You Must Look Beneath The Surface

The Daily Stoic

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Education, Business, Ryan Holiday, Society & Culture, Philosophy, Stoicism, 694393, Stoic Philosophy, Daily Stoic, Self-improvement, Stoic

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🗓️ 6 February 2020

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, like all Romans, seemed to have loved the theatre.

Seneca, in particular, had a great fascination for what “actors in theatre who imitate the emotions” could teach him about dealing with people in real life. Many actors appear “most dangerous when they redden,” Seneca observed, but “they were letting all their sense of shame escape.” From that, he realized that with Sulla “when the blood mantled his cheeks” it was always “due...to the novelty of a situation.” And “Fabianus also, I remember, reddened when he appeared as a witness before the senate; and his embarrassment became him to a remarkable degree.”

Evan Puschak, creator of the wildly popular Nerdwriter YouTube channel, made a great video a couple years ago, titled “Jack Nicholson: The Art of Anger.” The video is not only an eight minute montage of Nicholson’s very entertaining freak outs, it’s a distillation of a very human emotion. Like Seneca, Puschak wanted “to get a sense of the larger shape of anger as a human phenomenon.” Here’s what he learned:

For Nicholson—and everybody else, for that matter—anger can be a form of desperation, a noise so loud that you don't have to hear your own insecurities. The larger and louder it is, the closer he is to recognizing a vulnerability in himself. That's the challenge for an actor playing this emotion. You're not just playing anger; you're playing what's under it. Most anger isn't psychotic. It's only a thin veneer for what's brewing below, and you have to be able to turn up the volume while preserving traces of this deeper motivation.

This is a really powerful insight. To see that anger is not anger but often a glimpse of what is unresolved underneath. Sulla was revealing his weakness, his inexperience, his uncertainty. Fabianus was revealing his embarrassment. In The Border, Puschak points out, Nicholson was revealing fear. “Fear at what he's gotten himself into. Fear that he won't be able to get himself out.”

Although the Stoics spend a lot of time dealing with the symptoms of anger, they don’t spend enough time really looking at what’s underneath. Marcus Aurelius couldn’t remind himself to go to therapy because it didn’t exist then. Seneca couldn’t talk about processing trauma because we didn’t really understand that yet. The Stoics lacked even some of the healing strategies that result from the Christian emphasis on forgiveness. But just because they didn’t have these things, it doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from them now. It’s not enough to just stuff your anger down or cut it off at the pass—you have to figure out what’s going on way before that. You have to look at the root causes. You have to look back at the road you traveled to understand how you got to this place, this moment.

Tear off the mask. Look below. Look behind. And deal with it.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today.
0:13.6	Welcome to the Daily Stoke. For each day, we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living good life.
0:23.3	Each one of these passages is based on the 2000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at DailyStoic.com.
0:36.3	You must look beneath the surface. Marcus Arelius, Sennaka and Epic Titus, like all Romans, seemed to have loved the theater.
0:45.3	Sennaka in particular had a great fascination for what actors in theater who imitate emotions could teach him about dealing with people in real life.
0:54.3	Many actors appear most dangerous when they redden, he observed, but they were letting all their sense of shame escape.
1:02.3	From that, Sennaka said he realized how sola, when the blood mantled his cheeks, was always due to the novelty of a situation.
1:11.3	Fabianus also said, I remember reddened when he appeared as a witness before the Senate and his embarrassment became him to a remarkable degree.
1:20.3	Evan Pushchak, creator of the Wildly Popular Nerd Rider YouTube channel, made a great video a couple years ago titled Jack Nicholson, The Art of Anger.
1:30.3	The video is not only an eight minute montage of Nicholson's very entertaining freakouts, it's a distillation of a very human emotion.
1:38.3	Like Sennaka, Pushchak wanted to get a sense of the larger shape of anger as a human phenomenon.
1:45.3	And what he learned, he said, is that for Nicholson and for everybody else for that matter, anger can be a form of desperation.
1:52.3	A noise so loud that you don't have to hear your own insecurities. The larger and louder it is, the closer he is to recognizing a vulnerability in himself.
2:03.3	That's the challenge for an actor playing this emotion, he said, you're not just playing anger, you're playing what's under it.
2:10.3	Most anger isn't psychotic, it's only a thin, finnier for what's brewing below, and you have to be able to turn up the volume while preserving traces of this deeper motivation.
2:20.3	This is a really powerful insight, to see that anger is not anger, but often a glimpse of what is unresolved underneath.
2:29.3	Solo was revealing his weakness, his inexperience, his uncertainty, Fabianis was revealing his embarrassment.
2:36.3	In, the border Pushchak points out, Nicholson was revealing fear, fear at what he's gotten himself into, fear that he won't be able to get himself out.
2:46.3	Although the Stokes spend a lot of time dealing with the symptoms of anger, they don't spend enough time really looking at what's underneath.
2:53.3	Markis really couldn't remind himself to go to therapy because it didn't exist then.
2:58.3	Seneca couldn't talk about processing trauma because we really didn't understand that yet. The Stokes lacked even some of the healing strategies that result from the Christian emphasis on forgiveness.
3:09.3	But just because they didn't have these things doesn't mean that you can't benefit from them now.
	...

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