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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wolv0rine" data-source="post: 675178" data-attributes="member: 9045">Okay, you've seen a connection here that I hadn't intended to make.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  I find that anger is nearly always the most successful method of overcoming my own inertia.  If I need to begin or end something, anger is the most likely way to see me do it.  When I get angry, I act.  This means that the best way for me to deal with myself, usually (if I want results) is to become angry.  Now if someone else comes in angry at me, that won't work at all.  I'll just become angry back and stonewall over the principle of the thing. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />  The difference is when it is Me dealing with Myself, then anger is an effective motivational tool.  I don't resent following my own orders. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />[/b]Even keeping in mind that you disagree that anger prods us to fight or protect, raging against that <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> driver who cut you off reduces stress.  It's not the only way to reduce stress, but it's a completely natural way to reduce stress.  Most every animal does it, mankind does it until he starts over-thinking his every thought.  Sitting in your car, that guy never hears you or sees you, but you get to have your say over his, and you get the last word.  From your POV you have exerted authority over the situation, which is neccesary because that jerk just put your life in danger in a situation where you did not have any say over whether you lived or died.  And now your mind requires a little display of authority, of being in control (of your life or death), of not being a helpless victim.  You can theoretically untie the entire knot by saying "I don't need that", but I suspect that everyone does, those who say they don't much moreso than the rest of us.Nonono, you’ve misunderstood completely.  I’m not saying that if I agree with you I’ll die, or if I’m wrong my life will cease.  I was attempting to explain a conceptual construct and the rules it imposes to play in it.  The Conceptual Construct I’ve called ‘The Maxi-Level Event’ is entirely binary, only win/lose, only live/die.  There is no right or wrong within the MLE, because it presumes to operate on a level where it is thought even the human psyche does not understand those as concepts.Of course I’ve been wrong, I’ve been trying to answer the old question “Why would you get angry because I think something different than you?”  And I think that it’s because the subconscious mind automatically play the situation out on the maxi-level scale, automatically sees the Worst-Possible-Extension of the conflict, expanding it into a situation where it’s no longer about different opinions, but becomes an issue of life or death.  And it’s upon this background that the mind says “This is unacceptable”.  This is my proposed theory.Close...close.  I think people get angry when others disagree because they can sense the potential for the other person’s differing viewpoint to be imposed on their lives.  Someone else’s opinion now forces me to wear a seatbelt or be ticketed.  Someone else’s opinion makes certain substances found in nature are illegal to possess by law.  Someone else’s opinion nearly made it law that myself (when I was in school) and my children pray to a god, while I am an atheist.  These are real-life situations where what can only have started as a disagreement between two opposing opinions became something bigger, something more sinister (in my eyes, at least), something that gained the power to command that I follow it’s will, or be imprisioned.  So that is where I’m drawing real-life examples to base it upon.  Minor versions of the idea do happen all the time, and the process of them becoming Law don’t have anything to do with if they are just or right.  Usually they have to do with who paid which senator or congressman, and how much. But fear?  I don’t think it’s fear, persay.  I think it’s awareness, that this could happen.  Because it does happen, just not quite as black and white as the conceptual construct of the MLE uses.Ermm...but that wasn’t your proposal.  Your proposal was that anger at others was really anger at ones-self.  Anger, fear, love, hate, happy, sad..  all base primal emotions, and more than likely never far from each other.  Yeah, fear plays a hand in anger (but I could never agree that one causes the other entirely, because I think they are all too primal for such a simple answer), and anger plays a hand in fear, hate and love are very similar, etc.  Yes, I agree with that, if that’s what you’re saying.  More often than not, I find my own anger rises at either frustration or disgust at something outside of myself.  But I’m one of those weird “I know myself as well as possible” kind of people.  Even when I lie to myself, I know I’m doing it.  Within the rules of the Maxi-Level Event, yes that’s exactly right.  In real life?  No of course not, that would be silly. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />  I’m just expanding to the extreme, for purposes of closer examination.How can you not be convinced that anger is a signal to fight?  I mean, “Fight or flight” is mostly accepted as a base instinct in and of itself.  “Danger=((anger OR fear)=fight OR flee))”  Or, when faced with a serious situation, kill it or run from it.  If kill it, pump adrenaline to increase strength and reaction time, and lower reaction lag from reasoning.  That’s pretty much rage.  Rage is an extreme form of anger, which does not require such an extreme process.   As to the part I underlined up there, I disagree.  Anger can come from our own failings.  That I can agree with.  That is a possible option.  But it is not the only option.  I get angry at other peoples’ failings easily more often than at my own.The funny part is, every time I hit “Submit Reply” I think that exact thing.  heheheOkay.  I will agree that an argument based solely on semantics is pointless and fruitlessly painful.   However a semantics argument within another argument can be necessary to establish common ground.  So maybe it’s just as well in this case.   So let’s use Rage instead of Anger.  Rage is an extreme form of anger, afterall.  Now rage bypasses the normal process of rational thought for very good reasons that we need not try to get into for this issue.  For our purposes, let us only deal with rage in circumstances wherein you are not expecting to have to ‘fight or flight’.  That actually puts the advantage much deeper into your court, becuase we’ve limited our view to situations that lean more toward your viewpoint.   That’s fair.Okay, so rage.  Temple-pounding, fit-inducing rage.  The guy cuts you off, and you curse and scream.  What did you lose in doing that?  Maybe the people in the car with you are uncomfortable at your raging – or maybe they are raging with you and have no trouble with it.  If they are raging at what happened too, then they would feel uncomfortable that you aren’t.  That can go either way.  I really think the core of this arguement was the way you put forth your theory initially.  You stated something was a universal truth, and there aren’t really such things.  Children might find your rage unpleasant and sending bad messages.  On the other hand children might find it normal and fine, and not bat an eye or give it a moment’s thought.  I was one of the children who did the latter.  Rage didn’t bother me unless it was directed At me.  You’re asking what one gets out of raging, I’m asking what does one lose by it?  You feel bad?  I think you feel bad if you don’t rage, you’ve failed to have an emotional response to a situation that caused one (if it didn’t, you wouldn’t have to learn to control the emotion, natural response).  Now I’m not saying that you should not learn to control your actions or responses, we all know that that’s part of becoming an adult.  I think the question here is degrees of control, and when it’s needed or not.  How much do I need to control myself, and when?  I know that I feel better if I cuss that guy out, even if he never heard me.  I know that if I’m watching a Utah Jazz basketball game, and the other team scores a gorgeous 3-pointer because there was noone guarding him, I get angry.  Only for a few seconds, I wanted the team I like to win!  If I didn’t have an emotional response, I would never have cared about the game to begin with.  Okay, I’m officially rambling.  I’ll look for the next quote and stop with this. Yes, this is entirely true.  Some guesses are better than other guesses.  Pat of my biggest problem with the mental health field is it’s assumption that years of “ book learnin’ ” can give someone some form of definitive knowledge of how all minds work.  “I studied books about how certain people thought specific other people’s minds worked.  So I know how all minds work”.  It’s hogwash, and that presumption means that they are always wrong, because it’s reducing you to a set of pre-defined assumptions.  It’s nothing more than what I used to do when I was working as a phone psychic.  I am not a psychic, but I do know how to listen to people, break down what they say into it’s most generic parts, and repeat it back to them colored by my own opinion.  And I’ve found that most mental health professionals tend to cut out the listening part in favor of just repeating back what their books say.  Okay, that’s an entirely separate rant on my hatred of a professional field, I’ll let that die.  HeheAhh, but that’s a false definition of truth.  Truth is true, stripped of all opinion or desire. (well okay, there is this theory that if everyone believed something completely it might become truth by altering a universal law of physics to conform to common perception, but that’s tres isoteric).  You can call it truth, sure, but what you’re meaning is opinion.  The closest you can come and still be genuine is “My truth”, which is a phrase coined just for such purposes, and should be familiar with all of us, because it is the root of the idea of “This is the way it works In My Campaign World.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Like I said, you don’t have to regret it.  All you have to do is be aware that if you have taken another course of action at some point in your life, made a different decision, chose a different path, that things might have turned out in a more beneficial way.  If I had gone to college when I was offered a free ride, I might have a good strong career.  If I had told that girl I was in love with when I was 18 that I loved her, we might have had something beautiful.  I didn’t go to college, and now I’m a freelance illustrator without a penny to his name.  I regret that, it counts for both.  I never told that girl I loved her, but I told other girls that I loved them, and had something beautiful with them.  I’ll always be curious how that would have worked out, but I don’t really regret it.  It’s still an unresolved issue, it has no resolution, no closure.  Because it never happened.  Our lives are full of these, if we stop to think about them or not, if we regret them of not.  They have no closure because they never happened.I agree, the concept of “if I had done it differently, I’d be someone else” is fairly commonly known. But it does not in and of itself universally rule out what I was pointing out. Yes they do, and yes it is.  And in my case, I have no anger about my height.  I will, however, never be able to change it (and being taller has more advantages than not being taller in everyday life).  It’s still an unresolved issue, it will come up in situations constantly for the length of my life where I cannot reach something that most people can.  The fact that I’m perfectly alright with my height regardless./b]True, all of that.  Regrets can spawn anger.  Now if you had said “Anger is really regret, for everyone, always”, I’d step up and say “Ridiculous!”  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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