Quick sum of the idea I keep playing with lately:

It’s not that anger makes people dumb.  In fact if you support a stoic way of thinking – anger’s got a hell of an important function, and sometimes it can even help us make the “right” decision.

The thing is that anger, mad, and most of it’s variants makes us shrewd.  Politicians use it in rhetoric all the time to rile people up and create that in-group out-group polarity, and brand themselves as the leader on your side.   Anger makes you tunnel in on that which needs to be fixed, destroyed, corrected, etc.   It’s usually destructive – although sometimes we get angry at destructive/non-constructive tendencies, so that paradigm’s irrelevant.  I don’t care that anger’s usually destructive.

What I care about is how it channels and lasers people.  Anger takes those emotional circuits of our minds and makes us unable to do anything but think about a topic in a certain way, and it programs us to induce reasoning more than deduce the actual reasons for a situations.  These are necessary sometimes because, we don’t always pay attention to the best of things – this’s like a hard-wired safe-guard from nature that makes us SURE to focus on what’s important to our apparent survival.

But maybe there’s a better option.  If you’re truly evolved, you’re probably emotionally attuned to everything and perfectly adapted, OR, you’re able to reason through most of your life.  I could see it either, way, less important.  What’s key, and what’s pulling the trigger on this whole thinking is the realization that we CAN decide not to get angry.  I’ve been doing this lately with GREAT results.  I still get things fixed, and the issue is much better handled. Which made me go “dur hur I wonder WHY a human would evolve to be able to turn off their emotions when they could say fuggit and give in to easily getting fired up – like there’s evolution in being able to inhibit that excitatory emotional response like no other.   And I appreciate that added layer of complexity – it’d be easier for nature to wire a man to fly off the handle or just not have to.  Obviously, the choice is a specific feature.

(No I don’t think we always have the choice.  I just think we do more often than we think – we have the choice to get fired up about half the crap on social media, politics, what was said, what we think was said, devaluing others against ideals – these are often CHOICES we subconsciously make.)

And what I’ve realized is, when you get mad or angry at something, you do kind of elevate it’s significance.  You say, “My existence incorporates you to the point where you’re an obstructive issue which must be corrected.”   It’s not that you should be above anger, it’s not like your world should be bigger than items which aren’t ideal – that’s fuckin crazy – but it’s that when you CHOOSE to get fired up, you choose to give your existence and laser in on it.

I have some anecdotes I won’t get into of some pretty naughty kids.  The thing is, the key word in that sentence is kids.  I could even say fuckin’ kids – and you’d tell by my tone that the operative word is kids.   My life doesn’t involve kids, not right now.   And that there, is why I’m more disdaining than angry at the memory involved with this anecdote.

The point is, this’s a great reason why not to choose to get angry at cruz or trump (or insert politician of your anti-choice here.)  The man specializes in incediary campaigns and manipulative rhetoric – if you were to attack them, you make the premise of your attack your talking points.  And what sucks about that is you won’t get other talking points.  You won’t get peace of mind.  You’ll become shrewd and shortsighted.  You’re much easier to manipulate, trick, or explode into decisions you don’t want to make.   Again, it’s not that anger is a bad thing, it’s that you have to be choice about approaching things which resonate with things that make you mad.

I spent a day writing comedy this month, all I’ll say is, I don’t see how Jon Stewart can look into that which pisses him off and still find the humor in things.  For that, he’s a fuckin’ champ, and either a laser-savant, or some sorta super duper smartass.

I obviously think the later.

(Crap I meant this to be a much quicker sum.  Back to it I go.)