CHAPTER 5-5                               
ANGER1
     When you accidentally step on a dog's tail, the dog snarls 
at you.  When a bee buzzes a dog, the dog snaps at the bee.  When 
you stumble over a bench, you curse the unhearing bench.  More 
generally, when something causes us pain we instinctively react 
with attack and anger, unless we learn that it is silly or 
socially wrong to do so in that sort of situation.2 
     Anger can bring benefits; if it were not so, evolution would have bred it out of us long ago.  The dog's snarl teaches you to 
be more careful next time, and the dog's snap can chase the bee away.  Your curses have little effect upon the bench, but similar 
language may stop the neighbor from again dumping garbage onto your property, and your threats may induce the plumber to fix the 
pipe right this time.  
     Another benefit of anger is the positive sensation of the "rush" you get when you express the anger.  The explanation why the 
rush feels good must be left to the physiologists, but it undeniably does feel good for a while.  And if your anger is righteous 
(and whose isn't?), and the consequences of expressing the anger are not costly, you may feel satisfied afterwards. 
     But anger has costs, too.  After the berserk abandon and the adrenalin rush are over, you may have to face painful 
consequences of an injured relationship, a lost job, public humiliation, or private remorse.  You may then regret your wild fling 
of angry feeling and its expression. 
     Feeling angry and not expressing it has costs, too.  You may seethe for minutes or weeks or even years, poisoning your state 
of mind.  You may ruin your relationship with the person you are angry at, while remaining in the relationship that forecloses the 
chance of a better relationship.  Your mind may be so taken up with the anger that you reduce the time available for more 
productive or pleasant thinking.  Even if you try to practice "Don't get mad, get even", you will expend valuable thought and good 
feeling on the subject of your anger. 
     As always, the task facing you is to use the anger when it will be helpful, refrain from being angry when anger will be 
hurtful, and not spend too much time and energy agonizing to figure out which to do.  Here again we can paraphrase the Serenity 
Prayer of Marcus Aurelius and Alcoholics Anonymous:  Act angry when the action can alter the situation for the better.  Banish the 
matter from your thinking, or get out of the situation, when the action will not alter things for the better.  Decide well which 
to do. 
     Deciding well whether to express anger must depend entirely upon the specifics of you particular situation, and therefore I 
can offer you no guidance.  Learning how to express anger effectively does not come instinctively, and perhaps there are experts 
who can improve your performance; this is not something I do well or understand how to do well.  Therefore, the rest of this 
chapter will discuss how to deal with anger when you do not express it. 
       REASONING ANGER AWAY WHEN ANGER IS NOT APPROPRIATE
     Even a young child is aware that there is no gain from being angry with the door after you bump into it, and the child's 
instinctive anger soon subsides after the bumping.  Similarly, there is no gain from your being angry with the power company if 
electric power frequently goes off in your entire neighborhood during storms -- unless you are in a position to influence the 
company, or you are prepared to mobilize others.  There is no gain in being angry at your bad luck in getting mononucleosis 
despite your taking all precautions to prevent it -- the forces that brought about your disease cannot be affected by your anger.  
(On the other hand, your recovery might be speeded by your laughing frequently.  Norman Cousins has famously argued that laughing 
at comedy movies he systematically watched cured him of a dread disease.  This is not beyond belief, though it will surely be a 
long time before the theory is tested.) 
     The habit of asking yourself whether it makes sense to be angry in the given situation, together with skill at analysis of 
such situations, can help you distinguish the situations where it does not make sense to be angry.  If you then apply your will to 
the matter, you can control and eliminate your anger. 
     I am certainly not recommending that you examine only your self-interest when you decide whether to express anger.  People 
who refrain from expressing anger when powerful persons or groups trample the truth or the rights of others may feather their own 
nests beautifully, but they'll get no praise from me; the learned academics in my fields of special interest -- population 
economics -- who can convince themselves that it is better for all that they mute their criticism of the conventional wisdom as 
repeated by the World Bank and the Agency for International Development, and thereby save their grants, may be right that the 
public will benefit in the long run, but I'm not convinced.  That does not imply that I recommend being foolhardy; kamikaze pilots 
seldom are available for additional service to the public.  Here Hillel's wisdom fits well:  If I am not for myself, who will be 
for me?  But if I am for myself alone, what am I?  (There is still another part, often omitted:  If not now, when?) 
     (Did you say you detected a touch of anger in the paragraph above?  Well, writing a book brings certain side-benefits.)

                        REPRESSING ANGER

     Sometimes anger is appropriate even when there is no gain from expressing it. If your boss degrades your work without good 
reason, it is thoroughly appropriate for you to be angry, even if there is no gain in expressing your anger in that particular 
situation.  (In many such situations there would be gain in expressing your anger, however, though in an effective manner.) I do 
not suggest you reason away your anger in such a situation.  A self-respecting person must allow her/himself to be angry when the 
anger is appropriate.  As e e cummings wrote, "there is some s I will not eat" [check quote] (please note the lack of ellipses 
after "s"). 
     When being angry is appropriate but expressing it is not, then repression -- putting the anger out of your conscious mind as 
completely as you can -- is the best tactic.  Repression got a bad name from traditional Freudian psychotherapy, which believed 
that repression caused mental illness.  But the multi-decade continuing Grant (?) study of men who were college freshmen in the 
1940's finds that repression is a powerful positive device used frequently by the happiest and most successful men in the study.  
(A similar point is discussed in Chapter 5-4 on therapy for depression.) 

                     TURN ANGER INTO ACTION

     You can get rid of anger by engaging in an activity related to the cause of the anger.  This is related to expressing the 
anger emotionally, but it does not run the same dangers and it has the benefit of working for a good cause.  
     Many organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving have been founded by people who were angry about a loss they 
suffered, and mobilized to fight the evil that caused the loss.  The world needs more righteously angry people who will respond n 
this fashion.  And such work is often marvelously effective as an antidote to the anger and sadness that follow upon bad 
happenings. 
     

                            FOOTNOTES
     1This chapter depends almost entirely upon my own observations and analyses, in contrast to the previous chapters in Part 5 
which rest upon both the ideas and research of others and my own ideas.  It would be pleasant if all chapters in the book could 
rest on solid bases of established knowledge, but unfortunately, this is impossible.  
     2This is a more general and more fundamental view than the "frustration-aggression" theory of Miller and Dollard.
Page # thinking anger54@ 3-3-4d