more seriously. Meanwhile people of actual intelligence and conviction driven by self-sacrifice for the greater good (the people actually capable of changing and organizing their surroundings for the better) are quickly identified as social deviants and prevented from having any impact.

Some things everyone should be fearful of

Also, to address a point brought up by CraigD, I agree that anger is a sign of "fear". A person has to be doing something that you don't like before you can become angry and thus you could say you are "afraid" of the person's actions. However that does not preclude the anger from being righteous, the so called fear may be something that everyone would agree is something to be concerned about. That fear may be something like the fear that the king will take all of our material goods and make us suffer so that his life can be infinitesimally better.

A good measure is to see if the person will openly admit the motivation for their anger. Petty ignorant people feigning conviction often have petty motivations... simply asking them "Why do you care...?" may cause them to shut up because they know jealousy is not a valid motivation for anger.

[dduckwessel]

HydrogenBond, on 28 September 2010 - 08:23 AM, said:

Anger is more of a defensive mechanism. For example, the mother animal protecting her young will get quite angry to scare away the predator. The predictor is not angry but is trying to get a quick meal. If you watch lions hunting, they are not angry but are in a Zen state of mind. If you try to invade the lion's territory, he will get quite angry.

Self righteous anger is a type of defensiveness. One may be defending their ideas and beliefs from what appears to an invasion of their space or to protect their young. For example, say someone was not into smoking cigarettes. The smoker is enjoying themselves, with no external harm in mind. The anti-smoker might get angry with self righteous anger since they try to protect their health based on what they have been taught to believe. This anger reaction did not appear until their belief system changed.

Ex-smokers can often be the worse since their new belief system does not reflect smoking (territory). But sometimes they also secretly want to smoke again (urges are there) and to need to protect (their young state of mind) from this urge. They may get even more angry defensive.

There are many kinds of anger. I agree that anger is a defense mechanism to a perceived threat or for purposes of intimidation. Anger is an emotion that reveals passion but often the passion is strongly biased. A Creationist is very passionate but are they logical! Keeping a cool head is always best for when we are angry we usually over react. Out-of-control anger is evidence that someone needs therapy as the Bible says: "Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man you shall not go." (Proverbs 22:24) and, "An angry man stirs up strife, and a furious man abounds in transgression." (Proverbs 29:22)


As for righteous indignation, it's probably best in most instances to 'find out the facts first' before reacting. Of course if you see someone hurting a person or animal then a righteous response is to take immediate but controlled action.

[dduckwessel]

The law in democratic nations is 'free from passion' and that's why it works so well.

In a courtroom the lawyers can scream righteous anger all they want but in the end logic wins over passion.

[Farming guy]

Kriminal99, on 11 October 2010 - 04:28 AM, said:

What is anger?

Anger represents the belief that you are more powerful than your opponents, in a situation where you feel you must prevent them from doing something that harms you (which by extension can mean ideas you believe in). If we were still animals, then we would get angry simply because we were bigger than our opponent. In fact many larger people still have this attitude to some degree, probably until they have contact with the police.

However as an intelligent species, power is no longer controlled solely by size. Nor is it controlled solely by cleverness or ingenuity, although it helps. The reason why is because even the most formidable opponent cannot take on the world.

Angry for justice and balance

Power resides in numbers, and in order for the majority of people to be on your side there has to be a reason or motivation. Thus ideas hold the power among intelligent beings. If your idea is something that everyone would agree with if they understood, then you perceive yourself as powerful relative to your opponents. As intelligent beings, you may have this perception even if a "local majority" is against you. This means that if you know you are right, then a potentially infinite number of people in the future will agree with you. Or maybe you are just in the presence of dissenters but when your own camp is actually larger but not present.

Anyways, because of this model, anger can be perceived as a sign that the angry person believes strongly that they are right. Aka conviction. The person may also be willing to sacrifice themselves to combat a "local majority" to fight for future balance - the balance that results when the things that people believe are all true. If a person lacks conviction, it may be perceived that he/she does not believe strongly in what they are saying.

Feigned conviction

However these concepts are horribly abused in places where actual violence is not allowed like the US court system. For instance an ignorant petty insecure dishonest coward can feign conviction with the knowledge that no violence can ever take place in the courtroom, thus their feigned conviction will never actually be tested. In those instances where any chaotic events do take place in the courtroom, you might expect the same people to hide under a desk, cry and wet themselves.

Thus preventing violence altogether can incite dishonesty, confusion and chaos. Ignorant people will feign conviction to have their poorly formed ideas taken more seriously. Meanwhile people of actual intelligence and conviction driven by self-sacrifice for the greater good (the people actually capable of changing and organizing their surroundings for the better) are quickly identified as social deviants and prevented from having any impact.

Some things everyone should be fearful of

Also, to address a point brought up by CraigD, I agree that anger is a sign of "fear". A person has to be doing something that you don't like before you can become angry and thus you could say you are "afraid" of the person's actions. However that does not preclude the anger from being righteous, the so called fear may be something that everyone would agree is something to be concerned about. That fear may be something like the fear that the king will take all of our material goods and make us suffer so that his life can be infinitesimally better.

A good measure is to see if the person will openly admit the motivation for their anger. Petty ignorant people feigning conviction often have petty motivations... simply asking them "Why do you care...?" may cause them to shut up because they know jealousy is not a valid motivation for anger.

The last time I got remotely angry was when I bumped my head because I forgot to duck going through a low door. I am quite slow to anger, and I also happen to stand at over six feet in height and I weigh in at around 240 pounds, and I am not obese. I am in total agreement with CraigD. As someone who has been of above average size for nearly all my life, I have found myself on the recieving end of anger from smaller individuals several times.