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  • Val wants to master his anger.

  • And he realizes that anger is an appropriate response to some situations

  • and an inappropriate response to other situations.

  • And assuming he's neurotypical and healthy, Val will have mastered anger when he can determine

  • when anger is an appropriate response to a situation and when it's not.

  • And the causes of inappropriate anger are two misunderstandings: the misunderstanding

  • of necessity and the misunderstanding of effectiveness.

  • Let's start by taking a look at necessity.

  • Like most people, Val's anger first arises when he feels he has been wronged, harmed,

  • or some injustice has been done against him.

  • Anger arises as a necessity, so that he can respond to the current situation effectively.

  • But how does Val know if his interpretation of the situation is correct?

  • Has an injustice actually been done to him?

  • His answer to this question is really important to know, so let's take a look at an example.

  • Imagine Val driving through the city, and suddenly, a car cuts him off.

  • How Val interprets this situation determines whether or not he'll get angry.

  • The first interpretation is that the person in the other car tried to get ahead at his

  • expense.

  • Val feels an injustice has been done to him, and anger begins to arise.

  • In the second interpretation, Val believes the other person has somewhere really important

  • to be.

  • Maybe he's rushing to the hospital because his child is sick or his wife is pregnant.

  • And Val believes that, really, he's in the way of the other driver, and Val feels he

  • would be doing an injustice to him by not allowing him to get ahead.

  • Anger never arises in this situation.

  • In each situation, the arrival of anger depends on Val's interpretation.

  • It depends on whether he believes an injustice has been done against him, and it depends

  • on whether he believes anger to be necessary or not.

  • So how does he avoid the misunderstanding of necessity?

  • He needs to, as much as he can, create space and time to gain clarity.

  • He needs to confirm or disconfirm whether an injustice has actually been committed,

  • and he should seek proof.

  • But in the absence of proof, Val will have to make one of two presumptions: either he

  • will have to presume innocence on behalf of the other person or he will have to presume

  • guilt.

  • If he believes he lives in a fair place, presumption of innocence is the smarter choice.

  • But if he lives in a land of thieves, presumption of guilt is the smarter choice.

  • Making the wrong presumption is more likely to lead to the inappropriate use of anger.

  • But let's say that an injustice has been done, and Val feels that he's been wronged.

  • This brings me to the next misunderstanding: the misunderstanding of effectiveness.

  • Once Val's anger arises, he needs to channel it into an effective action.

  • And an effective action is one that restores justice or rebalances the scales.

  • But how certain is Val that his action will restore justice?

  • And why?

  • Let's go back to the scenario where Val was cut off in traffic, and let's look at

  • some potential responses.

  • The first response: Val decides he will cut the other driver off to get revenge, but this

  • creates a cycle of them speeding up to pass one another, until eventually, one of them

  • gets into an accident.

  • In the second response, Val reports the other driver to the police, who promptly takes the

  • reckless driver off the road and keeps the streets safer.

  • In this case, Val might have prevented an accident from happening.

  • In each situation, the appropriateness of anger depends on how effective Val's action

  • is at restoring justice.

  • So how does he avoid the misunderstanding of effectiveness?

  • Again, he needs to create space and time to gain clarity.

  • He needs to confirm or disconfirm whether his action will restore justice, and he should

  • seek proof.

  • And in the absence of proof, Val will again have to make one of two presumptions: either

  • he presumes it's better to take action or he presumes it's not.

  • If he believes the environment is fair and justice will be acted without his intervention,

  • it's smarter not to take action.

  • But if he's in an unfair environment where justice won't take place without his intervention,

  • it's smarter to take action.

  • And like before, making the wrong presumption is more likely to lead to the inappropriate

  • use of anger.

  • So in the end, Val's mastery over anger depends on his ability to answer two questions

  • correctly: have I actually been wronged or harmed in anyways?

  • And will my action fix that wrong?

  • And his greatest assets for answering these questions correctly are time and space to

  • find out the truth.

  • And ideally, through action and feedback, Val can get better at answering these questions

  • correctly.

  • And most of us are like Val, caught in the middle between two extremes: perfect judgment

  • on one end, and completely corrupted judgment on the other end.

  • And the more correctly we can answer these two questions, the more we perfect our judgment,

  • and the more we master our anger and move to the right, but the more incorrectly we

  • answer these questions, the more our judgment becomes corrupted, the more our anger masters

  • us and the more we move to the left.

  • So

  • what will it be?

Val wants to master his anger.

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