April 13, 2023

Horse 3163 - Eudaimonia - Element XI - Temper

I think that the various uses of the word Temper are interesting.

Tempered Steel is perhaps the most famous of all the tempered metals and the tempering process is one of work hardening, of folding and beating it back into itself, of forging and hammering byt fire, so that the finished product will be one which is more resilient, harder, sharper, and which will not shatter when hit.

Johann Sebastian Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier" derives its name from the tempering process of music, which is one of adjusting the various musical notes within a key, such that they sound chromatically correct and in harmony with each other. Specifically, The Well-Tempered Clavier was a work of music in 24 keys, which can be played on a well-tempered klavier/piano/harpsichord et cetera, which has had a kind of cheating process played upon it so that all of the keys are in harmony with each other. As music relies on intervals and humans are notoriously bad at having perfect pitch, then the fact that all of the notes in all of the keys are slightly wrong to make use of a series of compromises, then we no longer care.

The third use where you are likely to come across the use of the word Temper, is in relation to the disposition of humans and animals, and their relative exercise of anger at appropriate or inappropriate moments. One expects a soldier on the battlefield to be really angry in order to be able to do his job; we expect a labourer to be really angry and channel that anger into the striking of hammers into timber, but we can all show scorn and displeasure at someone who has lost their temper and displays inappropriate anger at their family or their work colleagues. We might expect a small child who has not developed or learned proper control of their emotions to display anger for really inconsistent reasons whereas if an adult acted that way against their spouse or their employees, we correctly identify that something has gone seriously wrong.

It is the third usage of the word "Temper" that we usually associate with the disposition of humans and animals but the inspection of the other two gives rise to make me think that they are connected. Quite a lot of the training of a child is to get them to take control of their own emotions and impulses, which is a kind of work hardening. Asking children to perform tasks or play nicely with other children, is training children to play in harmony with each other. In short, work-hardening, playing in harmony, and keeping control of one's anger and emotions, is part of deanimalising of people, as left unchecked and unregulated, even people can display more than a degree of feralness.

I have heard it said that anger is not really an emotion but rather a reaction to circumstance. I do not know if I agree with this, as anger can be displayed as both in reaction to an unmet desire, or a thing going wrong, as well as in opposition to us having being wronged by someone else. In all of those cases, anger wants to play in opposition to an enemy which may be abstract or real.

The Greeks had a very strong sense of those with the word usually rendered as anger - paroxunó (παροξύνω). It denotes one who is being incensed, who is being sharpened, who is being provoked; which seems to suggest that anger is a thing happening to someone more than them having agency to be able to control it. It is that last point which determines whether or not anger is well placed. Anger which leads to action in the face of injustice, is sometimes a noble pursuit. The problem is that humans are biased, selfish, small, self-centred creatures who believe that they are the heroes of their own story. Naturally, they're going to assume that their own anger is justified in the pursuit of justice while other people's is misplaced more often than not.

Broadly speaking, the Greeks never solved the problem Aristotle linked anger to desire which he thought bordered on gluttonous. Anger in Ethics is "a desire, accompanied by pain, for a perceived revenge, on account of a perceived slight on the part of people who are not fit to slight one or one’s own". He thought that "anyone can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not easy".

On the other hand, someone like Seneca who wrote an entire essay on the subject of anger, thought that it is the "most hideous and frenzied of all the emotions". He likened anger to a kind of temporary insanity and as an emotion without a logical border, he decried "whole peoples condemned to death in an indiscriminate devastation" in suggesting that anger leads to groundlessness of actions, inability to differentiate fairness and truth, and uncontrolled agitation. 

If anger is the emotion which follows as a result, then temper is the part of mind and soul holding it back. If anger is the beast, then temper is the chains which bind it. It likely follows that self-control and not reacting when every single bone in one's body absolutely wants to take off someone's head from their neck with a club, is a far better option most of the time. If everyone was quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, then everyone being well-tempered will likely lead to all three definitions of the word being practiced; which implies resilience, harmony, and appropriate reactions to things.

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