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Comment by tibbar | Hacker News Reader

The article strongly equates anger with a desire for revenge. That's a bit confusing to me - for me, anger is just an emotion that's not particularly linked to any plan. Heck, I can even be angry at myself, in which case revenge doesn't even make sense. I think anger is most closely associated for me with "painful reflection on something that happened to me that felt unjust".

As an aside, while being easily angered is not good, I also think it's equally bad ritually suppress anger, because (a) that takes a toll over time that you eventually won't be able to suppress and (b) if you don't provide "feedback" to whatever it is that's angering you, it will probably happen again.

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The claim in the article di that anger is associated with a desire for payback, of which revenge is one manifestation. This is subtle, but I think that in an article like this subtle differences matter. The author also claims that this is backed by psychology studies, though some sources for this claim would have been welcome.

The author does go on to focus on revenge only, and I'm with you on being skeptical that this implies that anger is an emotion that should be repressed. It seems to me that the authors equates a bit too quickly payback with a negative or a frivolous desire. The focus on Mandela's South Africa, of all things, is pretty curious since there definitely was a change in status for the white community after he took power.

When you're angry with yourself (or perhaps when you are angry at a situation in which you are by your own fault) the payback would be to not let that situation happen again. Or maybe the payback is to change yourself to address the character flaw that your anger is targeted at.

I love this distinction, thank you for capturing it. In this framing, what forms of payback besides revenge, if any, exist when one is angry with other people?

Proving them wrong. Or undoing the negative situation they created.

This can in fact be quite a powerful driver. When I was younger a hurtful comment by a teacher led me to start getting good marks in their subject. This was definitely fueled by the anger I felt at the dismissive remarks, as teenager me had no other motivation.

Another payback could be to increase your status to their level (not decrease theirs) so you can do things differently and make things right. What Mandela did basically.

Maybe making them feel remorseful or regret their initial action, but to me this is a byproduct and ends up not mattering that much. In the situation I described I didn't really care what the teacher felt or what effect there was on them (likely none at all). Though there was some satisfaction in proving to myself they were an idiot.

Replying to myself as I can't edit anymore, but I think payback can also be about cutting off the person from your life, or otherwise making them irrelevant to you. I don't believe this would qualify as revenge, and I think that this is a rather common type of anger payback. It is also rather healthy and effective when the person has a toxic behavior.

The article states that Aristotle and many modern philosophers agree that a desire for payback is a fundamental part of anger.

I questioned it too, thinking through a bunch of different scenarios.

The biggest counter example that popped into my head was being angry at my kids for doing typical kid stuff.

I'm not trying to get "payback" or revenge, right?

When I paused and reflected on it, I'm not so sure. Why do I raise my voice? I want them to feel bad, theoretically so that they learn to not do whatever it was they did. Is me wanting them to feel bad wanting payback? I guess you could argue that it is.

Whenever I get angry, it's very action-oriented. I stew on what I'm going to do in response to whatever made me angry. After I calm down, I can recognize how irrational most of those thoughts are.

My brain doesn't function well when I'm angry. The thing that I've learned, and it's been a hard lesson at times, is to not react. Those feelings of revenge and payback etc... make everything worse.

Especially when I really look back on whatever situation made me angry. Once I'm calm, I'm able to see what part of the situation was my fault. A lot of times, it's an embarrassingly large part, and the fact that I was a jerk in some way is hard to admit.

It's a lot easier to just externalize it all, get mad at someone else, and contemplate ways to "get even".

Thanks for pointing that out. As I reflect on it, I think anger is maybe just really confusing to me. I'm pretty hardwired to believe that if something went wrong, either it's my fault or there's some explanation for the other person's behavior. Anger causes some dissonance. I might burn a lot of cycles having a mental argument over the possible justification for what happened, and then of course I calm down eventually. I suppose that when I've been quite confident in injustice of a situation before I've calmed down, I've moved to thinking of revenge.

My thoughts of "revenge" aren't things that I would do to a person, for example, I don't think about slashing tires or calling their boss or anything like that.

It's much more internal, like "let's see how they like it when I'm gone". "They'll never find another guy like me". "This company will never survive without me". Stuff like that. When I get very angry, I shut down. My move is to leave.

I've acted on this many times when I was younger to my regret. I've learned to never make big decisions when I'm tired or angry, because a lot of the time they are vengeance driven, rather than what's best for me.

Yours is a good point — and something that took me a long time to understand about some people I care about. Personally, my anger is usually "directed," though more in the sense of furiously/forcefully wanting to correct some perceived wrong, rather than revenge. The notion of "directionless anger" was kinda alien to my mind.

But some people definitely have an "angry at the world" or "angry in general" feeling. And if you swoop in with a "let's fix the problem that's causing this" attitude, it may completely miss the mark for them. Ask me how I know (:

For some people, a good outlet for anger is venting, and doing something is not helpful. And for others, it's the opposite. People are complicated. We use simplistic words like "anger" which mean different things to different people in different contexts, and misunderstandings ensue.

> my anger is usually "directed," though more in the sense of furiously/forcefully wanting to correct some perceived wrong, rather than revenge.

This is the exact definition of revenge. While revenge carries connotations that we tend to separate ourselves from today -- sounds too barbaric? -- it's fundamentally about justice, and as such is justified and even noble given the right context and expression.

I suppose I lightly disagree with that. Revenge, to me, holds a significant connotation of "spite." I.e. making someone feel bad/hurt because they made you feel bad/hurt. It's about the hurt, as much as (or more than) correcting the situation.

But words are sloppy, I totally get what you're saying too (:

Interesting, yeah that makes sense to me too.

Very interesting. I definitely feel like my anger is directed - I'm usually angry about something specific, and it would feel good if someone genuinely tried to help fix the problem - but I just don't think about revenge too much. I think it takes most of my energy to try to understand what happened and why, and I don't generally stay angry that long about specific events.

> can even be angry at myself, in which case revenge doesn't even make sense

I have seen lots of people, myself included, where self revenge would make the most plausible explanation for behavior. I no longer see people as homogeneous or discrete.

Anger serves a useful tool, but it can also be an extremely powerful way to manipulate and be manipulated.

Fascinating, can you describe some of these cases? I suppose self-harm could fit this description, but let's say I'm angry at myself for making a bad decision that hurt someone else, what would revenge on myself look like? It would be hard to make things up to the victim by sabotaging myself.

Bad self talk where one tears oneself down is a common one.

There is also regressive punishment, in the case where someone else has been wronged, not writing the wrong and letting it linger is also a form of self harm.

I now have the philosophy that if I were to see someone else treating someone the way one treats themselves, and they take note of it, then the internal behavior is not appropriate.

Denying oneself something nice/good (but unrelated). Or doing something that provokes a punishing response from someone/something else. Like picking a fight, or "failing" to pay bills, gambling.

Neither will help a victim of course, but self-sabotage never help (almost by definition).

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