When You're the Object of Loathing

In the moment, anger feels like a game I have to play. Yet, it is a game that I cannot win. The only truly winning strategy is to opt out of playing all together.

When you’re the object of disapproval or loathing, or their words express those kinds of feelings, go to their souls. Go below the surface and see what they’re like. You’ll see that there’s no need for you to derange yourself in order to get them to think of you in a certain way. But you are obliged to be benevolent to them, because by nature they’re your friends. And the gods help them in all sorts of ways through dreams and oracles, at least to attain the objectives they prize.

This is §27 of Notebook 9 in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Earlier in this notebook, Marcus contemplated the fact that every transgression is a transgression against oneself. In other words, by doing wrong to someone else, you are doing wrong to yourself.

Last week, we focused on that line. We thought through how we ought to act in light of the fact that wrongdoing ultimately harms the wrongdoer. But in this week’s post, we’re going to think through the inverse case. What do we do when someone else has done us wrong?

Perhaps our first reaction is to be angry. This is often my first reaction. When I feel I’ve been truly, seriously wronged, I can feel the anger building in me. What I think few people admit when they discuss anger – either positively or negatively – is that being angry feels good, especially if you can rationalize your anger. When you feel like you have been wronged, and thus that your anger is righteous, there is an intense pleasure in being angry.

But the pleasure is fleeting. Rage cannot sustain itself, and eventually you’re just left tired — and if you’re lucky, things aren’t any worse than they were before. More often than not, you and your anger have worsened the situation.

When I was a child, my grandmother liked to play a trick on me.

“Pete and Repeat are sitting in a boat. Pete fell into the water. Who’s left in the boat?” she would ask.

“Repeat!” I would shout.

“Pete and Repeat are sitting in a boat. Pete fell into the water. Who’s left in the boat?” she would ask, and the loop would continue. When I was young enough, this was immensely frustrating. I was following the rules, but the game was designed to be pointless. Yet I felt like I had to keep saying Repeat when asked — that was just how the world worked.

Then, one day, it dawned on me. If I didn’t like the game, I could refuse to play. So when my grandmother asked me the dreaded question, I just shouted “No thanks, Grandma!” and went back to whatever it was I was doing. (In all likelihood, reading a book or playing on my beloved Game Boy.)

This is admittedly a silly anecdote — a small story about a young boy figuring out how to avoid being lightly teased by his grandmother. Yet I think that this is remarkably similar to my relationship to anger. In the moment, anger feels like a game I have to play. Yet, it is a game that I cannot win. The only truly winning strategy is to opt out of playing all together.

But if anger is not the right path, what are we to do? To see that, let’s look back at Notebooks 6 & 7.

A few passages from the earlier notebooks are relevant. First, in Notebook 6 §27:

If someone were to ask you to how spell ‘Antoninus’, would you enunciate each letter through gritted teeth? And if that makes them angry, would you get angry in return? Wouldn’t you just gently itemize each letter, one after another? You need to remember that here on earth too appropriate action is always made up of a certain number of stages, which you have to observe – without getting worked up or responding with anger so that you can complete the task at hand in a methodical fashion.

The crude summary of this is that anger, or getting worked up, is a hinderance to the task at hand. You need to break down the problem into a sequence and tackle them individually, just like spelling ‘Antoninus.’ Gently itemize each letter, one after another.

In Notebook 7, Marcus writes:

When someone mistreats you, the first question you should ask yourself is what conception of good and bad led him to do so. Understanding this will lead you to feel sorry for him, and will dispel any shock or anger, once you see that your own conception of goodness is still either the same as his or closely related. And so you’re bound to forgive him. On the other hand, if you’ve moved beyond this conception of goodness and badness, it will be all the easier for you to be lenient toward him for not seeing things right.

This passage from Notebook 7 is similar in sentiment to our starting passage from Notebook 9. “Go to their souls. Go below the surface and see what they’re like,” Marcus tells us there.

So when we are the object of scorn, or the victim of some wrongdoing, we have a plan of action. But this plan mostly involves reflecting on the person who wronged us: thinking about who they are, what could lead them to behave as they did.

For Marcus, there are two themes running through this reflection. First, solidarity. We stand as fellow human beings regardless of how someone treats us. “You are obliged to be benevolent to them, because by nature they’re your friend,” he says. It is unnatural, and therefore wrong, to be enemies.¹ Second, pity. When we can see what error of thinking – what wayward conception of good or bad – led to this action, we find ourselves feeling sorry for the person. He has, according to Marcus, not seen things right.

1. I wonder how Marcus squares this with running military campaigns that go beyond defending territory.