The Rage Inside

We're all capable of astounding feats of rage.
From the lowly doormat to the known short fuse.

In this state of anger, are we really different people altogether? Is it really that implausible that we can not identify with our other 'neutral' personality? Anger is often used as a crutch of sorts to say/do what is/was really being repressed by the mind all along. You shouldn't apologize to a person for the things said during an angry phase, the person must have just acted as a catalyst to give you a brief glimpse of what you were as a person all along.

We're all designed to live in a society, thus we all evolve a set of filters, a set of mental filters to weed out the anti-social thoughts, or any thoughts really that would lead us to unpopularity and exclusion from society. It all connects at the end of the day to the fact that we live to reproduce and whether you're a man or a woman, being anti-social in thoughts, words and especially actions means that you're not the most capable provider around.
To women, they wouldn't want to take the chance of being with someone who can't provide and sustain their offspring. Anyone who screams their guts out when things do not go as planned or goes around slapping people when they've been wronged, will eventually be institutionalized and thus ostracized and turn out to not be such a good provider after all.
To men, they simply just wouldn't want their child to inherit qualities of being short tempered, simply because it isn't a very attractive a trait to the female of the species. Since the only point to everything is procreation, anger as a gene, is consciously or subconsciously tried to be filtered out.

Working against this, is the increased pace of life. The fact that we're now more than even persistently hounded by a lot of people. Parents, friends and siblings were the old problems. To add to this, we now have people like banks, jobs, insurance agents, cell phone companies, internet providers and yes even people like call-center employees, credit card companies, advertisers and salesmen on the lookout for you! Anger really becomes part of our daily life, right from when you wake to find it pouring when you have a two hour commute to work ahead of you, to the horrendous traffic conditions only accentuated by cold and boorish people you meet on route. Your workplace is really where things might get worse but you grim and bear it only to remember you have another two hour commute ahead of you only to reach home and be reminded constantly by your parents/spouse that you're probably not doing things that you should be and are probably wasting your life.


Now remember, as a species, we've always been angry, right from when we evolved, as a defense mechanism. As you know, when angry, we're all capable of feats of strength, mental and/or physical, that would otherwise not be possible. That is because we've learnt, rather been taught to repress ourselves, mentally, emotionally and physically. When anger, through millions of years of evolution, all these barricades are broken to allow the person access to his almost full potential with a complete disregard of the society around him. The person goes into survival mode and probably equates that state of survival higher than any social implications he might face.


Words spoken when angry, actions done, thoughts had give you a brilliant insight into what you really are as an individual. You might want to live in the illusion that you're the perfect societal person, that you're caring, emotional, docile and altruistic. But the truth is far from innocent. You're a cold blooded, hard boiled person. Someone who would hurt someone else in the blink of an eye for personal gratification. You just haven't been in the condition where your anger unlocks these qualities for you yet.

How can you not be this vile survivalist? But completely ridding yourself of anger. But is that even possible? It is about here that people thing of Gandhi, but well, better examples exist. Ridding yourself of anger takes a few "realization" that are simple really, or so they sound. But realizing these few very basic notions, can in effect complete amputate anger as one does with a rotting limb.

1) Life as we know it ultimately is or leads to suffering/uneasiness (dukkha) in one way or another.
2) Suffering is caused by craving. This is often expressed as a deluded clinging to a certain sense of existence, to selfhood, or to the things or phenomena that we consider the cause of happiness or unhappiness. Craving also has its negative aspect, i.e. one craves that a certain state of affairs not exist.
3) Suffering ends when craving ends. This is achieved by eliminating delusion, thereby reaching a liberated state of Enlightenment.


Realize and end anger and along with it, worldly suffering. Sounds so very simple. Yet takes an entire lifetime to achieve.