I don’t think it’s precisely true. The serene antagonism that comes from having examined something and recognizing that it is worth taking your effort to destroy is different from the hot rage of offense. But of the two, I expect antagonism to be more effective in the long term.
Rage is accompanied with a surge of adrenalin, sympathetic nervous activation, and usually parasympathetic nervous suppression, that is not sustainable in the long term. Antagonism is compatible with physiological rest and changes in the environment.
Consequently, antagonism has access to system 2 and long term planning, while rage tends to have a short term view with limited information processing capabilities.
Even when your antagonism calls for rapid physical action and rage, having a better understanding of the situation prevents you from being held back by doubt when you encounter (emotional) evidence that doesn’t fit your current tack. The release of adrenalin and start of rage can then reliably be triggered by the feeling that you have unhindered access to the object of hatred.
It’s also possible when coming from calm antagonism to choose between rage and the state of both high parasympathetic and high sympathetic activation, where you’re active but still have high sensory processing bandwidth (see also runner’s high, sexual activity, or being ‘in the zone’ with sports or high-apm games), which for anger might be called pugnacity or bloodlust or simply an eagerness to fight.
Rage is good for punching the baddies in front of you in the face if you can take them in a straight fight. Pugnacity is good for systematically outmaneuvering their defenses and finding the path to victory in combat. Antagonism is good for making their death a week from now look like an accident, or to arrange a situation where rage and pugnacity can do their jobs unhindered.
but people recently have been arguing to me that the coming and going of emotions is a much more random process influenced by chemicals and immediate environment and so on.
I don’t feel like ‘random’ is an accurate word here. ‘Stochastic’ might be better. Environmental factors like interior design and chemical influences like blood sugar have major effects, but these effects are enumerable and vary little across cultures, ages, etc.
Given how stochastic your emotional responses are, it’s best not to rely on the intense emotions for any sort of judgment. If you can’t tell whether you’re raging because someone said something intolerable or because your blood sugar is low so your parasympathetic nervous activation is low so you couldn’t process the nuance of their statements, better not act on that rage until you’ve had something to eat. If you can’t tell whether you’re fine with what someone said because they probably didn’t mean it as badly as it sounds or because you’re tired so your sympathetic nervous activation is low, better not commit to that condonement until you’ve had a nap.
I don’t think it’s precisely true. The serene antagonism that comes from having examined something and recognizing that it is worth taking your effort to destroy is different from the hot rage of offense. But of the two, I expect antagonism to be more effective in the long term.
Rage is accompanied with a surge of adrenalin, sympathetic nervous activation, and usually parasympathetic nervous suppression, that is not sustainable in the long term. Antagonism is compatible with physiological rest and changes in the environment.
Consequently, antagonism has access to system 2 and long term planning, while rage tends to have a short term view with limited information processing capabilities.
Even when your antagonism calls for rapid physical action and rage, having a better understanding of the situation prevents you from being held back by doubt when you encounter (emotional) evidence that doesn’t fit your current tack. The release of adrenalin and start of rage can then reliably be triggered by the feeling that you have unhindered access to the object of hatred.
It’s also possible when coming from calm antagonism to choose between rage and the state of both high parasympathetic and high sympathetic activation, where you’re active but still have high sensory processing bandwidth (see also runner’s high, sexual activity, or being ‘in the zone’ with sports or high-apm games), which for anger might be called pugnacity or bloodlust or simply an eagerness to fight.
Rage is good for punching the baddies in front of you in the face if you can take them in a straight fight. Pugnacity is good for systematically outmaneuvering their defenses and finding the path to victory in combat. Antagonism is good for making their death a week from now look like an accident, or to arrange a situation where rage and pugnacity can do their jobs unhindered.
I don’t feel like ‘random’ is an accurate word here. ‘Stochastic’ might be better. Environmental factors like interior design and chemical influences like blood sugar have major effects, but these effects are enumerable and vary little across cultures, ages, etc.
Given how stochastic your emotional responses are, it’s best not to rely on the intense emotions for any sort of judgment. If you can’t tell whether you’re raging because someone said something intolerable or because your blood sugar is low so your parasympathetic nervous activation is low so you couldn’t process the nuance of their statements, better not act on that rage until you’ve had something to eat. If you can’t tell whether you’re fine with what someone said because they probably didn’t mean it as badly as it sounds or because you’re tired so your sympathetic nervous activation is low, better not commit to that condonement until you’ve had a nap.