“There is no more stupefying thing than anger, nothing more bent on its own strength. If successful, none more arrogant, if foiled, none more insane — since it’s not driven back by weariness even in defeat, when fortune removes its adversary it turns its teeth on itself.”
SENECA, ON ANGER, 3.1.5
The other day I was listening to the song “Freedom” by Rage Against the Machine. Since I have children now, I’ve been re-examining some of the song lyrics that I’ve recited over the years, critically examining them to see if they actually hold truth or just sound good. At one point in this particular song, the lead singer whispers, “Anger is a gift.” It just sounds so powerful and wise, especially when you’re fighting for freedom! But it’s dead wrong — anger is not a gift, it’s a curse and weakness. It’s the worst of all emotions and we should seek to avoid it.
Anger makes everything worse. It doesn’t listen to reason, because it represents the absence of rational thought. Anger is immune to reason. And when it runs out of options, it turns on itself in the end, as Seneca points out in his quote above.
The author of The Daily Stoic calls anger “bad fuel” in today’s chapter, and he’s right. Popular narratives abound in our society these days about the need to hustle, and how you have to have a driving force behind that hustle, and that maybe righteous anger (i.e. when you were looked down upon or told you couldn’t succeed) could be that force.
But that perspective conveniently ignores the side effects of anger. Negativity is negativity, pure and simple, no matter what angle you look at it from. Anger is a negative emotion — there’s no escaping that fact. The toxicity of anger is dangerous and detrimental to your mental and physical health. Anger is not a gift, not even in disguise. It’s not a boon, it’s not a driving force, it’s not a motivator. Anger is a weakness and it makes you less strong, and we should avoid it. We should choose to be at peace, instead, and that will make us unflappable and invincible.
