email), “I don’t have to explain myself to you.” At this point, Louise
really did have a decision, for she did not have to see that person again
or teach with him; but she also thought more and more that he had prob-
ably just had a big memory lapse and was ashamed, and worried about
aging. Furthermore, she really did want a paper by him. So in the end
she decided that to try further to extract an apology was going to doom
future interactions. Looking to the general welfare (!), she proposed that
he should write the paper anyway, and have someone else deliver it; and
she invited him to talk about it over a drink. He accepted. (Louise might
not so quickly invite him to a future event, however.)
I think that both of these were pretty good solutions (no doubt influ-
enced by the fact that Louise has been writing a book on anger and its
futility). Relationships were preserved, she had a clearer idea what she
could and could not expect from these two people, and she had preserved
the fruitful intellectual collaboration, and quasi- friendship (real friend-
ship in Case A). Did Louise get angry? Sure, for a short time. In the first
case, it probably was Transition- Anger, and nothing more: Louise knows
the person well enough not to let him make her really mad (usually). In
the second case Louise really was annoyed, but then she headed back
from the abyss, and decided that a positive take on the situation would
create more welfare for all in the long run. So she had a short spurt of real anger, but then turned to the Transition. After all, when you work with
people you buy into who they are. It’s foolish to expect to change them,
so you just have to figure out how to grapple with reality.
Now for the third. This one is slippery, because the whole group is
involved, and different people react in different ways. What does not
work: getting visibly angry at the person and treating him rudely. This
reaction, natural enough among some colleagues, just creates tension
in the whole group. What doesn’t work for long is talking to him about
it— his behavior is just too much a part of who he is by now, and the
whole problem is that he doesn’t know how he affects others. What does
work, often, is firm and frequent interruption, which he takes very well.
But the most creative welfare- enhancing solution of all was devised by
an administrator, who changed the person’s teaching schedule so that
he would finish class some minutes after the lunchtime discussions had
already started, and thus arrive late, with the result that he did not get
to set the topic, and was therefore much less disruptive. This case shows
that forward- looking thinking is everything. What would be accom-
plished by getting mad at this person? It would be like getting mad at a
genius two- year- old. Even Transition- Anger probably is a waste of emo-
tional energy. And it’s important that this is a nice and generous genius
two- year- old.
The Middle Realm
159
Let’s briefly contrast another case, Case D, of a genius two- year- old
who is not so nice. Unfortunately, the academy is filled with such peo-
ple. This important scholar was being invited to participate in a panel
inaugurating a new research center Louise’s university was opening in
a developing country. Louise was in charge of planning one of the big
opening- event panels, and this person was an important part of the plan,
because of the unique value of his work, recognized by a Nobel Prize.
Other high- quality participants would probably accept only if his partici-
pation was assured. This man engaged in characteristic delay tactics, and
then requested first- class transportation, along with business- class trans-
portation for his wife (!), something that is illegal under usual university
rules and a sign of infantile narcissism. But Louise knew from bitter expe-
rience that it was futile to get upset or even mention these defects to D, so she told university administrators that this is just how he is, and we want
him there, so you’d better resign yourself to giving him what he asks.
They knew their man, and agreed with Louise. In this instance, anger was
not even in the offing, just weary detachment. But there was also no rec-
onciliation or restoration of a working relationship: Louise was thinking,
don’t do anything with this person if you can possibly avoid it, but if you
really have to work with him, treat him like a selfish genius two- year- old.
This case shows the limits of non- anger: it doesn’t make a good working
relationship when people are like this one. (Case C is quite different, and,
with the help of non- anger, one may continue to feel much affection for
the protagonist.) But at least non- anger makes it possible to get on with an intellectual event. (The difficulty of working with D is so notorious that
on the occasion of Louise’s one prior cooperation with D, a conference at
their own university, their invited plenary speaker, another Nobel Prize
winner in D’s field, announced to a friend, himself yet another Nobel
Prize winner in the same field, that he was on his way to city Z to speak
at a conference co- organized by Louise and D. The friend’s response was,
“That’s the most implausible thing I’ve ever heard.” So: non- anger can
achieve the implausible!)
In short: more or less everything we said about the casual domain
is true in the collegial domain, with even richer occasions for comedy,
given the deeper temptations to narcissism that the workplace offers, and
perhaps especially the academic workplace. And the idea that one owes
it to one’s self- respect to get mad is even more pernicious here than it was in casual interactions. In all four of my cases one might have had righteous indignation, and been “justified” after a fashion, but with disrup-
tive consequences all around. The main difference is that in the collegial
domain apology can be of real, albeit limited, usefulness— as evidence,
going forward, that things will work better in the future, and thus as evi-
dence that pursuing a close collaborative relationship could be fruitful.
160
Anger and Forgiveness
But receiving an apology is very different from extracting an apology,
which is usually a mistake. If people have the character flaw of not want-
ing to admit they have made a mistake, a very common flaw, you could
joust with them until doomsday, upping the emotional ante, and you
would still get nowhere, except into the abyss. Instead of seeing things
as all about oneself and one’s “due,” however, one can simply realize
that some people don’t like to admit they are wrong, but they have other
good characteristics that one can value and even like— and just figure out
what to do about working with them henceforth. Others have true infan-
tile narcissism, which comes in many varieties, some more benign than
others— and then one must once again figure out what to do about that.
Another thing we learn from these cases is that imagination and see-
ing the situation from the other person’s viewpoint is an essential cor-
rective to the narcissistic focus on
one’s own insulted need for payback.
Extracting an apology would have been a way of (apparently) achieving
payback, but it would really not have changed the situation in a use-
ful way. Realizing something about the character and limits of each (that
both the first and second have a particularly childish aversion to admit-
ting they were wrong, that the second very likely is annoyed with himself
for forgetting something important and doesn’t want to admit it, that
the third is full of good will but incapable of listening) helped construct
a response that was useful. Human relations are full of problems to be
solved. It takes empathy to solve them well. And a sense of humor: for
it helped to think of these interactions as scripts for an academic sitcom.
Was Louise’s non- anger a way of not taking these four people seri-
ously? Yes, if “taking seriously” means not finding what they do funny,
or even childish. But why should we define “taking seriously” that way?
Louise’s attitudes would probably make for bad intimate relationships
with all four (although no doubt a strong maternal instinct would be an
essential ingredient of any good intimate relationship with colleagues C
and D— for someone else!), but that, fortunately, is not what we are con-
templating here. Maybe Louise was a bit manipulative in Case B, using
the colleague as a means to the success of the conference; and maybe the
administrator was manipulative in Case C. But this just goes to show that
in non- intimate relations it is not always bad to influence people’s behav-
ior for the common good.
V. Gratuitous Gratitude
Although gratitude is in many respects a backward- looking cousin
of anger, I argued in chapter 4 that it can be valuable in intimate rela-
tionships because it helps constitute the reciprocal good will that such
The Middle Realm
161
relationships rightly involve. But what about the Middle Realm? If the
Stoics are correct that our dealings in this realm are not worthy of seri-
ous concern (with exceptions to be considered in the next section), what
then of gratitude? Basically, it seems to be inappropriate for similar rea-
sons: just as we shouldn’t get angry because of the manifold insults and
indignities of air travel, driving, and so many other aspects of daily life,
we shouldn’t feel gratitude either when other people make these things
go well: such an emotion betrays too intense a dependence on external
goods. But, as before, we need to observe that gratitude is not exactly
symmetrical to anger. First, it involves a wish to do good for someone,
which seems less problematic than the wish to do ill, and is accompa-
nied by pleasant feelings, which are not welfare- disruptive, rather than
painful feelings, which often are. Second, it does not seem to be infected
by magical thinking: the grateful person does not fantasize that giving a
benefit to the person who has helped her will change the past. She usu-
ally thinks either that it will promote future goods or that it is just a nice thing to do. So the real problem the Stoics raise is that of inappropriate
dependency.
But there is a type of gratitude in the Middle Realm that may be free
from this problem. This is what I propose to call “gratuitous gratitude.”
So often one becomes accustomed to the bad things that travel and other
daily interactions bring with them. Avoiding anger in the Stoic way typi-
cally involves lowering expectations for how these interactions will go,
as one practices the usual Stoic praemeditatio malorum. Then, when something really nice happens, it is surprising and delightful. A really smart
and competent car repairman, a tech support person on the phone at
Comcast who actually knows what he or she is doing and is pleasant
to talk to; a sales clerk at Walgreens who does not behave as if the very
idea of answering a customer’s question is an insult; a guy waiting for
a weight machine you are using in the gym who does not exhibit steroi-
dal rage and impatience, but actually smiles and jokes, nicely; a teen-
age girl at the same gym who returns a piece of paper I have dropped
with a courteous “Excuse me, ma’am”— all these are windfalls of daily
life, surprising because so rare, and therefore occasions for real pleasure.
Is it only pleasure, or is the emotion gratitude as well? Often the latter,
I believe.
Is the pleasant emotion to that extent inappropriate? Here’s how one
might argue that it is: You, Louise, have been insulating yourself from
anger by expecting the worst, in true Stoic fashion, but you haven’t truly
stopped caring about these things. Underneath your shield, you really
care about politeness and good behavior, you child of the Main Line, and
you are only pretending that you do not, in order to avoid being angry all
the time. When good behavior arrives as a windfall, the strong emotion
162
Anger and Forgiveness
you feel betrays the residual attachment to these fragile goods of fortune,
and the emotion therefore is a sign that your Stoicizing project is woe-
fully incomplete.
Maybe. But maybe, too, it is perfectly all right to feel sudden pleasure
and to think that the person who acted so well deserves a good turn in
return (whether mere thanks and a warm smile, or a good review on the
Internet). I prefer the more charitable interpretation, since after all, we’re talking about pleasure and doing good, which are always in short supply
and don’t require elaborate justification.
Let’s study an example, to make these intuitions more precise. I go
to the market on the morning of a big dinner party, to buy fish for an
elaborate Indian dish. I am fully expecting that I will be skinning the filets myself, and that it will take me a long time. (The market is not one where
extraordinary service can be expected, and I do not expect it.) The man
from whom I buy six pounds of salmon filets asks me whether I would
like him to skin them and cut them into pieces (because I have mentioned
the type of dish I’m making). My eyes widen, and I say yes. Watching
his tremendous skill with his superior knives and superior deftness and
strength, I feel more and more grateful: he is not only saving me a lot of
time, he is doing it much better than I would do it. Part of my emotion
is pleasure at his artistry, but part, too, is gratitude for the generosity of his offer and the help it has given me. I would definitely not have felt
annoyed had he not made the offer: it was a total windfall. So I don’t
think I am betraying any residual attachment to external goods in my
emotion. But it is a really nice emotion, and I am hoping, in addition to
warm thanks, to do him a good turn in some way (though, since he is
head of his department, I am not sure what, despite having written down
his name, I could possibly do).
In the collegial domain, these cases take a more complex form. Let me
give two examples, returning to my alter ego Louise as I narrate them. In
the first case, Louise is working on a project that involves giving a series
of lectures, and she suddenly receives lengthy and
extremely helpful and
insightful comments from a member of her profession with whom she
has not conversed in years, and who had previously treated her work
with contempt. He had heard one of her lectures, and then bothered to
go read, with great care, the related parts of her manuscript. She certainly
was not awaiting comments from him, and would not have been even
slightly irritated if he had not sent any. Indeed, after thirty years she had finally brought herself to a point of non- anger at which his presence in
a large auditorium did not have the psychic effect of Seneca’s dragged
bench— or, at least, only that of a bench dragged a long way away! But
nonetheless: she was extremely pleased and grateful, since the comments
were really very helpful to her revisions. While it would have been a
The Middle Realm
163
mistake for her to carry on her career with any reliance on this person,
and while it would have been excessive to express her gratitude by invit-
ing him to a dinner party, since she doesn’t like him, she felt it was right
to feel gratitude, since the comments were extensive and had taken him
at least some time to write. (He is a very rapid worker, but even so. …)
Maybe he did it only out of a rigid deontological standard of hospitality,
but so what? It was good.
With the second case, we return to Case D of my earlier discussion,
and an update. When this difficult colleague did finally attend the open-
ing in the developing country, he arrived after traveling approximately
twenty hours. But instead of being tired and cranky he was a bundle of
positive energy. He not only gave a marvelous lecture at the opening,
he also rushed out to see the historical sites of the city, returning with
passionate enthusiasm and many questions. Louise was grateful for his
excellent contribution, and for the additional contribution that his sheer
presence gave to the event, since he is truly very distinguished— but also
for his love of a country she loves, and for his general quite unexpected
good will and positivity.
Colleagues can give pleasant surprises. Since many are children, and
many of the problems of working with them derive from that source, it
is well to remember that children also delight and please. As in the more
Anger and Forgiveness Page 29
