🐈

Unskillful usage of anger is like slamming all the keys on the keyboard and "winning" by producing the most soundwaves or pressing the most keys in a second. It's an all or nothing runaway process b/c it's unskilled, not because it's powerful.

It's like when Aang was learning firebending and accidentally burned Katara. We arrest our development when we feel like we'll go "out of control" with the intensity.

The 'firebender' inside us is oppressed to the extent that we can't deal with fire because we're afraid of everything going up in flames. Forgiveness is the cooling power that doesn't let things out of hand.

The fire is suppressed because its power is feared. Its "power" though is fake. We saw the dropping knife and remember it as a slicing sword. The flame is remembered as a demon so fire is banned.

The problem with being afraid of your own feelings of anger is that in order to suppress them you have to model yourself as having virtues you don't actually have while also closing yourself off to higher empathy.

E.g. if you suppress the feeling "I wanna kill that guy" then you'll never understand killing and violence. You mistake the tiny candle you're capable of producing with a real flamethrower. You equate fully feeling and thinking the thought w/ the actual action.

In practice, the gap between feeling like you want to kill someone and actually doing it is massive. The same as dying in a game or narrowly losing a sports match feels like dying but is far from actually dying.

One of the reasons following the rules in a game is so important is because the game is a ritual that dissipates murderous rage. You need far more murderous rage than you think to actually physically hurt someone but make no mistake about the nature of the emotion.