Flames of Anger

burning the wood of a hot temper

Anger is one of the sinews of the soul.

〰 Thomas Fuller 〰

Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash

Feeling the Heat of Anger

Anger is like gasoline

If you spray it around and somebody lights a match,

You’ve got an inferno.

〰 Scilla Elworthy 〰

When was the last time you exploded with anger?

Perhaps that’s not your style. Anger doesn’t always burst into flames. It depends on temperament, disposition, and culture of the angered human.

Do you simmer or seethe? Stew and boil? Crackle and pop? Smoulder and smoke? Or spit, splutter, and fume?

The answer, instinctually, also depends on the intensity of the internal upheaval, which can be anything from slight annoyance to full blown rage.

“Then I realised that I am still angry…”

Allegra Chapman

writes in her recent piece I’m really f*cking angry. “the fire… still flickering away inside me, even if I’m struggling to feel the heat. And maybe it’s in this state, with a cooler head but the blisters still on my fingertips, that I can find the lessons and the opportunity in this feeling. That I can listen to what my rage has to teach me.”

These words stopped me in my tracks. I know about lessons and opportunity in feelings. I don’t often read other writers spin their thought threads into this language.

What can anger ~ or rage ~ possibly teach?

After centuries in the doldrums and dungeons, negative emotions (in general) are enjoying a slot in the limelight. We’re still uncomfortable in the moments they show up. But if we can at least try not to shove them under the proverbial carpet, not to smother them, with the futile and fatal intention to extinguish them forever… we can give ourselves a chance to listen to what they have to teach us.

We are becoming aware of the positive contributions of fear. We do recognise the importance of giving grief a voice. We learn to identify good shame (as well as the bad one).

Having been taught to view anger as one of the ‘despicable inner turds’ who need to be ‘managed’, now we may discover that anger is not necessarily the ‘bad guy’ after all.

Before we meet anger as an accomplice or teacher, let’s revisit, briefly, our story with this fiery character, who shows up every so often within every human life.

Like all atmospheric currents of the inner climate, anger has an identity of their own. And like all emotional entities, humans have given them many names and expressions, each with a scintillating spectrum of meanings, morphing through carbon copies of time.

Anger [from Old Norse angra = to grieve, distress, be vexed, take offence › from Latin angere = to choke, throttle, torment] started life in English as a verb in the sense of causing an affliction, distress or irritation, both mental or physical.

Taking into account some cognates in English and other languages ~ German Angst, French anguisse, Latin and Roman languages angustia, English anguish (= acute physical or mental suffering) ~ we know that what we call anger is literally provoked by a distressing, or at least unwelcome experience of tightness or constriction ~ like being throttled, or choking.

Despite this linguistic fact, anger has spent much of their life (so far) being associated with violent actions and reactions ~ explosive expansion and spontaneous combustion ~ rather than the internal experience of constriction by strangulation.

We’ve come to think of anger ∞ violence as conjoined twins. As if violence was an inevitable, innate, indigenous aspect of and response to the felt sense and emotional phenomenon we call anger.

It isn’t. Inner experience (= internal emotional, visceral, somatic, subjective) and outer expression (= external physical, material, factual, objective) are distinct human activities, i.e. readily distinguishable through perception and understanding.

That some (or many) humans fail to separate them occasionally (or frequently) doesn’t prove the contrary. Here we are, perfectly capable of looking at, writing, and reading about anger ~ perhaps even allowing the feelers of instinctual sense tune into it ~ without bursting into flames.

David Schultz on Unsplash

Stoking the Fires of Outrage

The gap between the anger

and struggle that fills the streets and the

quiet yearnings of the inner life

has been the curse of our species.

〰 Theodore Roszak 〰

The confusion of inner emotional experience and outer physical expressions in response to the event is not unique to anger. This is in part due to confusions and misunderstandings ~ which happen all the time when words are passed on orally, like in Chinese Whispers ~ with bewildering outcomes.

Tracking the life stories of our emotional words and their changes of meanings over time, can deepen and radically tranform our understanding.

In German we have two words for anger ~ Wut and Zorn. Nowadays, these two words are used interchangeably, as if they were synonyms ~ virtually embodying the same identity. Their roots tell a whole other story.

Before traipsing into the tangled woods of Wut and Zorn, let’s turn towards two English ‘synonyms’ of anger :: rage and outrage.

Rage [from Latin rabere = to be mad, rave] entered English c. 1300 in a wide range of meanings, including madness, insanity; ‘rashness, foolhardiness, intense or violent emotion, anger, wrath; fierceness in battle; violence,’ (also of storms, fire, etc.)

From late 14 c. rage was used in the sense of ‘fit of carnal lust or sexual desire.’

In Middle English, rage could also mean ‘come to a boil; grieve, mourn, lament; flirt, make love,’ and from 1785 it was adopted by fashion trends as being all the rage.

Rage is linguistically related to rabies (= mad-dog disease), due to symptoms caused by this infection. The same connection is mirrored in the German word for rabies = Tollwut.

Outrage [from Latin ultra = beyond + rabere = to be mad] was used in English as a verb to act immoderately, go to excess from 1300 c. The noun, adopted simultaneously, could refer to any evil deed, offense, crime; affront, indignity, act not within established or reasonable limits.

‘Outrageous’ excessiveness can relate to food and drink, dress and physical appearance, speech and written language, sexual, moral, or any other kind of behaviour. From 1769 outrage became attached to injury of feelings, moral principles and social actions.

“The term ‘outrage’ has long been used in both Britain and Ireland, where it frequently described moral and social transgressions associated with gendered violence, especially rape,” Nicholas Sprenger explains in his article The Politics of Outrage_Violence, Policing, and the Archive in Colonial Ireland. (September 20, 2024)

The term outrage itself became a potent weapon to attack the Irish people and depict them as degenerate, barbarous, sexually depraved etc., thereby establishing, and justifying, the superior status of the English in the 18th century.

In current use, within our contemporary social and political climate, novelist and activist ZZ Packer views outrage as an indispensable feature of civil disobedience.

“Our civil duties and the civil rights that others have, which some would argue are an outgrowth of our natural rights,” Packer explains in an interview with Alexander Heffner on The Open Mind Podcast. “So I think that’s one way and related to outrage. Outrage also has these two capacities … It’s just sort of the outrage cycle.”

Colin Lloyd on Unsplash

Fanning Infernal Wrath

\WOMEN ARE PROPERTY\

University comes under fire

after demonstrators spark outrage.

〰 Faith Bugenhagen 〰

Here are some glimpses into the world of anger words used (mainly) in English:

Exasperation [from Latin ex = out + asperare = to make rough, roughen] adopted in English around mid 1500s in the sense of irritation, provocation.

The ancestral asperity (= hardship, harshness) had already been around since c. 1200, morphing into asperation in early 15 c. (not to be confused with aspiration).

Indignation [from Latin in = not + dignus = worth] came into English c. 1200 from Old French indignacion = fury, rage, disrespect, and Latin indignatio = displeasure, regard as unworthy, provocation.

In America, indignation meetings were once a common way to express popular outrage. In January 1870, five thousand women in Utah gathered in one of the most remarkable indignation meetings.

“The women would speak for hours, railing against the “nonsense” that they were hearing out of Washington, D.C., and announcing to the world that they were ready to become political actors.” Dianna Douglas wrote in 2020. “Utah women would soon make history as the very first group of women in the country to vote… The news from Washington that had finally pushed the women of Utah into this mass meeting was a tough new law against polygamy.” 

Ire [from Latin ira = anger, wrath, rage, passion] adopted in English c. 1300 in the sense of intense anger, rage, violence, wrath.

Mad [from Old English gemæd = out of one’s mind] used in English since late 13 c. In the sense of crazy, demented, foolish, insane, silly.

The meanings ‘beside oneself with excitement or enthusiasm, under the influence of uncontrollable emotion’ and ‘enraged, furious, beside oneself with anger’ have been recorded since early 14 c., especially in American English.

The word mad in Middle English usurped of the more common wod in Old English (see wood)

Temper [from Latin temperare = mix in due proportion, modify] originally in English used in the sense of mental state, referring to the four humours ~ sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and melancholic ~ which according to old medical theories determined a person’s disposition and character.

This interpretation from the late 14th century gave way to a calm state of mind (1600) and morphed by 1828 into angry state of mind or disposition to be easily angered.

Temper tantrums (= outbursts of anger) appeared in the early 18th century.

Wood [Old English wudu = tree, forest, grove] was originally a collective word for the substance produced by trees. Wudu was also used in the sense of wild. It survived in the phrase out of the woods (= safe, return from the wilderness), first recorded in 1792.

wood [adjective from the same origin] was used in Old English (wod) in the sense of violently insane, mad, possessed.

Although now obsolete in English, etymological cousins of wood survive in the English words vates (from Latin vates = bard, poet, seer), prophet (= person who foretells, sees, is possessed by spirit), vaticinate (= to foretell, prophecy), Vatican, and Wednesday (= Woden’s day)

wood is cognate with the German Wut [from Old High German wuot = madness]

Wut (and wood) are directly related to the name of the chief Teutonic god Woden (Wotan in German, Odin in contemporary English). The word was originally associated with a state of being beside oneself, under the influence of a demonic force or supernatural powers, which affect body and soul, with the power of will and reason temporarily suspended.

Wroth [from Old English wrað = angry] now mainly used in the form wrath in the sense of extreme anger.

Zorn [Old High German zorn, torn = battle, fight, quarrel] originally used in the sense of physical hostile disputes in actions and words, now describes the emotional state of anger.

Zorn is related to the Old English tēran = to destroy, fragment by force, tear apart. The word is listed here because its origin captures the important distinction between anger as a state of mind and violent action.

Pablo Martinez on Unsplash

Kindling the Embers of Furore

Harness the power of your anger.

〰 Sam Parker 〰

Fury [from Latin furia = violent passion, rage, madness] entered English in late 14 c. in the sense of fierce passion and became synonymous with angry woman.

The Latin ancestor is intimately related to the Furies in Roman mythology ~ three goddesses of vengeance, perceived as personified curses, ghosts of the murdered, and/ or servants of the underworld.

These three ‘Daughters of Darkness’ have been named as Allecto (= the ever angry one), Tisiphone (= the avenger of murder), and Megaera (the jealous one).

Alongside their association with the pursuit of wicked humans, they were also identified with spirits of fertility of the earth.

Furor [from Latin furor = rage, madness, passion] was adopted in English in late 15 c. in the sense of rage, madness, angry mania.

Furore [the Italian form of furor] was first used in English in 1790, meaning craze, excitement, enthusiasm, enthusiastic admiration.

English dictionaries are listing furore in the above sense as ‘archaic’ or ‘obsolete’. In German, Furore is used in the same sense of making a big splash, causing a sensation.

Furore represents the fertile, creative spirit of the Furies. It captures the pure and potentially constructive energy of anger without the negative associations with violence, as captured in the quote by peace builder and author Dr. Scilla Elworthy, “If we can put our anger inside an engine, it can drive us forward.”

Anger has received attention in the context of ‘anger management’, educating people who get overwhelmed by their hot temper to ‘control their anger so it doesn’t control them’ ~ as part of the wave of ‘emotional intelligence’ which has instigated a shift in the general understanding of the role of human emotions.

The assumption behind such training supports the belief that the emotional internal experience of ‘being in the woods of anger’ and an external expression of ‘outrageous destructive behaviour’ are inseparable.

While anger management training can be helpful for people who struggle with this issue, it only acknowledges the destructive side of anger. Given this widespread, onesided and incomplete interpretation, I was delighted to discover

Sam Parker

, author of the substack publication Good Anger.

“Why do we so often conflate anger with violence and aggression, when they are completely separate things?”

Sam asks important, courageous, and radical questions, which open up a new path for meeting anger in a constructive arena.

“Why do we only ever talk about anger when it’s in surplus, instead of in a deficit? And where is anger in the #mentalhealth and wellness conversation?”

Sam calls anger ‘the least understood emotion.’ He is currently writing a book with the title Good Anger: Positive Aggression, and Why the World Needs it, to be published in 2025.

Fuelled by the fertile spirit of the Furies, I trust that Good Anger will be received with the furore it deserves.

In each moment the fire rages

It will burn away a hundred veils.

And carry you a thousand steps towards your goal.

〰 Rumi 〰