Anger and the Intellect

I'm not sure how angry I really am. I feel like anger is a consistent theme with me. I feel like seriousness is a major theme with me. Then sometimes people tell me that they have a hard time imagining me being angry or serious.

Then sometimes people pick up on how angry I 'secretly' am. They say it isn't a very well kept secret. And I don't think it is a very well kept secret. Or maybe it is. I'm not really sure what I'm like.

There is something going on with this that I don't understand. I'm not sure whether I'm actually angry or not.

I think that I use my intellect to mitigate any anger that I might feel. In the past I have wondered about the relationship between anger and the intellect. Is it possible to think away anger? Is it possible to analyze away anger?

Seems unclear. Might be unlikely. But at the same time I have some hope for this idea. I have hope that it is possible to use the intellect to assuage anger. This would make sense. Zizek says that philosophy is meant to show us that our problems are really false problems. So if we can find a way to show that our problems are false problems then we might find some respite from our anger.

Also, anger always has something to do with meaning. We experience anger (and other emotions) because certain things mean certain things to us. And the task of the intellect, according to Collingwood and others, is to purposefully create our world of meaning.

I want to manage my anger by controlling the web of meaning in which my emotions are embedded.

Some Notes/Meaning and Anger.

I literally intend this to be a note of sorts. I am currently working on three different posts.

One is on my thoughts on my experience with reiki/yoga and how I sorta deal with it today after reading about quantum physics and neuroscience and other stuff. One is on Foucault's Discipline and Punish and how I see it being similar to Clausewitz's On War. Unfortunately I haven't been reading a lot the last two days cause I have been busy. But I'll be moving forward in D&P soon. The last post is on the 'everyday a priori imagination.' I explored the possible role of Collingwood's notion of the a priori imagination in a compassionate world view in my post of 3/30/10. At the time, however, I was just exploring some experiences that I had with road rage and thinking about the imagination, so I was surprised to make the connection. But now I think it seems pretty worthwhile, and I would like to pursue that idea more explicitly and more in depth.

Lastly, the note that initially spawned this post. In my post of 5/25 I think I made some statements that don't really pay attention to the effects of stress. I am very curious about the imagination and how we can craft it. I talked about becoming the crafter of your own world of meaning. It is about meaning. Many things in society feel good or bad because of the meaning that is associated with it. Anger, however, I'm not sure. We certainly assign meaning to anger after the fact. But in the actual moment of anger, are we capable of overcoming it through exercising power over meaning? Umm, my sense is that anger on some level must be essential. It must just happen. It doesn't need society's world of meaning to be a thing. Sometimes I have been pretty mad an it didn't feel like there were many words between me and that anger. But I don't think meaning operates entirely in the world of words. Definitely not. So I'm not sure. But at the same times, the 'essential' expression of anger can often be triggered by meaning in the social world. I want to explore this at some point. Right now it feels hard to think about and I'm going to eat.