Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Western philosophy meets Eastern philosophy at the 2005 ICCP Conference

The Father of Cognitive Therapy speaks with his holiness the 14th Dalai Lama on how emotions, thoughts, and society impact our choices in life.

Meeting of the Minds, Part 1

(Subsequent parts can be viewed by clicking on the frames on the left side of the web page.)

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

you know what I am going to ask! transcript please?

Sigh. I am sorry. Just can't sit through videos.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

I like to offer different forms of media here, when I find them.  Some people like videos or audio recordings more than transcripts.  I'd certainly be happy to post a transcript for you, Nicole, if I had one, but again, in this case, I do not.  Sorry.  :-)

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

np :)

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

I haven't finished watching the full discussion yet, but I've been enjoying their respectful and playful back and forth. 

One of my first series of blog posts to Gaia (then Zaadz), back in 2007, dealt with the potential meeting of Buddhist and CBT approaches to anger and violence.  I was not aware of any contact between Beck and the Dalai Lama or Buddhism at the time, but I sensed a natural compatibility.  Here are links to those old blogs:  Meeting Violence Where It Grows, Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; and Part 4.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Hi Balder and Nicole,

I did not watch the entire dicussion yet, but got an idea what its about. Two things struck me as interesting:

1.) Buddhism as a religion is much closer to cognitive psychology than I thought
2.) Bow Ties fit really well with grey hair

Which makes me think about haircuts again. This is such an amazing topic, don't you think? Somebody'll have to explore haircuts and their psychosocioemotional multiple meanin layers in depth one day. hahaha

Ha. But yah sure this is a cool East-West Confluence. And a meeting between science and religion, too. Interesting sh§t. Mister Aaron Beck is a classic Psychologist btw. His BDI Test (Beck's Depression Inventary) is still in use in today's mental clinics. But actually we don't use it very often, cause most people who visit our institution are so depressed that no test is needed to identify their malady. Black LOL.

Also I noticed that His Holiness the Dalai Lama had more overall talking time than Mister A. Beck (at least in the parts that I watched). I'm not complaing, I'm just saying. Dudes. :-P

Depression, baby. Everybody should have one, lol. At least once, eh. Until you learn…

Ciao

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Thanks Bruce, I will check out those blogs later in the day.

Christophe, hmm cognitive psychology and grey hair eh? :) How your mind works… I just got my hair cut Saturday. My beloved is determined to have his cut today.

I believe in East-West dialogue, in science-religion dialogue.

Ouch, yes that is very black, that most who go there are that depressed.

Learned helplessness - “the biggest fear of an adolescent is not fitting in”

I gave up on that long ago! No problem :)

Bravo amico,

Nicole

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

I listened to this.  Relevant in some ways to the guru theme we've been exploring, reverence for the Dalai Lama seems to me overstated if not misplaced, but in any event damaging to objectivity.  It's interesting how deferential people can be toward a dude—Mister Lama's a dude, a man, a guy—who somebody sometime called God, or whatever his appropriate appellation is.  What a myth, but that didn't stop the introducer from saying being in the Dalai's presence, or whatever she said, was the most exciting event in her life.  I'd personally rather spend an evening with Rodney Dangerfield.

A few quotes from the Dalai (the Dalai? Where do these guys get this stuff?) showing his slightly less-than-modern, tarnished views that to my mind show he's still dreaming of flying.  Here's one quote concerning anger:

“When you see the ugliness of anger, it goes down.”

Ugliness.  This reminds me of something I read from one of his books.  He said, to effect, why would you so value life when you spend the first 9 months snuggled up to feces? 

Here's another quote:

“All negative emotions arise from ignorance and misunderstanding [might have been 'delusion' or some such harsh word].”

Anger is ignorance.

Here's a different view.  Anger is a relational energy, yes, negative in the sense it compels one to move away from another.  On the continuum of development, anger might manifest, on one end, as actual pushing or even as killing.  A little more developed is that typically seen in modern forms of fighting, a kind of word-pushing where the angry person attempts by emotive vocalization to “push” the other into a different way of being and behaving.  A little more developed is to view anger as a signal that I have been operating on a wrong assumption about that person and that that assumption must change.  Investigating why the assumption is incorrect will typically show some or another symbiotic dependence on the other, whereby one's inner movement is to move toward greater self-reliance and independence, hence the heat of anger. 

Yes, anger should feel uncomfortable.  It's very role is to compel a person to move, whether to actually physically or emotionally move another—these being stage-appropriate and functional necessities in evolutionary history—or as energy to move one's own assumptions.  Where's ugly except in one's conceptions?

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

I understand your point, Tom, and agree that there are multiple ways of relating to anger, some more evolved than others – with “anger is bad!” generally being on the lower end of the scale.  In my opinion, Buddhist teachings are actually a lot more sophisticated and subtle than you give them credit for, but I can see why you might get this idea from some quotes by the Dalai Lama.  I don't really enjoy his books that much because he speaks in a very simplistic way in most of them — perhaps trying to target an idealized audience of the 'everyday man.'  But Tantric teachings basically advocate relating to anger and other so-called negative emotions as energy, as forms of vitality and intelligence, each with its own gifts.  They are not just 'problems,' they each have potentials that can be cultivated and worked with in various ways.

Your description of the development of more and more subtle ways of understanding and relating to anger is the description of a growth in insight, a 'dispelling' of ignorance that allows for a deepening of compassion, empathy, skill, insight. 

Personally, I don't see anything problematic or out-dated about seeing 'ugliness' in anger.  If you stop there, totally demonizing anger and rejecting it, then yes, that becomes a problem.  But I think that seeing the harmfulness and hurtfulness of anger, the often destructive consequences – I am thinking here of seeing the bruised and bloodied face of a battered woman, the look of sheer terror in the eyes of your child – and feeling deep discomfort with the situation (this is ugly!), is an important step in turning around to look at anger itself, to feeling impelled to investigate it, to begin to work with it with greater maturity and subtlety.

Concerning the deference given to the Dalai Lama, yes, it was a bit much in this video. But having met him personally on several occasions, while I also see him as 'just a human,' I also recognize that he does have a palpable 'aura' or presence that is notable.  I once catered a meal for him.  One of my co-workers was the “Rodney Dangerfield” of our crew – the loud, playful, obnoxious joker and drinker.  He had no interest in the Dalai Lama, knew almost nothing about him.  But during the event, he came face to face with him, and the Dalai Lama touched him and gazed in his eyes and spoke to him for a moment.  I later found him sitting by himself in the corner of the kitchen, a different person.  I asked him what was up.  He was tender in a way I had never seen before, and he said, “I don't know.  I feel different.  I met the Dalai Lama and I never knew someone could be like that.  I just didn't know.”  I've also met certain teachers who have had that impact on me.  A gaze that goes right through you, deep into you, and touches a potential that has been implicit but unrecognized.  It can be a shattering moment. 

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

That's really beautiful, Bruce. I am not a Buddhist but I have great respect for the Dalai Lama. And yes, anger is probably more often than not unskilful and destructive so while Tom and others may be more skilful and productive, I do not believe that is typical.

Lov,

Nicole

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Hi Nicole, what you call “unskillful and destructive” is a characterization from your stage of development.  From a neanderthal's stage of development, “unskillful and destructive” anger is godlike, a functioning the neanderthal cannot even dream of, an emotional articulation so fine as to escape the neanderthal's crude operational grid—the workings, surely, of a truly enlightened being.

My characterization merely takes a larger, evolutionary view of such things as anger.  Anger is so prevalent one can I think only reasonably conclude it's given as a natural process.  The only other option is to view it as an evolutionary mistake.  As a natural process, I expect to find, if I so investigate, that anger holds its own step-wise, natural unfolding into higher expressions, some of which I traced in my post.  For anger, and speaking personally, I view that higher expression as something light and precious, the very doorway, in fact, to independence and even access to higher blissful states.  Ever notice that spiritually realized and mature persons (try Ramana) are not particularly co-dependent angry types?  That should be a clue.  Anger is to me but one map to that place.

Calling it ugly is just so unimaginative as to be a waste of vital human potential, and a fearful or rejecting response to life processes.

As to the Dalai's person to person characteristics, good for him for exuding a certain presence.  I wouldn't call that godlike either, personally, nor would I consider that his presencing ability counteracts what I consider to be the unimaginative, retro theory he produces.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Sorry, Tom, I must be really tired. I can't follow your post at all. Are you saying that you don't agree anger is generally destructive or unskilful?

Love,

Nicole

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Yes, anger is not destructive in the extra sense I take you mean (anger as undesirable or bad-because-destructive or something, see below).  In other respects, yes, anger is destructive, that's its role: to destroy a connection, or a relation, or a mode of connecting or relating, or an assumption or a dependence.

Put it this way: you experience anger every week, if not every day at some level of subtlety.  Everyone (except the most damaged or rarest of evolved beings) is in this very camp.  Anger is universal.

The general view, if you read peoples' perspectives, is that anger arrives in some important respect as an unwanted guest—I personally hear this view even in the word “experience” in the previous paragraph.  Allow me to characterize this view as split or unintegrated: I'm me here, and anger comes unwelcome and uninvited from some not-me there, and it's up to “me-here” to do something about that ugly anger thing.

Is it not more in accord with experience, or development perhaps, to take full responsibility for my being, in every manner of how I am, to say I am actively and willingly generating anger?  If that's true, which seems, pardon me, almost inarguable that it must be true, anger being so universal, why not own anger as something I want, even something I'm doing voluntarily?  That to me is an interesting view.

It raises the following question: why am I generating this uncomfortable feeling called anger?   The answer to this question is actually quite removed from the stream of anger, and will be a form of information that says, to this or that effect:

• “well, I'm angry because this person hit me” (which is an emergency signal calling for immediate attention and response); or

• “well, I'm angry because this person broke my trust” (which is a signal calling for me to analyze why I'm trusting this person in this fashion);

• etc.

This informational processing of anger renders anger my friend, a signal of some inner state that requires my looking deeper.  Why do I associate or put myself in the company of people who hit me?  Why did I assume this person would not break my trust by sleeping with that other man?  This questioning will undoubtedly lead, in most cases, to the questioner uncovering a faulty assumption and/or a dependent way of relating etc.  And it is that dependence or faulty assumption etc that is the actual source of the difficulty and pain.  Absent either of those, or some other form of (call it) dysfunction, I'm not being hit (that one's for Bruce's somewhat victim-like rendering above) and I'm not intimately involved with someone who will sleep around on me.  One thus learns at the level of information, assumption and responsibility-taking, with anger as one of the closest, trustworthy friends, to be properly boundaried.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Tom, the following that you said (If that's true, which seems, pardon me, almost inarguable that it must be true, anger being so universal, why not own anger as something I want, even something I'm doing voluntarily?  That to me is an interesting view. ) is consistent with things I have “preached” in behavior change programs in prison. Anger has a place. Learn to channel it to the right place at the right time, and in the right way. Otherwise it becomes one of those dis-owned shadow elements that drain energy and gunk up the system. Face it, work with it - not against it. 
  I shared here at Gaia, or some other forum recently, that I once had a highly integrative dream about my dis-owned anger toward my wife. The angry fellow was standing in water and attacking my wife while she and I were in a row boat (“merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a song”). At first, I tried to kill the bastard, by strangling him. Then, I noticed how his breathing matched mine, and I re-united with my own anger. 
   Darrell

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Excellent dream, Darrell.  I like your perspective.  And I like what anger does for people: it's to me a keystone of evolutionary process in the relational realm.  I think some people want the universe to be only nice.  I tend to suppose the designer of this universe (me and you when all's said and done) found nice-only a little too boring.  (S)he (we) therefore said, methinks, let there be everything that now is, has been and will be.

But anger, like any higher evolved thing, has its own rules for handling—it's decidedly not a nice, safe thing (per the Designer).  It's like fire, or nuclear arms: handle them one way, things blow up; handle them another, higher cooperativeness evolves.  Results are their own education that can be heeded, or not.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

The key seems to involve applied awareness, in the sense that anger without awareness, without some aspect of mind walking around it and facing it from various angles, tends to move one to action, dimenishing sensititivity and awareness, but maximizing some effect - whether “assertiveness” or “aggression”.
   Anger is great at organizing quick action, especially if there is not much time to “think”. But those who learn to face anger and to think quicker, on their feet, can learn to modulate the anger without either crudely expressing it, or crudely supressing or repressing it. 
  “Face and work through”, or “processing emotions”, tends to bring a kind of wholeness (awareness seems to involve a kind of spread out, relaxed, low resistance field) to the realm of the particular. And anger with its blinders and lazer beam, can connect with the very, very, particular. 
  I once did a wierd science experiment with lust (not anger, but another “ugly” emotion that seems to focalize/narrow). When I looked at borderline sexual photos while seeing the whole picture, my lust or sexual urges, were very low, usually absent altogether. Conversely, when I looked at parts, my mind seemed to be in the lust mode. 
  Seeing a whole image - much less thinking of a whole person - seemed to turn me into a doctor or humanitarian, rather than a sexual being or hunter. At least under those circumscribed (punn!) conditions, directing my mind to see “whole” effectively shifted my hormonal self from horny to professional or even spiritual. 
   If a similar wholeness abilty can be applied to anger (and/or to its particularity or focalizing mode), then wholeness perhaps can be integrated with the particular. This somehow reminds me of incarnation theology. When such integration occures, then the parts have access to more energy than before, and are no longer left to thier own high resistance “devices”, or mode, which cuts them off from the greater field of energy. As such, they have greater capacity to create, as though incarnations of the Creator. 
   Agency gone awry competes for communion. Anger is high in agency, and can appear “ugly” in the sense that it often leads to brokeness or fragmentation. But that is blaming the wrong thing. The problem is not anger - it is our failure to integrate it with our wholeness. One of my secular definitions of “God” is “whole-mind activity”, God as a “god-function”. 
   Learning to de-frag our anger is both divine work that helps transform all fragmentation in the world and in the entire universe, and is allowing “God” to guide us. When it comes to learning to be whole in the midst of such focalizing energies as anger and lust, we are both saviors and saved. 

    Darrell 

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

I think this is worth inquiring into further.  One thing I'm concerned about is treating anger as something in itself – as something either inherently 'bad' or inherently 'good' and life-serving.  I think both approaches are problematic.  I am also concerned, Tom, that your analysis, while insightful, also leaves certain important perspectives or considerations out.  At least, to me, it appears inwardly or self-focused at the expense of other (relational) perspectives.

One thing I question is whether we should treat unconscious eruptions of anger and 'anger' after intensive 'informational/cognitive processing' as the same thing.  In other words, is anger always one's friend, inherently?  Is anger befriended the same thing as anger as unconscious reactivity?  Or is a new mode of feeling-response enacted through the process of maturation and self-inquiry?

Put it this way: you experience anger every week, if not every day at some level of subtlety.  Everyone (except the most damaged or rarest of evolved beings) is in this very camp.  Anger is universal.

I agree.  But I am curious about your insertion of the exception, 'rarest of evolved beings,' particularly in relation to your comment below about informational processing (with the answer to 'why am I angry' being removed from the stream of anger).  It seems you are holding room open for a perspective from which 'anger' will be seen as an unevolved response to situations.  In which case, calling anger ugly or a friend would both be stage-appropriate responses to a condition which is horizontally, but not vertically, universal, because there is an imagined point in evolution at which it will no longer arise or be seen as necessary or skillful.

The general view, if you read peoples' perspectives, is that anger arrives in some important respect as an unwanted guest—I personally hear this view even in the word “experience” in the previous paragraph.  Allow me to characterize this view as split or unintegrated: I'm me here, and anger comes unwelcome and uninvited from some not-me there, and it's up to “me-here” to do something about that ugly anger thing.

I think it is often the case that anger arises from aspects of ourselves that are not integrated.  It's not just that talking about anger as an unwanted intruder is unintegrated; it's that its eruption often signals that there are aspects of ourselves that are not integrated; and further, that it is often a 'function' or 'expression' of that lack of integration, that partiality of self-acceptance, that residual field of resistance, hurt, etc.  Thus, anger, after the fact, can indeed serve as a 'signal' to us that we have these shadows, and affords us an opportunity for growth and learning.  The fact that it can serve this function does not mean that anger is inherently good or skillful, in my opinion; it just means that it affords us an opportunity to look more deeply, and in that sense is useful.  By this, I do not mean to suggest that anger is inherently evil either.  I am just calling into question the valorization of anger over the demonization of it; both approaches seem partial, but both also appear to me to be useful at different points in an overall process.

In my previous letter, I mentioned seeing the ugliness of anger when you look into the face of an abused spouse or one's terrified child.  I'm not sure why you read that as a victim-like rendering of anger, Tom.  What I was trying to point at was that anger, while it may be useful for our own inner growth processes, ultimately, and therefore isn't to be rejected altogether (which would lead to other problems – actually being a further function of the 'rejecting' tendencies that underlie anger), it also often has very real consequences in the world.  Its eruption can cause others a lot of harm; it can be very destructive.  It's not just seeing anger as an uncomfortable feeling inside, but as a mode of feeling that – while it may be a move to protect some inner boundary in the angry person that is, in fact, precious – can also wreak devastation in the lives of others, causing lasting physical and psychological harm. 

For a person without insight into himself or his feelings, who is caught in a cycle of anger, lashing out continually at others, expressing unresolved inner conflicts outwardly in a pattern of abuse, anger is currently not their friend.  It is a source, not of insight, but of suffering and destruction, for self and others.  It can be quite ugly indeed.  Anger can be befriended, and I think it should be; but sometimes a sharp break from a destructive pattern needs to be made before you can return to it, later, with more 'space' and room for insight and inquiry.  As I see things, I am quite comfortable saying anger is ugly and anger is a good, precious friend.  I feel something missing, something unintegrated, if we say it is okay to call anger a friend but not to call it ugly.  It isn't inherently either, and it is both.

Best wishes,

B.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Bruce and Darrell - quite simply, yes, and thank you for expressing eloquently what I only feel when I read Tom's posts.

Love,

Nicole

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Bruce: But I am curious about your insertion of the exception, 'rarest of evolved beings' …  It seems you are holding room open for a perspective from which 'anger' will be seen as an unevolved response to situations.

The insertion is a boilerplate escape hatch to allow evolution's possible advance such that, at some future time, emotions no longer register in awareness.  I somewhat doubt that will happen, but maybe it will.

I don't find the word 'unevolved' helpful as you use it.  Anger is itself evolved and would not have appeared but for having been evolved as such.  Any given person is as evolved as that person is, so I personally don't look onto another as unevolved or think his or her behaviour to be stage-inappropriate.  They are who they are.  Some will be less evolved in certain ways than others, but that's a comparison from a higher vantage point.  From a neanderthal's perspective, an angry modern is a god: much more highly differentiated, aware, able, flexible and articulate.

Bruce: I think it is often the case that anger arises from aspects of ourselves that are not integrated.

I disagree and don't find this wording properly descriptive.  Yes, anything can feel unintegrated from a later perspective, but the path to that later perspective is through the process of a differentiating creation of the new that, before it is created as such, is not to my mind rightly called unintegrated—because it doesn't exist.  Ask this question: assume you're at stage 4; is it right to say stage 7 is currently unintegrated, some existing but split-off thing that needs patching into the whole?

I personally prefer to speak of anger in terms of what it signals relationally.  I don't expect that a person at a lower stage will necessarily understand or be able to work with anger as such, but like anything later-evolved, this perspective can be retro-fitted as a helpful explanatory for those wanting to process anger with a less energetic, more informational eye.

As to your abused spouse, what's she doing with someone hitting her?

A person in such relation likely will not hear such question as constructive.  People prefer the victim stance of “____ did it to me,” ____ being life, or Henry, or my parents, etc.

But back to the woman in an abusive relationship.  Apart from the state's response through law—leave that to one side for a moment—I'm sure the abused woman will feel anger.  If she doesn't, she's in trouble.  If she does and acts on the anger, her anger will eventually direct her to the exit sign.  It may take her some time to find it.

If she doesn't act on the anger, the anger will almost certainly build.  That's its design.  Its an uncomfortable energy that says “your boundaries have been violated,  you better listen.”  When it's not heeded, anger memory increases anger heat at some next opportunity.  Some women wait years to act on anger, then kill their abusive spouse in rage, a heightened form of anger.
 
As to the abusing man, well, there's a few things to say.  The first is, why would the universe create such a being?  I'll leave that for your own personal answering.  The second is that the state has its own anger response, if you will, by application of state laws to counterwork the man's angry behaviour.  Legal responses sometimes work to produce growth, oftentimes they don't, or at least in a given specific instance.

Bruce: For a person without insight into himself or his feelings, who is caught in a cycle of anger, lashing out continually at others, expressing unresolved inner conflicts outwardly in a pattern of abuse, anger is currently not their friend.

I disagree.  Per my musings above, anger knows the way out and will recur so long as its signal is useful and not heeded for the development and evolution it desires.  When its usefulness is spent, voila, no anger.  Anger is very rational.  I regard it as sometimes the only signal that in fact can guide to an exit, ie, to the next stage, ie, to an understanding of, and strategy for resolving, what is currently not functioning the way I want it to.  Anger expression-outward is IMO and for its part stage-appropriate and as life evolves, state and social laws and mores will pressure, as they do, any lesser evolved mode in a pressure-forward stance.  I'm not suggesting that pressure should not be there.  I'm just arranging my words to allow the suggestion that anger is my friend, which I feel to be true.

By the way, I view phrases like “unconscious reactivity” as “pressure” phrases in the manner of pressure I mention above.  I don't find such phrases helpfully descriptive, because they assume, like I said, an evolution that has not yet occurred should have.  That's to put a donkey before a horse.  A person in an outwardly expressed anger reaction is not unconscious to a neanderthal: to the latter, he's a God of Consciousness.  The Buddha, in fact.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Hi Tom

I think we mostly agree on anger, and as usually we are looking from different perspectives.


From one of your recent posts I see you are into Games Theory (does that include TOM ;)? ).
Anger at roots seems to a version of retaliator strategy in action.

What it does, is prepare w body for battle when it detects a major breach of any of the trust contexts.  Exactly how it does this I am not certain.

One of the outcomes, is that higher functions are restricted, as the body is prepared for battle.

The danger to some people, is that this restriction of higher brain function can be so severe, that there is effectively no higher function present to detect or monitor the extent of the retribution being metered out.   In some people, this can lead to serious harm being done to others with no higher awareness of the damage.    One of the guys I used to work with was like that.   When calm, he had the fastest reactions of anyone I have ever met - he managed to out drive Rod Millen in a $2M works Toyota, driving an RX7 we put together by gas-axing two separate crashed ones down the middle and stitching the undamaged halves back together.   But his anger was really dangerous.   He could do near lethal damage before anyone became aware he was even upset.   Not nice to be on the receiving end.  No one ever saw the first punch coming, and it was rare for anyone to mount any sort of defense before the third one landed.


Training one's higher awareness to always be able to maintain a veto on anger is difficult, and few achieve it - thus it is “dangerous”, in the extreme edge of situations; and more so for some than others.


I agree with you, that in an evolutionary sense, it is part of a stable grouping of genetics that supports cooperative society by punishing cheats (retaliator strategy).


And to achieve a stable higher level relationship that replaces retaliator strategy with more complex strategies, one must be able to control anger in all situations (without making it wrong - thank you for sharing, and not now).


Cheers

Ted

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Hi, Tom,

While we may disagree on a few points, and may be misunderstanding each other on a few others, I'm enjoying this discussion and hope we can take it further.

You said:  I don't find the word 'unevolved' helpful as you use it.  Anger is itself evolved and would not have appeared but for having been evolved as such.  Any given person is as evolved as that person is, so I personally don't look onto another as unevolved or think his or her behaviour to be stage-inappropriate.  They are who they are.  Some will be less evolved in certain ways than others, but that's a comparison from a higher vantage point.  From a neanderthal's perspective, an angry modern is a god: much more highly differentiated, aware, able, flexible and articulate.

Right, I wasn't saying anything about stage-inappropriate behavior, nor intending to say anger itself wasn't an evolved mode of response.  By unevolved, I meant “lesser evolved,” from the point of view of that “rarest of evolved beings.”

I said: I think it is often the case that anger arises from aspects of ourselves that are not integrated.

You replied:  I disagree and don't find this wording properly descriptive.  Yes, anything can feel unintegrated from a later perspective, but the path to that later perspective is through the process of a differentiating creation of the new that, before it is created as such, is not to my mind rightly called unintegrated -— because it doesn't exist.  Ask this question: assume you're at stage 4; is it right to say stage 7 is currently unintegrated, some existing but split-off thing that needs patching into the whole?

No, it isn't.  But that doesn't appear to be what I'm talking about, so let me ask you:  Are you saying here that you don't think it's appropriate or properly descriptive to refer to such things as the psychological unconscious, or subpersonalities, or repressed or disowned memories or feelings, or 'the shadow'?  Because those are the things I was referring to – aspects of consciousness which appear to operate outside the awareness and/or sphere of control of the ego – rather than not-yet-emerged higher potentials. 

As we adapt and develop, in the process of either adjusting to a particular environment or 'transcending' our current stage, we sometimes dissociate or repress rather than include; but what is dissociated does not go away, or so many psychologists tell us.  It remains as a split-off part of the psyche that does not develop, or which at least remains out of sync with one's persona and ego.  From a later perspective, we can call it 'unintegrated'; from the ego's current perspective, such repressed memories and impulses often show up as ego-alien expressions, either 'intrusions' in consciousness, something that just 'comes out of nowhere,' or projections onto other people.  However it shows up or finds expression, it generally appears as not-me.

You wrote: I personally prefer to speak of anger in terms of what it signals relationally.  I don't expect that a person at a lower stage will necessarily understand or be able to work with anger as such, but like anything later-evolved, this perspective can be retro-fitted as a helpful explanatory for those wanting to process anger with a less energetic, more informational eye.

Yes, I agree this can be helpful. 

You asked:  As to your abused spouse, what's she doing with someone hitting her?

This is a separate question.  If we keep our focus on the abusive expression of anger in a given instance, I think it can be quite a meaningful and impactful event for an individual to see the ugliness of what they are up to – what is most likely an inappropriate expression of anger on an easy target (like kicking a dog, or abusing a child, when you are afraid to confront your boss).  Seeing it as 'ugly' and not flinching (e.g., immediately rationalizing or otherwise escaping) can be a real wake-up call.  In your post to Darrell, you referred to anger as 'not nice'; recognizing the 'ugliness' of anger is recognizing its not-niceness, and that means its potential or actual destructiveness, particularly when unskillfully or immaturely expressed.  In my opinion, this does not negate or work against recognition or valuation of its informational or signalling function.

In my own life, there was a time when I was quite angry and depressed.  I have mentioned this time period before, because it was a pivotal point in my history.  My 'world' had crashed around me, with quite a few of my friends having died or been killed in a period of a few months, my mother having just married a man who turned out to be an abusive, raging alcoholic, and so on.  A very difficult time.  I contemplated suicide, contemplated killing my step-father, alternated between explosive anger and dark brooding silences, and withdrew from most of my relationships.  Eventually I had the opportunity to get out of that situation and spend time by myself up in the mountains.  During that time, I had what I experienced as a mystical sort of opening – encountering a 'presence' in those mountains which communicated to me a profound sense of order, well-being, clarity, and grace.  In that awesome, clarifying presence and silence, I was graced with a clear vision of my own state, and a recognition of my own 'hand' in that state.  I never felt I was 'wrong' to be angry about my friends dying or having to endure an abusive drunk in my house (I knew such responses were reasonable), but I could also see that my own angry thought patterns were magnifying these feelings in quite destructive ways.  In the 'embrace' of this profound silence, I saw the 'ugliness' of my own contracted state and the harmful ways my anger was manifesting (both within me and in my relationships).  Seeing this did help me to achieve a sort of 'space' and distance from those patterns, and awaken a motivation to change, and from that time forward the patterns began to decrease – but I also had to work consciously with myself, analyzing my reflexive thought patterns, learning to hold an emotional reaction instead of acting it out, etc.  This took a long time (I'm still working through aspects of it, actually), but it started with a sort of confrontation with myself, in which what I was doing became loathsome to me and I recognized it as something I no longer wanted to continue.

Now, I think we could possibly differentiate 'anger' as a systemic response to threat or crisis, as you've been defining it, from the consequences of expression of that anger, which is what I first perceived in that mountain experience (seeing both my own self-contraction and the harm I was causing others), and also from the particular thought patterns through which that basic response is channeled and by which it is often maintained and magnified.  Aaron Beck's thoughts about this might be helpful.

Beck recognizes anger as an expression of our evolutionarily adaptive fight-flight response, but he situates this mechanism within a cognitive context which emphasizes the roles of frustration, (often short-sighted) goal attainment, and “the crucial importance of the meaning attached to our interactions as a key factor in arousing anger and hostility.”  In Beck's analysis, the specific cognitive processes that are activated in stressful or conflictual situations were quite adaptive throughout much of humankind's history, but have become maladaptive in many modern contexts no longer marked by imminent threat from predators, hostile members of other tribes or clans, or other sources of “clear and present danger.”  Beck refers to many of these once- or sometimes-adaptive cognitive processes as primal thinking.  Particularly prominent among them in the genesis of hostility are personalization, dichotomous thinking, overgeneralization, and inaccurate or incomplete causal attribution.  In situations where rapid assessment of potential threats in the environment is called for, primal thinking is an efficient, automatic, and often unconscious process that allows the human organism to get itself into a state of readiness, particularly to fight or flee.  But because primal thinking is basically egocentric and non-reflective by definition, it is also disadvantageous when more nuanced forms of reflection are called for.

Often primal thinking happens outside of our purview, serving as the tacit motivator of maladaptive interpersonal behavior.   Beck suggests that we can become conscious of this process by tracking our automatic thoughts that immediately precede or follow feelings of anger or hostile exchanges.  These thoughts take a number of forms, but can be generally classified as core beliefs, rules or expectations for how people should relate to us, and rights.  These beliefs and rules take specific forms in anger-prone people, and like all primal thinking processes, are essentially egocentric, global, and rigid in nature.  The genesis of anger and hostility frequently lies in beliefs which lead one either to feel wronged or hurt by the other in those instances when the belief or expectation appears to have been violated.
           
Beck tracks the escalation to anger algorithmically, as follows:

 
            EVENT –> DISTRESSED –> “WRONGED” –> ANGER –> MOBILIZE TO
            ATTACK

 
            LOSS & FEAR –> DISTRESSED –> SHIFT OF FOCUS TO OFFENDER –>           
            FEELING OF ANGER

 
Both transformations are frequently accompanied by automatic thoughts taking the form of “should” and “should not,” and which are typically over generalized and rigid.  These thoughts are highly invested with value, often referring to core beliefs about self-worth or security, and whether they operate on an individual or societal level, they serve to mobilize one to attack.  Beck likens the tendency to respond with anger to an addiction, pointing out that in these instances, aggression serves as a “mood normalizer,” reestablishing (temporarily) one's sense of power.

Cognitive therapeutic treatment of anger and hostility involves two distinct phases, in Beck's formulation: 1) deactivating the hostility mode in the moment through the employment of different disruptive or calming techniques, such as taking a “time out”; and 2) uncovering and addressing those cognitive structures that make one violence prone, particularly through teaching the individual to resist dichotomizing and labeling, to reframe or reformulate maladaptive core beliefs, and to become more cognizant of the fallibility of one's judgments.  Through this process, one is able to reduce the intensity of what Beck calls the total hostility constellation, a virulent combination of “beliefs, vulnerabilities, imperatives, and images that dispose one toward violence or punishing.”

Practically, phase two is accomplished through therapy and through individual tracking of automatic thoughts, especially with an aim toward uncovering the implicit but unreasonable core beliefs, asserted rights, and rules that govern one's behavior and reflecting on them rationally, when one is outside the grip of the triggering event and emotions and thus capable of higher-level, less reactive cognition.  Beck gives numerous examples of this process throughout his work, such as teaching an abusive husband to alter his core belief from the contention that a real man doesn't “take crap” from his wife, to the more adaptive and less violence-producing belief that a real man can “take crap” without allowing it to get to him.  Using the Spiral Dynamics model, we might say that this initial adjustment is made within the context of the husband's memetic value system, but other interventions may also encourage a more nuanced reflection that might move one in the direction of a values transformation.  Concerning the rights frequently asserted by anger-prone people, for instance, Beck suggests a series of counter questions that, if taken to heart, would likely encourage one to broaden one's circle of concern and possibly begin a transition to a higher memetic value system.

Thus, while 'anger' does provide a 'signal' that is worth listening to, I think it is also imperative that we consider the developmental 'source' of that signal and the cognitive context in which it arises, rather than treating it simply as a form of always-to-be-trusted higher intelligence.  I think any instance of its arising certainly bears informational content that can be useful and helpful to us, so the anger-response is worth befriending, but I question the assertion that it is always 'rational.' 

Let's talk about this further, if you see things differently.

Best wishes,

Bruce

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Hi, Ted, I'm unfamiliar with the retaliator strategy, but your drawing reference to it makes sense to me.  In my little world of guessing, anger looks to me to have evolved on a conservative basis, basically as you describe: shoot first, ask questions later.  This conservatism seems to me necessary because social relations, in which anger operates, are fraught with uncertainty given the human capability to deceive.  And because like you say anger is generally triggered in circumstances when trust is or likely has been already breached—for whatever reason including deluded, inaccurate perceptions on the part of the angry person—it operates in a perceived already-one-down situation where any given next step could meet the feared outcome.  So its radar volume to max, guns loaded.

I think Edward O. Wilson said something about the conservatism of human violent and anger responses.  Let me see if I can find it.  Here it is, it's from On Human Nature:

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Bruce:But Tantric teachings basically advocate relating to anger and other so-called negative emotions as energy, as forms of vitality and intelligence, each with its own gifts.  They are not just 'problems,' they each have potentials that can be cultivated and worked with in various ways.

This is an effective method of working with emotions I use a lot. But why to use it only to so-called negative emotions? I have long ago dropped the distinction between negative and position emotions. Every emotion can be either harmful or useful. The usefullness fully depends on what you do with that emotion, what you try to accomplish by it.

When seen from an evolutionary perspective every emotion exists there for a very good reason. It will very likely have an harmful effect on our evolving, if we try to get rid of some fundamental naturally emerging emotion.

However it is important to be able to work with the emotion, which makes it to dissolve to something else. This work means as its first step owning one's anger or whatever emotion fully.

I can understand the demand  many religions have made to be without anger form an evolutionary point. This kind of ideal is useful in one point in human evolution, when people have to start to learn to better contain their anger and not acting it immediately out. In those times anger as an internally felt emotion you could work with was not there. Hence anger always had to find an outlet. And this outlet was often violent and destructive.

For a modern person the demand to be without anger is plainly harmful. We should learn instead better to connect to our anger, contain it fully, feel it fully, and look at it from many different perspectives. Research has shown clearly that hostile people, who tend to be reactive, and in harmful ways act out their anger, are pretty poor in containing their anger and internally looking at it from differing perspectives.

Bruce: Concerning the deference given to the Dalai Lama, yes, it was a bit much in this video. But having met him personally on several occasions, while I also see him as 'just a human,' I also recognize that he does have a palpable 'aura' or presence that is notable.

A few years ago I went listening to Dalai Lama, when he paid a visit to Helsinki.
First a talk in a big hall, and then I was there also later in the evening, when he spoke to a smaller group.
To me he seemed to be a humble man, who said several times “I'm just an ordinary Buddhist monk”. And he seemed to mean it. My impression was that he tried to get through to us that he is in no way perfect, but rather a pretty ordinary human being, who however has benefited from the Buddhist practices.

I also was surprised how modern he was in his thinking in many ways. We have to take into consideration that he represents an old and respectable tradition. That puts plenty of restrictions to one's freedom of thought and behavior.
 
Therefore I was truly pleasantly surprised when he said towards the end of his talk, that he thinks that the next Dalai Lama should be a woman!

The overall impact was that a very natural feeling of respect of him arose in me.

Irmeli

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

I appreciated your thoughts, Irmeli, as I frequently do.  I emphasized negative emotions in my comment because we were talking about anger, but Tantra works with all emotions in a similar way, not just negative ones. 

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Interestingly enough, last night I got into a very heated argument with my Robert, and at various times both of us were very, very angry.

It gave me a chance to observe at close hand some of the positives and negatives of anger for us and for the growth of our relationship.

First, the heat of anger alerted us that we were working on something extremely live for both of us: a core issue, in fact more than one core issue, which we perceived quite differently.

Also, the heat of anger made it difficult for us to hear each other in our usual compassionate way. We actually raised our voices and talked over the other person, which we don't do. He suggested that he would get off the phone and let me go off by myself and “work through my issues” - again, not our way, we work through issues together. We repeated the same things over and over instead of moving on constructively.

It was only when the anger became mitigated by other processes and a sense that the other person was really hearing and understanding and that there were even significant areas of agreement that the heat began to go out of the argument, and when anger was gone, argument became discussion, and discussion became resolve and resolution, and resolve and resolution became re-commitment to the relationship and better ways of communicating, and the re-commitment became a deepening of love and longing.

So, while the anger was instrumental in helping us identify core issues and motivating us to work them through, it quickly became extremely obstructive and had we not been able to move past it, would have likely utterly derailed the process of resolution and re-commitment.

In previous relationships, I rarely got past anger. There were only different kinds of compromises, avoiding the issue, suppressing, insisting on my way, etc etc. I have found anger destructive in these ways not only in my relationships but also in friendships and business dealings.

This is a great discussion, I am really appreciating all the perspectives.

Love,

Nicole

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Nicole, To me that is one of the most fascinating and satisfying aspects of a love relationship - to be able to reverse polarities while on the very brink of destruction. It is a true Pheonix rising from ashes. Anyone can love under ideal conditions, but can they love in the middle of hating? Until hate and anger wimper away like a little puppy? That is what, I think, Tom meant by the desired “not-nice” of life. It is a triumph of the human soul. And it is, simply put, “beautiful”. 
    Darrell

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Thanks so much Darrell. You understand so very well!

Hugs,

Nicole

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Nicole:So, while the anger was instrumental in helping us identify core issues and motivating us to work them through, it quickly became extremely obstructive and had we not been able to move past it, would have likely utterly derailed the process of resolution and re-commitment.

I have been married to my husband almost for 38 years now. And I think this marriage has been a relatively happy one.

I am in this relationship the one who tends occasionally to rise high in anger. My husband has a more calm temperament, and is warmhearted and caring in many ways. He has however not easy to discuss his difficult emotions, and he seldom shows anger directly. Instead it tends to get out in indirect ways, e.g. by nagging to me about something that I consider to be insignificant.

I tend to repeatedly make clear to him how I feel about this issue, and how bad I feel about the nagging, but often this does not make the nagging to stop. And this is the situation  what makes me eventually rise high in anger.

That does not happen very often though, because expressing anger tends to be for me pretty time and energy consuming. Often I also let things pass by, because of lack of time and energy.

When I express anger, I do it deliberately with the purpose of breaking a behavioral pattern that is intolerable to me. I have never felt guilty for that, or a need for apologizing for it. I become very pushing and penetrating then. I don't resort to name calling or blaming. Instead I make loudly very clear how I feel about the situation, and how I perceive it. The loud penetration is necessary because usually at this point my husband has got in a defensive mode and does not want to listen to me. I try to listen to him also, but tend to break his talk, by making comments of his faulty reasoning. He tends to make wrong kind of generalitations, claiming that I do always something, when it actually appears very seldom. Or then he compares things that very clearly belong to different categories. He cannot defend himself and usually at some point he stops speaking altogether. I may demand him to say something in his defence, but he remains dumb, and leaves the room.

In the early days of our marriage a week or two of dumb distance treatment by him would follow. For long he has not anymore remained dumb very long, but  distance he can keep from me for days.
 
I have always respected his need to take this distance. I myself actually need it also. During this period I internally process all the different feelings and emotions the episode activated in me. I also feel into the pain and hurt I feel he is feeling. Nowadays I almost feel those too as mine.

It is very interesting to observe again and again, that when I have come to the point, where my internal turmoil has got cleared out, he stops the distance keeping. I'm not the one who initiates that. And then actually we have easier to be in each others company than it was before the anger.

I have observed that his nagging, and my tendency to detachment or indifference, and other incompatible personal features in us, tend to in unobserved ways make us more and more in some unseen ways feel tense in each others company.

Rising high in anger helps to clear these things out for us. Without this occasionally appearing fierce anger I believe our marriage would have not lasted as long as it has.

Anger is for me a force to break a  behavior I perceive as destructive. I use it, when other means available to me don't work. And mostly in the long run I can see it having been the initiator of a constructive process.

Irmeli

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Dear Irmeli, That was a very well written and helpful account for those of us who are realizing (if ever so slowly) that our sessions here are not really “thinking” sessions so much as they are “therapy” sessions that happen to use a lot of projected “thoughts” to help us each grow as whole persons. Both you and Nicole have provided life-oriented thoughts which show why we are “really” here. 
   Not to say we are always up for therapy, but that the transcendance need is strong here, despite the appearance of a mere pastime of thinking. I love to philosophize, but I love my wife and kids more - much more. 
   Would I stop philosophizing if they insisted? No, because that would not be me loving them. Would I channel the urge to philosophize in more user-friendly ways that honors the primacy of love? Yes, most definitely. But, of course, I have failed miserably at that value many times. 
   Like anger (in our above discussion of how to use or channel or “work with” or “work though”, instead of repressing anger), thinking philosophically is not bad or good, it is a glob of energy waiting to be put to good use. It is up to us to learn how to integrate that gift with the gift of love relationships.
   I am addressing the conversation in this way because I am sensing how valuable your contribution above is to a usually extremely “heady” dialogue here. This group may be thinking its way to “heart”. If so, thoughts have certainly served us well - have “done their job”. I have always contended that thinking done well, full bore, will, at some point kind of transcend itself, put itself partially out of business and find a core of energy that more resembles “love” than “thought”. 
  This is true (IMO) especially if the thought is done by thinker types (or other types who have it as a strong secondary gift) who are well equiped to go “full bore” with thought. A person with a drastically different gift-disposition than thinking may need an entirely different vehicle than philosophical thought to arrive at the core of self (which I speculate is something like “pure energy”, even if that is a “metaphysical”, rather than post-metaphysical, position. But then, I don't really care if “the energy core deep within” is real in the old-school, way. I am happy if it is real in the sense that it is a valuable metaphor that orients my life in a productive direction, such as to help me grow “spiritually”.). The meaningful myth qualification within the above parentheses (the over-use of parentheses is a tilt of the hat to Wilber, in the sense that imitation is flattery!), does, I believe, place me properly in this “post-metaphysical” forum. 
   I will try to return to the idea that we are doing therapy in disquise, later on. 
But first, I would like to share two poems that speak better to the dynamics of a love relationship than I can with logical thought here. I wrote them, but with my right brain, instead of the left brain I am using now. So, it is as though a different author, with a different voice, revealed a different, and deeper, truth than I possibly can in the current voice.
   I believe that learning to flexibly shift to this mode is part of what we need to learn to face and work through our anger, etc. Integration of the left and right brain hemispheres has a place in Integral Life (is it zone 5, or zone 6?). I suspect that the good ol' right brain is the seat of much of what we often call “vertical mind” activitiy - the mind that can ride up the elevator and glimpse different frames of reference than we are normally using with the “horozontal” mind which typically adjusts to the floor we're on. The integration of this floating, vertical, mind with the horozontal, setting, holding, mind also, I believe, has everything to do with learning to stage-advance - to move on up to (and into) a higher stage/”floor”. 
   Below is the right brain version of some of what you were discussing in the above example and interpretation about you and your husband's love relationship dynamics: 


The Weathermakers

We are the Weathermakers - 
Mr. and Mrs. .
You stepped this way
and I stepped that.

Your step started clouds
collecting a condensation of tears,
turning into bloated effigies
forming battalions pressing overhead, over heart.
Scorn, jagged and white hot,
jumps out from your dark disposition.
Suddenly, love is shattered,
blazing and smoldering.

My step started a drought,
collecting cracks in once-loamy soil,
turning into deep gaps,
forming a mosaic of distance under foot, underhanded.
Indifference, jagged and shadowy cool,
spreads out from my dry disposition. 
Soon, love is shriveled,
stagnant and evaporating.

We seldom recall stepping this way or that,
both left wondering
where the thunderstorm or drought came from, 
or why it came to this (or that). 
Way back, years ago, or only yesterday, we stumbled,
began pushing or moving away. 
Magnetic fields formed moist or dry air;
we worked the weather, 
whether we knew it or not.  

So, why don’t we use this or that power to step together,
form a gentle rain on a dusty path
we settle down softly?
Let’s hold hands and stroll home,
welcoming the sight of our front door,
where we’ll step onto a plush mat
that reads “The Weathermakers”. 





     copyright 2005 Darrell Moneyhon






Patch

Patch Adam’s mentor helped him 
learn to look past the fingers, 
and to focus on the background,
the people, the possibilities.

I no longer see her anger.
Beyond the fingers, I see the hurt and fear
in someone I love.

I see her difficulty knowing that I love her.
Never mind that I failed terribly in some way
(and could be defensive). 
She hurts. I care. 

Her verbal assaults are just sonic booms, not bombs,
molecules getting jammed
as we cross the sound barrier.

Now I want to hear her, 
and for her to hear the words:
“I’m sorry that I hurt you.”


copyright 2000 Darrell Moneyhon

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Thank you Darrel for sharing your wise and beautiful poems.

We both seem to share the experience that marriage can powerfully challenge us to grow as human beings.
The darker aspects of ourselves will almost inevitably at some point come on the fore between the spouses.
The challenge is to somehow to learn to deal with these constructively. And not to too long avoid a confrontation. But then the relationship has to be on a foundation, that does not brake down from occasional hard winds or even storms.
You describe this beautifully in your poems.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

The quote from Bruce (Bruce:But Tantric teachings basically advocate relating to anger and other so-called negative emotions as energy, as forms of vitality and intelligence, each with its own gifts.  They are not just 'problems,' they each have potentials that can be cultivated and worked with in various ways.) reminds me of the way the animated movie Waking Life portrayed different emotions, as though they were expressions of energy split off from a whole spectrum of the possible self. 
   The angry guy in the jail cell was simply seething with anger, and was burning a ciggarette the whole time he burned and fumed about pay-back. The red had a chakra-like effect, as though we were really seeing the chakra energy behind the object/character on the screen. Each character was a part of the self. The goal of the whole movie seemed to be to face each aspect and wake up to a higher reality without losing the energy that each aspect/expression represented. 
  The whole self would be needed to wake up to an awareness so liberated that it floats effortlessly into the sky. I have long felt that dreaming is a kind of natural de-fragging, in which the energy is faced, tagged, rounded up, and re-configured, or re-formatted in a way that allows the whole system or energy stream to flow better. Wholeness and efficiency may be more related than we think. 
   If you can reconfigure the fragments, and essentially disolve the fragments or gaps, then the slightest effort gets more done, freeing up plenty of resources to complete the “job” of wholeness/integration. 


  Darrell

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Hi Nicole, thank you for sharing your most recent encounter with anger.  Allow me to give a few observations from my perspective.

Interesting how anger arose with the precipitation of a core issue.  In my experience, anger accompanies important business.  I can feel annoyed if a driver forgets to drive at a green light, but I'll feel angry if a driver runs a red light and almost hits me.  Quite alot more at stake with the latter, hence an amplification of annoyance into anger.

Also interesting is you couldn't hear each other in the heat of anger.  This, I think, is anger's ability to override higher-centre control that Ted and I traded words on.  I'll give you my theoretical perspective which adds a little intentionality back into this notion of override. 

I sense that in the type of anger in which one experiences anger heat, the heat is an other-changing function and modality, which is the reason, naturally, it overrides discussion (discussion isn't so other-changing).  It seems to me the brain, in its near-infinite wisdom and social genius, knows very clearly how to hurt another through words and affect creation.  Of course, it would know this in a general sense as the simple reverse of its own experience: it remembers how you hurt me, does a quick computation on what happened, and reverse engineers how to hurt you.  Add a little personal knowledge of you, like how your mom laughed at you, and bingo, I've a nice sharp hurt-arrow waiting patiently in my quiver.

Play along with this assumption a moment.  We all know how it feels when someone gets angry at us (not good).  That feeling can motivate us to change our behaviour so as to again please that other, or it can prompt us into reprisal action called my anger back … “but you did X!” … as my attempt to change you from wanting to change me.

The latter is a typical-course fight, where both people attempt, through this refined and oft-used anger-affect-expression function—including angry words that to a reasonable bystander can often sound absurd for the claims they make—to get the other to back into a corner of submission with its hoped-for white flag up, “ok, I'll change.”

However, this typical-course fighting generally results in something of a stalemate-through-exhaustion, where both sides say, “fuck it, it's dinner time, I'm hungry, and I actually don't hate your mother and think she's ugly.”

Then the couple typically throws out the universal make-up line: “sorry honey, I didn't mean to hurt you.”

Let's pause on this because I find this transition-point very interesting.  If my theory is correct that the brain knows full well that angrily expressed words and affect almost certainly will hurt you, then I quite clearly did intend to hurt you. 

Saying I didn't mean to hurt you therefore is a lie, and a critical lie, IMO, because it stops one from owning the anger-fighting-warring process at the white-hot spot of greatest ownership leverage.  Ain't gonna touch that hot-spot with a 40 foot pole, sayeth the couple.  “Have you any idea how much more pissed she'd be if she knew I was intending the hurt she felt?”

Here's a little anger therapy.  It's called truth: “darling, I meant to make you squirm in shame and painful, guilty memories, and meant to do so with a 9 of force on a scale of 10.  I was able to carry out my conscious, destructive intentions toward you with some success because I intimately know your weaknesses and your hotspots, and I hit at least 7 or 8 of those with bulls-eye accuracy and streams of locution that impressed even little ole stream-of-consciousness me.”  Ah, that's a little more like it.

See why anger-heat overrides reasoned talk?  It's war, and I'm voluntarily, knowingly generating this war, because I want you to hurt and change, dammit.

My experience with anger-heat is to give it a day.  Just forget talking.  Clarity about what was triggered won't wither but will increase over a little time, and my metabolism will have by then reset itself to a non-warlike stance.

But how to transmute anger heat?  One can begin, I think, with a small confession of sins: I meant to hurt you, big-time, asshole.

Give that truth process 10 years, during which one also investigates the trigger points anger highlights, and anger heat will dissipate because no longer useful.  One will have internalized the hurt one intends and will eventually learn that inner growth is more interesting than pushing and shoving others, not that this latter isn't stage appropriate.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Hi Tom Bruce Nicole and lurkers,

I see lots of power in what each of you say, and to me there is an explanation underneath that adds power, and is not clearly coming out in the conversation.

I think when Tome talks of “Tit for Tat” strategy, and I talk of “Retaliator” we are talking of the same thing, and others reading this may not have much idea of that which we are speaking.

For me it is one of the fundamental building blocks of the “Matrix” in which we live.

Evolution requires only 3 things to proceed.
Something that can replicate (ie something that can cause copies of itself);
A source of infidelity in the copying process, leading to a population of variants;
Competition for replicating success amongst the variants leading to differential survival of the variants.


That is evolution in a nutshell.
And there is much that is implicit within that, that is useful to make explicit.

Very quickly in evolution, replicator that get together in cooperative fashion do better than those that go it alone, so associations of replicators form.

There are lots of factors that influence the survival of these associations.

In one view, it comes down to cost benefit analysis. 
What are the costs of being in this group, in terms of access to metabolic resources?
What are the benefits in terms of reproductive success?
Ultimately, everything in evolution is measured in reproductive success, whatever intermediate measures may be used to determine that.


When we look at the first replicators, these were most likely a family of molecules called RNAs.   Over time evolution and competition amongst associations of RNAs made conditions suitable for a related family of molecules DNAs to take over the prime role of replicator, with RNAs being reduced to a variety of secondary roles within structures called cells.

Over more time, some lineages of cells developed complex communities within cells, working with different lineages of cell within one bigger cell.   This gave rise to Eucaryotic cells, with nuclear membranes, mitochondria and chloroplasts.

Probably at this same stage, replicators developed sex.

In most situations sex is an unstable strategy.   It is almost always more costly and therefore less successful to go to the effort of sharing genetic material, than it is to simply duplicate you material into a copy of yourself.

The exception to this is if there is some source of damage to the replicator, which is what mitochondria bring to the party.   These cells within cells bring two sources of damage, as well a great source of energy (they are about 30 times more efficient than the alternative).    The problem is that they introduce oxygen free radicals, which damage the DNA, and they also introduce DNA fragments called introns, which have the characteristic of inserting themselves into other DNA in random fashion.

In such a dangerous (from the DNA replicators perspective) environment, sex has a benefit, because it in very few generations it has a significant advantage in maintaining the integrity of associations over cloning, even though it also introduces much more variability into the populations.


So in sex we see a “strategy” that works in an environment that is dangerous to individual associations that works by mixing things up, to ensure that even if the rate of damage is very high, many associations will survive.


The next major advance of the complex atomic replicators was to group cells together, to form much nigger entities.

Then cam genes (HOX) that allowed differentiation during development.   Initially inside and outside, then front and back, the above and below, then left and right (as the gene kept getting duplicated and adapted to new uses).

Then came the gene for segmentation.

When you combine segmentation, with differentiation over multiple axes, we have a recipe for the complexity of the animal world that we see.

One branch of apes (us) have taken that specialisation to an exceptional degree.  We have developed brains that allow us to learn behaviours.

We come with a set of basic behaviours, and we are able to replace all of these with new learned ones.

This ability provides an environment in which a new form of replicator can exist - a meme - a unit of transmissible behaviour (in the very broadest sense of behaviour, which includes language and thought).


So, just as we have seen the evolution of some very complex life forms in the biological world of genes, while at the same time we see that some patterns of genes making a living a very stable in particular environments; so it is with memes.

In some minds, very complex associations form and evolve, and across all minds, “culture” is continually evolving, and we see in some people the equivalence of “bacterial” complexity, while in others we observe the equivalence of hominid complexity.

There is a sense is which “culture” in the widest sense of language and all patterns of behaviour, is the ecosystem of being for memes.


So we, as self aware entities, give birth to ourselves through a declaration in language.
That language has evolved by mimetic evolution mostly over the last 100,000 years, and in another sense it would have had slow beginnings going back 10s of millions of years.

That mimetic evolution had its beginnings in an environment created by the evolution of RNAs and DNAs going back some 4 billion years.

The RNAs and DNAs got their atoms from a process that started with stuff that was mind bogglingly hot and dense and was more light like than matter like, expanding cooling, condensing through different forms, and eventually cooling down enough to give us atoms of mostly hydrogen with traces of helium and lithium.     And over millions of years some of those atoms got together in bigger clumps which became the first stars, and when they exploded, the violence of the energies at their core created all the heavier atoms that are so critical to us.

So here we are - self aware in language, which language evolved by apes imitating stuff, which apes evolved because some types of groups of atoms could leave copies, which atoms came from exploding stars, which stars were composed of condensed light.


When we first become aware, we are aware of non of this.

All we know is that we are.  We have thoughts, and experiences.
Over time we figure out we have bodies that we can do stuff with, and those bodies have habits and ways of doing stuff that seem to have been around long before we showed up, yet people expect us to be in control of it all.


How is that all relevant to this discussion?

It gives a context.

It gives a context in which the context machine that is the human brain can see that anger is a complex mimetic response, that in the first instance we have no control over.   We may certainly learn such control, and in extreme examples, some of us may even be able to create contexts in which the anger context never triggers, and the anger context will always be a part of the machine, because it is mathematically stable for it to be so.


For me, this is the context in which there is some truth to the stories of “integral” and not nearly s much”truth” as most “integral wonks” would like.

This is the context in which consciousness is clearly emergent, and we are all related, in so many complex and deep ways.


These “realities” given by scientific study of external “reality” give us powerful understanding and powerful analogies to work with in the internal reality of being a self aware consciousness in such a complex environment.


So yes, anger exists.
In part it has a physiological basis in the structure of our evolved brains, and in part it has a basis in the evolution of the complex culture that our bodies are born into, and which gives birth to our reflective self awareness, and in part it can have active components of our “will”.

And each of those parts is deserving of substantial tomes to detail some of their major mechanisms.

That is what appears to be so to me (in the sense of being the most probable interpretation of the information available to me at this time).

Love Peace Power Passion and Prosperity

Ted 

And if it speaks to you - how about donating some money to www.solnx.org as an active mechanism for increasing the probability that all human beings get to experience the reality and the freedom that such an understanding brings.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Ted, I liked this evolutionary principle, as it seems we have partially lost it in a socio/cultural sense:  ”Very quickly in evolution, replicator that get together in cooperative fashion do better than those that go it alone, so associations of replicators form.”
       Wilber talks about communication or “mode of mutual resonance” in “social holons”, and describes how important this is for the people, or geese, to get on the same page, and how this getting on the same page helps us survive as a group and, therefore, as individuals as well.      I am not alone in sensing an erosion of “cummunity” in the modern or post-modern world. The old structures are gone or are leaving, and cooperation is waiting for a new system to provide this critical evolutionary function. Integral Life is one attempt at a kind of cultural-engineering of a new system that aids in increasing the level of cooperation. 
   Where did all the cooperation go? We were busy honing our skills with competition (“Competition for replicating success amongst the variants leading to differential survival of the variants.”), and assumed that “Mayberry” (the fictional town in the Andy of Mayberry situation commedy television series during the mid 1950s through the early 1960s) would always be there, due to the good-heartedness of people, etc. Similar to assumptions that mother earth could take whatever little thing we tax her with. But you know the saying “Assume makes an 'ass' of 'u' and 'me'. Well, perhaps it is very true. Our assumption that, somehow or another, “Mayberry, or its equivilant, will naturally be there, so why not emphasize competion and forget about cooperation?” may have compromised - made an ass - of all of us in the post-modern world. Creative destructionism (where “creative” would be using your second evolutionary principle)  is rapidly becoming plain old “destruction”. We have fashioned a fire! Stress is usually conceptualized as an overload of change. Our “fire” is designed to do just that! It is a “stress fire” of gigantic proportions, as though (to mix metaphors) we tried to run the “human race” way too fast, and went anerobic, leaving tons of lactic acid in our system, unti we are about to “hit the wall”. Are we nearing the infamous “mile 20” of the marathon?! I have hit that wall hard a time or two. It ain't pretty! 
   My contribution to human survival and evolution is a “creation/innovation” from, I believe, the second principle of evoluton (out of the box infidelity). Actually, my idea is simple, but I wrote a whole book about it. The idea is to make a post-modern version of “Mayberry” that salvages its strengths, without having the narrow-minded, ethnocentric, parochialism that existed in it “back when”, during the “good old days”. In the book, I call it Allsberg. 
   The book is called The Marketing of Virtue: Allsberg Rising. If interested, I could email you a PDF file of it. The book has not found its way to a publisher yet. Ironically, the author of “The Marketing of Virtue”, sucks at marketing!
    Darrell

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Tom:But how to transmute anger heat?  One can begin, I think, with a small confession of sins: I meant to hurt you, big-time, asshole.

When I get angry I don't actually want to hurt an other person, rather I want to destroy a behavioral pattern between us. Working through and feeling fully what gets activated in me through expressing my anger, changes me also. It can break patterns also in me not just in the other.

I have never felt expressing my anger to be a sin. My morality is concerned more on how I express the anger, what words I use. My requirement is that my words and expressions can stand daylight even outside anger.
In my angry state I tend to say things that I out of politeness don't say, but they are my true perceptions. Therefore apparently they can be felt as truly hurtful.
I actually don't want to hurt the other person.  I tend to afterwards feel deeply into the feeling of hurt I have activated in the other. Maybe therefore I have not created enemies, or got  friendships broken through my anger. My friendships tend to dissolve through my tendency to indifference and detachment.

However I have observed that my tendency to analyse the behavior of the other aloud, when I'm angry, is not that effective, even if it might be pretty precise.

My thearpist long ago suggested me that I would try get through changes in my husband's way of treating me, by treating him as he treats me, and stopping analysing him. The'Tit for tat' principle, that you have brought up in your earlier posts.My first reaction to that suggestion was: 'It is too cruel. I cannot do that to him'.My reaction however was very telltale to me. And I kept that suggestion in my mind even if I couldn't for many years apply it.

During the last couple of years I have cautiosly started to experiment with it. The results have exceeded my expectations. I do these things very deliberately and consciously. It is not the same as retaliation. When my husband feels angry being treated like that, I tell him frankly: I did it consciously and deliberately. Can you see how being treated this way makes you feel? Can you now relate to why I feel so frustrated and angry, when you treat me this way?

Irmeli

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Bruce, Thanks for exposure to this East meets West event! My first impression of the discussion between the Dalai and Beck was the remarkable similarity of approach to dealing with anger voiced between the two men from very different cultures. Both articulated a need to get outside of intense anger, or it will take over and blind you, and you will “regret it later”. Both offered a technique to get outside of the anger. Here is where I noticed a difference. This East/West difference may noting, and may be worth an attempt to try to personally integrate two “truths”. Here is the simple difference in distancing: 
    East: Detach and observe, simply observe
    West: Stop and think, think about what you are doing, especially think about your thoughts that are contributing to the anger. Challenge those limited thoughts. If you think it through well enough, you see it more “objectively” and the more objective thinking itself will shift you away from the irrational thoughts involved in the anger experience. 
      It seems to me that both stopping to think about the thoughts, and trying on new thoughts for size,  is West's way of “detaching”. We think our way out of a distorted, or unsustainable, thinking problem. 
    Thinking more objectively, in a more “rational” manner, about the matter at hand is our way of “observing”. 
    West uses a more verbal (or discursive logic) left brain approach. 
   East uses a more non-verbal, right-brain-ish, approach. 
   But both minds are taking us to the same, or similar, destination. 
I personally think that the non-verbal detach-and-observe method may be a bit superior in the long run, and may get us where we want to go quicker, with less stumbling. But I also believe that thought done well, done properly, will get us to the learning that we need in order to have or emotions rather than our emotions having us - to a point of emotional mastery. The trouble with thoughts is that they invite Bohm's dead-thought “system” that gets in the way (sometimes a lot) along the way to mastering emotions. 
   Poetic metaphors (subtle body?) seem a reasonable bridge, or interface, between the West (left-brain) approach and the East's (deep formless right brain? Its depth perception and gestalt skills as pure function, without so much of the symbolism that the right brain also seems to specialize in) approach. A metaphor is accessible to “thought”, but also opens the door for pure experience (IL subjective experience), especially once the image/symbol is properly understood as being something like Plato's shadows on the wall of the cave, as an indication of something deeper and truer. 

    Darrell 

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Darrel:
East: Detach and observe, simply observe
West: Stop and think, think about what you are doing, especially think about your thoughts that are contributing to the anger. Challenge those limited thoughts.

I think these both approaches should be mastered. I cannot say which one of them is superior. To me they complement each other.

When these techniques are mastered in a way that they are practically automatic functions of the mind, then comes time to feel fully into the intensity of anger. And you don't need to “regret it later” as the result is not harmful, but clearing and purifying instead.

Irmeli

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Hi, Darrell,

You wrote:  East: Detach and observe, simply observe
West: Stop and think, think about what you are doing, especially think about your thoughts that are contributing to the anger. Challenge those limited thoughts.
Actually, Buddhism employs both approaches.  Besides the “mindful noting or observing” approach, it also employs analytical forms of meditation for reflecting on the origins and short- and long-term consequences of various (akusala, unskillful) patterns of thinking and emotional response.

I agree with you and Irmeli that both approaches are valuable.

Besides these approaches, there are also various tantric and 'nondual' approaches, which I may outline later.

Best wishes,

B.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

I agree. Both better than one only. Thinking better for “vertical enlightenment” (Wilber, stage elevation) and observing for “horozontal enlightenment” (Wilber also, mind state mastery/integration)? I am biased to think the mind needs to ride the elevator up and get glimpses (states) in order to build a truly sound foundation, but then, I am an “intuiter” type, and vision would be the door or hallway for growth when vision is a person's natural “gift”. I “see” things ahead of time and reality constellates around that. I have tracked my ideas over many years, and they “fit” about 15 to 20 years after I “see” them. An intuiter is often a voice in the wilderness. That is precisely why “thought/thinking” is so important, if the dreamer is to ever meaningfully share the merit of the envisioned ideas. And it is the “seers” duty to do so, because the sooner the collective can use the good ideas for adaptation, the better the chances for survival and properity. 
  I just proposed a type (in this case “intuiter/dreamer”) by perspective interaction (see my discussion on that in open forum, if interested), in the sense that, at least in our society, a whole lot of critical “thinking” would be used as the main pathway in the scientific West (UR dominant). Dreamer operates from UL  and has to communicate (with articulated “thoughts”) to the UR, and to the other perspectives/quads/zones.      
   Otherwise the “gift” has no niche, no “place in this world”. The UL is the base from which the intuiter needs to work. If I try to work from a different quad, my effectiveness, and my voice, will be diminished, will lack clarity, authenticity, and authority. 
  That is why it is important to assess one's own gifts, and for collectives to emphasize the finding and development and “placement” (finding proper “niches”) of the “gifts”. This, to me, is an integral way of thinking or seeing things. 
   I feel that”gifts” (each person's type, kind of multiple intelligence “strentghs”, or naturally strongest “line, and other forms of “predisposed apptitudes”) needs to be emphasized in collectives, if the collective is to be healthy and optimal. Even democracy, which shares the power, accomplishes little if the “voter” doesn't know if they are a “finger” or a “foot” in the collective “body”. 
  A vote cast with truly informed consent requires several things. One of them is “What is my gift?” Then the person can “vote” according to how the system bests allows this gift - as well as other gifts needed to support this gift -  to be fully utilized. Until there is this kind of “gift efficiency”, then sharing power is not such a great thing. It is a necessary, but not sufficient thing. 
   The best way to “vote” is to know, use, and share your gift. In the meantime, traditional “voting”(whether at the ballot box, or “on your feet” as a consumer and/or investor) may help restructure the system so-as to allow for such efficiency and equitable-ness later on. 
   We do not need to all have just “a” piece of the pie. We need to have the piece of the pie that we can digest and use, according to the natural, predisposed, apptitudes and characteristics we have - according to our “gifts”.  “Each according to his gifts” should be the new mantra (IMO). 
    Darrell

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Irmeli: When I get angry I don't actually want to hurt an other person, rather I want to destroy a behavioral pattern between us.

Hi Irmeli, guessing from afar, I'd say you probably do want to hurt another by anger. 

In fact, my interpretation of the anger expression is that it's primary intent—it's primary design—is to scare and hurt another.  I am here looking at anger expression functionally, quite apart from what the consciousness of an angry person might say.

Let me define my terms a little more sharply.  First anger expression: when a person gets “angry” with another, that person will typically display some or all of the following qualities:

• raised voice
• threatening demeanour
• vocal criticisms directed at “you” and “what you did”
• swearing and other expletives

This anger posture is accompanied by physical changes that I interpret as preparing a person for fight.  These changes include some or all of the following:

• increased heart rate
• facial flushing (“red”)
• increased blood pressure
• increased adrenaline and other action-readying hormones and compounds circulating in the blood
• focused attention into a hard stare
• tense muscles
• increased blood flow to the hands to prepare for striking

This overall presentation, to my mind, is a presentation intended to intimidate—it's a physiological, phenomenal show that operates and creates effects in another regardless if the angry person consciously reports such intention or design.  The threatening anger-stance is from what I can tell universal across cultures, it operates virtually automatically, and persons on the receiving end very easily report feeling intimidated, scared, frightened, nervous, hurt (variably depending on relative power differences).  Also, in looking at what actually occurs in an angry encounter, I almost always see a use of words that are received as hurtful by the recipient.

For me, it is a small but important theoretical (and inner developmental) leap to say this: what a recipient feels being confronted by an angry person—intimidated and hurt—was reasonably intended by the angry person, again whether that intention is wholly conscious or conscious at all.  In other words, what that person felt by my anger is what I wanted that person to feel.  This move, to me, is the road of internalizing anger and breaking the externalizing cycle.

Thus in my own inner life, I have long concluded that what another feels as the consequence of my action—subject to small variations and differences that don't affect the overall conclusion—is something I intended and wanted.  For me, and apart from mere revenge, the only reason I can think of for intimidating and hurting another is to attempt to change that other from a course of behaviour I find undesirable.

In your own report, I see my understanding of “intention to change” in the rationale you give for anger-expression, to destroy a behavioural pattern.  Of course, the typical focus of anger fights is “who's going to change?”

Thus anger expression is to me a form of behaviour-changing force by threat.  Anger is not peaches and cream, but is a powerful affect that desires a certain result. 

Btw, my reference to “sin” is facetious.  I don't view life process, including anger, as undesirable.  I'm here merely giving my opinion on how anger functions, and how internalizing that function can lead to a dissipation of anger's historical role and outcome.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Tom:Hi Irmeli, guessing from afar, I'd say you probably do want to hurt another by anger. 

I cannot confirm this, because that is not my consciuous perception. What I percieve is a desire to destroy or break through a behavioral pattern in the other, not to destroy the other. If I manage through my anger to break the pattern, actually the other will benefit in spite of his feelings of hurt.

Fiery anger is pretty energy consuming for me. I must care for the person to bother to create this fiery energy that is meant to break down a behavioral structure.

If I wanted to truly hurt an other person hostility, abuse, negligence, and abandonment would be more effective. To do it you don't need to create a fiery anger. A few sneaky words can do the job. No excess of energy is needed.

Of course I can have an unconscious desire to destroy another person. That has been earlier the case with my mother. Long ago, when my father asked me to help him to find my drunken mother, I declined. I also asked him to stop searching for her and said: Why to bother searching for her. If she has fallen down and is freezing to death, then we will get rid of that problem. And I didn't feel consciously any anger at all. I just saw a practical solution to a long lasting problem.

Irmeli

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Hi Irmeli, I'm not questioning you care for the other in expressions of anger.  In fact, my saying anger is your friend affirms that anger and love are coincident life expressions, all part of the greater whole where one thing necessarily serves the other.  Part of my intention in framing my contributions here as I have is to reframe discussion around anger beyond the typical religious condemnations, soft and hard, that have dominated peoples' understanding of anger.  Yes, I see the function these old historical roles may have played, and appreciate them.  My point is: let's leave them (anger is ugly) in the past where they belong.  Evolution wants newness and new framings and new understandings and new relations and ways of being.

However what I am saying respecting your description is that an angry expression will create certain effects in the other, and that those effects are reasonably anticipated consequences—actually intended consequences—of the angry expression.  Those consequences are necessarily part of the design of anger.

Let's put it this way: draw two scenarios:

Scenario 1
You're sitting with your husband.  You're at a fine restaurant.  You're celebrating your life together, your children, all the twists and turns of your relationship history.  You reach over, grab your husband's hand, raise your wine glass to him while you tell him how much you love him and appreciate your life together.

Scenario 2
You're venting angrily at your husband.

Now we invite a Martian, who knows little of human behaviour to discern between these scenarios.  We give the Martian a brief description of pleasure and pain, and ask him to put one word, pleasure or pain, to describe your husband's interior in each scenario.  We allow him access to whatever tests he might perform in whatever manner he chooses to determine body states, blood contents, etc—whatever you can imagine.

What will he choose?

I'm suggesting your husband will feel one way in one scenario, another way in the other.  I find that though people will often take at least some credit for another's feelings of bonding and love after lovingly expressing to that other, they stop short of taking credit for feelings arising on expressions of anger.

And as the final block in this scenario I'm building, I think feelings motivate.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Irmeli, let me picture what I'm trying to say from a different angle.  You ask your 6 year old nicely to go brush his teeth.  He doddles around and doesn't do it.  You then ask again, this time a little more firmly.  He still doddles and doesn't brush.  You then raise your voice angrily and tell him if he doesn't brush his teeth you won't be taking him to the fair tomorrow.

Here we see clearly the motivating aspect of anger: it's design in this scenario is to get the little tike to brush his teeth, to motivate him to do a certain behaviour.  And the motivating works: it generates a feeling of foreboding threat in the child, a fear of pain in the future, and he responds accordingly with a change in behaviour.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Tom:However what I am saying respecting your description is that an angry expression will create certain effects in the other, and that those effects are reasonably anticipated consequences—actually intended consequences—of the angry expression.  Those consequences are necessarily part of the design of anger.

These bodily reactions tell about the path through which anger has evolved throughout history in animals and humans. But it tells very little about those levels to which it has at best evolved in humans.

I want to look at anger from this perspectives, because through this way of looking on it, some important and in daily life distinctions can be made.

The point I'm trying to make here is that anger can be used to many different purposes in the daily lives of people.The outcome of anger is highly dependent on these intentions. Often the intentions are not conscious.

I claim that we can also use anger with intentions that are not aiming to harm the other person, but rather to help to make clear that I don't like to be treated this way. Often anger arises after having tried to in more friendly ways communicate how I feel about the situation with no impact at all.

However behind anger can be also intentions to truly harm another person. The effects of anger can be quite different then. This type of anger tends to get easily suppressed. It can in stressful situations break out with disastrous effects.

I take an example from my own life. I had a mother who had a grave borderline personality disorder. She used to in pretty unpredictable ways to attack and hurt me physically. It was about pretty serious violence, knocking me down to the floor, kicking me there, and also hitting me with a carpet beater.

I adolescence occasionally thoughts started to arise in me of wanting to kill my mother. I immediately each time realized that in that way I would only harm myself. And the thought got dropped.

As a young adult I internally worked through  masses of anger and hate towards my mother. This work was very healing to me. However it apparently did not touch my earlier desire to kill my mother. That desire had not appeared consciously for many years. I thought it was fully gone.

In the 90's I went through a eight year long psychoanalytical psychotherapy, where masses of fear and anger started to again surface, now from deeper levels than before.

I had mentioned at some point to my therapist that as young I sometimes felt the desire to kill my mother. At some point, when I had already been for many years in that therapy, my therapist picked this up and suddenly asked me: In which way did I want to kill my mother as young? I said I never went that far in my thoughts.
Then she asked me to try to imagine how I could have wanted to kill my mother.
I tried to do the visualization, but could not. Then the therapist started  colorfully describing different ways of killing my mother. I still couldn't do it.

She repeatedly took this up in the therapy sessions. And each time I could not do the visualizations. Then one night in bed,  I suddenly could visualize myself killing my mother. I did it in all the different ways my therapist had described to me. And it felt truly good to kill my mother in very cruel ways .

During the following months I did the killings in my mind many times, and in many different ways my imagination only could hit on. Sometimes I also acted the killing out on a cushion.

The impact of this on my actual relationship with my mother was amazing. I had  felt somewhat tense in her company, and I also  being depleted of my energies. Now I was much more relaxed with her. And I was not anymore depleted of my energies. I got much more courage to confront her angrily, which later turned out to give really precious gifts to both me and my mother and to our mutual  relationship. These results were truly miraculous.

The episode with my father I described  here in an earlier post in this thread, was an outcome of having suppressed my desire to kill my mother and the anger connected to this desire. The point here is that the outcome of a suppressed intention can get realized indirectly without any feeling of anger.

I want to emphasize that most of my felt anger does not have behind it the intention to kill or harm another person. Anger can originate from very different aims and intentions having then quite different effects.

I think it is important to make this distinction. From my perspective it seems not very useful to claim that all anger is meant to hurt another person.

A distinction could be made between wanting to hurt a person, or wanting to hurt a pattern of communication.

Irmeli

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Irmeli: I claim that we can also use anger with intentions that are not aiming to harm the other person, but rather to help to make clear that I don't like to be treated this way. Often anger arises after having tried to in more friendly ways communicate how I feel about the situation with no impact at all.

Yes.  And what I'm saying is a person chooses anger-expression over those other modes of communication because anger offers a type of force those other modes of communication don't.  Anger's force has a greater probability of what you call impact.  “Impact,” as I understand it, is not mutual consent via calm deliberation, it's essentially me saying this is the way things will be in a threatening disposition.  Of course, anger-expression might not achieve its less-than-consensual goals; I'm not saying it necessarily will.  It merely has a greater probability of an “impact.”  Usually it starts a cycle of retaliation and counter-force.

But why does anger expression carry force?  I contend that anger-expression, by its very structure—raised voice, hard stare, rapid heart beat—communicates a threat of harm or loss to the other, whether harm to some interest the other holds dear, like loss of the relationship, a theat of actual physical harm, a threat of harm to another, etc.  Threat of harm or loss is what I'm here calling an intention to cause hurt or pain. 

Of course, anger not expressed, but felt inwardly and viewed as carrying information about something essential in my personal context and my assumptions, my boundaries and my relations, might be barely noticed by another.  But this anger likewise carries force and impact: it wakes me up to something important, something I need to address.  And it doesn't in my experience ever just go away.

There can be any combination of inward and outward forms of anger. 

Btw, Irmeli, I truly appreciate how forthcoming your descriptions are.  It sounds from your work regarding your mom that anger, in yet another example of its life-enhancing functions, helped you to break through something that held you down.  As you say, “These results were truly miraculous.” 

I think I understand where you're coming from with your wanting to emphasize not wanting to hurt another.  I don't want to drop my statement that anger intends harm, or threatens harm or loss, because I think it's an interesting means of internalizing—being truthful about—what occurs in most situations of anger I see.  What I largely see in anger-expression is people angrily accusing each other of various modes of failure and malfunction, etc., etc., including saying things they actually do not mean.  They say these things because the brain knows they carry the force of hurt or threat of hurt or loss. 

For instance, someone might in an angry fight say, “Oh yah, well I think you're obnoxious and actually quite stupid!”  The very same person, in the make-up session following the fight, can be heard to say, “I'm really sorry darling, I didn't mean to hurt you, and didn't mean all those things I said.” 

Two lies.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Bruce, regarding your responses to me above, I'll answer some of your questions and address some of your concerns.  Here we go:

Bruce: Is anger befriended the same thing as anger as unconscious reactivity?

To me, and in essence, yes.  I view anger as an “emotion” that in its structure wants to “move” in a given direction.  That direction, in my view, is toward firmer, more secure, better protected self boundaries.  By “self” I mean both the inner sense of self and anything physical (like a home) in which the self lives.  Anger to my mind wants these boundaries safe and secure.

The difference between anger-expression and inward processing is the former tends to rely to a greater extent for its boundary-security in preventing others (through changing others) from breaching.  In the latter, I become secure by changing myself, by inquiring why I might react and need this thing called security, and thus working anger from that vantage point.

Bruce: Are you saying here that you don't think it's appropriate or properly descriptive to refer to such things as the psychological unconscious, or subpersonalities, or repressed or disowned memories or feelings, or 'the shadow'?

I'm not denying we have lesser and greater awareness of our actions, behaviours and intentions.  I just think a developmental perspective is more faithful to observation than a perspective that says I'm expressing anger because I denied myself something.  This latter basically dismisses an evolved role for anger as a secondary effect of an original mistake, or something.  For me, the fuller description of anger speaks to anger's evolutionary role, its past, its function and its evolving future.

Regarding the notion of “the unconscious,” Otto Rank, who I adore, once said, a little tongue in cheek, that he didn't think anything is really unconscious.  He said when pressed, his clients would often admit knowing full well what they were doing and why.  Rank said they simply didn't want to say what they knew.

You can see something of the truth of what Rank was saying by looking at lying.  Lying can seem a very unconscious act.  On the other hand, a lie, by its very structure, knows the truth, or it couldn't structure itself as a lie.  Every liar thus knows the truth, or operates with an idea of the truth, which allows the liar to effectively construct the lie.  But ask a liar to say the truth?  That's another matter entirely.

Bruce: I never felt I was 'wrong' to be angry about my friends dying or having to endure an abusive drunk in my house (I knew such responses were reasonable), but I could also see that my own angry thought patterns were magnifying these feelings in quite destructive ways.

In your story of anger in your life, it looks like you concluded at some point in time that acting on your anger, or further generating an internal angry disposition, was no longer constructive.  My guess is if you look back on what processes occurred for you relationally during that time, you likely saw certain changes in your relation to your step-dad, your mom, and probably to life.  I would see all of that as carried in important respects by anger, not despite anger.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Thanks for your response, Tom.  Do you have any thoughts on the material by Beck I shared?

Here are some of my further thoughts in that direction:

Outbursts of anger frequently tend to cloud or obscure underlying emotional states or conditions that precipitate anger (feeling vulnerable, hurt, weak, etc), and so to the extent that habitual reliance on 'anger' can essentially keep an individual in denial with regard to these other dimensions of him- or herself, I would not say that anger itself is inherently constructive or inherently good or necessarily evolutionarily adaptive.  In other words, while there is a 'logic' behind anger ('must protect boundary') that is evolutionarily understandable and reasonable, especially when looked at in the abstract and from a distance (or within certain evolutionary, developmental, and environmental contexts), it can also serve maladaptive and non-evolutionary ends; it can be a growth-retarding agent, since its outward threat-elimination orientation is rather conservative and narrow in its focus (good for survival situations, not so good in the family) and, left to its own devices, can serve to harden present self-boundaries and preserve the status quo rather than allowing for the permeability and vulnerability to outside information that marks an 'evolutionary' orientation.  Anger might motivate change (destroying the threat, psychologically or physically, or getting out of the situation), but in my opinion, anger must generally yield to something else for individual growth to be facilitated.

A question to ask is, if you are hurt by something or someone, is anger the most evolutionarily adaptive response, in all situations?  I see value in anger-contextualized (an evolved recognition that the arising of an aggressive threat-response indicates hurt and perceived boundary-breach), which can serve as a signal for introspection and evaluation of one's present condition, state, expectations, beliefs, etc.  But this anger-as-signal is a developmentally different animal, in my opinion, from the primitive or original fight-response, because it is recontextualized within a higher cognitive frame in which its absoluteness is already in question.  This is a frame which recognizes not only that anger carries potentially vital information, but which also recognizes that the response itself arises within a cognitive context which itself may be limted, mistaken, etc.  In other words, while there is a certain rationality and intelligence to anger ('must protect boundaries to preserve life or self'), the cognitive context in which such threat is perceived may not be rational or valid, and so the response itself may be similarly misguided.

I do value the life-affirming, all-embracing approach you are describing – I agree with it, in principle, and, to the extent that I am able at this point, in practice as well – but I still find myself not wanting to give the anger-response an unqualified 'yes,' for the reasons above.  I recognize its intelligence, but find that intelligence limited, essentially, by the limitations of the cognitive-emotional system it serves (which can misinterpret input, misperceive the environment, and also fragment against itself).  There's an intelligence to anger, yes, but it must serve greater intelligences to be 'adaptive' in our modern evolutionary world.  By itself, it can be destructive and growth-retarding.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

A post-script:

I do see 'loving my anger' as a wise, growth-promoting, integrative move, and is certainly preferable to trying to deny anger any value or utility, or to repress or entirely eliminate it.  But given anger's nature and its roots in a more evolutionarily primitive response-system, I experience 'loving my anger' as somewhat akin to loving and caring for a guard dog.  I can trust it with some things, and can't trust it with others, and so saying 'no' to it in certain situations (and perhaps during certain stages of one's life) has a place within the larger 'yes.'

Some teachers I've studied with describe a several-phase path of training, the first step of which is renunciatory and involves saying 'no' to impulses we do not currently have the resources to handle; but later stages allow the 'kenneled' impulses back out to play, in increasingly subtle and sophisticated ways.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Hi Bruce, I like some of what Beck says.  I partly agree with his definition of primal thinking as an efficient form of thinking that readies for fight or flight. I don't like his gloss “egocentric” — doesn't add much useful information for me.  I think primal thinking is well adapted for a circumstance of uncertainty, which is a regular feature of an anger context.  I quoted Wilson above saying humans have a tendency to respond to a perceived threat in such a way as to generate a sufficient barrier of comfort: this is primal thinking.

In a context, like today, where people can communicate with perhaps greater disclosure and honesty, the latter themselves being emergents appearing with the development of language and society, primal thinking should evolve to a higher expression.

As to some specifics Beck names, I agree with him here:

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Is the less subtle, because being so, “unreasonable”?


Hmm, let's see.  Someone cuts me off in traffic. 

a) I feel disrespected and that makes me mad.  No one disses me.  I'm going to make sure that person knows who he's messing with.  So I pull a gun out and shoot the driver.

b) I feel a rush of adrenaline at the close call, but assessing the situation, I realize that I'm okay, I'm not in a hurry, and the person might be experiencing an emergency (I don't really know at this point, but there might be a good reason for their behavior), so I relax, give a little space, and continue driving.

One is a less subtle, more primal reaction than the other.

Is it fair to differentiate the responses in this instance in terms of their reasonableness as well?

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Bruce, I don't think it is that simple…

if someone is as emotionally or mentally unstable to pull a gun in an instant of road rage, he will more than likely not possess the ability to respond in the more logical way that you also presented…

now, maybe this man has been stuffing his anger for a long time, let's say he is a practicing Christian with a family, and he thinks he has to 'act' a certain way, and he has been doing this for years and years…

shall we also say that there are some things in his past that he has forgotten…which he needed to, cuz he could not deal with them at the time, and so awareness kicked in, or didn't in this case to protect…

let's also say that he has just been layed off at work, his wife is dying of cancer, and his child has just been molested by a child molestor, which has triggered a memory of his own rape as a child…

we might ask why he has a gun…hmmmmm…he is one of those Republican Christians…and a war vet as well…so he has no prob with packin…

so…here we have the makings of yet another tragedy…why???  lots of reasons, but it all started b/c he was unable to process what had happened to him as a child…not b/c of what happened to him as a child…cuz lots of things happen to children…if we are able to process them correctly, we can successfully integrate them…if not…we get the man pulling the gun out in a fit of road rage…

but you are never going to have the man who is able to go both ways that you presented…a man that snaps like that is not capable of the other…and the man that is capable of the other, would never snap…

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Star, you're missing my point.  I wasn't asking Tom to imagine a single person who would be just as likely to respond in one way as the other; rather, I was trying to make the point that 'less subtle'/primal thinking modes of response in particular situations can indeed be called unreasonable (although, given the particular psychological stressors the person might be suffering from, still understandable).  Tom denied that Beck's use of 'unreasonable' was an appropriate descriptor for primal-thinking-driven responses, and I don't agree – there are some situations where 'unreasonable' is, indeed, appropriate and accurately descriptive.   

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

my bad…*

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

i just went back and reread…and i am not sure you made your point…

are you saying that the man with the gun is understandably unreasonable…but unreasonable none-the-less???

given the circumstances, i would suggest that his head exploding instead of the gun powder…would make more sense…

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

By “understandable,” I meant you could find a psychological explanation for his unreasonable, explosive reaction to the traffic scenario.  The point is that primal thinking, while adaptive in certain emergency situations, is often maladaptive in other contexts. 

Concerning what Beck calls 'unreasonable core beliefs,' he does not mean that they were unreasonable when they first were formed, but that they are unreasonable when extended outside of their developmental context.  In their original context, black-and-white / either-or primal beliefs helped to ensure a certain margin of safety in an often hostile environment.  But while “I must destroy anyone or anything who threatens my safety” might have been a reasonable strategy in early human history, and still would be useful in some high-risk situations, “I must punish or destroy anyone who even appears to disrespect me” is generally a maladaptive code to live by in modern civilization (except in some high-risk situations).  The general impulse to protect one's boundaries is reasonable; the belief, “I must attack and harm anyone who does not meet my expectations for respect,” is not.  Cognitive therapy looks to identify maladaptive beliefs which mobilize one to react and behave in ways which cause individuals to suffer.

While we might reasonably identify the adaptiveness of 'anger' as an evolutionarily emergent 'natural response,' we should not overlook the fact that anger is a cognitive event which actually follows upon several prior interpretive steps.  And those interpretations may be more or less accurate, more or less adaptive.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Bruce said:  we should not overlook the fact that anger is a cognitive event which actually follows upon several prior interpretive steps.  And those interpretations may be more or less accurate, more or less adaptive.


what are the several prior interpretive steps, and how are they more or less accurate or adaptive?

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Bruce: While we might reasonably identify the adaptiveness of 'anger' as an evolutionarily emergent 'natural response,' we should not overlook the fact that anger is a cognitive event which actually follows upon several prior interpretive steps.  And those interpretations may be more or less accurate, more or less adaptive.

Your understanding to me overlooks that the typical form of anger, anger expression, is designed to not look too carefully, to not be “accurate,” because the time it takes to discern might prove fatal and/or can itself be wrong due to deception and faulty analysis.  Again, on this planet of death, it's not good to be wrong in one's analysis; therefore don't analyze, strike first and create a margin of safety even if the striking is “inaccurate” (it's not inaccurate in the function it performs in the environment in which it performs it).

What you call the unreasonable belief I must attack is a just a value judgment from a more developed position that would not be but for evolutionary mode you are judging.  For a person carrying such belief, is it possible for them to immediately, and for all time hence, simply drop that “belief”?  Highly unlikely!  That belief is a development structure.  I don't see the utility of calling a development structure unreasonable (except to apply force by shaming).

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

One of the premises of the cognitive therapeutic approach, which is the position I'm speaking from for the moment, is that we largely feel the way we think, and the way we think is not fixed (though some core beliefs are deep rooted and do not easily change). 

I don't think I'm overlooking the relatively adaptive design of anger; rather, I'm saying that the design of that mode of response is useful for some situations, but not for other more complex and subtle ones, so when it arises in those other situations, it is 'maladaptive,' particularly if we rely on it to the exclusion of higher faculties.  I am certainly not condemning this primal response mode, nor denying that it actually helped ensure survival and further development of the species, nor that it can still be useful in emergency and physical threat situations.

What I was wanting to stress in my last post was that, while the 'angry' fight-response (of the primal fight-flight responses described by evolutionists) is evolutionarily adaptive and useful, its 'naturalness' does not guarantee the 'intelligence' or 'appropriateness' of any particular instance of its arising.  If cognitive theorists are right that we tend to feel how we think – and Beck has tracked a number of primal, automatic thoughts that typically precede the anger-response – then anger arises subject to various meaning-systems or interpretations, and may be the servant of irrational or unreasonable thoughts.  The notion that 'anger is very rational' (as you mentioned elsewhere) should be balanced or qualified, in my opinion, by the recognition that it is often triggered by or marshalled in the service of irrational or pre-rational interpretations or cognitive frames.

The use of the phrase 'unreasonable belief' is Beck's, so let me give some examples of what he's talking about.  Beck has noted that anger-prone people tend to engage in a number of similar cognitive strategies:  over-generalization, personalization, dichotomous thinking (e.g., friend or enemy), catastrophic thinking, exclusive causal attribution, etc.  Within situations of immediate physical threat, such strategies can be adaptive (they can function automatically and equip you for quick, decisive protective action).  But many situations in modern society are considerably more complex and considerably less personally threatening. 
Regarding Beck's 'unreasonable core beliefs' (which usually reflect one or more of the above interpretive strategies), here are some examples:

People must show respect for me at all times.
People who disagree with me disrespect or dislike me.
People should always do what I want.
If I'm not loved by everyone, I'm unworthy or a failure.

And so on.  Such beliefs may have arisen in circumstances where they 'made sense,' but generalized to 'the world at large,' they become unreasonable and frequently sources of suffering.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Bruce, further comments on your posts:

Bruce: Outbursts of anger frequently tend to cloud or obscure underlying emotional states or conditions that precipitate anger …

Yes, IMO the very design of anger, in an (earlier) stage of development, is to cloud and obscure—to derail—the thinking process.  That's its role.  An organism in such earlier state needs precisely to stop thinking in order to act.  Historically (and from inference), those who did stop and think were clearly losers in a broad sampling of cases, such that those whose metabolisms threw a cloud puff into the thinking centre and acted survived.  Deception is a very real, consequential reality affecting human social interactions.  In previous times, it very often could entail death.

Thus in my conception, anger is working properly in an early stage of development when it creates “unreasonable beliefs.”  But I'm a structural functionist.  Always have been.

Bruce: … while there is a 'logic' behind anger … that is evolutionarily understandable … especially when looked at in the abstract … it can also serve maladaptive and non-evolutionary ends; it can be a growth-retarding agent …

Let me put a different spin on this.  The logic behind anger is evolutionarily understandable in the concrete: evolution is a concrete, life or death affair.  Outcomes on this planet of death are not abstract.

Anger has for its part served to produce, not retard, growth, because it is one of the least comfortable feelings a human can feel.  It's physiological accompaniments are unhealthy.  It can lead to death.  It demands that change occurs.

Many people, I find, really don't like big chunks of life process.  They say things like this planet contains something like a problem of evil whereby, in a really perfect universe—of course, spiritual types will admit that this universe is “perfect” in a “nondual” way and get with the program, but in a really perfect universe—there would be no death, no killing, no eating, no harming, no starving, no hurting, no pain, no fighting, no warring, no fear, no privation, no hate, no shame, no deception, no nothing that requires anger as an essential life-sidekick and, in certain circumstances, saviour.

That's not the universe I am, it is therefore not the universe I want or respect theoretically, if only because I view subtler reaches of my being, and evolutionary development, as forms of ongoing-integrating or integrating-in-consciousness or integrating-upwards, or some such.  It runs against my grain to reject any part of what I am.  An evolutionary past is a child to the evolutionary present.  Is it “bad” to be a child?  I prefer a responsible, parental loving of the past.  Call it Tom's uncomfortable way of love.

Back to anger and development.  Anger, with enough time, produces its opposite, which is harmonious living.  In line with this proposition, my guess is that warring in Europe propelled Europe farther up the SD scale than America.  Read Robert Axelrod's book The Evolution of Cooperation.  He argues effectively that stable cooperation builds on a base settled by, among other things, conflict. 

Anger is so uncomfortable, unsettling and destabilising, it demands resolution.  Her's a proposition: given enough experiences of anger expression, and in a sufficiently stable society based on a sufficiently stabilised background level of trust, people will naturally climb the learning ladder—they empirically have done so, which should be enough evidence—where anger, at an upper reach, can show itself IMO as one means by which a person can shed even the idea of security, so secure can one become in being what one is (Ramana I Am stuff).

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

I am really enjoying this thread…

I would like to make a comment…Bruce, I don't think we should EVER say no to our anger…in the sense of feeling it, and inquiring into it beyond the surface feeling…

Now we should say no to harmful actions of anger…unless they are necessary…iow, someone breaks into my home, hurts my child, I am a tiger or a lioness…and don't let me have a gun or they are dead where they stand…

Anger is a natural human response or feeling…and necessary for survival…when it is triggered we should always pay attention to it and investigate…but in some situations, it is wise and correct to just react…

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

That's the spirit, Star.  Let's be responsible for everything we can know ourselves to be and have been.  In an evolutionary universe, that's alot!  Let's go into what we are, to nurture it like a mother nurtures a child, and see what any aspect of life brings.  Yes, we do want change, but why not suggest change is simply part of what is and doesn't need to imply the past—of which we are children—is bad.

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Tom said:  Yes, we do want change, but why not suggest change is simply part of what is and doesn't need to imply the past—of which we are children—is bad.


oohlala…so true…so true…without my entire past i would not be me…and i like me…gol*


anger is a tool like anything else…learn to use it appropriately, and it IS your friend…run from it and deny it…and it will devour you with a vengence…


I love anger today…I love being able to say hey, you pissed me off and here is why…or, to be able to honestly inquire within my own awareness as to why whatever is uncomfortable is uncomfortable…resolving it, engaging it fully, integrates…and heals…*

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Star: without my entire past i would not be me

Yes, what a truth that is.  But for the earlier, no later, so the later is but an expression of the earlier.  What's more, the later, needing the earlier just to be, is, despite being more developed than the earlier (the later's typical superiority claim), more dependent than the earlier.  Advance into dependence!  Ha, what a great universe!

Here's one implication for the present discussion: I am not but for, and express, all that mucky “immaturity” called anger-expression, etc., etc.  What people might say is the more mature expression of anger, is simply the birthchild of that “immaturity.”  Therefore, there is no immature anger.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

LOL…i love that…the birthchild of immaturity…

maybe another way of looking at it could also be that this so-called immature anger is anger that has not been able thus far to express its true voice…

however, i don't think i can go so far as to say that immature anger does not exist…

that is kinda like saying i was never a fetus…isn't it???

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Can you expand on that, Tom?  Are you saying here that there is a pure, constant “essence,” anger, that is the same for everyone and just gets “expressed” in different ways?  Or are you questioning the appropriateness of calling anything immature?

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Bruce, “immaturity” is a relative value judgment from a position of perceived higher maturity.  Viewing the same “immaturity” from a position of lower maturity—the neanderthal, in my example—what a developed modern considers “immature” to a neanderthal very likely looks like a god: maturity defined.  Where is this “immaturity” of which you speak?  Are you suggesting people should always be more advanced, more mature than they ever are?

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Of course.  I have no quibble with that.  I'm not suggesting an absolute state of maturity; I'm focusing more on what we can generally agree upon, at our present stage of human evolution, and more specifically in modern culture, as “mature” or “immature” expressions within various contexts.  Primal thinking, being an early emergent and pre-rational mode of cognition, can be called immature from the point of view of a rational or post-rational mode of functioning.  And anger, when an expression of primal thinking, can therefore be called an “immature reaction” when in contexts where rational modes of thinking are more adaptive.
With that said, yes, I agree with your alternative point that, there being no “absolute” state of maturity, no expression of anger is inherently immature either.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Isn't everyone just where they are?  Yes, everyone likely can change their course, but only in the future.  As for where they currently stand, that's what and where they are.  Everyone is in that very place of being what they currently are.  And everyone is immature compared to the future.  What you call “immature” is to my mind just some future to another person at some stage that is to you, but not that person, past.  How descriptively useful can it be to label someone immature (except to shame)?

You might also ask, adaptive for whom?  What you call “adaptive” is to my appreciation a certain developmental stage, let's call it stage 5.  Is a person at stage 2 expected to attain a stage 5 adaptation?

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

I'm talking about a relatively well-established and recognized developmental trajectory that is available to human beings.  I'm not talking about trying to shame or humiliate people.  We don't have to use this descriptor in discussion with the person in question, but it is not a meaningless or useless descriptor.  It is a relative one.  You could also use other terms, like pre-rational or whatever.  I'm not entirely sure what you're taking issue with; I recall your having made many similar evaluative comments about Cohen, Adi Da, the Dalai Lama's philosophy (archaic, outmoded), the guru-disciple mode of relationship, etc.  Are you reconsidering making any judgments about or evaluations of individuals' respective levels of developmental maturity or “evolutionary” status?

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

when a baby is a baby and cries cuz it is piss off and hungry and angry…that could be considered immature anger…but it is age appropriate…the baby eventually learns to talk and voice it's needs, and feed itself…etc…then the baby finds all kinds of other things to get pissed off about…so are you saying Tom that anger never grows up?  LOL…

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

You might also ask, adaptive for whom?  What you call “adaptive” is to my appreciation a certain developmental stage, let's call it stage 5.  Is a person at stage 2 expected to attain a stage 5 adaptation?

If s/he lives in a stage-5 society, then, yes, eventually.  A stage-5 society expects its adult citizens to follow stage-5 rules of conduct.  People at stage 2 are not 'adapted' to the needs and expectations of a stage-5 society, and will likely end up in trouble in that society. 

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

I wanted to add that I believe I understand your concern, Tom, and if I am hearing you correctly, I appreciate what you're saying; but in my reading of Beck, Alford, and others who I've read in this field, “adaptive” is not intended to refer to any specific developmental level.  Rather, what they are concerned with is general cognitive system-environment fit or adaptedness, and with ways to assist people when maladaptedness is leading to suffering, difficulties, and/or psychopathology. 

Further, primal thinking is not something only people at a particular developmental stage engage in.  It shows up in people at multiple stages of development, often in the form of semi-unconscious automatic thoughts (which preciptate and magnify emotional reactions).  So, the question of the 'maturity' or adaptedness of particular modes of thought is, in many cases, an intrapersonal one – where more archaic modes of thinking override individuals' higher capacities in a way that is felt to be debilitating or which leads to interpersonal distress.

In my old paper that I linked near the beginning of this thread, I discussed the possibility of using something like Spiral Dynamics in cognitive therapeutic work, as a way of helping the individual finding more (horizontally) adaptive interpretations within his or her memetic value system, and possibly also using Socratic dialogue to help initiate vertical v-Memetic development, where appropriate.  So, I appreciate your concern with an approach which would seek to fit everyone into the system of expectations appropriate only to a single stage, and would not advocate that either.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Tom:Viewing the same “immaturity” from a position of lower maturity—the neanderthal, in my example—what a developed modern considers “immature” to a neanderthal very likely looks like a god: maturity defined.

My experience  through my interactions with my great teacher, my mother, is that our maturity, when looked at from a lower developmental level, tends to look like a weakness.
This is especially true, when we are in certain aspects disconnected from our earlier developmentally lower aspects.
This weakness our developmentally lower 'immature' close relatives, friends, coworkers and bosses can be very good in spotting. And they are capable of taking advantage of this weakness with their lesser moral development by faking higher morals, and other rough methods we cannot use. Bluffing and swindling are from a evolutionary point old, well working survival strategies.

As long as you get at least some success with these methods, when dealing with people, who are actually developmentally higher, you perceive these people as weak, naive idiots.

I started to have real success with my mother, when I consciously started to respond to her from a similar altitude than she did, but did it better. Only then I got her respect, and  I became the leading wolf. And that position cannot be taken by loving kindness. It is taken through skillfull aggression while simultaneously not seriously harming the other, and not abandoning her, and then showing loving kindness every time she behaves truly from a more mature level. This led my mother in an old age shift to functioning from a developmentally higher stage.

 All my tame empathy and understanding of her difficulties and problems hadn't helped a bit. Maybe it had instead contributed to the worsening of her condition, as there was no one who could confront her truly in a way that she understood and valued. Rather people around her were afraid of her, felt uncomfortable in her company and avoided her. Although my mother was resourceful with this problem also: she bought herself friends.

Irmeli

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Hi Irmeli, I agree and see that lower-evolved types can see higher-evolved ways as weak.  It seems to me a well-established higher mode can moderate this perception by what you say, adopting lower-evolved strategies which, again as you say, can be wielded with good effect by the higher-evolved person because that person has greater conscious flexibility in that lower-evolved mode.  That's a mouthful.  I like your phrase skillful aggression.  I use this strategy myself.  I don't let people walk on me by “loving” them, which “love” often to me looks to me to be fearful and “nice.”

The Tit For Tat strategy I mentioned above approximately captures these observations.  It essentially posits that people at lower-evolved stages simply will not evolve into a higher, more cooperative mode unless they hit the wall called another's counter-will.  That is evidently the context they need to realize, at some point, they don't want further pushing.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Hi Irmeli and Tom

Just to say I really appreciate the insights in your 2 posts here. Especially these:
Irmeli: “This weakness our developmentally lower 'immature' close relatives, friends, coworkers and bosses can be very good in spotting. And they are capable of taking advantage of this weakness with their lesser moral development by faking higher morals, and other rough methods we cannot use.”

Tom: “people at lower-evolved stages simply will not evolve into a higher, more cooperative mode unless they hit the wall called another's counter-will.”

These to me are invaluable insights and I wish they were more widely recognised. Thanks for sharing.

James

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Yeah, I wasn't advocating repressing anger or denying it.  I think I've been clear in what I've written already, but to be doubly so:  I meant not giving it free reign in terms of 'being unleashed' on someone (since I was using the dog metaphor), or being a default mode of reacting/relating.  Sometimes you have to say no to its immediate presentation in order to put a hault to destructive habit patterns.  This “no” is different from denying that we are angry or trying to repress it, and it may help to make space so you can more readily inquire into it “beyond the surface feeling.”

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Bruce, but what about when it needs to be unleashed???

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

I think too, that outburst of anger offer the opportunity for clarity if they are examined honestly…

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Then let 'er rip.

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well, i'm not angry about anything personal today…gol…but hey, the day is young…all i have to do is go and read some of the crap that is passed off as enlightenment on some of the other threads on Gaia and i can assure you it wouldn't take long for me to experience and demonstrate my frustration…but as for real anger…i save that for deserving issues…like hungry children, wars raging, our earth being destroyed…and the ignorance and lack of humanity of mankind…

however, in the past i have had to deal with being angry over the past…and until i resolved it, it played a big role in my emotional instability…i am in a better place today…but deeply rooted issues still arise within at ever deepening levels…i just don't look upon it as a 'bad' thing today…but as a chance to heal further on this human journey…

*

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

The Lioness of God has returned, ha ha ha ha ha.
Or the Lioness of the devil, to some, eh Balder!
Good to see you back babe.
I hope you are ready to, as I said ealier, kick some ass, LOL!
Ha ha ha ha ha

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I'm ready to kick your Zakass…lol…whadayasay???   wanna let me kick your Zakass in cyber space?…lmao*

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Man ladies, wilder than you have tried, and as you see, my dear, they have not succeded.
If you want to kick my Zakass, just come on down to the city. Cause I sure aint commin down to Tennessee.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

scardy cat scardy cat…and you are assuming that you know how wild i am…that is an impossibility my friend…but don't be surprised if i do show up in NY…my daddy is from there and i have some wicked ass relatives i'm certain, that i have yet to meet…lol…iwuvu2much…*

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

are you in NYC Zak? I have a conference in July 2010 there to attend. It would be fun to have a Gaia meetup around then…

I am so looking forward to the meetups in Tennessee at the end of December with Star and Zennie and Hal and maybe others.

Hugs,

Nicole

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Today, I stumbled across this presentation by Diane Hamilton.  It's called The Wisdom of Your Upset — Anger.  Hamilton essentially posits what I've presented here, which is a way of viewing anger as a body sensor offering a vital, life-giving information—wisdom, even—which however can only be accessed as such only when and to the extent one is friendly, familiar and intimate with one's anger modes.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

i have to admit that i have not viewed it, but right off i am inclined to say that this cannot be taken as any absolute…b/c things that might make me angry one day, i might laugh at on another day…so that suggest something beneath the actual anger provoking episodes that is involved…or to any set patterns i may be experiencing…

becoming familiar with my anger modes is to suggest that they are solid…while they do run in patterns, the patterns are not solid…

i'm just saying that i think we need to be careful about putting these methods in absolute boxes…or our anger…*

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

Hi Star, I'm not talking absolute boxes.  Far from it.  Familiarity with anger can be placed on the same level IMO as familiarity with another person, which takes time, is complex, and requires an aware, 1P experience almost exclusively.  No absolute box there either.

Here's a possibility: if I don't have a generalized sense of what anger is doing in particularized contexts—with a similar familiar feeling or comfortable frame of reference by which I understand a friend's actions in particular contexts as they occur—I don't know my anger very well.

Re: Aaron Beck and the Dalai Lama in Conversation

i agree we need to know anger well…

but i would say that it is just as important to recognize it in others as well…

anger shows up to a party dressed as many things…*