| I've heard this rebuttal a few times, that western values try to suppress emotions, and anger is sometimes good. Eliezer makes this point too. I'm still not sure I fully understand it. The anger I feel when I'm cut off in traffic is distinct enough from the anger that I feel at oppression or injustice to really deserve its own label. Like, anger1 and anger2. Since they feel so different, I have slightly different thoughts about each. I never want to drive with anger1 instead of safety. Driving with anger, or "road rage," is not an interesting value-neutral way to experience the world. I think that driving anger is a distinct emotion that is always unhealthy and just happens to share the name "angry" with other emotions because of superficial similarities. People will probably say that's just a different context, I think that's overgeneralizing, but even in other contexts I worry about the call to set aside rationality. (Instead of anger1 and anger2 you could call one rage and the other indignation.) When I'm angry ("angry2") about senseless human suffering, I agree it should move people, people should not just tune out. But that seems like a straw man of the rationalist approach. There too I'd rather channel that feeling into a thought process that maximizes my impact, rather than just attempt to satisfy the emotional call to yell or cry or punch a wall. Those may be important therapeutic responses, but if you can feel satisfaction by just getting to work to try to correct the injustice, that would be better. I'm rarely physically threatened, but my system still occasionally floods me with fight or flight adrenaline. What's so wrong about saying that's a quirk of evolution, and thoughtful responses are going to leave me better off, absent some weird fringe scenarios? I've heard the opposite perspective from people smarter and calmer than me though, so maybe I'm wrong and it just hasn't clicked for me yet. |