Seneca: Curbing Anger
The Stoic’s Cure for the Most Destructive Emotion
“We shouldn’t control anger, but destroy it entirely — for what control is there for a thing that’s fundamentally wicked?” — Seneca
In the 1976 film Network, Howard Beale, a long-serving news anchor, decides he’s had enough. He gives an impassioned on-air speech raging against the absurdities and unfairness of life in the late 1970s. It all culminates in an appeal to his viewers to stand at their open windows and yell “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
Thousands take to their windows to yell into the rain. The network’s ratings go through the roof.
Surfing the web these days is like taking a walk down a street when half its inhabitants are yelling out of the window. Like the fictional network, media makes money from making people mad. A newsroom motto “if it bleeds, it leads” has been superceeded in the internet age by “rage to engage.”
The kangaroo courts of the internet whip up “storms” and frenzies of anger. It’s never felt so good to be angry. You can rage from your armchair, hurl insults, prove you’re right with fervour rather than reason. And anybody who disagrees with you are the reason the world is going to hell.
