Anger is not right - right?

Published in Living Now Magazine June 2015

“Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.”

Robert Green Ingersoll

We should banish the world of anger – expel it to the farthest reaches of the Universe – prohibit all and every person from being or becoming angry – especially men. It is a toxic emotion that serves no purpose except to incite war and death. Way back in Rome at the time of Christ, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (otherwise known as Seneca the younger) knew this when he wrote,

“Anger: an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored
than to anything into which it is poured.”

But is this really true?

Aristotle, 350 odd years earlier in Greece wrote,

“Anyone can become angry, that is easy.

But to be angry at the right person, to the right degree,

at the right time, for the right purpose,

and in the right way – that is not easy.”

So, here lies our issue, it is ridiculous to say that any and all forms of anger are bad. We needed it way back in the day when could be set upon by a tiger walking through the jungle. F…