To briefly recap: “Trust therefore marks
something like the outer limit of anger.
As trust builds, so does anger diminish. Trust signifies that the relationship has been restored (or
that we believe it can and will be), and the original anger is no longer
needed. In turn, forgiveness is a
sign of this restored trust. Forgiveness means that I am no longer angry”.
It seems to be widely
held that one notable ethical psychologist – the youth known to us as Jesus of
Nazareth - argued that you are best starting with forgiveness, and trying to
avoid the anger part altogether. In other words, forgive your transgressor straight
away, and go right to the trust building part.[1]
The idea here seems to be: by the power of your (loving) example you can persuade
another of their wrongdoing. This
is the gentle Jesus of folklore. Many see it as naïve.
Nevertheless, according
to extant accounts, the young Gallilean did see a legitimate role for anger in at
least one circumstance.
Clearly, in that particular case he wanted to point to a transgression, and in
a fairly dramatic fashion. It
would seem that money-lending in the Temple was, for Jesus, a red-line issue.
But this is what is
interesting about it. This was a case of anger at a set of systemic, social practices
rather than at an individual, personal transgression. Indeed, these were practices that that tore at the very
fabric of the moral order of his society (as he saw it). However, despite this, his anger
doesn’t seem to have been personalised – in other words, it doesn’t appear to
have been directed at anyone in particular. His actions in driving the money-lenders from the Temple, and
his accompanying words, stayed pointed at the issues. As I argued in my first post, this is
the very essence of legitimate natural anger. It forcefully points to an
independent standard that has been breached.
So why, then, does
Jesus seem to have endorsed anger at a general social level, but not at a individual
and circumstantial level? Part of the explanation may be this: getting angry at
someone in particular personalises it. And this brings major risks.
More precisely: if the
person who has transgressed against a standard already (tacitly or explicitly) agrees
that the standard is legitimate, then it in all likelihood means that you don’t
have to get (very) angry with them to make them realise they’ve done wrong. You can just (calmly) explain to them
what has happened.
On the other hand, if
they don’t agree that the standard you are pointing to is legitimate, then getting
angry is unlikely to make them any more receptive to your argument as to why
that standard should apply. This is in part because anger can be too easily
interpreted as being about their personal failure to meet the expected standard,
rather than being a forceful assertion of our wish to be treated according to
that standard. In short, anger can
be too easily seen as being about moral judgment, or blame. As, indeed, it
often is.
Why is this a problem?
Because the human ego will instinctively work very hard to maintain its
integrity in the face of a challenge.
It will tend to self-justify, rationalise, deny, lie, lash out, push
back, blame-shift or just plain obfuscate. It takes moral work to overcome these
tendencies and learn how to gracefully accept responsibility for our actions,
just as it does in learning how to manage our instinct to anger.
In other words,
legitimate natural anger is not easy to pull off in practice at a personal
level. Most people are, in my experience, very bad at it. Focusing one’s anger on calling
attention to the issues rather than the fact of personal responsibility (i.e.
blame) requires genuine presence of mind, and a great deal of moral maturity. It also requires a very good
understanding of the person you are getting angry with, and how they are likely
to react.
That’s why expressions
of anger mostly just lead to angry argument, where personal offense is taken,
and defence and counter-attack become the pattern. Frequently these arguments are not resolved, and just die
into silence, to be picked up again when some other trigger occurs – unless and
until a trust-building move is made by one of the parties. This either takes
the form of an apology and plea for (partial if not full) forgiveness by one of
the parties, or a recognition that the other party has (somewhere in the
argument) made a legitimate claim. And unless there is already a lot of
underlying trust already in the relationship, these sorts of encounters, if
repeated, can end up being poisonous and/or terminal.
Alternately, getting
angry with someone you barely know (and hence have little or no basis of trust
with, or who has no reason to care about you) is likely to mean ending any
chance for an ongoing relationship at all.
To summarise, then:
Anger rarely works unless a) at some level people already agree with you (i.e.
they accept the legitimacy of the standard you are pointing at with your
anger), b) they are morally mature enough to accept the moral judgment implicit
in your anger, and/or c) they trust you enough (or care about you enough) to want
to continue to engage with you.
So why is anger so
attractive, if it’s so potentially ineffectual? This gets us back to Nussbaum’s argument. Nussbaum argues that anger is directed
at inflicting pain. I previously suggested that this was not the case, at least
in the sense of a desire for retribution.
However, there is another sense in which this is true, albeit
indirectly.
Anger makes us feel better because
getting someone to see our legitimate claim to suffering also involves them
accepting responsibility for it, which is - if it is authentic - painful to
them. In this sense, inflicting such pain comes firstly from more or less
forcing someone, through our anger, to empathise with us: Now you understand how I feel! This alone makes us feel better: we
feel understood, validated. But there is always another dimension to this forced
empathy: the pain someone feels at feeling responsible for causing our
suffering. Call it guilt, or shame,
or remorse, or whatever. This kind
of pain is a sign that someone not only has understood our legitimate claim,
they have taken responsibility for it.
And thus, it can also make us feel better. Our anger has achieved its
purpose, and we are vindicated.
But: It is this
dimension of anger than can easily slide into the notion of retribution, with
all the consequences that Nussbaum highlights. We feel better when someone else
feels remorse, because it demonstrates they have understood and accepted our
claim. And this is why it is so
problematic, and why is so rarely works: because sentient creatures tend to do
anything to avoid involuntary suffering.
As I said, people will tend to self-justify, rationalise, deny, lie,
lash out, push back, blame-shift or just plain obfuscate if it means avoiding
the pain of remorse. It takes moral work to overcome these tendencies and learn
how to gracefully accept responsibility for our actions, just as it does in
learning how to manage our instinct to anger.
But this has two
paradoxical implications.
First: If the key to
anger’s effectiveness with a ‘transgressor’ is the degree to which they are
able to accept responsibility for their actions, anger is probably unnecessary
to the approximate extent that it will be effective. In other words, anger works best on those people who are
already morally mature, and hence probably are already more responsive to calm
instruction anyway.
Second: If the pain of
remorse is necessary to the process, then so too is forgiveness. This is true in
a practical as well as moral sense – and the two are related.
How so? Legitimate anger
is premised on the notion that (illegitimate) suffering is wrong. To the extent that anger leads to
remorse, the pain of remorse has no legitimate function beyond its role in signifying
and accompany acceptance of responsibility, and thence in signifying and
accompany a change in understanding, and thence behaviour. Once behaviour has
changed, remorse has no further valid psychological function. The only role it can continue to play
is in relation to retribution. Or as Nussbaum calls it, ‘payback’[2].
In other words, to
stay angry at someone after they have (authentically and appropriately) felt
remorse – i.e. sufficient to mean that their understanding has changed, and
hence their future behaviour will change - is no longer to point at the claim
which your anger originally expressed, but to point at you: your desire for
them to continue to suffer. And
this is illogical (and hence also morally wrong), not simply because (as Nussbaum
argues) it does nothing to “restore the thing that was lost”, but because of
the initial premise that motivated (and constituted) your anger in the first
place: that illegitimate suffering is wrong.
This is why
forgiveness is both morally and psychologically necessary. Forgiveness prevents us falling prey to
the desire to inflict further (illegitimate) suffering, which just leads to
further anger.
Importantly, however,
forgiveness also implies trust: trust that your transgressor has not only changed
their understanding, but that their changed understanding will lead to changed
behaviour. Now, we can choose to
stay angry at someone until we see observable changes in their behaviour. In other words, we can use sustained
anger as a conditional form of ‘discipline’ against our transgressors: I will
continue to hold you morally responsible for causing illegitimate suffering
until you prove that you have changed. In this sense, anger is used as
something like a ‘teaching tool’.
But this move runs the
same sort of risks as any kind of anger: if the transgressor genuinely does
feel remorse, and believes they have changed – if, in other words, they possess
goodwill - your continued anger (and lack of trust) may seem like continued
(and unfair) retribution. And if they don’t feel authentic remorse, then your anger
has been ineffective anyway, and your continued anger will only exacerbate their resistance.
Again, for such sustained anger
to be effective, the transgressor needs to be morally mature enough either to have
recognised and accepted your claim, and to have recognised and managed their own
reactions. In either case, this
means they are probably mature enough to be trusted (provided that you have
adequately explained your claims, and there is no other unacknowledged external
factor likely to impede their ability to change their behaviour.).
In light of all that,
the “Jesus Strategy” – forgive the transgression, clear your mind of anger, and
skip straight to the trust building move of forgiveness - perhaps doesn’t look
so stupid and naïve after all. It starts to look canny and persuasive, if extremely
challenging. As Mandela found, it’s definitely something you have to work hard at.
OK. So it’s hard. And to that extent, it maybe
not realistic in the short term. We all have our issues to overcome. And, to be
even more realistic, it doesn’t always lead to change. What do you do if, after
repeatedly playing nice, and calmly but firmly explaining the situation, your
transgressor continues to do the wrong thing by you? What if they simply don’t accept your argument, and can’t
see the legitimacy of the claim you are pointing to, or don’t accept your
account of why they have breached the standard?
The guy who
may or may not have been Jesus’ brother suggested this, instead: be quick
to listen, slow to speak, and slow
to anger. As an alternative to
the Jesus Strategy, it makes sense on two levels. First, it’s less of a stretch target for those of us who
don’t aspire to be saints, and second it leverages the relationship between
anger and trust to make anger more effective as a tactic for change.
Let’s call this the
Modified Jesus Strategy: First build trust, and use anger with care. Choose the
time and place, know your transgressor (and their likely reactions), and don’t
personalise it. In other words: measure your anger, and use it only when you
are confident the right conditions prevail for to have a chance at being
effective. Otherwise it’s liable to be counterproductive.
But that’s all still largely
at a personal level. It still doesn’t fully address the other questions I
posed:
What if my claim is not simply about
something that is personal and circumstantial, but systematic and social? In
what sense does it make sense to be angry at “the system”, or at the people who
(wittingly or unwittingly) perpetuate it?
To these I want to now
add another question. Having highlighted the importance of moral maturity (i.e.
peoples’ ability to manage their spontaneous reactions and accept personal
responsibility), a more fundamental challenge has to be acknowledged:
What if people just lack good-will?
[1] Sometimes his view is
summed up by the prescription to ‘turn the other cheek’. However, I personally
don’t see this as advice about anger so much as a shrewd psychological trick to
delegitimise and avoid personal violence by confronting it with a show
of character. (In its own way a psychological “shock tactic” not unlike the use
of natural anger, perhaps more understandable and effective in an age where the
use of casual violence was almost certainly a legitimate social norm).
[2] Here, the phenomenon of ‘retribution’ can function on both sides of the relationship
i.e. someone can keep ‘torturing themselves’ with remorse long after it is
appropriate.
