Before You Reply In Anger: A Stoic Plan

Anger can make a reply feel urgent. This Stoic talk explores Seneca’s account of anger and invites you to plan for an ordinary, recurring trigger. Write a when/until rule, choose one physical response and use the evening questions to review your conduct. Jon also considers anger at injustice and the limits of the Stoic view. Return to the prompts when you want to prepare a more deliberate reply.

Transcript

Aya Seneca said that there's three different stages to anger. So the first stage is the initial jolt or the first movements. This is completely outside of your control. Something happens. You can't think your way to reasoning with it. Before it happens, It comes on too quickly, Too fast. And even the wisest person in the room will still have this little jolt happen to them. We would not call this anger though, Right? We would just call this the first movements. You know, An initial impulsive reaction. The second stage is the yes. This is whether you assent or you withhold assent to the impression. So you get this jolt and then after the jolt a little impression will start to form and the impression will be a sort of like sense data with a little truth claim about reality. Specifically in the case of anger, I should be avenged. So the Seneca would say that anger comes primarily primarily from this feeling that an injustice has happened and you want to avenge the injustice. And then the third stage is the wreck. When you feel completely out of control, You want vengeance and reason is no longer at play. So as a practicing stoic, We want to spend a lot of time on stage one and two, Primarily on stage two. So we want to be better at noticing the jolt, Noticing stage one. Most of our time will be spent in learning how to deal with our impression. An interesting insight about anger. Anger is the combination of two thoughts, According to Seneca. So in formal logic, You have premises and conclusions, And the premise is the kind of setup to the conclusion. So the first premise, When you feel anger, According to Seneca, Is the premise that you should not have been injured. Injured could mean hurt, Disrespected, Something bad happening to you. Something bad should not have happened to me. And the second premise is, It is my duty to avenge it. So it would be something like, I ought not to have been injured. It is my duty to avenge it. Therefore, I will get angry and avenge it. So it kind of comes from this belief. A lot of people only examine the first one. The second part, Premise two, Is where the action component of anger comes from. Prepare the obstacle. This is before. It is best to prepare obstacles beforehand for vices which are known. Seneca's examples. Those who cannot hold their wine tell their household to take them away from the table. Those who know they are unreasonable when ill give orders that nobody obey them when sick. All right, So know yourself, Know thyself. Think about your triggers. Think about the things that annoy you. Think about the things you think you should be exempt from. Make a list and then start to prepare for that obstacle beforehand. So yeah, Everyone's different. There's not a one size fits all. But think about the things that make you angry on a regular basis. And I want you to actually do this work. Recruit someone. Let us beg all of our friends to give us their opinion with the greatest freedom at the very time when we can bear it least. The greatest remedy for anger is delay. Beg anger to grant you this at the first, Not in order that it may pardon the offense, But that it may form a right judgment about it. So delay, As is often seen, Is, You know, Go cool off, Go count to 10 so you can relax. The Stoics would say no, You delay so that you can form a better judgment about it. Because ultimately, If you're delaying and still having those those bad judgments, Those incorrect judgments, You're still going to get angry. You're still going to make bad decisions. We're just buying ourselves time to think clearly. The same thing with this. This is a really unglamorous technique to wait, To delay, To withhold assent, But it is probably the most powerful one. One of the things I like to do if I ever receive like a difficult message is completely uncommit from replying immediately. Even if there's a mild trigger there, I'll wait, I'll think about it, I'll mull it over, I'll try different approaches. All of this is a form of delay so that I can get clearer about my decision making. Okay, And in terms of the evening reflection. Anger will cease and become more gentle if it knows that every day it will have to appear before the judgment seat. So if we know that every night we are going to be assessing our day, The theory holds that we are going to act better in the day. The Stoics had exercises like imagine the wisest person you know with you at all times as you go through life. Think about people that you admire are in your company. How do you act when they're there? Try to act like that anyway. I've certainly known people that when I'm around, I tend to be my best self more easily. You know, People that I'm inspired to be around, People that bring out the best of me. Why should I act any different when they're not around? That's the idea. So the questions that we want to ask ourselves every night, Super simple. What bad habit of yours have you cured today? Question two, What vice have you checked? Um, You know, Which means sort of, Uh, Kept it kept in check. Um, And in what respect are you a better person than you were yesterday? So yeah, These exercises come from Quintus Sextius, And Seneca used them. People say that Seneca came up with this nightly reflection. He didn't, But he did it. If you have a pen and a journal handy, You can start writing it out. Name a trigger that you can already predict, And simply finish the sentence. When X happens, I'm not allowed to do something until something. Fill in the blanks. This is a way of premeditating on a potential trigger. That's the first stage. The next stage is we're gonna look at a physical reversal that we can do. Don't do them all, But pick one thing that you can commit to. Slower step, Quieter voice, Unclenching the jaw, Sitting down. One thing only. Let's look at where Stoicism falls short potentially when it comes to anger. So Seneca thought that anger is never good. He was very clear about this. Aristotle thought that anger is sometimes okay, Sometimes justified. The Stoics did not think that. Bad, It's a passion that we should destroy, You can't even moderate it. So yeah, That's part of Stoicism. You won't find anywhere in Stoicism where they think anger is okay sometimes. Um. . . A modern interpretation, Anger at injustice may be fitting even when it is counterproductive, And telling the wronged to drop it may be a demand only the comfortable can make. This is a tricky one because if we take stoicism too far, We could say that anytime you get angry, Like you are overreacting or you're not seeing something, You're not sensing something. And that's a slippery slope because then we can sort of become dismissive of real victims. So like anger is sometimes a signal that we should take seriously. And sometimes even when you act in ways that are not socially acceptable, Good. It's almost like you could make a bigger claim that, Yes, It might not have been good in terms of that specific situation, But it had some sort of other kind of good, Some ineffable quality to the goodness that it produced long-term. Maybe you see someone standing up for something that inspires you to not allow oppression to continue on for yourself, For example. So I don't want you to go away thinking, You know what? The Stoics were completely right. Is always wrong. I'd like you to think for yourself and question it. Is anger sometimes justified, Really? But don't justify it in a way that justifies it for you. Think about it in terms of a society. When is anger allowed? When is it not allowed? How could you justify it? One of the big issues that Stoics had with Aristotle's view is that Aristotle said that anger is sometimes okay in the right amount, At the right times, In the right dose. That sounds great in theory. Like, Okay, Yeah, I agree. Anger is okay sometimes if it's in the right time, In the right dose, And the context works. But who the heck is going to be able to decide when that is, When they're angry? And that's what the Stoic view is like. Well, The angry person can't decide the right dose of anger, Really. So it's a tricky one. The daily practice, One line at night, What bad habit have I checked today? I'd like you to do the three questions. If you can't, That's the one question to look at. What bad habit have I checked today? In the one contract, One trigger, One prohibition, One person, Tell them this week.