More on Anger
New Anger is about flaunting one’s anger as a kind of credential.
I find this fascinating and disturbing. As a Vulcan, I disapprove of the expression of any emotion in any circumstances. I assume man and wife should call each other by their last names, with proper reserve and cool courtesy, on their wedding night. Political stuggle always involves the passions, and, to a degree, the act of opposing calls for Jeremiad, and correcly so. But Peter Wood says he detects something new and different, something that is a product of a long-standing movement toward infantilism and emotionalism in the modern mind.
in Philosophy, I date the disease as springing from Freud, who first popularized the notion that self-control was ‘repression’ that is, a disease of the mind, rather than the admirable self-restrain of a moral man.
In Science Fiction, STRANGER IN THE STRANGE LAND fulfills much this same role: it is an apologia for infantile emotions, particularly those which might tempt a middle-aged man or an adolescent boy.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
