Men and anger

Men with the biggest egos are also the most hostile. Hostility may be projected or repressed. If projected, it’s impossible to mistake—somebody’s getting blamed, shamed, laughed at or shot. Repressed anger is less obvious, but it too displays itself, often as impatience, judgment, criticism, passive-aggression, false jollity or do-gooding. Perhaps fearing that something worse lies beneath it, men are generally incurious about their anger. On a functional level, they’re basically OK with it.

Splitting myself

Ego works like Facebook does, on a like/dislike basis. The problem with this is that everything I see represents an aspect of myself. What I like, I own. What I dislike, I disown.

Images

An image of a thing is not the thing. Salvador Dali liked to point this out. Men have an image of themselves—a hive of memories, hopes, fears, regrets, opinions, preferences. There’s no problem with this until we mistake the hive for the honey.

On the boil

There are essentially two groups of angry men—exploders and imploders. Exploders project their anger; imploders eat it. Of course, sooner or later, the imploder explodes, and people are shocked when he does.

Fear

The fearful man is not afraid of this or that. He is afraid of Life. Talk no more of triggers. Fear is the issue, not the objects fear creates to be afraid of.