It should come as no surprise that Marcus includes perhaps the best-known Stoic technique of all, which we’ve called cognitive distancing. When you’re angry, remind yourself that it’s not things or other people that make you angry but your judgments about them. If you can let go of your value judgments and stop calling other people’s actions “awful,” then your anger will diminish. Of course, as Seneca pointed out, there are initial feelings of anger that we can’t control, which the Stoics call the proto-passions (propatheiai). We share these emotional reactions to some extent with other animals, and so they’re natural and inevitable, like the anxiety of the Stoic teacher whom Gellius described being caught in a storm. Marcus says that it’s up to you, though, whether you persist in your anger. We don’t control our initial reaction, perhaps, but we do control how we respond to it: it’s not what happens first that matters but what you do next.
How can you learn to pause and gain cognitive distance from your initial feelings of anger rather than being swept along by them? By realizing that another person’s actions can’t harm your character, Marcus says. All that really matters in life is whether you’re a good person or a bad person, and that’s down to you alone. Other people can harm your property or even your body, but they can’t harm your character unless you allow them to do so. As Marcus puts it, if you let go of the opinion “I am harmed,” the feeling of being harmed will disappear, and when the feeling is gone, so is any real harm.14 Often, though, just reminding yourself that it’s not events that are making you angry but your judgments about them will be enough to weaken the hold anger has on you. 8. ANGER DOES US MORE HARM THAN GOOD
Marcus often links gaining cognitive distance with the next technique, which we’ve called functional analysis. Think about the consequences of responding with anger and compare them to those of responding rationally, calmly, and perhaps with empathy and kindness. Alternatively, just remind yourself that anger actually does you more harm than good. The Stoics liked to consider how ugly and unnatural anger looks—a scowling face, grimacing, turning puce with rage, like someone in the throes of a horrible disease.15 Marcus views the profound ugliness of anger as a sign that it is unnatural and against reason.
Also, where does anger get us? It’s often totally impotent. Bear in mind, says Marcus, that men will carry on doing the same things anyway, even if they cause you to burst with rage.16 Worse, though, our anger is not only futile but also counterproductive. He notes that it often requires more effort to deal with the consequences of losing our temper than it does just to tolerate the very acts with which we’re angry. The Stoics believe that we take offense because we assume other people’s actions threaten our interests in some way. However, once you consider that your own anger is a bigger threat to you than the thing you’re angry about, then you inevitably start to weaken its grip.
Anger about perceived slights does us more harm than the slights themselves in an even more fundamental sense, though. The actions of others are external to us and cannot touch our character, but our own anger transforms us into a different sort of person, almost like an animal, and for Stoics that’s the greater harm. Marcus therefore reminds himself that the vice of another man cannot penetrate your character unless you allow it to do so. Ironically, anger does the most harm to the person experiencing it, although he has the power to stop it.17 Your first priority in most cases should therefore be doing something about your own anger before attempting to do anything about the events that triggered it.
Throughout The Meditations, Marcus frequently expresses this in another way, by reminding himself to leave the wrong with the wrongdoer: “Does another do me wrong? That’s his business, not mine.” He who does wrong does wrong against himself; he who acts unjustly acts unjustly to himself, because he harms only himself, he says. The wrongdoer damages his own character; you shouldn’t join him in his misery by making the value judgment that he has offended and harmed you too.18
It’s tempting, once again, to imagine that Marcus may have been thinking of adversaries like Cassius when he warns himself not to feel toward his enemies as they feel toward him. Likewise, you shouldn’t start to harbor the sort of opinions the wicked hold or those they wish you to hold. In short, the best form of revenge is not to sink to their level by allowing yourself to become angry with them.19 If someone hates you, Marcus says, that’s their problem. Your only concern is to avoid doing anything to deserve being hated. 9. NATURE GAVE US THE VIRTUES TO DEAL WITH ANGER
Marcus also recommends applying another familiar Stoic technique to anger, the one we’ve called contemplation of virtue. You should ask yourself what virtue or capacity Nature has given you to cope with the situation you’re facing. There are several closely related questions you might also ask: How do other people cope with anger? What would your role models do? What do you admire certain people for doing when faced with situations that would make others lose their temper? Marcus says that you should accept that wrongdoing inevitably exists in the world and then ask, “What virtue has Nature given man as a response to the wrongdoing in question?” He explains this by comparing virtues to medicines prescribed by Nature as the “antidotes” to vice.20
The main antidote to anger for Marcus is the Stoic virtue of kindness, which along with fairness makes up the cardinal social virtue of justice. Whereas the Stoics viewed anger as the desire to harm others, kindness is essentially the opposite: goodwill toward others and the desire to help them. However, what other people do is not strictly up to us, so we should exercise kindness and goodwill toward others with the reserve clause in mind, by adding the caveat “Fate permitting.” Like Cato’s archer, a Stoic should aim at the target (of benefiting others) but be satisfied if he has acted with kindness, and willing to accept both success and failure with equanimity.
Marcus actually gives a specific example of what he means, by describing an imaginary encounter with someone who was testing his patience with their hostility. He imagines gently encouraging the person in the right direction by responding along the lines of “No, my son, we have been made for other things; I shall be in no way harmed, but you are harming yourself.” Marcus says we should speak to them delicately, reminding them that human beings are meant to live together in society, like bees and other communal animals, and not to be at odds with each other. We should not speak sarcastically or include harsh rebukes but rather reply with affectionate kindness in our hearts. We should be simple and honest and not lecture them as though from a schoolmaster’s chair or as though trying to impress bystanders. It’s tempting again to wonder if Marcus was thinking how he should talk to men like Cassius, or even his own son Commodus.
For Stoics, kindness first and foremost means educating others or wishing they would become wise, free from vice and passion. It’s a desire to turn enemies into friends, Fate permitting. Marcus’s example of acting with kindness actually entails educating the other person in two of the most important strategies he mentioned earlier: