Mega Genius Intelligence Briefing No. 37

Mega Genius^® Intelligence Briefing:

An Einsteinian Conclusion

The late English author Douglas Adams noted, “In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”

The theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, who also dealt with universal concepts, contemplated the human emotion of anger. Before I share his conclusion with you, let us begin a brief journey of enlightenment on the subject by clarifying the difference between being annoyed, angered, and enraged.

A young girl asked her father, "Dad, what is the difference between anger and rage?"

Her father replied, "It is just a matter of degree. Let me show you what I mean." Then he went to the telephone, put it on the speaker, so that his daughter could hear, and dialed a number at random. To the man who answered his telephone, the girl’s father said, "Hello, is Melvin there?"

The man answered, "There is no one living here named Melvin. Why don't you learn to look up numbers before you dial them?"

"See," the father told his daughter. "That man was not happy with our call. He was probably busy and we annoyed him. Now watch...." Then the father dialed the number again.

"Hello,” he said, “Is Melvin there?"

"Now look here!" came the testy reply. "You just called this number, and I told you that there is no Melvin here! Don’t call this number again!" The receiver slammed down hard.

Then the father turned to his daughter and said, "You see, that was anger. Now I'll show you what rage is like." He dialed the same number, and when a stern voice shouted, "Hello!" the father calmly said, "Hello, this is Melvin. Have there been any calls for me?"

Anger can easily be humorous, but, too often, it does not seem to be. Many emotions – such as mild interest, monotony and sympathy – are sedate and undynamic, but not anger. It can explode upon your life like a fireball, skyrocket your blood pressure, ruin your relationships, and rob you of sleep. In an instant, it can plunge you into litigation, lawyers’ fees, financial ruin and prison. Anger can even be a premature ticket to your grave.

I am sure you realize that in these times of elevated stress, road rage, and court-ordered anger-management classes, almost anything that you do, or do not do, may annoy someone else and perhaps incur his wrath. People often become angry over utter insignificance. If your opinion about anything differs from that of the next fellow, just expressing it may make him livid. For instance, I know two women, who shared a longtime friendship, who once argued about whether ham was mostly pink or white, until they became so enraged that they refused to speak to one another for seven years. Neither was willing to allow the other to have an insignificant opinion. That was all it took.

I have no anger toward anyone in the world, but the emotion still intrudes upon my doorstep. Just the fact that I am both immodest and communicative frequently gores someone’s bull. For example, recently, in a restaurant, a woman who has been my “friend” for 40 years launched a pyrotechnic show directly at me, spewing more rage than I had seen since George C. Scott slapped a hospitalized soldier in the 1970 Academy Award-winning film, Patton. In fact, I now feel a fellowship with that shell-shocked combatant. With flashing eyes and trembling lips, “Betty” (not her real name), shouted, wept, and berated me for an hour, finally decreeing repeatedly that neither of us must ever speak to the other again.

There were two reasons that I permitted her to dramatize for so long. First, she was my houseguest, to whom I wanted to remain hospitable. Second, I was curious about her uncontrolled fury, the likes of which I had not encountered in civilized society for more than half a century. (If you are used to tirades, perhaps you should associate with a more mentally-stable class of friends.)

Betty and I did not have an argument, you understand; she had a diatribe. Although I could have easily resolved her rage within moments, I confess that I let this woman, whom I still love, maintain the anger that she so fervently created, for three reasons. First, it is not helpful to others to reward their bad behavior. Second, she deserves the opportunity to accept responsibility for her actions. Third, she deserves the opportunity to learn this priceless lesson – he who angers you, controls you.

What crime had I committed that made her so angry and me so unforgivable? Had I injured her family, or her home, or her? No, Betty’s sole complaint to me was that I had confidentially told her husband that I was unimpressed with one aspect of their teenage daughter’s high school education. I had not criticized Betty’s daughter, you understand, just privately expressed the fact that I was unimpressed with a facet of her schooling. You see, my crime was that I had expressed an opinion (only slightly more significant than the color of ham) that Betty was unwilling to allow me to have. That was all it took.

Anger is defined as a strong feeling of displeasure. Because you probably become angry occasionally, and because others undoubtedly become angry with you, it is a subject worth examining intelligently. The more you understand anger, the more humorous angry people will seem, because you will be amused by their irrationality. Your levels of awareness and abilities rise and fall together, therefore it is important that you remember that, to the degree that you increase your understanding of anger, you increase your ability to control it.

Here are six important keys that you should know about this emotion.

The first important key to know about anger is that at the instant that a person becomes angry about anything, he makes the decision to be angry. In that split second, he decides that he has a right to be angry and that he is going to be angry, right then. He cannot become angry without making the decision to be angry. Of course, if he is alert and can catch himself deciding to be angry, then he can choose not to decide to be angry, at that time. Not becoming angry will not immediately resolve the circumstance, but becoming angry is never an intelligent solution. Anyone resolves an unwanted situation best when he is acting rationally.

The second important key to know about anger is that it occupies a key position on the emotional scale, which is a sequence of various emotions that people experience. The scale ranges from serenity (as we proceed downward) through exhilaration, enthusiasm, cheerfulness, conservatism, boredom, anger, fear, terror, grief, and apathy, to name just a few of the primary emotions. If we were to count also the secondary emotions, we would find nearly 60 clearly distinguishable emotions, in all.

As an example of how the emotional scale works, before you can descend from cheerfulness into the state of grief, you must slide sequentially downward through conservatism, boredom, anger, fear, and terror, either slowly or quickly. Conversely, to ascend from grief to cheerfulness, you must climb upward through the same emotions, in reverse order. Consequently, if one who was experiencing grief subsequently felt fear, that would undeniably indicate that he was improving emotionally, as opposed to his feeling apathy, which would confirm that he was deteriorating emotionally.

In the midst of the emotional scale is anger, which is closely associated with similar secondary emotions, such as antagonism, hostility, hate and resentment. For the purposes of this Mega Genius^® Intelligence Briefing, it is not necessary for us to differentiate between these secondary emotions. What is important is that we realize that dead center of them is anger, and that it is the primary emotion at which irrationality kicks in. At boredom, one is – well – bored ... ho-hum. However, just one primary notch lower on the emotional scale, at anger, relatively rational thought processes begin to become unbalanced and jumbled, and behavior becomes illogical, foolish and unintelligent. Always remember that anger is the point at which a person toggles his main switch of rational thought and behavior to the “off” position.

The third important key to know about anger is that you should never trust a person while he, or she, is angry, for that person will not only communicate less effectively, but will exhibit a lower level of control, responsibility and ethics. Here is why.

For a person to become angry with you, six things must happen:

1. He must fail to communicate effectively.

All troublesome conditions begin with ineffective communication.

2. He must misunderstand something.

All misunderstanding results from ineffective communication.

3. He must consider that he has failed to control someone or something.

Anyone who considers that he has sufficient control of people and objects in his environment has nothing about which to be angry.

4. He must consider that he is the unwanted effect of someone or something.

Unless he considers that he is an unwanted effect, he has nothing about which to be angry.

5. He must shirk responsibility by considering that someone else, or something else, is cause.

Another person can only be angry with you to the extent that he shirks responsibility by considering that you are cause and that he is effect. If he admits that he caused the effect on himself, even if it was by accident, then there is no one else, or anything else, with which to be angry.

If he admits that he has even a little responsibility for what has happened, then he cannot blame you without also blaming himself, which is a road that an angry person will never travel far.

By denying responsibility, he excavates his grave.

6. He must make the decision to be angry.

Having decided that someone else, or something else, is the entire cause of the effect on himself, he makes the decision to be angry. No one can make another person angry; he makes the decision himself. Then he begins thinking particularly irrationally, and expresses his rage by shouting at you, kicking the dog, attacking a chair, or otherwise assailing, either verbally or physically, whatever he considers to be cause.

The fourth important key to know about anger is that an angry person will tend to use the emotion to punish others, thereby inflicting suffering, pain, or loss. His computation will be similar to this. “Since you are cause and I am effect, the angrier that you make me, the more wrong you are. Therefore, the more you deserve to be punished.” Of course, that is irrational, illogical and backwards. In fact, the angrier that he becomes, the more he exhibits his own failure to communicate effectively, his own failure to control his environment, and the more he flaunts his own failure to accept responsibility.

Using anger to punish others is learned behavior. For example, Betty, who tried to punish me with her rage and her decision that we must no longer communicate, learned the technique from her mother, who, for decades, has directed her anger at, and withheld communication from, people whose views were at variance with hers. Moreover, Betty’s teenage daughter has already learned the same behavior from Betty. As is often the case in families, the irrationality of trying to punish others with anger continues down the generations, such as from grandmother, to daughter, to granddaughter, and so on.

The fifth important key to know about anger is that an “angry” person is not necessarily angry. People sometimes mock up an attitude of anger, just to get a point across or to promote compliance, such as in the technique of a United States Marine Corps drill instructor. The determining factor is whether the person totally controls his expression of anger or his anger even minimally influences him.

Lastly, the sixth important key to know about that emotion is that when you are angry, it is high time for a makeover. You will never be less attractive than when you exhibit anger … except for when your body is dead.

In brief, anger is an out-of-control emotional reaction of displeasure, exhibited by someone who has communicated ineffectively, misunderstood something, failed to control his environment, become an unwanted effect, denied responsibility for his condition, and decided to become angry. Anger proves that the angry person has failed to understand. Of course, anytime that you happen to be angry, it applies to you.

Instead of explaining the emotion, as I have, Einstein stated his universal concept more succinctly. “Anger,” he said, “dwells only in the bosom of fools.”

Mega Genius ^®

26 June 2007

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