On Anger, Guilt, and Vitality

1. Intro

Anger is a type of vitality. Probably the most notorious type. And if anger is notorious for poorly founded reasons, then it could possibly be a place humming with potential. Often misunderstood and misused, often the scapegoat. The word anger is often a misnomer for an act coupled with a feeling, rather than simply a feeling. That conflation is no friend to a vital psyche. Here, we want to go to the source of anger because a good relationship with anger is an underpinning aspect of freedom, creativity, authority, humor, and play - a lot of good things. 

Pristine anger is immediate anger - the anger of instinct. Pristine anger is clear-eyed and full of energetic potential but incomplete. It's an accurate feeling, but merely psychological. To be useful anger needs to traverse the world of relationship. It needs to move from feeling to language. Anger moves quickly. Getting it into language takes skill.

Pristine anger is psychological. It happens before any possibility of conflict. 

But this needs a little more nuance. Because the pristine anger also happens after interpersonal conflict. Meaning the conflict happened, and then I feel a new pristine anger that has not yet met the social realm. We want to make this process conscious, and catch that pristine anger early. Get to know it. 

Get to know it because this (category of vitality) type of anger is an element of human goodness. It wants to weave into consciousness, and be a complementary color thru the rest of the fabric of the self. Being in touch with our pristine instinct is necessary for psychological authority, for becoming skillfully discerning, and for allowing motivation and creativity to unfurl to catch the gusts and breezes of the self. 

2. Instinct, Media, Epistemology

Pristine anger is an aspect of instinct. Instinct is an immediate response of the self to experience. It's unclear whether a person can ever make exact contact with  instinct, though I think there are moments where it is possible to make a very close approach. The reason for this is because the stimuli we experience are mediated by our nervous system at the very least - and it is hard to get to experience before our nervous system does, since our nervous system is what delivers the experience to us in the first place. Experience is likely also always mediated by our unconscious, which is embedded in our nervous system. So we have a physical element, the nervous system, and a psychic element, the unconscious that likely always arrives as a package with our conscious awareness. 

But this isn't to say we can't get closer and closer to instinct. We can do a lot of traveling more closely toward that pristine instinct. Our body which holds a lot of emotional habit and habitual scruff can be cared for and freed of large aspects of this burdensome stuckness. Basically it can be tended to like a garden or an orchard. The same goes for our unconscious. The unconscious mind can be freed from limiting past habit, this is reflex, and allowed to merge more with instinct, which it wants to do - this is intuition. 

It is then But the closer we get to instinct the clearer we think and feel, the more energy we have, and the more authority we carry. More of a reflex, than a premeditation. It's not influenced by a past habit, but refers to the self in the moment in order to respond to the world. 

Instinct is related to an internal epistemology, an internal way of knowing. This contrasts with the media. Media is shorthand for mediating epistemology - the media mediates knowledge. It is, by contrast, external epistemology, an external ground for external knowing. It is either in competition with our internal knowing or a supplement to it. I want to take in knowledge from others who are trying to arrive at truth. I don't want to take in knowledge of people who are trying to promote an agenda. Telling the difference can be difficult. I want to try. 

Internal knowing is within the reach of the every self. Internal knowing is key for keeping psychological bearings. Or said another way, divorced from instinct we become easier prey for external epistemological authority. Our authority suffers when there's a vacancy of our pristine anger. 

It's our job to sort how we get to what we think we know. There is a purely intellectual route of thinking here where we're likely to get lost, not that thinking is bad, but if it's separated from our body, and we want to think with our mind and think with our body. If we are only in our mind, we will miss important points. Then there is the turn inward to the body and its world of information and remembering, where work awaits, but so does clarity. 

An aside: Dismembering and Remembering. Forgetting is rarely a useful word. Similar to forgiving. Forgiving is code for desensitizing one's self. Both words tend to have lazy meaning, convenient in their haziness. Forgetting tends to imply a passive process. Yes there may be mental attrition of the content of the mind from getting older, but forgetting things that affect us greatly is always an active process - more similar to 'I put it out of mind.' Forgetting is rarely used in this active sense.

Dismembering is quite a violent word. To pull into pieces. The Hindu gods are often represented as having numerous arms. The god being symbol of the psyche. And the god dismembered is the psyche pulled into pieces. And the god remembered is the psyche put back into place. Anger is a likely candidate for dismemberment. Our bones know the reasons why. And our bones also know that a full-fledged psyche needs remembered anger to hum with life as intended. 

Back to anger: A non-mediated response of instinct is healthy operating for the human, where  personal vitality is in contact with external reality. A motivating breeze of liveliness. That's what we want. This gives a person good traction for their vitality and with good footing one can make an impact on our vicinity. It's also how we most efficiently use our energy. 

But how can you tell whether a response comes from healthy instinct or unhealthy past habit? Whether a response is enlivened by instinct or charged by the bitterness of the outcast? To move toward that type of contact requires lots of sorting of past experience and old patterns, a lot of looking inward. It requires a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other type of patience. By this we can start to tell what is old pattern and what is non-mediated experience - what's charged up old habit and what is instinct. 

3. Proprioception

(Proprioception is another internal way of knowing.) The body in the present moment holds lots of information, just waiting to be accessed. But if we've turned off access to this awareness, how do we now approach? This is where attention to breathing becomes fundamental. Most people are unaware of how they feel in their body, and are blocked off from this aspect. It affects because it is fundamental to their ability to know, and fundamental to the authority of their being. (Epistemology in the era of mass media. How do I know anything? This is where knowing my body is fundamental. I can know my self and my body and begin from there. Ontology in the era of the dopamine click. Who am I? How do I become real? What if I don't feel real, what do I need? This has more to do with dynamics of narcissism. The presence of the caring other who can see the specific you reasonably well. The sui generis self doesn't exist, except in the movies.) Without body awareness confidence is simply a show of confidence. Body awareness accessed thru proprioceptive breathing ushers a person into intimacy with their instinct. Our sensations are something we can get to know. By which we can get to know our specific unique vitality. One's body offers a wealth of information that passes most people by. But everyone can relate to their body in a listening way if they choose.  

3.5. An Aside: The Word Wrath

In Noah Webster's 1828 First Edition of An American Dictionary of the English Language, the word wrath has three entries. The third reads: a. just punishment of an offense or crime - there's a line break, before the definition continues - b: God's wrath, in Scripture, is his holy and just indignation against sin. After each section of the third entry a verse in the Bible is listed for reference. In Merriam-Webster's 2020 Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition, the definition of wrath has two entries. 1. strong vengeful anger or indignation, and 2. retributory punishment for an offense or a crime: divine chastisement. There is no third definition. And of course no Bible verses.

Several things are notable in the contrast. The changed display of authorship, with Webster's name diluted and demoted. He was a Bible believer. The lack of the third definition in the 2020 version, along with its deletion of the idea of justice within the definition. Then there is the removal of the religious component. The coinciding removal of the ideas of justice and God. The removal of the reference to God. And the editors, working behind the scene to mediate meaning. 

This is not to say put the God of the Bible back in the dictionary. This is, however, to say that the removal of this culturally foundational God leaves a vacancy in the foundation of meaning. This is a very small example of what Nietzsche predicted in The Gay Science about the ramifications of the death of God. He said that European culture was, know it or now, founded on the principles of Christianity. Take that foundation away and there will be an absence of structure. 

The God of the Bible lacks a co-helixing feminine component. The yin that goes with the yang. The Shakti that goes with the Shiva. Society and individual both suffer for the imbalance. But critique of the God, who does, or did, hold a lot of authority and provide a lot of cultural order, without stepping into our own authority, again, leaves a vacuum of meaning and meaning like anything will atrophy if not stewarded.  

The God of the Bible can also be a way to shirk personal authority and to not think. But taking personal authority is hard work, and so is the act of actual thinking, which requires that one's authority has not been outsourced to a mediating force - the parents, the religion, the media. 

And back to words and their meaning. A word has reference of meaning in two directions. Lateral and direct. Lateral meaning is dictionary meaning. What does toast mean? It leans on what the words bread and heat mean. What do bread and heat mean? Bread depends on the word flour and heat depends on the word energy. And so the words lean on each other and what is the foundational word? Direct meaning is like taking a bite of a slice of toast. What is toast in this direct sense? The experience of it. T.S. Eliot said, "Oh do not ask what is it. Let us go and make our visit." Stop flipping pages in your dictionary and go knock into the thing itself. These are aspects of foundational knowing and of authority. 

Anger divorced from the idea of justice becomes, has become, problematic for society. And much of western, formerly Bible believing, society has a different imbalance which is mercy without justice. The cult of being nice. But how do we regain the idea of justice without the idea of God? This gap will not fill itself. 

4. Proprioception as part of the I - A flirtatious look at the phrase 'I love you.' 

Proprioception is also key to intimacy. Let's look first at the first word 'I.' Part of our I is proprioceptive. How I feel in my body when I'm around 'you.' If I don't know my proprioception when I'm around you, I'm missing part of the picture. If my information gathering doesn't include a tour through the proprioception of my body, I could be missing important information. To know my proprioception and to bring it to the table in relationship means more potential for intimacy and connection, more richness and meaning. It also means less likelihood that I miss something important things that happen in the relationship. And if I know my self in this way, I'm more likely to be able to see 'you.' This then begs the question of whether you have access to your proprioception....  

5. Proprioception and Authority

The body in the present moment holds lots of information, just waiting to be accessed. But if we've turned off access to this awareness, how do we now approach?

This is where attention to breathing becomes fundamental. Most people are unaware of how they feel in their body, and are blocked off from this aspect. It affects because it is fundamental to their ability to know, and fundamental to the authority of their being. (Epistemology in the era of mass media. How do I know anything? This is where knowing my body is fundamental. I can know my self and my body and begin from there. Ontology in the era of the dopamine click. Who am I? How do I become real? What if I don't feel real, what do I need? This has more to do with dynamics of narcissism. The presence of the caring other who can see the specific you reasonably well. The sui generis self doesn't exist, except in the movies.) Without body awareness confidence is simply a show of confidence. Body awareness accessed thru proprioceptive breathing ushers a person into intimacy with their instinct. Our sensations are something we can get to know. By which we can get to know our specific unique vitality. One's body offers a wealth of information that passes most people by. But everyone can access it if they choose.  

This instinctual anger can take another useful form which is a force toward truth in our pursuit of accuracy. Truth with certainty may be out of our reach as humans if we really think about it. But this is not to post-modernly throw in the towel and call ourselves agnostic and milquetoast around. Knowledge is a spectrum of depth. Authority is the same. We can get to know - a process - ourselves. And develop - a process - our authority. What we want is a closer and closer approach to truth. Which is a closer and closer approach to our own authority. We can keep working toward awareness and becoming more refined and sturdy along the way. 

Certainty discounts the sway of the unconscious. Instinctual anger is an antipode to the lie. And relatedly, its an antidote to the lethargy of the pushover or depressed part of us all. It is part of the cure.

-Expanding awareness is key. It helps us sort the unconscious old patterns from the vital instinct. We look closely at behavior, patterns and sort, sort, sort. And the sum of successful sorting is insight. With this insight we're armed to skillfully move into contact with more the world. The result is a more vital life. -

Most of us are primarily motivated by a harsh breeze. It whispers, do more, you must do more to be of any worth.

6. Anger, Guilt and Interpersonal Difference