Should a Man Understand His Anger, or Just Have It?
First presented in a public seminar at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, New York City.

I learned from Aesthetic Realism that a man needs to do all he can to understand his anger in order to be proud of himself. And the main thing we need to understand is that we have two completely different kinds of anger. In his lecture, Aesthetic Realism And Anger, Eli Siegel said:

In a good anger we are fighting for the beauty of the world. In a bad anger we don't give a damn about the beauty of the world. The anger that is good is really an anger that is the desire to be pleased. But the anger that's bad is the desire to see the world as bad.

That desire to see the world as bad is contempt, and when it fuels a man's anger, though it has him feel decisive and tough, it also makes him reckless and mean. It undermines a man's life because it is against his deepest desire—to like the world.

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