We contrast with the brusque type, careless of whether he arouses
anger, the tactful, which conciliates by avoiding prejudice, and
which hates force and anger as unpleasant. Against the quick to
anger there is the slow type, whose anger may be enduring. We may
contrast egoistic anger with the altruistic and oppose the anger
which is effective with the anger that disturbs reason and
judgment; intellectual anger against brute anger. Rarely do men
show anger to their superiors; extreme provocation and
desperation are necessary. Men flare up easily against equals but
more easily and with mingled contempt against the inferior.
Anger, though behind the fighting spirit, need not bluster or
storm; usually that is a "worked up" condition intended in a
naive way to frighten and intimidate, or through disgust, to win
a point. Anger is not necessarily courage, which replaces it the
higher up one goes in culture.
8. Disgust, also a primary emotion, is one of the basic reactions
of life and civilization. Literally "disagreeable taste," its
facial expression, with mouth open and lower lip drawn down,[1]
is that preliminary to vomiting. We eject or retract when
disgusted; we are not afraid nor are we angry. We say "he--or
she, or it--makes me sick," and this is the stock phrase of
disgust. Inelegant as it is, it exactly expresses the situation.
Disgust easily mingles with fear and anger; it is often dispelled
by curiosity and interest, as in the morbid, as in medical
science, and it of ten displaces less intense curiosity and
interest.
[1] See Darwin's "The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals,"
--a great book by a great man.
After anything has been accepted as standard in cleanliness, a
deviation in a "lower" direction causes disgust. Those who are
accustomed to clean tablecloths, clean linen are disgusted by
dirty tablecloths, dirty linen. The excreta of the body have been
so effectively tabooed, in the interest perhaps of sanitation,
that their sight or smell is disgusting, and they are used as
symbols of disgust in everyday language. Indeed, the so-called
animal functions have to be decorated and ceremonialized to avoid
disgust. We turn with ridicule and repugnance from him who eats
without "manners" and one of the functions of manners is to avoid
arousing disgust.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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