Dealing with Anger
People experience anger when their expectations around how they should be treated don’t align with their actual treatment (or when they expect a thing to happen based on some series of actions and it does not happen).
Given that anger results from misalignment in expected and actual treatment, cultures with stricter rules around status and interaction consistently feature more anger if they expect outsiders to be aware of these rules—though they experience less anger when everyone knows the rules and sticks to them, as there is little room for misalignment of expectations. Generally, people whose cultures hold outsiders to their cultural standards are more likely to experience frequent anger. This can be seen in both the extreme political left and right around things like gender pronoun norms. Because these factions have conflicting cultural expectations around “proper” interactions, exchanges between left and right-leaning people more frequently leave at least one party smoldering with fury.
Cultures similar to our own, which see humanity as wretched and fallen, experience fairly low rates of anger because they expect very little from others and therefore expect to be treated poorly. Not caring about others’ treatment can, in itself, incite anger in other people when they expect others to be emotionally impacted by their presence, actions, or opinions. only to find that they are not.
What about anger in relationships? The sad truth is that some people expect to be treated in a way that would not only be seen as unreasonable by society but also not be feasible for their partners. For example, someone may ask a colleague or spouse to do one thing and then change their mind about what they wanted—all while forgetting to verbally update this person—then get angry when the partner does what was originally asked of them.
These unreasonable expectations can produce anger spirals, in which partners treat each other with greater and greater hostility in response to increasingly unjust treatment. Should partners enjoy a shared culture with reasonable and clearly defined expectations for participants in various types of relationships, rates of anger are likely to be lower.
Anger is a close cousin to shame, which is felt when a person’s own actions don’t align with what they expect of themselves.
Some cultures have relatively low expectations of what is expected from others but very high expectations of what they expect from themselves. As such, these cultures experience a high amount of shame. While many act indignant toward these cultures, shame is a fairly innocuous emotion for a tradition to leverage and probably one of the “better” emotions as it is driven toward self-improvement. Shame is only really negative when it is felt constantly (the product of a culture holding unreasonable standards). That said, cultures that use shame as motivation often intentionally set the standards too high to create a “background shame” that keeps an individual indebted to that culture. (For an exploration of emotional instability, see page 800 of the Appendix.)
What about meditation—not just as it relates to anger, but in general? We don’t have much to say beyond what is commonly said (and there is no need for us to rehash common analysis here). The only two spicy takes we have on meditation are:
- Whether or not meditation benefits you may be genetically linked to your sociological profile. We, personally, glean many of the benefits people gain from meditation through long walks in the woods, while others seem to get nothing from such activity. Perhaps the best form of meditation for you—be it walks, mantras, yoga, tai chi, prayer, gardening, building, cleaning, or something else entirely—is influenced by the structures of one’s inherited culture (urban vs. rural, hierarchical vs. loose, individualistic vs. collectivist, etc.)—and to a certain extent, one’s gender and hormonal profile. (Simone added that last point pointing out she knows far more women who find cleaning meditative than men.)
- Meditation can cause harm. Negative outcomes from meditation range from relaxed states inducing panic attacks to slower mental processing due to a loosened ability to quickly understand things as defined concepts.[[32]](#_ftn32)