Humans are passionate creatures. Anger is one way to express that passion. But, anger in itself is a superficial emotion that usually masks something deeper. Our anger is something that can be used for our benefit, to explore within. However, uncontrolled anger can be catastrophic.  "No space is left for reason once passion has been ushered in and given jurisdiction."

Uncontrolled Anger

"Momentum is pleasing if it stops in its tracks when ordered, doesn't run past the boundaries we have set, and can be steered and brought back on track as it goes." A healthy amount of anger is biologically and psychologically good - a means to get rid of stress hormones (with healthy ways of dealing with anger)

Healthy Anger

"Once shaken and overthrown, the mind becomes a slave to that which drives it. Just as bodies in freefall have no power over themselves and cannot resist or slow their descent, but the unstoppable downrush cuts off every thought and regret. Anger is like freefall gravity."

Is Anger Worth Our Time?

"Take note of this flaw in human nature and always suspect it: what we have to hear, we readily believe and we grow angry before we use our judgment.  Think then: what if we are driven to act, not by accusations but by mere suspicions, and grow angry at the guiltless because we read the worst into someone's facial expression or laughter."  Always suspect and inspect your anger before acting on it.

What To Do When You're Angry

1. Avoid anger as much as you can, and if you do get angry, find healthy ways to manage them.  2. Be aware that we are all humans, and we are prone to mistakes. "The greatest punishment of a wrong that's been committed is having committed it." 3. Practice mutual leniency: we can put up with brief annoyances  4. "Hold back a bit; look, here's death, arriving to make you equal with them." At the end of the day, we have the inevitable end, so let's spend the living days with more love and compassion, rather than anger and hate.

The Ultimate Truth

Timeless wisdom on controlling anger in personal life and politics from the Roman Stoic philosopher and statesman Seneca In his essay “On Anger” (De Ira), the Roman Stoic thinker Seneca (c. 4 BC–65 AD) argues that anger is the most destructive passion: “No plague has cost the human race more dear.” This was proved by his own life, which he barely preserved under one wrathful emperor, Caligula, and lost under a second, Nero. This splendid new translation of essential selections from “On Anger,” presented with an enlightening introduction and the original Latin on facing pages, offers readers a timeless guide to avoiding and managing anger. It vividly illustrates why the emotion is so dangerous and why controlling it would bring vast benefits to individuals and society. Drawing on his great arsenal of rhetoric, including historical examples (especially from Caligula’s horrific reign), anecdotes, quips, and soaring flights of eloquence, Seneca builds his case against anger with mounting intensity. Like a fire-and-brimstone preacher, he paints a grim picture of the moral perils to which anger exposes us, tracing nearly all the world’s evils to this one toxic source. But he then uplifts us with a beatific vision of the alternate path, a path of forgiveness and compassion that resonates with Christian and Buddhist ethics. Seneca’s thoughts on anger have never been more relevant than today, when uncivil discourse has increasingly infected public debate. Whether seeking personal growth or political renewal, readers will find, in Seneca’s wisdom, a valuable antidote to the ills of an angry age.

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Books

De Ira or "On Anger" is an essay on anger by Seneca the Younger. The work offers advice on controlling anger and to make it subject to reason. It is not clear to scholars who wrote the first work on the subject of passions or emotions (the terms are thought interchangeable), but while Xenocrates (396/5-314/3 BCE) and Aristotle (384-322 BCE) were students at Plato's Academy, a discussion on emotions took place which provided likely the impetus for all later work on the subject. The Stoic Posidonius of Apamea (c.135 - 51 BCE) is considered the main source for Seneca, also the work of Theophrastus, Antipater of Tarsus, Philodemus of Gadara, Sotion of Alexandria, Xenocrates (active sometime after 346 BCE) and Aristotle (c. 384-322 BCE ). Other influences may have included works On Passions by the Stoic philosophers Zeno of Citium, Chrysippus, Aristo of Chios, Herillus, Hecato of Rhodes, and the Peripatetic philosopher Andronicus of Rhodes (c. 1st century B.C.). Within the context of Stoicism, which seeks to aid and guide the person in a development out of a life of slavery to behaviors and ways of the vices, to freedom within a life characterized by virtue, de Ira posits this as achievable by the development of an understanding of how to control the passions, anger being classified as a passion, and to make these subject to reason.Seneca's thoughts of the relationship of the passions to reason, are that the passions arise in a rational mind as a result of a misperceiving or misunderstanding of reality.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca or Seneca the Younger); ca. 4 BC – 65 AD) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero, who later forced him to commit suicide for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to have him assassinated.

The Ultimate Truth

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