ATDTDA 671ff

[Michael Bailey]

On 1/18/08, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>Three types of anger are recognized by psychologists: One connected to
>the impulse for self-preservation, occurring when the person or animal
>is tormented or trapped. The second type of anger is a reaction to
>perceived deliberate harm doing or unfair treatment by others.
>Irritability, sullenness and churlishness are examples of the third
>type of anger which is related more to character traits than to
>instincts or cognitions.[3]

nice cite.
If there are multiple definitions of anger, then
I will try to refute each.
My hypothesis is that anger is always
unnecessary and counterpoductive, and there's always a
response that's more useful 'n' fun...

1) Self-preservation - Isn't there a major karate-movie
cliche where the sensei always takes the fighter aside and
says "He beat you because you got angry?"   A-and
isn't anger what drove Anakin to the dark side, which
turned out badly for him.

2) Reaction to unfair treatment - St John of the Cross,
somewhere in _Dark Night of the Soul_,
talks about suffering turning to 100-fold rewards.
 To endure the suffering, through practice even to
experience it as pleasure -
not in a naive or foolish way, but consistently with
one's intelligence -
these practices actually go along with "BDSM on the family level" as
described in GR, eg.  (also with the religious experience including
various forms of inebriation)

3) Character traits - what Shakespeare would have called
a choleric disposition.  Milton wrote "Hence, loathed melancholy"
but didn't manage to banish that humor forever...
perhaps my stance against anger only reflects
the current status of an implicitly transitory nature
and would only meet success among those predisposed similarly.

> All these questions don't mean ATD is good writing, for a host of
> reasons, least of which is the 900+ page count.

AtD didn't cause me to immediately swoon with ecstasy the way
Vineland did, but gradually I begin to taste of the 100-fold rewards of the
"peine fort et dure" of reading AtD.  (-;

I'm probably as unlikely to change your mind about it
as you mine*, but you often make good points, so...
"a host of reasons, David?   And what might they be, pray tell?"



Mike Bailey
"Mother very easily made a jam sandwich, using no
peanuts, mayonnaise, or glue" - Robert Anton Wilson


* I'm approaching the mindset of a Creationist in that regard:
"a Pynchon book is a great book"
is almost a postulate for me, not a hypothesis.