Layer 31 Passion and Patience

.
The Today programme on Radio 4 just now featured an item on a new production at the National Theatre of “The Taming of the Shrew”. This came shortly after a trailer for ‘In Our Time’ in which Melvyn Bragg was talking about this morning’s programme, which focused on the human brain. He mentioned that Shakespeare had little regard for the brain, by which he meant ‘thought’, compared with his emphasis on the ‘heart’, meaning human passions and emotions.

This was a real coincidence as I’d woken up today thinking about Shakespeare’s regard for patience, as a crucial human ‘virtue’. He speaks of patience in lots of the plays. For example, in Romeo and Juliet: “Be patient. For the world is broad and wide.” (Act 3 Scene 3) That phrase alone is worth a whole session of reflection and meditation.

Needless to say, Romeo, being a young man under the influence of passion and infatuation, has no interest at all in being patient, and no intention of calming his enthusiasm in order to ensure long-term happiness. Obviously his banishment from Verona was seen as the best thing for him - to give him a chance to cool down.

This week I enjoyed a long and stimulating conversation with two good friends about human emotions - whether they are positive or negative, whether they are simple or complex, whether they have components of thought, feeling and intuition as well as passion, and whether passion is the basic or primitive driving force within us, the fiery part, the libido, and so on.

Yesterday’s Guardian featured a letter from a Hillingdon Councillor, Norman Nunn-Price, who was commenting on what the Labour Party needs to do in the wake of last week’s disaster in the local elections. He speaks of anger, and how to channel this emotion in a positive way.

“ There are now many ex-councillors who are very angry at losing their seats. They are now free to be active where it matters - on the streets and doorsteps. This anger must be harnessed.”

Yes indeed. By everyone, every day. If we take the time to reflect on the things that make us angry, then we should think through the ways in which we can constructively use this emotion and the passion that fuels it to eliminate from our lives the things that make us angry. If not, we either have to learn how to live with the anger and whatever‘s causing it, or else let it rip negatively, and to hell with the consequences.

For myself, I’ve always liked the phrase “Don’t get mad, get even.” Given that we can’t prevent ourselves experiencing anger from time to time, it seems to me that what this means is, don’t just let your anger rip and cause havoc in a useless negative way - consider why you feel angry, and who is causing the anger, and act wisely and logically in a way that will either punish or neutralise whoever or whatever caused you to feel angry. Essentially, revenge is a dish best served cold, as the saying has it. Personally I quite like it frozen, on a stick.

Some quotations on Anger:

http://www.cybernation.com/victory/quotations/subjects/quotes_anger.html

Incidentally, Norman Nunn-Price concluded his letter, “The Labour party in Westminster must turn its back on the fat cats in the City and all these media whiz-kids and advisers. Spend the next two years on the streets where people live. Talk to them, listen to them and learn from them. Build up our fighting strength again. Replenish, replace and regroup the shattered battalions. That is the way ahead“.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/may/07/3

Revenge

(Wikipedia has an interesting page on revenge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge)

Working with children and their parents over so many years I frequently had to deal with the notion from the Old Testament of ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’, and the determination of both the kids and their parents that they needed some sort of revenge on wrongdoers. It was very hard to convince them that the role of the school was to help children learn from their mistakes, and to develop their emotional intelligence.

It was sufficient punishment normally, given that the children did learn from their mistakes and rarely committed the same act of aggression more than once, for them to have to talk through what they had done, and to feel a sense of shame and disgrace. Even more so if their parents were brought in to talk about the matter, which happened whenever children did not learn and did not respond to warnings and demands for better behavior, better self-control, etc.

Learning to control anger can be hard, and some children are just naturally more fiery than others - more inclined to flashes of temper, instant reactions to frustrating situations, more passionate in their likes and dislikes. Both carrot and stick are needed. Praise for successfully staying calm or walking away from stressful situations; and having to experience isolation from their friends and teachers, and deprivation of things they enjoy, as well as counseling sessions and having to reflect on whatever got them into trouble, when things go wrong.

In Our Time - The History of the Brain.

A curiously unsatisfying and superficial edition of the programme. No reference at all to the essential parts of the brain and what functions they perform - the frontal and pre-frontal lobes, the amygdala and the hippocampus.

Aristotle regarded the heart as the most important part of the human body. He dissected animals of every kind. He believed the heart was the major organ of the human body. He thought the arteries were the conduits of ‘sensation’. The brain looks as though it has very little blood, being grey in colour. Therefore he considered the brain was relatively unimportant.

Plato thought the soul controls the human body, and was located in three places - one part being in the brain, one in the heart, one in the guts or liver. But ‘the heart’ is what makes us human. The brain is seen as a kind of ‘wise counselor’.

[Very clever, I think, of Plato to recognise that our ‘souls’ are complex, and made up of thoughts, passions, feelings, etc.]

Galen was a prominent ancient Greek physician, whose theories dominated Western medical science for well over a millennium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen

Shakespeare tended to use ‘the brain’ as almost a term of abuse.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What ‘In Our Time’ left out.

The amygdala is clearly a vital part of the brain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amigdala

Damage to the amygdala, or perhaps deformation, or under-development, will “produce noticeable changes, including overreaction to all objects, hypoemotionality, loss of fear, hypersexuality, and hyperorality, a condition in which inappropriate objects are placed in the mouth”. Hmmmm.

Problems with the amygdala may also be responsible for Borderline Personality Disorder, paranoia, and autism.

The hippocampus is another key area, controlling memory, inhibition, and a sense of space, it seems. This is one of the first areas to be damaged by the onset of Altzheimer’s.

Borderline Personality Disorder is particularly interesting, since it seems to occur in individuals who have problems with controlling strong passions. Sign and symptoms, according to Wikipedia, can include,

1) Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
2) A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
3) Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
4) Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving).
5) Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-mutilating behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars, or picking at oneself.
6) Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).
7) Chronic feelings of emptiness, worthlessness.
8) Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
9) Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms
For those of us working in education and life-long learning in emotional and spiritual intelligence the above list provides much food for thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_Personality_Disorder

Patience

The cultivation and practice of patience seems to me a vital part of becoming emotionally and spiritually intelligent, as an antidote to excessive passion and a tendency to use it negatively. Easy for an Oxzen to say, you may think, but then again a certain lack of passion or fire in one’s makeup brings its own problems. Ah, the difficulty in finding a balance . . .

http://www.cybernation.com/victory/quotations/subjects/quotes_patience.html

Quotes re patience

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
~ W. H. Auden ~
The two powers which in my opinion constitute a wise man are those of bearing and forbearing.
~ Epictetus ~
Patience means self-suffering.
~ Mahatma Gandhi ~
Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.
~ Barbara Johnson ~
Consider the hour-glass; there is nothing to be accomplished by rattling or shaking; you have to wait patiently until the sand, grain by grain, has run from one funnel into the other.
~ John Christian Morgenstern ~
If I have made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.
~ Sir Isaac Newton ~
Patience makes a woman beautiful in middle age.
~ Elliot Paul ~
Patience in the present, faith in the future, and joy in the doing
~ George Perera ~
In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience.
~ W. B. Prescott ~
Rome was not built in a day.
~ Proverb ~
An ounce of patience is worth a pound of brains.
~ Dutch Proverb ~
There are times when God asks nothing of his children except silence, patience and tears.
~ C. S. Robinson ~
Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.
~ Johann Friedrich Von Schiller ~
Who can be patient in extremes? [Henry Vi]
~ William Shakespeare ~

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here’s an interesting link to Shakespeare and The Normalisation of Violence.

(I was just thinking this very morning how difficult it is to educate children in non-violence when they are exposed on a daily basis to powerful images of men using everything from knives and swords to guns, tanks, rockets and aircraft to blast their enemies, often in the name of revenge, or justice, or just ‘taking out the bad guys’. Brings back to mind the cap badge worn by our very own Prince Harry - “We do bad things to bad people”. Oh - great!)

The Moderate Voice

http://themoderatevoice.com/at-tmv/newsweek-blogitics/19330/clinton-obama-mccain-and-shakespeare-the-normalization-of-violence/

This contains an interesting reference to Ate

Ate, a Greek word for 'ruin, folly, delusion', is the action performed by the hero, usually because of his/her hubris, or great pride, that leads to his/her death or downfall. There is also a goddess by that name (Até) in Greek mythology, a personification of the same.
In Nonnos' Dionysiaca (11.113), at Hera's instigation Ate persuades the boy Ampelus whom Dionysus passionately loves to impress Dionysus by riding on a bull from which Ampelus subsequently falls and breaks his neck.

In the play Julius Caesar, Shakespeare introduces the goddess Ate as an invocation of vengeance and menace. Mark Antony, lamenting Caesar's murder, envisions "And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge, With Ate' by his side come hot from Hell, Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war, ..."

http://www.theoi.com/Daimon/Ate.html