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Jan. 30, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
24:25
Why You Should Get ANGRY!
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Time Text
Something's Wrong Here 00:10:31
Hey, hey everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Friedman.
Hope you're getting well.
So I had a call this morning and with the permission of the listener, I'm going to tell you a good theme that came out of it.
So the question was around anger and the purpose of anger.
So this has nothing to do with this person's life, but it is an important principle that came out of it.
So we're going to talk about that.
So the big question with anger is what's the purpose of anger?
Like, why do we have anger?
And what is the purpose of anger?
How does it help us?
How does it serve us?
When is it too much?
When is it too little?
When is it inappropriate?
Blah, blah, blah.
So let me sort of make a case here and tell you what I think is the most important aspects of anger that need to be thought about when dealing with it.
Because, you know, you don't want to go through life with no anger.
You also don't want to go through life with sort of chronic perpetual irritation and so on.
So let's see if we can find the old Aristotelian mean, right?
Too little anger means that you are too easy to push around.
Too much anger means that quality people don't want to spend time with you and you can only ever have, you know, victim types in your life.
So let's say you grow up with an angry father, an irascible, irritable, angry father.
Could be mother, just going to go, son, father.
Now, can you call your father out on his anger?
Can you say, Dad, you know, it's kind of uncomfortable and you seem to spend a lot of time angry or pissed off and tense and frustrated and it's kind of awkward and I feel a little tense or quite a bit tense around you.
And, you know, boy, could we really try and try and sort this out?
I would really appreciate that if we could have a conversation about it, if there's something I'm doing or something that comes from you and so on, right?
Because angry people tend to be either in your face or avoidant.
So if your father is not getting along with your mother, then, you know, there's a sort of man cave, you know, the garage or the shed or someplace that they go where they do incomprehensible, manly things in the deep testosterone of their perpetual avoidance.
And if that's the case, of course, then you either get explicit disapproval from your angry father because he's yelling at you or mad at you or upset with you or criticizing you or something like that.
You either get that explicit disapproval or, yay, alternatively, you get the implicit disapproval.
Of course, the implicit disapproval is he's avoiding you.
He's gone to his man cave somewhere and he's kind of avoiding you.
And so you put in this, you know, it's a horrible position when you're a kid, right?
You're put in this position where you have to deeply believe it's that this belief is sort of inflicted upon you.
You sort of have to deeply believe that either something's wrong with him or something's wrong with you.
I mean, you could say or both, but kids don't tend to work that way.
And of course, it's not really a real way to work, right?
Because you can't really say, well, when it comes to the father and the child, the father and the son, both parties are equally at fault, like that doesn't really make any sense because that would be to say that the kid is born wrong, born bad, born dysfunctional, born selfish, whatever it is, right?
And of course, if you're born that way, then you can't really be criticized for that.
You know, nobody really nags at me about being blue-eyed or blonde because that's just how I was born.
So you can't sort of say, so the kid is born not wrong and the father, therefore it must be the father who's wrong.
And the father can't claim excuse of, well, I had a bad childhood because he's an adult and he's holding the child accountable and so on, right?
So if you've got an ill-tempered father, he's either aggressive or avoidant.
And either you are then explicitly criticized or implicitly criticized.
And the implicit criticism, this is why I consider neglect far, far worse than verbal abuse, because the implicit criticism is much, much tougher to deal with than the explicit criticism.
Because if somebody says, you know, you're a selfish a-hole, you know, and repeatedly, then at least you have something to work with.
You can say, oh, okay, so that's the criticism.
Am I a selfish a-hole?
And you say, well, no, there are times when I've been pretty kind and generous and thoughtful and, you know, blah, blah, blah.
So you can push back against a specific criticism.
But neglect and avoidance, where your father just goes off and does other things, that's a whole different situation, right?
It's a whole different situation because your father's criticism is never made explicit.
And therefore, you can make up any number of things that you are deficient in.
I'm not manly enough.
I'm not sporty enough.
I'm too loud.
I'm too quiet.
I'm too selfish.
I'm not selfish enough.
I'm like, whatever you're coming up with, you get to invent it all on your own, which means it's a buffet, right?
You served a meal, you can like or not like the meal.
But if it's a buffet, things you don't like are kind of on you.
And so neglect produces an infinite variety of self-attack.
If you're called a selfish a-hole or, you know, you just, you don't think, or, you know, then at least you have something specific to work with.
Okay, this is what my father doesn't like.
And is this true?
Is this false?
You have something specific to work with.
But if your father's just avoiding you, then you don't know.
Right.
It's, I mean, you're getting ghosted in your own home.
And ghosting makes people crazy because they don't know what's going on.
They don't know what the situation is or why they're being ghosted.
So they tend to go kind of crazy and make up all of these things.
It could be any number of things.
So you get to pick from an infinite buffet of self-criticism if you are neglected or if your father avoids you.
So something's wrong with you or something's wrong with him.
Again, it can't be equally both.
Now, as a kid, if you say, well, there's something wrong with my father, then you would get angry, right?
If something is wrong with you, we tend not to get angry.
So the example I've given in the past is if you are supposed to meet your friend at seven o'clock and he's not there and he's not there.
And then he shows up at eight and you're angry and you say, we're supposed to be here at seven.
He said, no, no, no, you said eight.
And then you, he shows you the text message where you said eight and you got your wires crossed.
So you wouldn't be angry with him anymore.
You say, oh, man, I'm so sorry.
Like, sorry, I must have really cried.
You might be annoyed at yourself or whatever, but you wouldn't be angry at him.
If you texted him and meet you at eight, you show up at seven.
He gets there at eight and you're mad at him and then he says, right?
So it wouldn't be, wouldn't be just.
And nobody would continue.
Well, you should have known.
You should have known what I meant, not what I said, right?
So the anger, if your father is neglecting you, avoiding you, if he's not present, then, sorry, I didn't need to say that three times, then you would be angry at him.
If you would experience as a child being angry at him, you'd say, hey, hey, bro, bro, what are you doing?
What are you doing?
You come home, you spend a couple hours in the man cave, and then you pass out in front of the TV.
Like, I'm not getting any parenting here.
Like, you need to step up.
You need to actually be a parent.
Like, this is not right.
You need to sort of do right by me.
You need to do your job.
You need to do your damn job, you know, rage against the breast.
Tom Cruise Magnolia style.
You got to do your job.
Do your job.
So can you say that?
Right.
Can you say that to your father?
You need to step up and do your job.
Right.
Like if your dad's an entrepreneur, right?
Let's say he sells boilers, hot water boilers, right?
And if a customer has a big problem with the boiler that he installed, the customer's going to call him up and say, hey, this boiler's not working or the boiler is leaking like crazy or the, you know, the boiler is overheating or, you know, the boiler is on fire or like some bad thing is happening with the boiler, right?
So he would be used to customers saying to him, something is wrong with the boiler.
I'm not a happy customer and you need to come and fix the boiler, right?
Because they're the customer, right?
So if you as a child are not getting the services that you want or need from your father, then you would, of course, in a sort of rational universe, you'd say to your dad, hey, like, I'm not satisfied with the quality of the service I'm receiving from you as a parent.
That is not, that is not good.
That is bad, bad stuff.
You are a bad provider of services or the services you provide are bad or whatever, right?
You'd lodge a complaint, put them in the suggestion box.
Dad, I miss you.
You know, we're not spending enough time together.
We don't really have any positive interactions.
And I'm getting kind of jumpy because, you know, it's not much fun for me.
If when you come home, you just avoid me or sit on your phone or sit on the computer or go to the man cave.
Or like, I feel bad because I feel like I'm not interesting.
And, you know, I know it's not my job to be super interesting and entertain you as, you know, I'm just a little kid, but, you know, you got to, you got to fix this.
You got to, you're going to sort this out.
Like, this is, this is bad for you.
It's bad for me.
And, you know, you've decided to be a father or at least keep the kid, keep me.
So you got to do your job.
You know, if you had an employee who just sat around on his phone all day or played on the computer or did some hobby, you know, built ping pong tables or something, you would say, well, no, you're not, you're not doing your job.
You're doing other things, but you're not doing your job.
And then if your employee then, you know, spent the morning doom scrolling or brain rot scrolling on Insta and then spent the afternoon building a ping pong table, which is not his job, and then took a nap, you would feel like, well, this person isn't doing their job.
And you would be upset with them.
Employee Misbehavior 00:03:14
You'd be angry at them.
And you'd say, you need to do your job.
And if they refuse to do their job, you'd fire them, right?
So you have a job called parenting, which you're not doing.
You are avoiding.
And that's bad.
And you wouldn't accept this from your employee.
So why would I accept it from you?
Your employee is providing services to you.
He's not providing those services.
He's a bad employee.
You got to get him to change or you're going to fire him.
In the same way, if you install a boiler and the boiler is bad, then you have to go fix it and so on, right?
So, so you need to do your job.
You need to do your job.
You need to parent, right?
Well, I mean, what would happen?
Well, your parent would get annoyed and angry and whatever, right?
So your anger, so you're hurt, right?
Hey, Daddy, I miss you, right?
You're a little kid.
Daddy, I miss you.
I love you.
You're hurt.
So of course, because you're hurt, right?
You express that you're hurt.
Now, when does the anger come in?
Well, the anger comes in when you express that you're hurt, but the behavior doesn't change, right?
You express that you're hurt, but the behavior doesn't change.
So if you've ever had a friend, usually we've all had one friend like this, who just drives too damn fast.
He just drives too damn fast.
And you say to your friend, listen, can you slow down?
Like, why are you going 90 into 70?
I don't, like, please slow down.
Now, if your friend is like, oh, yeah, sorry.
I mean, sorry, I've got a bit of a lead foot.
I don't mean to make you uncomfortable.
I will slow down, right?
Let's say I'm talking miles an hour to make it even worse.
So if your friend, on the other hand, speeds up, then you're angry because you've made a reasonable request, which is don't go 20 miles over the speed limit, which is like going 130 in a 100 zone in the kilometer system.
So it's too far, especially if the road conditions aren't great, like it's wet or slippery or icy or snowy or something like that.
Like slow down.
I'm not comfortable.
And if the person, if your friend just turns and smiles at you and hits the gas or doesn't slow down, then you're going to get angry because you're frightened of dying.
He's in control of your life.
I had a guy actually, we were working together and we were at a corporate retreat in the Rockies and he was driving me up there from Vancouver and was just way too fast around those hairpin turns.
And I'm like, you gotta, you gotta stop, man.
Like, you gotta slow the hell down.
It almost got us killed at one point.
We're like on two wheels on a hairpin turn.
And if your friend doesn't slow down, doesn't acknowledge or acknowledges but doesn't slow down or in fact speeds up, then you get angry.
Well, why do you get angry?
Because the person is doing something that is upsetting or fearful or hurtful or dangerous or whatever, and they are not listening.
Right.
Like if you have a friend who likes pulling out an air horn and blasting it in your ear, which can damage your hearing, and you say, I need you to stop doing that.
And then he does it even more, then you've got a situation.
Why Anger Can't Fix Someone 00:10:39
You've got a sadist on your hands.
You've got a cruel person.
You've got a narcissist, a selfish person, a hierarchy person, a status person, whatever it is.
But they sure as hell, I'm a good friend.
So anger is when hurt or upset, when a negative emotion that you're experiencing is not enough to get someone to change his or her behavior.
They either maintain or escalate the negative behavior.
Then your hurt is not enough to change their behavior because you want empathy, right?
I mean, and you're not getting it.
In fact, you're getting the opposite, perhaps.
Because once you ask for empathy, there's no neutral situation anymore.
You either get your empathy or you get sadism.
It's sort of like if you've got an uncle who play wrestles with you, like say you're eight or nine years old and you've got an uncle who play wrestles you and he does something that really hurts you and you say, oh, ah, that hurt, right?
And then he just does it again.
Well, now you're in a situation where it's not play.
You're in danger.
You've got a sadist on your hand.
You've got a cruel a-hole on your hand who's now hurting you and not doing it by accident.
Whereas if he says, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, blah, blah, blah.
I'll make sure I never do that again.
Let's stop for a bit.
And I'm so sorry.
Right.
I mean, I remember when I was in, I was maybe 14 or 15, a friend of mine had a pool.
And so we loved going over there.
And there was a priest who was in his 40s back then who, you know, was wrestling with the kids in the pool, but way too hard, like pinning your arms, half popping your shoulders out.
And people were like, whoa.
But he just kept doing it.
So we just avoided him.
It's just a weird effort.
Just a very strange fella.
He was doing some, I'm stronger than you.
I'm bigger than you.
Maybe this is how you pop people's shoulders out and bring them closer to God.
I don't know.
It's just a weird, a weird afternoon.
Hey, how come you kids aren't swimming?
There's a weird, muscular John Cena tentacle priest in the pool.
So we are not doing that.
Right.
So someone does something that upsets you.
You tell them, and you know, it's if it's reasonable, right?
If it's reasonable.
It's not like you used the word flugel horn, which my father used when he beat me.
Okay, well, maybe even then you can avoid the word flugelhorn or something like that, but you know, assuming it's reasonable.
And if the person doesn't change their behavior, well, now you're in a situation of anger because they've revealed themselves to be selfish, a-holes, narcissists, whatever it may be, a sociopath, maybe a psychopath, whatever, right?
But they are not moved by empathy in the right direction.
They're either not moved by empathy or they're moved in the wrong direction.
So then you get angry.
Why do you get angry?
Because your anger is trying to keep you safe and you recognize that you're in a situation where somebody is being cruel to you.
And neglect is one of the biggest forms of cruelty.
I mean, it's like starving someone, right?
Emotionally, it is starving someone, particularly a child, particularly if you're, God help you, an only child.
So you go from, I'm upset, hurt, sad, whatever, scared, to requesting a change in behavior so that you don't feel sad, bad, scared, right?
And if the behavior doesn't change or escalates, then you get angry.
And you get angry for a one-two strategy.
So the first strategy is: look, I said, stop blowing your horn in my ear.
Stop it.
I mean it.
Don't do it.
So then maybe they'll stop blowing their horn in your ear because you're angry.
Maybe.
At least it gets the horn out of your ear.
It doesn't bode well for the friendship in the long term, but at least it gets the horn out of your ear, right?
So you're protected.
Now, if they still don't get their horn out of your ear, like you said, hey, like it really hurts when you blow that horn in my ear.
And then they do it again.
You're like, will you stop?
Stop it.
Stop blowing that horn in my ear.
I mean it.
Like seriously, do not do that again.
And if they do it again, what is your impulse?
To get away.
To leave.
To get out of the situation.
I mean, maybe you want to beat the guy up or whatever.
I don't know.
But your anger is like, this cannot be fixed.
And so you need to get away.
Right?
If you keep play fighting with someone and they keep full-on clocking you in the face and you, hey, that hurt.
And then they do it again.
Will you play more carefully?
For God's sakes.
Pull your punches.
Know your strength.
Right.
And if they do it again and again, you're like, you're really angry and you're peace out.
You're done.
You're out.
You're out.
You're not doing that anymore with the guy.
You're not doing that anymore with the guy.
Right?
That's what the anger is for.
So you, I'm hurt, I'm upset.
I'm bad.
I'm scared.
Whatever.
Feel bad.
And if the behavior continues or escalates, then you get angry, which is an attempt to stop the behavior.
And if the behavior continues, the anger turns to exasperation, which is a combination of significant anger and hopelessness.
In other words, my anger cannot change the situation.
Sorry.
My anger cannot change the person.
Therefore, my anger is telling me to leave the situation.
Does that make sense?
Fear, sad, bad.
Ask for a change in behavior.
If it doesn't come, you get angry in the hopes that you can stop the behavior.
If the behavior continues, you get more angry and leave.
So the guy's blowing the horn in your ear.
It hurts.
It's uncomfortable.
It's unpleasant.
And you say, stop.
Like, that really is annoying.
Like, sorry, this is bad.
Right.
And then they do it again.
Hey, stop that.
And if they do it again, I'm out.
I'm leaving.
Hey, man, I'll stop.
And it's like, but then that's a game, right?
So your anger, the first pass of the anger is to change the other person's behavior with recognition that that person's empathy and your negative emotion is not enough to change that person's behavior.
So then you try to change that person's behavior through anger, right?
And then if it doesn't change, your anger is we're at.
And so the analogy in the workplace is someone's not doing their job.
Say, listen, man, it's really bothering me that you're not doing your job.
It's upsetting me.
It's having a negative effect on the other workers.
It looks bad on me.
And, you know, please, can you just do your job, right?
You're sort of being vulnerable.
You're saying how it affects you and something, right?
And if the person doesn't do their job, then you say, okay, so this is a performance review.
I'm putting a black mark in your file.
You have to do your job or you won't be working here for very long, right?
And then hopefully they'll change and you don't have to go through the hassle of hiring someone new.
But if they still don't, then you just fire them if they still didn't do their job, right?
So the first is being vulnerable about what you need and honest about your negative experience.
The second is saying you need to change from an assertiveness anger standpoint.
And the third is if your negative emotions are not enough for that person to change, the fact that they're upsetting or harming you or making you feel something negative, if that's not enough for them to change, then you get angry.
If that's not enough for them to change, then you peace out, right?
You're angry, your anger turns into exasperation.
So a lot of people get stuck in the second part where they expect their anger to change somewhat.
When you have to get angry at someone in order for him or her to change, the relationship is almost certainly doomed because it's not happening because of empathy.
The relationship is almost certainly doomed if you have to resort to anger to get someone to treat you decently, right?
So your anger cannot fix anyone, right?
Your anger cannot fix anyone at all.
It's really important to understand.
If the person does not respond to upsetting you in an empathetic way, if the person does not respond to upsetting you in an empathetic way, then that person has no empathy, which means they have to substitute cruelty or power or mockery or something like that.
And you can't fix that person.
You cannot fix somebody who has no empathy.
You cannot fix someone who's addicted to status or who mocks you or, oh, don't be so sensitive.
You know, that kind of thing.
You can't fix those people.
You cannot fix those people.
You cannot fix those people.
And trying will paralyze you, will wreck you, will ruin you, because then you're taking the obligation on to say that, well, my anger or my upset or whatever it is, my pleas can fix someone, can make someone better.
Your feelings cannot fix people.
Nobody can fix a lack of empathy.
It's sad but true.
This is why you've got to treat your kids as best as you can, as best as they need to develop empathy when they're young.
Because you cannot petition the Lord with prayer.
You cannot fix people who don't have empathy.
Nobody knows how to do it.
Otherwise, we wouldn't have prisons.
Therapists would know how to fix people who were, say, narcissists or something like that.
You can't fix them.
If you try, what happens is you say you end up with despair, right?
You end up with despair.
Despair is when your anger feels useless, futile, pointless.
That's despair.
And you don't want to end up in a situation where your anger is useless and pointless and helpless, and you just end up permanently irritated, frustrated, tense, negative.
And that's going to entirely condition the people who you're going to end up having in your life.
So do not imagine that your anger can fix people who lack empathy.
Your anger at best can get them to stop doing negative actions in the short term.
Your anger can do that temporarily, but it cannot fix them.
It cannot give them empathy.
It cannot make them be empathetic.
So your anger in general exists to get you away from people who lack empathy and who are maybe in fact be actively cruel.
And usually people who act people who lack empathy are almost always cruel.
Because when you don't have empathy, all you have is status.
And in order to have status, you have to put other people down in order to have a higher status.
Status is the opposite of empathy.
Empathy is win-win.
Status is win-lose.
So I hope this made sense.
And I really do appreciate your empathy.
Empathy, my friends, towards freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
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And freedomain.com slash books for all of the lovely new print versions of the novels.
I hope to talk to you soon.
I appreciate your time, thoughts, care, and attention in this most essential conversation.
Lots of love, my friends.
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