Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
Old traditions worked this out a long time ago: someone who cannot be certain they are right cannot be righteously cruel. Doubt is not weakness here, it is what keeps the hand down.
Notice the order of the argument. Not calm down and then reconsider, but hold the certainty loosely and the heat has nowhere to stand. For a test, ask what would have to be true for you to be mistaken about this, and see whether you can answer it at all.
Qur’an and Sunnah
His is the Judgement and to Him you shall all be brought back (Quran 28:88). Judgement is placed somewhere other than in your certainty about what a person deserves.
وَلَا تَدۡعُ مَعَ ٱللَّهِ إِلَٰهًا ءَاخَرَۘ لَآ إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَۚ كُلُّ شَيۡءٍ هَالِكٌ إِلَّا وَجۡهَهُۥۚ لَهُ ٱلۡحُكۡمُ وَإِلَيۡهِ تُرۡجَعُونَ
Do not call out to any other god beside God, for there is no god but Him. Everything will perish except His Face. His is the Judgement and to Him you shall all be brought back
Qur’an 28:88read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised controlled trial, a treatment built around training attention, drawing on mindfulness based cognitive therapy and dialectical behaviour therapy, reduced aggression and improved anger coping in autistic school aged children. Approaches that work on how thoughts are held, rather than on who was right, do move aggression. That trial was with a specific group of children and does not transfer wholesale to adults.
Clifford P, Gevers C, Jonkman KM, Boer F, Begeer S. (2022). The effectiveness of an attention-based intervention for school-aged autistic children with anger regulating problems: A randomized controlled trial.. Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Righteous anger needs to be sure it is right, so loosening the certainty takes the ground from under it.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
The real skill is not spotting the hole in their reasoning. It is running the same test on the belief you hold most tightly.
You can be completely right and still lose the room. Usually the trouble is not the point you are making, it is the edge you are making it with.
Hold up a cup and ask what it is. A cup, a container, a weapon, a paperweight, an odd object to a creature with no hands. The answer depends on who is asking.