February 28
The passions are in themselves neither good nor evil. Only how reason orders them and where it directs them gives them their value.
Summa Theologica (freely rendered)
Listening mode
The passions are in themselves neither good nor evil. Only how reason orders them and where it directs them gives them their value.
Indignation you can justify well feels especially clean. You have arguments and examples; perhaps you're even right. Precisely for that reason it's hard to tell whether your reasons are steering the agitation or merely giving it a shape after the fact. The intellect is a skilful lawyer. It likes to work for whoever hires it first.
But it can also put things in order too thoroughly. If you examine every strong feeling before you allow it, often little is left that still wants to go anywhere. You are level-headed then, but without direction. Some things you wouldn't even notice if nothing about them had bothered you.
Between these two errors there is no fixed spot where you could settle in. Rather, each time a simpler question arises: does your anger know whom it is really meant for? Often it hits the nearest person within reach, though it is meant for something that lies farther away and is harder to grasp.
The way there is longer. Along the way some of it cools, and what arrives is not necessarily less.
