In our class, we talked about a lot of emotions that are related to anger. Anger, envy, rage, fury, and resentment are all emotions in the anger group. At the beginning of the class, the first reading material we read was the anger chapter in Solomon’s book, and the last reading material was the case of rage which talks about rage in the anti-racism system. From Solomon to Myisha, they all represent that range and anger are interactions with others. They strongly suggest we talk about our anger to others to “clear” our anger. I have to say, this is useful for me, and I believe these suggestions also fit many other people. I talked to one of my friends who is an international student. However, she disagrees with it, and she believes there is another way or method to deal with our feelings. Talking with her, I realized that all the material we discussed is from western society and follows the background in western culture. If we put these opinions or thoughts into different cultural backgrounds, it may not work so well. As an international student, in this blog, I want to go through the arguments from the reading material and discuss if there is another way we can deal with our anger.<\/p>\n
First, I would like to discuss how to classify rage. In Myisha Cherry’s book “The Case For Rage.” Myisha divided the rage into different situations. They are rogue rage, wipe rage, ressentiment rage, narcissistic rage, and lordean rage. To simplify, the first four kinds of rages from Myisha bring destruction or violence, while the lordean rage is chasing a change and a new social form. For example, the rogue rage is just believing in Nihilism and blaming everyone because of its own unjust experiences, or the wipe rage believes in the zero-sum game that the new people are grabbing indigenous peoples’ jobs. For those rages, they chase destruction, blame others, or wipe out the outsider. But for the lordean rage, It is chasing for change, to make the superior people not be in a prestigious position, and let everyone have an equal chance. Deal to the anti-racism perspective, I agree with Myisha’s division on the rage, and I want to further divide into the rage that brings destruction and the rage that brings change. In this standard, rogue rage, wipe rage, resentment rage, and narcissistic rage can all be classified as the rage that brings destruction, and lordean rage will be the rage that brings changes. However, to further discussions about Myisha’s method, I think her division is strongly based on the result of the rage. In other words, if someone has rage but does not lead to any action, we can’t classify it as any rage. Furthermore, Myisha’s standard is also firmly based on their anti-racist background. This standard would be less helpful if we were not talking about rage in the anti-racism structure.<\/p>\n
Then I want to go back to talk about Solomon’s view on anger. It is the very first chapter we have read. In this chapter, Solomon introduces the concept of basic emotions, and obviously, anger is one basic emotion. According to Solomon, anger always includes not only one person because people usually have a target to get angry with. Solomon even gives a more general statement about emotion. He states, “Anger and most of our emotions usually arise with and in other people.” It is reasonable to have such an argument, and Solomon explains that the social context usually generates emotions. However, Solomon doesn’t consider if people are angry with themselves in this situation. In his argument, anger should come from someone to specific something, which means people can be mad at themselves. In this situation, the emotion only contains one person. If only one person is included in this emotion, it is not the interaction with others that allows us to face our emotions alone. From this point of view, we can see a method where we can face our emotions isolatedly without others’ help. However, this does not mean we can not tell others about our emotions or share our thoughts if we are angry at ourselves. I want to state that people have the right to face their problems individually if they do not want to share their emotions with others. Even for more than one person, some issues might not be discussed or discussed to solve them. For example, if I am angry with one of my best friends and know that sharing my feelings with him will make him generate negative emotions, I may choose not to talk to him about it. The situation is an exceptional case, but I still believe that sometimes not talking about our emotions or feelings is a clever strategy and people should keep it as an option.<\/p>\n
Solomon then states another aspect of anger is we can use anger as a tool, and to use the anger. We should first really be angry. Here Solomon hasn’t clarified what is being angry. I believe that people should show they are angry when they want to use anger but still keep people’s minds and can’t be angry. It is tough for people to stay rational when they are in an angry mood, and people usually will do what they will regret when angry. They typically fall into the first four rages described by Myisha and bring destruction instead of change. So to use anger as a tool, people should show they are in anger but cannot really be angry.<\/p>\n
Many people have objections on this point, just like Solomon. In his book, he states people can not let others know its anger if it is not really angry. He believe people should really get angry to let others know he is anger, and can use anger as a tool. However, Solomon also states that emotions always follow the social norm, and he also states many times in his book that people may be blamed if they are not showing some emotion in a specific situation. So for many situations that I want to use anger as a tool, people may already know I should be in anger, and by simply saying I am in anger, we can use anger as a tool but not actually get mad or rage.<\/p>\n
In the book “How Emotions are Made,” Barret discusses how our brains deal with emotions. The whole system is just like a bank. When it comes to negative emotions, the brain will hold and store them at first and then find a way to process them. For example, the brain can process our negative emotions through things that can make us relax to adjust our emotions. The system of the brain reminds us we can not always store our negative feelings and not express them, but there are many ways to deal with negative emotions, and talking and sharing are definitely not the only ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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