Anger

David Warren writes about anger:

I knew a man of nearly saintly disposition, who responded to the most outrageous goads by turning in on himself & becoming reflective; who endured a woman for many years whom most of his fellow men considered unendurable; who did not flinch at acute physical pain, but reacted philosophically. We were all surprised the day he killed himself.

I work with a woman who has been in America only two months. Where did she come from? Bangladesh! Can you imagine the culture shock she must be experiencing? Actually, David Warren describes to a tea what I have seen of her:

With humans one hardly can be sure what one is dealing with. In many Asian cultures, anger is suppressed, & responded to with smiles & then giggling that Western visitors find hard to understand. When in the role of boss, or customer, we think that they are not taking us seriously, & become angrier as a result. My advice would be, “Don’t push your luck.” The giggling is an expression of nervous anxiety; the preceding smiles were intended to assuage. But the capacity for anger is most certainly there, & when it is finally unleashed, you are a dead man.

Surely, there is no justice without anger. However, Warren writes,

The man of power I most fear is the one who seems entirely in possession of his temper, because he is a monster of self-will. The anger will never be expressed in shouted words, yet may sometimes be detected in a gesture. It will be sublimated, & applied in far worse ways, & in the moment he “gets even” you will know that he was ruled by his anger all along, under the direction of a brooding malice. Yet there is still some spontaneity in him. Having finally struck, he will hate his victim all the more, because now his victim knows him. Never work for psychos, & stop electing them to high office.

Read more here: http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2013/03/11/wrath/