The PATH: On Anger, Revenge, and Forgiveness
sent by J.W. Bertolotti | November 8, 2021
1. On Anger
The philosopher Seneca wrote a great deal on the topic of anger and its many perils. In his essay On Anger, Seneca stressed that anger is the most destructive of the passions.
Seneca wrote,
Anger is not only a vice, but a vice point-blank against nature, for it divides instead of joining; and in some measure, frustrates the end of Providence in human society. One man was born to help another; anger makes us destroy one another; the one unites, the other separates; the one is beneficial to us, the other mischievous; the one succors even strangers, the other destroys even the most intimate friends; the one ventures all to save another, the other ruins himself to undo another. Nature is bountiful, but anger is pernicious: for it is not fear, but mutual love that binds up mankind.
Similarly, the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius put it this way in Meditations, When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you’ll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case, they’re misguided and deserve your compassion.
Although Seneca called anger “a short madness,” it often creates an unending cycle of revenge until someone has the wisdom to stop it.
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2. On Revenge (and Resentment)
The philosopher Simon Critchley (a previous guest on In Search of Wisdom) explains in Bald: 35 Philosophical Shortcuts, revenge is the desire to repay an injury or a wrong by inflicting harm, often the violent sort. If you hit me, I will hit you back. Furthermore, by the logic of revenge, I am right to hit you back. The initial wrong justifies and starts the cycle of revenge. But does that wrong make it right for me to hit back? Once we act out of revenge, don’t we become mired in a cycle of violence and counterviolence with no apparent end?
To quote the Chinese proverb attributed to Confucius,
Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
According to Seneca, it is much better to heal than to seek revenge from injury. Vengeance wastes precious time and exposes you to many more injuries than the first that sparked it. Anger always outlasts hurt. Best to take the opposite course.
What is the opposite course? I argue it is starting a new cycle involving a path of continuous forgiveness or consciously letting go of deeply held negative feelings (not repressing but working through…).
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3. On Forgiveness
What initially comes to mind around forgiveness?
According to The Greater Good Science Center,
Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.
The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr called forgiveness — the final form of love.
Reflect for a moment; when was the last time you practiced forgiveness? How do you deliberately decide to let go of deeply held negative feelings? If we choose not to release feelings of resentment or vengeance, where does it go?
We can find wisdom from Marcus Aurelius on the topic, “You are like others and often do wrong yourself. Even if you abstain from some forms of wrong, all the same, you have the bent for wrongdoing….”
Understanding our fallibility seems to be an essential step in the process. Another critical perspective comes from Socrates on the notion that “no one knowingly does evil .” Similarly, the American poet Maya Angelou said it like this— “when people know better, they do better.”
The strange thing about anger is it often arises not from the situation but our strong value judgments towards individuals or groups. The Writings of Chuang Tzu illustrates this point in the Empty Boat parable:
If a man is crossing a river
And an empty boat collides with his own skiff,
Even though he be a bad-tempered man
He will not become very angry.
But if he sees a man in the boat,
He will shout at him to steer clear.
If the shout is not heard, he will shout again,
And yet again, and begin cursing.
And all because there is somebody in the boat.
Yet if the boat were empty.
He would not be shouting, and not angry.
The philosopher Martha Nussbaum explains, There’s no emotion we ought to think harder and more clearly about than anger. Anger greets most of us every day — in our relationships, in the workplace, on the highway, on airline trips — and, often, in our political lives as well.
If this is true, I propose there is no practice we should think harder or more clearly about than forgiveness.
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful. If so, please consider sharing it with others.
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