A lot of this seems alien to me but I've also suffered from lifelong anger issues (perhaps also due to some corporal punishment I experienced) so it probably tracks... so I'm going to try these. I am especially sensitive to being struck physically. When my 2.6 year old son hits me, for example (the other night he literally tried to grab my eyeball out, out of the blue, fingernails and all), I must immediately walk away and let his mother know, otherwise I am in danger of reacting badly.
Same on all fronts. Mom died March 2020, a week before COVID lockdowns. The wake for her we had at our house was the last social engagement I experienced for at least a year.
This seems particularly useful to know about especially as organizational change across so many workplaces has created tension.
The only part I wonder about is the "playful" storytelling. There are definitely better ways to communicate danger to a child than the boogeyman. It will take a lot more effort than a silly story, but you're trying to build up their mind after all.
I find this stories = lessons concept interesting in that we tell this story in so many ways, but that if it's an Aesop or Brothers Grimm it's just stories, if it's Christianity, Islam etc it's to be treated seriously and with reverence and respect.
One of the authors, Michaeleen Doucleff, also wrote a book called Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans. It's interesting, and has some useful points to think about while parenting. However, I felt that a lot of the concepts would be difficult to apply in the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) society I live in. The author acknowledges this, of course.
Typical story about some exotic knowledge or practice that is a shortcut westerners could take to solve otherwise complex problem.
Who says anger is always wrong? Or that not exposing children to it is better? Screaming at somebody can be a valid excalation in a conflict, signaling serious aggression and that worse is to come if the offending party does not cease.
Yelling can be stupid and worse than useless. People can lose their temper too often or when they do not have a chence to win an escalated conflict. But an extreme does not justify the other (never doing it).
Also kids are kids. Sometimes they will not accept any calm argumentation no matter what. And shocking them into submission with verbal aggression will. Again, this can be over used by some parents.
There are no shortcuts and no recipes. Never doing something or always doing some other thing does not work.
Although, this comment is a little extreme.
There is something to be said about, developing the child for the environment they're going to exist in.
In an Inuit Community where everyone is cool headed, it's the right thing to be a cool headed person.
But, the average world is not the same. There are more hot headed people than hot headed ones out there, and managing them requires one to speak their language.
anger is outward frustration in response to something not yielding to your will.
before you can control, your arrows, or your rifle, or the small parts of your world, you have to control yourself, and know your place. you can be smarter than a hatchet, or a wet campfire
A caption in the article says “A lot has changed in the Arctic since the Canadian government forced Inuit families to settle in towns. But the community is trying to preserve traditional parenting practices.” (and earlier the article says “Elders I spoke with say intense colonization over the past century is damaging these traditions.”) — what is this referring to? What did the Canadian government do?
Start with a search for the phrase "Killing the indian in the child". That is a deep dive into darkness.
1) Forceful re-adoptions where the government would take kids from Inuit parents and give them to white parents.
2) Residential schools where they would forcefully take a child and send them away from their parents and not allow them to speak their native language or even dress in their native clothes. Someone else mentioned the "graveyards behind schools".
> In June 2015, the TRC released an executive summary of its findings along with 94 "calls to action" regarding reconciliation between Canadians and Indigenous Peoples. The commission officially concluded in December 2015 with the publication of a multi-volume final report that concluded the school system amounted to cultural genocide. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, which opened at the University of Manitoba in November 2015, is an archival repository home to the research, documents, and testimony collected during the course of the TRC's operation.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the opposite as advertised. It's a serious mistake to take the self proclaimed Ministry of Truth at face value.
I only know of 1 forced relocation the Quebec -> High Circle relocation after WW2. I don't believe that's what they are referring too. Unless they mean the standard first nation reservation rules. Which are not applicable for Inuit from what I understand.
The government had multiple "relocation" ventures beyond the high arctic relocations and it's not much of a stretch to call it the standard policy from that period. HBC also did an experiment with the now-deserted town of Devon's harbour. Other examples include Nueltin lake and Banks Island.
The Canadian government forced Inuit families to settle in towns primarily for administrative and political reasons. This policy, known as the High Arctic relocation, was implemented during the Cold War for sovereignty and security purposes, as well as to assert Canada's presence in the Arctic. The government believed that by relocating the Inuit, it could strengthen Canadian sovereignty in the North. However, this forced relocation had devastating consequences for the Inuit, leading to social, economic, and cultural disruptions. While the government has issued an apology and provided some compensation, the overall impact of the forced settlement on the Inuit community has been largely negative. The Inuit were separated from their traditional way of life, which had sustained them for centuries, and faced significant challenges in adapting to a more urban lifestyle. This has resulted in intergenerational trauma and loss of traditional knowledge and practices.
The Canadian government has since recognized the inherent right of Inuit to self-determination and has been working with Inuit organizations to address the impacts of the forced relocations. Various land claims agreements have been signed, granting title to certain blocks of land to the Inuit. Additionally, initiatives such as the Inuit Child First Initiative have been introduced to support Inuit communities. However, the long-term effects of the forced settlement policy continue to be felt, and efforts to address its legacy are ongoing.
In conclusion, while the forced settlement of Inuit families was driven by political and administrative motives, it has had detrimental effects on the Inuit community. The Canadian government has taken steps to acknowledge and address these impacts, but the overall outcome of the forced relocation policy has been largely negative for the Inuit. Ongoing efforts are being made to support Inuit self-determination and address the legacy of the forced relocations.
One of my proudest parenting moments: my 9 yo was crying around noon, I was trying to comfort him and he slapped me in the face with anger.
“Are you slapping me because you’re hungry?”
“Yeah”
“You want a banana?”
“Yeah”
However, consider the environment, quite hostile, where being a part of the tribe is about as starkly life-or-death as it gets. Stay with the tribe in the deep of winter: you live. Get chucked out for a couple hours in the deep cold (and I mean ... COLD) and you're dead in hours.
Yet southern populations of people always have reputations for being hotheaded, but northerners (stoic scandinavians) have the opposite.
It could be this one trick you click, but it could also be rapacious evolutionary and social evolutionary pressure imposed by nature.
I'm with the Inuit and Jedi on this one: anger is pretty useless[0], and if you must[1] take revenge, that's best served cold.
Sometimes I wonder if the typical Hollywood W-plot, in which the hero's best friend/significant relation is shown partying/getting the girl/otherwise living well at the top of the middle ∧ then killed by the villain at the bottom of the right ∨, after which the hero gets angry and wins the day, has been deliberately chosen to teach the proles exactly the wrong lesson, but then I remember to never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Speaking of storytelling, isn't a corollary of The Iliad that if Achilles had not been —or at least not stayed— angry, a few dozen ships worth of Achaeans would not have died (as described by Homer with lines worthy of 1975's Rollerball) in gruesome ways?
[0] is it useful for creatures that only have a limbic system? not only do we have a neocortex, but it's much more useful in these cases
[1] often simply continuing to live well oneself is far better than any revenge
"At times it is only the angry who are in a position to apprehend the magnitude of some injustice. For they are the ones willing to sacrifice all their other concerns and interests so as to attend, with an almost divine focus, to some tear in the moral fabric. When I am really angry, it is not even clear to me that I can calm down—the eyes of the heart do not have eyelids—and the person making that request strikes me, to adapt a locution of Socrates’, as trying to banish me from my property, the truth. They are calling me “irrational,” but they seem not to see that there are reasons to be angry."
Anger is useful in a way, that it gives energy and overcomes paralyzing fear. When you are in a survival fight with no way to escape, anger can make all the difference - otherwise we would not have evolved it. But sure, it is way way better, to not be in a situation where anger is the last resort - and in all normal (social) situations, anger is dangerous. The idea is is to be in control of your body - and not your emotions controlling you.
So I am with the Inuit with this approach:
"When they're little, it doesn't help to raise your voice," she says. "It will just make your own heart rate go up."
When you meet anger with anger, the fire only goes stronger.
Children mainly learn by observing the elders. If they resolve their conflicts with anger - they will mimic it. If they see the elders being calm, that is what they will learn. And if they learn, that they will get what they want, if they throw a tantrum - then this is what they will do more in the future. Consequence is key here.
But I am very sceptical about the bad stories. They don't help I think.
What helps is channeling the anger with martial arts for example. There you can learn to feel the anger raising, after you get a hit - but not become blinded by it. You stay cool. And in control.
edit: what works best when my children have their heads hot - literally cooling them with a bit of water
Anger is not at all useless, it is a powerful and extremely useful emotion. When we witness injustice, when our loved ones are threatened or harmed, when someone treats us with contempt or disrespect, anger is our signal that we must take action, and it gives us the energy and courage to do what must be done.
Understanding your anger and not letting it control your behaviour (ie not giving in to blind rage), is important. But there are no useless emotions, and of all the “negative” emotions, anger is among the most useful and important.
> Anger is not at all useless, it is a powerful and extremely useful emotion.
A while ago I had a loved one both harmed and threatened.
I called my insurance, who gave me a lawyer, who got the facts from my loved one and combined them with the law, giving the case to a judge, who gave us a court order which allowed us to both (a) remedy the harm, and (b) get law enforcement backup. For this outcome, very little energy, and no courage (at least on our parts), was required.
How would anger —or even moral outrage— have improved the situation?
> (...) and it gives us the energy and courage to do what must be done.
I don't think that's true. Anger, by definition, is a primal/emotional response that leads people to act abruptly without any semblance of reflection on the potential impact of their actions.
The expressions "acted in anger" does not mean "acted with courage to do what needed to be done". It actually means someone screwed up badly without thinking things through.
You are describing moral outrage. The other poster is talking about what academics associate with the fight or flight instinct.
I agree with the other poster anger and other extreme emotions are usually negatively correlated with long term success. Extreme emotions engages our primal brain which prevents our more advanced brain from engaging.
In Sanskrit literature, a term often used when describing heroes like Rama and Arjuna is jitakrodha, “one who has conquered his anger”. The idea is for you to be in control of your anger, rather than for anger to control you. Rather than anger arising in response to external circumstances and causing you to be carried away and doing things you may regret later, instead anger should be a tool, something you invoke or bring on, when you consciously decide that you need to do battle (or something requiring that energy) — like fire (something anger is frequently compared to), it is dangerous and destructive but a useful tool when one employs it deliberately.
The problem is that there's about equal amounts of malice as stupidity in the world, so you never really know why. Assuming stupidity by default doesn't always make you feel better and may still lead to an emotional reaction you don't want to have.
The better solution is to not care why, and do what ya gotta do. Usually that's creating distance from the source of problems and you and your work.
> The problem is that there's about equal amounts of malice as stupidity in the world
Also, they are often connected. People who don't know something often refuse to learn it or even to hear about it. Not knowing something is stupidity, but refusing to learn is a conscious decision to be stupid in harmful ways, and that is a form of malice.
I always think twice about my revenge and definitely serve it cold. However thinking about it, Inuit are some of the coolest cultures out the here, right next to Japanese. Their commitment to stay cold-headed and be hard working is something to we should all aspire to achieve.
Painting the Iliad as a modern-day LGBT story is missing the forest for the trees. It encompasses so much more than the single-minded focus on physical attraction of today allows for: kinship, loyalty, adoration, piety, and veneration were all expressions of love to the ancient Greeks, and most of them existed without any physical component.
I suspect this has a lot to do with the uncompromisingly dangerous and tenuous subsistence that is living in the Arctic. The inability to manage anger would be selected out as it would be detrimental to the survival of the tribe.
I wonder how much of it is culture and how much are centuries of selection towards survival in a certain environment. It could be that these lessons don't work with other kids in the same way.
It's not really an obsession of the anglosphere, if that's a thing. It's part of a larger signal from the upper part of the class divide, saying "Dear masses, we're going to be taking more, so learn to be content with less."
It's a great question actually! Why would people who have tons of possessions and live in comfort not just spend all their time enjoying being happy, harmonious and fulfilled?
Why is it that having possessions doesn't seem to fulfill all our social, emotional and cultural needs?
This is very interesting and I can see how it can produce good results.
What I can't do is square this with my own observations of the current generation of parents. In my particular social and geographic circle, most parents tend to let the children do whatever they please. This almost produces "feral" children that can't even eat and sit properly (and I don't mean the Victorian Properly, I mean without dumping a full plate of food on their head or throwing cuttlery against the wall) or observe the basic rules of social interation.
If the "throw me the pebble" was applied to these children they would just think it would be OK to throw pebbles at strangers on the street.
What's the missing element in our society (honest question)?
I’m not sure lying to your kids about sea monsters to the point that your children are so petrified of the water they don’t go near it is quite as benign as they believe.
Depending on the age/location, this is most likely life or death (e.g. a toddler falling into freezing cold water), probably growing to an age where the fear can be understood more rationally is a better outcome than doing nothing losing a child.
> At first, these stories seemed to me a bit too scary for little children. And my knee-jerk reaction was to dismiss them. But my opinion flipped 180 degrees after I watched my own daughter's response to similar tales — and after I learned more about humanity's intricate relationship with storytelling.
> Oral storytelling is what's known as a human universal. For tens of thousands of years, it has been a key way that parents teach children about values and how to behave.
Also, the Inuit parents don't want their little children going near the water. That the ocean is dangerous and to be avoided is the truth. The story about the sea monster is a way of communicating this truth in terms that the little children can understand.
(Calling this “lying” is like calling it lying to teach classical mechanics: to a first approximation Newton's laws of motion are true; they can be refined later. Similarly, though we can later refine the sea monster to say that it takes the form of waves and currents and depths and drowning and all that, IMO to a first approximation there is a sea monster, and in primal moments it can be useful to remember that.)
It certainly gives you more ammunition as a teen to distrust and venture the things your parents also taught you or implied were dangerous. It also teaches your children to believe foolish and questionable speech+conduct on the part of authority figures which has creates many other problems.
Why is it necessary? Why do you need to lie to your children? Teaching them that lying is "fun" is absurd, so many problems are rooted in tradition and "because I said so" or belief in mythical good and bad guys and boogiemen.
The options on the table is a) be petrified of the water, or b) risk falling into ice cold water, and option a) is the one that actually keeps your children alive.
I wonder if storytelling is effective due to an evolutionary pressure that leads kids who don't learn from storytelling to succumb to the dangers warned against by children's stories. I mean, there's a recurring theme in children's stories which is the character who didn't listened is also the character who falls victim and serves as a cautionary tale.
Why couldn't you just literally (in a controlled setting) introduce them directly to the danger by mediating and showing them thru direct experience? Take your kid to work and let them see what they're up against
They don't use bags, though it's always possible that that's an adaptation of the original story. It seems more likely that there is cultural variation in traditional stories.
There is no need to make it impossible for a monster to target adults. You can just say that they target children.
Your point was my initial reaction, too. But hey, these people have been raising kids to survive in the freezing cold for hundreds of years, who am I to say they're wrong?
I bet there is a certain delicacy to telling the stories as allegories so that you can transition them from fantasy to rationality as the kid grows.
For example, the "sea monster that swallows you and brings you to another family" sounds like an allegory for "the water will drown you and bring you to the afterlife / death". If you respect your kid's intellect, I bet that you can explain that connection to them once they're getting too old to believe myths, while still holding onto the emotional connection.
to be fair to the concept, it's a pretty benign sea monster (as far as sea monsters go..)
>Jaw says Inuit parents take a pre-emptive approach and tell kids a special story about what's inside the water. "It's the sea monster," Jaw says, with a giant pouch on its back just for little kids.
>"If a child walks too close to the water, the monster will put you in his pouch, drag you down to the ocean and adopt you out to another family," Jaw says.
i'd much rather encounter that monster than any of the sea-yokai.
I wonder why across different cultures there seems to be a monster with a bag.
Is there one proto-story being evolving through cultures or do people find it too gruesome to say that children are eaten so they create independently.
Also, unaddressed: when they get old enough to realize the story is fake, are they more likely to do something stupid then, because they don’t understand the actual reasoning?
Yeah that's exactly the problem with the boogeyman. They inevitably enter a rebellious phase that could be mostly avoided if you maintained trust and communication.
Easier said than done, but you need to keep things simple and direct. To be blunt about it, most parents aren't mentally mature enough to have kids.
I wouldn't say irrational. They are inexperienced. They don't know the risks, and they don't know what they are risking with some kind of behavior.
If you place someone who never set foot outside of a major urban center and place them in a forest, they will do a lot of stupid things that can get them killed. If you take someone who always lived in a temperate climate and place them in either subzero temperatures then they won't even know what to wear without risking at least frostbite. If you place them in a hot environment they won't even know they are risking their life with heatstroke or dehydration.
A lot of this seems alien to me but I've also suffered from lifelong anger issues (perhaps also due to some corporal punishment I experienced) so it probably tracks... so I'm going to try these. I am especially sensitive to being struck physically. When my 2.6 year old son hits me, for example (the other night he literally tried to grab my eyeball out, out of the blue, fingernails and all), I must immediately walk away and let his mother know, otherwise I am in danger of reacting badly.
One of my first memories is of "biting Mother."
Her response was "bite this little bastard back."
I've spent decades untangling our Love. RIP, Mom.
Same on all fronts. Mom died March 2020, a week before COVID lockdowns. The wake for her we had at our house was the last social engagement I experienced for at least a year.
1 reply →
This seems particularly useful to know about especially as organizational change across so many workplaces has created tension.
The only part I wonder about is the "playful" storytelling. There are definitely better ways to communicate danger to a child than the boogeyman. It will take a lot more effort than a silly story, but you're trying to build up their mind after all.
> There are definitely better ways to communicate danger to a child than the boogeyman.
Why do you say that?
"If you go into the water you will die." Death is pretty abstract to a toddler. Even extreme pain - they've never been hurt in any serious way.
"If you go into the water you will be grabbed by a monster and taken away." It's all concepts a toddler is very familiar with.
I find this stories = lessons concept interesting in that we tell this story in so many ways, but that if it's an Aesop or Brothers Grimm it's just stories, if it's Christianity, Islam etc it's to be treated seriously and with reverence and respect.
text-only version of the article: https://text.npr.org/685533353
One of the authors, Michaeleen Doucleff, also wrote a book called Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans. It's interesting, and has some useful points to think about while parenting. However, I felt that a lot of the concepts would be difficult to apply in the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) society I live in. The author acknowledges this, of course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Briggs
https://archive.org/details/neverinangerport0000brig
Typical story about some exotic knowledge or practice that is a shortcut westerners could take to solve otherwise complex problem.
Who says anger is always wrong? Or that not exposing children to it is better? Screaming at somebody can be a valid excalation in a conflict, signaling serious aggression and that worse is to come if the offending party does not cease.
Yelling can be stupid and worse than useless. People can lose their temper too often or when they do not have a chence to win an escalated conflict. But an extreme does not justify the other (never doing it).
Also kids are kids. Sometimes they will not accept any calm argumentation no matter what. And shocking them into submission with verbal aggression will. Again, this can be over used by some parents.
There are no shortcuts and no recipes. Never doing something or always doing some other thing does not work.
Although, this comment is a little extreme. There is something to be said about, developing the child for the environment they're going to exist in. In an Inuit Community where everyone is cool headed, it's the right thing to be a cool headed person. But, the average world is not the same. There are more hot headed people than hot headed ones out there, and managing them requires one to speak their language.
a reasonable outlook on reality.
anger is outward frustration in response to something not yielding to your will.
before you can control, your arrows, or your rifle, or the small parts of your world, you have to control yourself, and know your place. you can be smarter than a hatchet, or a wet campfire
A caption in the article says “A lot has changed in the Arctic since the Canadian government forced Inuit families to settle in towns. But the community is trying to preserve traditional parenting practices.” (and earlier the article says “Elders I spoke with say intense colonization over the past century is damaging these traditions.”) — what is this referring to? What did the Canadian government do?
what didn't they do?
Start with a search for the phrase "Killing the indian in the child". That is a deep dive into darkness.
1) Forceful re-adoptions where the government would take kids from Inuit parents and give them to white parents.
2) Residential schools where they would forcefully take a child and send them away from their parents and not allow them to speak their native language or even dress in their native clothes. Someone else mentioned the "graveyards behind schools".
They did this in Australia.
it's now rightly called cultural genocide.
> What did the Canadian government do?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commi...
> In June 2015, the TRC released an executive summary of its findings along with 94 "calls to action" regarding reconciliation between Canadians and Indigenous Peoples. The commission officially concluded in December 2015 with the publication of a multi-volume final report that concluded the school system amounted to cultural genocide. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, which opened at the University of Manitoba in November 2015, is an archival repository home to the research, documents, and testimony collected during the course of the TRC's operation.
https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060...
---
It is a LONG, deep, and dark rabbit hole to dig through those documents that takes you through places such as undocumented graveyards behind schools. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/stó-lō-natio...
Specifically regarding the Inuit resettlement - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Arctic_relocation
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the opposite as advertised. It's a serious mistake to take the self proclaimed Ministry of Truth at face value.
6 replies →
I only know of 1 forced relocation the Quebec -> High Circle relocation after WW2. I don't believe that's what they are referring too. Unless they mean the standard first nation reservation rules. Which are not applicable for Inuit from what I understand.
The government had multiple "relocation" ventures beyond the high arctic relocations and it's not much of a stretch to call it the standard policy from that period. HBC also did an experiment with the now-deserted town of Devon's harbour. Other examples include Nueltin lake and Banks Island.
Perplexity's answer to this:
The Canadian government forced Inuit families to settle in towns primarily for administrative and political reasons. This policy, known as the High Arctic relocation, was implemented during the Cold War for sovereignty and security purposes, as well as to assert Canada's presence in the Arctic. The government believed that by relocating the Inuit, it could strengthen Canadian sovereignty in the North. However, this forced relocation had devastating consequences for the Inuit, leading to social, economic, and cultural disruptions. While the government has issued an apology and provided some compensation, the overall impact of the forced settlement on the Inuit community has been largely negative. The Inuit were separated from their traditional way of life, which had sustained them for centuries, and faced significant challenges in adapting to a more urban lifestyle. This has resulted in intergenerational trauma and loss of traditional knowledge and practices.
The Canadian government has since recognized the inherent right of Inuit to self-determination and has been working with Inuit organizations to address the impacts of the forced relocations. Various land claims agreements have been signed, granting title to certain blocks of land to the Inuit. Additionally, initiatives such as the Inuit Child First Initiative have been introduced to support Inuit communities. However, the long-term effects of the forced settlement policy continue to be felt, and efforts to address its legacy are ongoing.
In conclusion, while the forced settlement of Inuit families was driven by political and administrative motives, it has had detrimental effects on the Inuit community. The Canadian government has taken steps to acknowledge and address these impacts, but the overall outcome of the forced relocation policy has been largely negative for the Inuit. Ongoing efforts are being made to support Inuit self-determination and address the legacy of the forced relocations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Arctic_relocation
Previous threads
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23927773
Thanks! Macroexpanded:
How Inuit parents teach kids to control their anger (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19396563 - March 2019 (251 comments)
I vaguely recall other related threads on this if anyone can find them!
One of my proudest parenting moments: my 9 yo was crying around noon, I was trying to comfort him and he slapped me in the face with anger. “Are you slapping me because you’re hungry?” “Yeah” “You want a banana?” “Yeah”
Would you explain why this makes you proud?
I assume as the kid is showing a good grasp on identifying his emotions.
I can guess they are proud because they were slapped in the face but didn't react in anger.
1 reply →
Oh my god I'm imagining being 9 years old and slapping my mum and crying because I was hungry, can't do it lol
Sorry 9 month old. I’ve just realised the mistake
nine months old, not 9 years old
However, consider the environment, quite hostile, where being a part of the tribe is about as starkly life-or-death as it gets. Stay with the tribe in the deep of winter: you live. Get chucked out for a couple hours in the deep cold (and I mean ... COLD) and you're dead in hours.
Yet southern populations of people always have reputations for being hotheaded, but northerners (stoic scandinavians) have the opposite.
It could be this one trick you click, but it could also be rapacious evolutionary and social evolutionary pressure imposed by nature.
I'm with the Inuit and Jedi on this one: anger is pretty useless[0], and if you must[1] take revenge, that's best served cold.
Sometimes I wonder if the typical Hollywood W-plot, in which the hero's best friend/significant relation is shown partying/getting the girl/otherwise living well at the top of the middle ∧ then killed by the villain at the bottom of the right ∨, after which the hero gets angry and wins the day, has been deliberately chosen to teach the proles exactly the wrong lesson, but then I remember to never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Speaking of storytelling, isn't a corollary of The Iliad that if Achilles had not been —or at least not stayed— angry, a few dozen ships worth of Achaeans would not have died (as described by Homer with lines worthy of 1975's Rollerball) in gruesome ways?
[0] is it useful for creatures that only have a limbic system? not only do we have a neocortex, but it's much more useful in these cases
[1] often simply continuing to live well oneself is far better than any revenge
"At times it is only the angry who are in a position to apprehend the magnitude of some injustice. For they are the ones willing to sacrifice all their other concerns and interests so as to attend, with an almost divine focus, to some tear in the moral fabric. When I am really angry, it is not even clear to me that I can calm down—the eyes of the heart do not have eyelids—and the person making that request strikes me, to adapt a locution of Socrates’, as trying to banish me from my property, the truth. They are calling me “irrational,” but they seem not to see that there are reasons to be angry."
Agnes Callard, https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/anger-management-agnes...
Although I am not a violent person, I think some people only respond to violence. They cannot be reasoned with.
6 replies →
Anger is useful in a way, that it gives energy and overcomes paralyzing fear. When you are in a survival fight with no way to escape, anger can make all the difference - otherwise we would not have evolved it. But sure, it is way way better, to not be in a situation where anger is the last resort - and in all normal (social) situations, anger is dangerous. The idea is is to be in control of your body - and not your emotions controlling you.
So I am with the Inuit with this approach:
"When they're little, it doesn't help to raise your voice," she says. "It will just make your own heart rate go up."
When you meet anger with anger, the fire only goes stronger.
Children mainly learn by observing the elders. If they resolve their conflicts with anger - they will mimic it. If they see the elders being calm, that is what they will learn. And if they learn, that they will get what they want, if they throw a tantrum - then this is what they will do more in the future. Consequence is key here.
But I am very sceptical about the bad stories. They don't help I think.
What helps is channeling the anger with martial arts for example. There you can learn to feel the anger raising, after you get a hit - but not become blinded by it. You stay cool. And in control.
edit: what works best when my children have their heads hot - literally cooling them with a bit of water
Anger is not at all useless, it is a powerful and extremely useful emotion. When we witness injustice, when our loved ones are threatened or harmed, when someone treats us with contempt or disrespect, anger is our signal that we must take action, and it gives us the energy and courage to do what must be done.
Understanding your anger and not letting it control your behaviour (ie not giving in to blind rage), is important. But there are no useless emotions, and of all the “negative” emotions, anger is among the most useful and important.
> Anger is not at all useless, it is a powerful and extremely useful emotion.
A while ago I had a loved one both harmed and threatened.
I called my insurance, who gave me a lawyer, who got the facts from my loved one and combined them with the law, giving the case to a judge, who gave us a court order which allowed us to both (a) remedy the harm, and (b) get law enforcement backup. For this outcome, very little energy, and no courage (at least on our parts), was required.
How would anger —or even moral outrage— have improved the situation?
9 replies →
> (...) and it gives us the energy and courage to do what must be done.
I don't think that's true. Anger, by definition, is a primal/emotional response that leads people to act abruptly without any semblance of reflection on the potential impact of their actions.
The expressions "acted in anger" does not mean "acted with courage to do what needed to be done". It actually means someone screwed up badly without thinking things through.
6 replies →
You are describing moral outrage. The other poster is talking about what academics associate with the fight or flight instinct.
I agree with the other poster anger and other extreme emotions are usually negatively correlated with long term success. Extreme emotions engages our primal brain which prevents our more advanced brain from engaging.
8 replies →
In Sanskrit literature, a term often used when describing heroes like Rama and Arjuna is jitakrodha, “one who has conquered his anger”. The idea is for you to be in control of your anger, rather than for anger to control you. Rather than anger arising in response to external circumstances and causing you to be carried away and doing things you may regret later, instead anger should be a tool, something you invoke or bring on, when you consciously decide that you need to do battle (or something requiring that energy) — like fire (something anger is frequently compared to), it is dangerous and destructive but a useful tool when one employs it deliberately.
"That's my secret, Cap. I'm always angry."
The problem is that there's about equal amounts of malice as stupidity in the world, so you never really know why. Assuming stupidity by default doesn't always make you feel better and may still lead to an emotional reaction you don't want to have.
The better solution is to not care why, and do what ya gotta do. Usually that's creating distance from the source of problems and you and your work.
> The problem is that there's about equal amounts of malice as stupidity in the world
Also, they are often connected. People who don't know something often refuse to learn it or even to hear about it. Not knowing something is stupidity, but refusing to learn is a conscious decision to be stupid in harmful ways, and that is a form of malice.
Distance is the only solution I know of when the malice is significant and it is at an all time high right now in the USA.
1 reply →
I always think twice about my revenge and definitely serve it cold. However thinking about it, Inuit are some of the coolest cultures out the here, right next to Japanese. Their commitment to stay cold-headed and be hard working is something to we should all aspire to achieve.
The Iliad is the greatest LGBT love story of all time and I will die on that hill - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_and_Patroclus
If you read the Iliad as a man losing his childhood lover, everything makes sense. Many in the classical greek period took this interpretation.
Painting the Iliad as a modern-day LGBT story is missing the forest for the trees. It encompasses so much more than the single-minded focus on physical attraction of today allows for: kinship, loyalty, adoration, piety, and veneration were all expressions of love to the ancient Greeks, and most of them existed without any physical component.
1 reply →
Every day I become more convinced that Hanlon’s razor is an example of malice.
How so?
2 replies →
I suspect this has a lot to do with the uncompromisingly dangerous and tenuous subsistence that is living in the Arctic. The inability to manage anger would be selected out as it would be detrimental to the survival of the tribe.
Yes, lets celebrate their economic, cultural, and life expectencies. They have it all figured out.
I wonder how much of it is culture and how much are centuries of selection towards survival in a certain environment. It could be that these lessons don't work with other kids in the same way.
I misread the title, and thought the answer would be something like "with our FREE® Anger Management System™ that you can try* TODAY© from the comfort of your home!"
Could they also have genetic differences in their temperament that makes them slower to anger naturally?
Looks like they've got ADHD and ODD like the rest of us. https://www.jaacap.org/article/S0890-8567(22)00189-7/fulltex...
If this were a joke, the answer would be "Keep cool!"
I believe they were looking for the word "suppress".
what is exactly the anglospheres obsession with trying to make their life more like that of people who live in squalor and possess nothing?
>what is exactly the anglospheres obsession with trying to make their life more like that of people who live in squalor and possess nothing?
I don't understand either.
We'll point to something like this and say, "look at what this culture does that's positive!"
But if you point out something negative of a specific culture, that's taboo.
> But if you point out something negative of a specific culture, that's taboo.
"Study indicates better anger control in populations that club baby seals!"
> We'll point to something like this and say, "look at what this culture does that's positive!"
> But if you point out something negative of a specific culture, that's taboo.
But surely the mistake there is in the second practice, not the first one.
It's not really an obsession of the anglosphere, if that's a thing. It's part of a larger signal from the upper part of the class divide, saying "Dear masses, we're going to be taking more, so learn to be content with less."
It's a great question actually! Why would people who have tons of possessions and live in comfort not just spend all their time enjoying being happy, harmonious and fulfilled? Why is it that having possessions doesn't seem to fulfill all our social, emotional and cultural needs?
Some would say the posses all that matters.
Indeed, the posse is all that matters.
2 replies →
[flagged]
This is very interesting and I can see how it can produce good results.
What I can't do is square this with my own observations of the current generation of parents. In my particular social and geographic circle, most parents tend to let the children do whatever they please. This almost produces "feral" children that can't even eat and sit properly (and I don't mean the Victorian Properly, I mean without dumping a full plate of food on their head or throwing cuttlery against the wall) or observe the basic rules of social interation.
If the "throw me the pebble" was applied to these children they would just think it would be OK to throw pebbles at strangers on the street.
What's the missing element in our society (honest question)?
I’m not sure lying to your kids about sea monsters to the point that your children are so petrified of the water they don’t go near it is quite as benign as they believe.
Depending on the age/location, this is most likely life or death (e.g. a toddler falling into freezing cold water), probably growing to an age where the fear can be understood more rationally is a better outcome than doing nothing losing a child.
From the article itself:
> At first, these stories seemed to me a bit too scary for little children. And my knee-jerk reaction was to dismiss them. But my opinion flipped 180 degrees after I watched my own daughter's response to similar tales — and after I learned more about humanity's intricate relationship with storytelling.
> Oral storytelling is what's known as a human universal. For tens of thousands of years, it has been a key way that parents teach children about values and how to behave.
Also, the Inuit parents don't want their little children going near the water. That the ocean is dangerous and to be avoided is the truth. The story about the sea monster is a way of communicating this truth in terms that the little children can understand.
(Calling this “lying” is like calling it lying to teach classical mechanics: to a first approximation Newton's laws of motion are true; they can be refined later. Similarly, though we can later refine the sea monster to say that it takes the form of waves and currents and depths and drowning and all that, IMO to a first approximation there is a sea monster, and in primal moments it can be useful to remember that.)
Ha, I finally get to mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children
One of my favorite articles!
Do many people, when older, get upset about the lies their parents told them about Santa, The Easter Bunny and such?
I'm skeptical these sorts of childhood lies cause any issues.
It certainly gives you more ammunition as a teen to distrust and venture the things your parents also taught you or implied were dangerous. It also teaches your children to believe foolish and questionable speech+conduct on the part of authority figures which has creates many other problems.
Why is it necessary? Why do you need to lie to your children? Teaching them that lying is "fun" is absurd, so many problems are rooted in tradition and "because I said so" or belief in mythical good and bad guys and boogiemen.
9 replies →
I do not know, but I think such lies are best avoided.
They are also not scary lies.
The options on the table is a) be petrified of the water, or b) risk falling into ice cold water, and option a) is the one that actually keeps your children alive.
I wonder if storytelling is effective due to an evolutionary pressure that leads kids who don't learn from storytelling to succumb to the dangers warned against by children's stories. I mean, there's a recurring theme in children's stories which is the character who didn't listened is also the character who falls victim and serves as a cautionary tale.
Why couldn't you just literally (in a controlled setting) introduce them directly to the danger by mediating and showing them thru direct experience? Take your kid to work and let them see what they're up against
6 replies →
The story distinctly says the sea monster uses a pouch for small kids, so they wouldn't have to fear it as they get older if that part is explained
There's a good children's book about Eskimo undersea child-snatching monsters: https://www.annickpress.com/Books/A/A-Promise-Is-a-Promise
They don't use bags, though it's always possible that that's an adaptation of the original story. It seems more likely that there is cultural variation in traditional stories.
There is no need to make it impossible for a monster to target adults. You can just say that they target children.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qallupilluit
Your point was my initial reaction, too. But hey, these people have been raising kids to survive in the freezing cold for hundreds of years, who am I to say they're wrong?
I bet there is a certain delicacy to telling the stories as allegories so that you can transition them from fantasy to rationality as the kid grows.
For example, the "sea monster that swallows you and brings you to another family" sounds like an allegory for "the water will drown you and bring you to the afterlife / death". If you respect your kid's intellect, I bet that you can explain that connection to them once they're getting too old to believe myths, while still holding onto the emotional connection.
to be fair to the concept, it's a pretty benign sea monster (as far as sea monsters go..)
>Jaw says Inuit parents take a pre-emptive approach and tell kids a special story about what's inside the water. "It's the sea monster," Jaw says, with a giant pouch on its back just for little kids.
>"If a child walks too close to the water, the monster will put you in his pouch, drag you down to the ocean and adopt you out to another family," Jaw says.
i'd much rather encounter that monster than any of the sea-yokai.
The story of the monster is technically the truth. Being near the sea is dangerous and requires respect and understanding.
There will be a transition period between realizing the story is fake, and the real reason why small people need to stay away from the water.
However, this realization will be at a point when the kids are bigger and more co-ordinated to get away from a rogue wave/whatever danger.
The other fact is that this legend is passed down from generation to generation, which is a sign that it’s effective.
1 reply →
I wonder why across different cultures there seems to be a monster with a bag. Is there one proto-story being evolving through cultures or do people find it too gruesome to say that children are eaten so they create independently.
at what psychological development stage? (usually age)
Also, unaddressed: when they get old enough to realize the story is fake, are they more likely to do something stupid then, because they don’t understand the actual reasoning?
Yeah that's exactly the problem with the boogeyman. They inevitably enter a rebellious phase that could be mostly avoided if you maintained trust and communication.
Easier said than done, but you need to keep things simple and direct. To be blunt about it, most parents aren't mentally mature enough to have kids.
5 replies →
Looks like adults ain’t scared of the ocean too much to fish.
Disciplining in harsh ways ain’t without downsides. Nor not disciplining at all. Pick your preferred poison?
I think the key to their parenting success is not "lie to your kids about the ocean" but "don't yell at your kids".
1 reply →
So it is wrong to warn kids about strangers with vans offering candy or entertainment?
It worked for Christof (Truman Show), and for Morty Smith and his child.
It’s almost as children are irrational creatures without fully developed brains and can’t handle the truth.
I wouldn't say irrational. They are inexperienced. They don't know the risks, and they don't know what they are risking with some kind of behavior.
If you place someone who never set foot outside of a major urban center and place them in a forest, they will do a lot of stupid things that can get them killed. If you take someone who always lived in a temperate climate and place them in either subzero temperatures then they won't even know what to wear without risking at least frostbite. If you place them in a hot environment they won't even know they are risking their life with heatstroke or dehydration.
4 replies →
So they use lies and deceit instead of anger.