Logic defeats anger, because anger, even when it’s justified, can quickly become irrational. So use cold hard logic on yourself. Remind yourself that the world is “not out to get you,” you’re just experiencing some of the rough spots of daily life. Do this each time you feel anger getting the best of you, and it’ll help you get a more balanced perspective. Angry people tend to demand things: fairness, appreciation, agreement, willingness to do things their way. Everyone wants these things, and we are all hurt and disappointed when we don’t get them, but angry people demand them, and when their demands aren’t met, their disappointment becomes anger.27
Good work, APA—spoken like a real Stoic! Except for the suggestion that anger can sometimes be “justified,” which Seneca argued against vigorously. In fact, Seneca and the other Stoics argued that a wise person could never be harmed by anything trivial. In the words of Epictetus, “No one will harm you without your consent; you will only be harmed when you think you are harmed.”28 Or as Marcus Aurelius put it, “Discard the judgment and you’ll be saved. Who, then, is stopping you from discarding it?”29 Both of those quotations are helpful in terms of overcoming a belief that you have been harmed.
Another way to restructure the belief that you’ve been harmed is through the use of humor. Since many of the things that make people angry are entirely meaningless in the grand scheme of things, there’s no harm in laughing off something trivial, or making it into a joke. One day when Socrates was walking down the street, someone hit him in the head. This remark was his only response: “It’s too bad, these days, that you don’t know when you need a helmet when going out for a walk.”
IN ADDITION TO THOSE two central techniques, Seneca mentions many other approaches for avoiding anger. If you’re interested in learning more about these, I highly recommend reading his book On Anger. I will mention a few here, which he writes about in depth:
•Realize that people often have no idea about what they’re doing, and do things in error, so don’t take their actions too seriously.
•Be magnanimous: with a lofty mind, be above feeling injured by trivial things. Look down on them as being unworthy of your attention.
•Look carefully at the extreme ugliness of anger, and also at its danger. This will provide a strong deterrence to becoming angry. (That’s why Seneca provided the graphic descriptions of how anger is so ugly.)
•Associate with good-natured people who are unlikely to make you angry and unlikely to put up with your own anger. People with character defects are much more likely to upset you and negatively influence you.
•Don’t allow yourself to become mentally or physically exhausted, which encourages irritation and anger.
•If feeling stress, consider doing something relaxing to calm the mind, like playing music.
•Since everyone is different, understand yourself and know what tends to make you angry. Once you understand your own weak spots, don’t expose them to things likely to upset you.
•There’s no need to hear and see everything that happens. You can avoid many annoying things simply by not taking them in. (This is especially valuable advice in the Internet age!)
•Don’t entertain false suspicions or exaggerate trivial matters.
•Forgive others, and even all of humanity, because you are not perfect either: the faults we find in others also exist within ourselves.
•Remember that if someone starts to make you angry, you can just wait a little: death will make us all equal eventually. So, rather than being angry, it’s better to focus your mind on more important things.
JUSTICE WITHOUT ANGER
In our time, in which it’s fashionable for people to vent their every outrage on social media platforms, some people might find it shocking that Seneca believed extreme anger was never justified, because nothing good ever comes from it.
Aristotle thought that a moderate amount of anger was desirable, if controlled, because of the way anger encourages soldiers to fight, and the way it can energize human action. But Seneca skillfully demolished this view by pointing out that real anger, or rage, is a vice that can never be moderated. Moreover, anger undermines our rationality, and thus our ability to function as authentic human beings. But Seneca’s ultimate takedown of the idea that anger could enhance the performance of soldiers came in the form of a question: If anger can help soldiers to fight more effectively, he asked, why don’t we also get them drunk, so they will swing their weapons around more fiercely? Case closed, at least in my opinion.
Seneca fully realized that our world is full of terrible injustices and inhumane events that take place daily. But in one respect, we are somewhat less fortunate today than Seneca was because of the time in which we live. Today, the global news media have made it a lucrative industry to bring every possible outrage into our homes and minds each time we turn on a screen or open a newspaper.
Since bad behavior is plentiful and inevitable, Seneca took the reasonable view that a wise person should never get angry at any of the events we are assaulted with or hear about on a daily basis. Seneca thought the world to be good overall, due to human kindness and generosity, and human reason. But, as he noted, so many bad things happen that, if every bad behavior made us angry, we would need to be angry each moment of every day. That, of course, would be unlivable.
For Seneca, the alternative approach was to be reasonable and practical. Realistically, he said, we must expect the world to be full of people with terrible character traits. But the way to improve the world is not through the harmful energy of anger, but through the use of reason. For a Stoic, the proper way to look at the world would be like a doctor, expecting to meet a host of diseased patients every day. As Seneca writes,
A wise person is mentally calm and balanced when facing error, and not an enemy of wrongdoers, but one who helps others to heal. Each day, he leaves his home with this thought in mind: “Today I will meet many addicted to wine, many overcome by lust, many who lack gratitude, many enslaved by greed, and many bewitched by the false promises of ambition.” But all these conditions he will treat with kindness, as a doctor treats his own patients.30
The other way to look at the world is from the rational and level-headed perspective of a judge presiding over a court of law, who is sometimes forced to punish those who have done wrong. Seneca stresses that a judge should never punish a wrongdoer out of anger, but out of hope that the punishment will encourage the offender to become a better person in the future. A judge who punishes someone out of anger would be as dangerous, and just as undesirable, as an armed soldier swaggering while drunk.
Even though we live two thousand years after Seneca, he provides us with a good, realistic model for social change, because he shows how we can improve the world by relying upon reason alone. Extreme anger will not increase justice or make the world a better place; it will only make the world more miserable, and more out of control. Anger, in the Stoic view, can only increase human suffering.
CHAPTER 5
Wherever You Go, There You Are: You Can’t Escape Yourself
Those who rush across the sea change their weather, but not their minds.
—Horace, Letters 1.11.27
ONE DAY LUCILIUS WAS FEELING A BIT DEPRESSED and wanted to cheer himself up by taking a trip, as many people do today. He thought a change of scenery might help to improve his mood. Unfortunately, the project was a failure: Lucilius’s depression was not cured. But as Seneca commented, “You must change the mind, not the location,” because “your faults will travel with you wherever you go.”1