March 6, 2023 • 32 mins
Achilles has anger issues. The great Greek warrior sits out most of the Trojan War because he's angrily sulking. When he finally enters battle, he does so in a fit of rage that causes him to commit atrocities and bring dishonor on himself.
So what can we learn from this angry character in Homer's epic poem, The Iliad? With the help of Harvard classics expert Greg Nagy and anger counsellor Dr Faith Harper, we look at how anger can creep up on us and what we can do to defuse this sometimes explosive emotion.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, you shouldn't never do anything in front of Alive Mike,
because I'm already recording. Ye wait, where you're supposed to
tell me when he started reporting, I've started recording. One
(00:37):
of the most fun things about hosting this podcast is
that I get to share stuff that I absolutely love
with my listeners. I of course get to tell you
about all my favorite findings from psychology and cognitive science
on how we can all feel happier, but I also
get to tell you about other topics that I adore,
academic subjects that go beyond the science of well being.
Especially in this new Happiness Lessons of the Ancient series,
(00:57):
I get to share stories about my favorite thinkers and
the insights that I've learned from reading all their classic texts.
But this series means that I also get to introduce
you to some of the people that I love too,
So we have for the podcast to say your name
and your title. I am Associate Professor of Literature at
A Mighty and your name is Stephanie Frampton. This is
(01:20):
my friend, Stephanie. Stephanie and I met over a decade
ago when she first started dating a friend of mine.
At first, I was a little skeptical of this new
girlfriend that had joined our social circle, but she quickly
won me over when I learned that she served as
a graduate teaching assistant for my favorite class when I
was in college. It wasn't a course about happiness or
anything having to do with psychology. It was literature and
(01:42):
art c fourteen Concepts of the hero in Greek Civilization,
taught by famed Harvard professor Greg nah. If you want,
you can check out a version of the course for
free on Harvard's at X platform. Back when I was
in college, Greg Nag and his class were legendary. Every year,
hundreds and hundreds of students would try to sign up
for the course, which was lovingly known on campus as Heroes.
(02:05):
Because of such high demand, Heroes had to be taught
in a huge amphitheater twice a week, Naj would stand
up front on a giant stage and regale his students
with stories of the classic Greek heroes. In Naj explained
that Greek heroes weren't like modern superheroes like Superman or
Wonder Woman or Captain America, characters who generally do morally
(02:25):
good things that lead to a happy life. Greek heroes
were more like cautionary tales. They got a lot of
stuff wrong, but in doing so gave us some important
hints about the kinds of things we should be going
for in our own lives to be happier, better people.
I loved hearing about all of Naj's tales of heroes,
but my favorite part of the class was when he
covered the Greek poet Homer and his masterful epic saga
(02:47):
known as the Iliad. The Iliad is Homer's classic story
of the Trojan War, the famous battle between the Greeks
or the Achaeans as they were known back then, and
the Trojans. The poem is divided into twenty four chapters
or rhapsodies, which tell the story of the mighty but
volatile Greek warrior Achilles. Achilles is pretty much the textbook
case of what not to do when you're dealing with
(03:08):
strong emotions, but the Iliot also gives us some surprisingly
science backed hints about how we can regulate our rage
and feel better. So as we began planning this new
series on happiness Lessons of the Ancients, I knew I
really wanted to include Homer and the Iliot and my
list of classic texts to share with you, and so
I asked my friend Stephanie, a former teaching assistant for
(03:29):
my beloved Heroes class, if she'd be my guest for
the episode. But Stephanie thought that I should go a
little bigger with my guest choice this week. She thought
I should ask the man himself, Greg Nash, and I
told Stephanie, no way, Greg Nash not going to happen.
He's far too important. Plus I'd be way too nervous. Hi, Greg,
(03:50):
I hope this note finds you well. One of your
former Heroes students, Laurie Santos, is host of a podcast
called The Happiness Lab. We'll be doing a series of
chats about the psychology of the ancients for the podcast,
and I wondered if you might be interested in joining
us to discuss happiness in the iliad? Do let us
know all that? Definitely. A few hours later, Greg Naj
(04:13):
emailed back and said he'd love to join the two
of us for a conversation. I was thrilled and kind
of terrified. I mean, Greg Nash, my Harvard professor legend.
I demanded that Stephanie sitting in on our conversation just
to give me some moral support because knowledge as well, Nash,
I remember him being kind of scary. Greg. Hello, Hello, Hello,
(04:35):
Hi Greg. I'm so happy to see this merry group
Stephanie reunited, and it feels so good. I know it's
been a long time. Turns out Greg wasn't as scary
as I remember, Little pointed you. Dear Laurie. Oh my goodness,
it's been too long. Seeing my old teacher turned me
right back to the keener student I was back in
(04:56):
the nineties wanting to impress the professor. I even showed
him my course notes that I'd kept for decades. So
this is my notebook from like nineteen ninety three. You
see all that's beautiful. I still have all. It just
warms my old heart. So here reunited with you. With
(05:20):
that somewhat cringeworthy reintroduction to my former professor out of
the way, Welcome to the latest in our Happiness Lessons
of the Ancient series, where the Happiness Lab explores what
we can learn about regulating our anger from Homer's famous
epic The Ilian. I wanted NOAs to begin by explaining
the ways that Greek heroes differ from the sorts of
(05:40):
all powerful Marvel type superstars that we know in modern times.
What I think is most interestingly different about ancient Greek
heroes is that we expect a hero to bee hundred
percent admirable, but actually there's that I'm going to make
up this percentage. There's five percent or ten percent, sometimes
(06:01):
even more in the hero's behavior, whether it's a he
or a she, that is so shockingly bad, so shockingly dysfunctional,
that you say to yourself, as a modern or postmodern,
how can I admire somebody like that? But heroes weren't
there to be admired. Heroes were larger than life humans
(06:22):
who experience things that are kind of ordinary for us
in a larger than life way. So even when they're dysfunctional,
they're more dysfunctional than we can ever be. And that
larger than life dysfunction definitely comes out when Greek heroes
experience emotions, so much so that the ancients had a
different word for extreme hero level feelings. When you and
(06:45):
I talk about our emotions love, hate, anger, the ordinary
word is pathos. Pats just pathos, and for us, that's
an emotion. When a larger than life hero experiences these
larger than life passions, you call them passion paths for
(07:07):
a larger than life hero is the passion of the hero,
and Homer's Iliad is a cautionary tale about the dysfunctional
passions of one hero, in particular Achilles, the most glorious
of all Greek warriors. Achilles A story begins towards the
end of the Trojan War. The Greeks had been attacking
the Trojans on their home turf for a long time,
(07:28):
trying to lay sage to that great city, but the
fighting had to stop because a terrible plague had taken
over the Greek camps. It turns out that the Greeks
had offended the god Apollo because Agamemnon, a sort of
uber king on the Greek side, took one of Apollo's
beloved priestesses as a war prize to stop the plague.
Agamemnon was forced to give that priestess back, but Agamemnon
(07:50):
was pretty bummed that he lost his war bride, so
he decides to use his uber kingley power and pull
rank and take someone else's war prize instead. And who
does he choose to steal from Achilles? So the over
king insults Achilles in a horrible way and justin take it,
and Achilles was understandably really pissed. He feels betrayed not
(08:15):
just by the over king, but by the fact that
all the Achaeans go along with the insult by not
standing up to the king, and so basically he is
so hurt that he sits out the Trojan war during
most of the twenty four performance units of the Eliot
(08:36):
called Rhapsodies. Even after getting pleased from many of the
other Greek kings, Achilles refuses to head back to the
battle and help his fellow comrades who were dying in droves,
and so, for example, you never see him in his
glory days as a chariot fighter, and he was the
best of chariot fighters, but he doesn't get to do
any of that because he's sitting it out for a
(08:57):
lot of the Eliot. The fact that Achilles spends most
of the poems sitting out the war means that there's
a chance he'll also lose something much more important than
some lost war prize. If Achilles doesn't return to the fight,
he stands to lose out on what the Greeks called cleos,
the theme and the glory that heroes achieve after they die.
In contrast to people today, the ancient Greeks really cared
(09:20):
a lot about how they'd be viewed after death. They
wanted to be immortalized for the virtue and brave deeds
that they showed in life and especially in battle. They
were hyper aware of their legacies, and at least some
modern thinkers have argued that we might be a bit
happier ourselves if we followed the ancient Greeks lead. Here,
the journalist David Brooks has this kind of contrast that
(09:41):
he talks about between resume virtues and eulogy virtues, like,
resume virtues are the skills you know, all our college
students are building up. But but we shouldn't care about
you know, what people are going to say about us,
what our legacy is going to look like after the fact. Yes,
that's so true. And there's this question of what is permanence,
and Lauria, you and I sit down and read the
(10:02):
Iliot and we're still experiencing it. We're still witnesses of
the clause that Achilles got into. But achieving immortal Greek
cleios involved a difficult trade off. Most Greeks only got
cleios when they risk their lives to achieve glory in war.
It was a deadly bargain that really bothered Achilles so
much so that he talked about it in a pivotal
(10:23):
part of the poem. In Rhapsody nine, he's sitting there
on the shores of the water and he's singing about
the klaiadrawn, the deeds and the fame of the heroes.
All of achilles friends come to him and say, you
better come back to the fight, and he sort of
(10:43):
makes this bargain with himself. He says, I'll have a
short life, but I'll have that undying Clios. So what
Achilles is saying is okay, and I'm willing to die
young if I can get at Klaus. And if I
do that, that will be a consolation, and that will
be for me like a beautiful flower that never loses
(11:04):
its aroma, never loses its luster, the vibrant colors even
stay because it's not just Klaos, it's Klaus Afton. Flowers
live and die, but this flower will live forever, unwilting.
But in order to get that unwilting flower of Cleios
and fame, Achilles needed to actually show bravery in battle,
(11:28):
which he wasn't doing for most of the book because
he was still pissed at Agamemnon and refusing to fight,
So that's why Eventually Patrick Lys, who is the kind
of kinder, gentler version of Achilles Patricks, Achilles's best friend, says, look,
you can't let your people be slaughtered like this. Let
me at least take your place. Achilles is right hand man,
(11:50):
decides to perpetrate a bit of a ruse. Patriklos sneaks
into battle against the Trojans using achilles armor for a while,
the Trojans are fooled and freaked out that the great
warrior Achilles was finally back, but the ruse didn't last long.
Patriklos's helmet falls off and he's revealed, and since pat
Close is not as good of a fighter as Achilles,
(12:11):
he quickly gets killed by the Trojans. He dies at
the hands of Hector, who is then the one Trojan
hero that Achilles hates more than anyone else in humanity.
And when Achilles finds out that the guy he hates
most in the world killed his best friend, he absolutely
loses it. The rage he was feeling before goes from
bad to worse. Achilles doesn't just go back into battle.
(12:35):
He goes full on berserker on the Trojans. He tracks
down his mortal enemy, Hector and kills him on the spot,
but he doesn't stop there. His anger causes him to
go off the moral deep end. He attaches Hector's dead
body to the back of his chariot and drags him
around the walls of the city in front of Hector's
entire family. He wants to mutilate the corpse of Hector
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and the cruelty he inflicts, which includes things like executing
prisoners of war, slaughtering enemy without mercy, and then Laurie
this is the worst part. After the slaughter is over
and he and his men come back to the headquarters,
there's going to be a feast, and he says, don't
(13:19):
bother washing up, so he thinks that his own men
can just start eating while they haven't washed off the
human blood. Achilles' rage meant that he was violating all
known standards of virtue and decorum. His extreme anger meant
that he was yet again on the verge of losing
his chlaos, of being remembered not for his bravery and
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virtue or for his wrath and debauchery, And then the
question is how does the iliad resolve all this anger,
all this hatred. When we get back from the break,
we'll see that the answer involves understanding how anger actually
works psychologically so that we can successfully regulate it during
times of frustration and rage. To help us down that path,
(13:59):
we'll meet a psychologist who will explain how strong emotions operate.
She'll share some evidence based tips we can use to
deal with anger, strategies that will see the great Greek
heroes used to control their own passions, and ones that
can help us out when we're having a frustrating day too.
The Happiness Lab will be right back. The wrath sing
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goddess of Peleaius's son Achilles, that destructive wrath which brought
countless woes upon the Achaeans and sent forth to Hades
many valiant souls of heroes. One of the reasons I
love Homer's famous poem is because there aren't many books
(14:46):
that start with the word wrath or mannus as it's
written in Greek, but that's how Homer begins the Iliot.
He asks the muse to sing about the wrath of
Achilles and how it could cause so much destruction. To
better understand the psychology of anger, for this episode, I
decided to take a page out of Homer's book. I
decided to call upon my own muse, a therapist who's
(15:07):
an expert on the science of anger and who can
help us make sense of where Achilles went wrong with
his rage. I got a great last night because I'm
trying to pull into a parking spot and somebody opens
their car door and then leaves it open while they're
digging around in their truck. I don't know what they're
doing move by trying to park, I'm trying to go
grocery shopping. This is psychologist Faith Harper. You may remember
Faith from a previous episode that we did on negative emotions.
(15:29):
She's written several fantastic books on strategies we can use
to control all forms of emotional pathos, including our anger.
It just feels like there's this idea of how things
should be, and when people break the contract, we get mad.
Anything that doesn't align with how we expect the world
to work can create these feelings of distress, but this
(15:51):
need for movement to create change. Faith's work can help
us learn from Achilles's cautionary tale of wrath and perhaps
can help us apply the lessons of ancient Troy and
the modern grocery store parking lot. I wanted to start
with Faith's definition of anger. It comes from the Latin
route meaning to outmove. It's creating energy to propel action.
(16:13):
It's the nervous system getting wound up enough to do
something with it. Anger is your body directing you to
create change. And I think that's a good neutral definition
because we have these ideas about anger being very negative
and something that we shouldn't have, versus paying attention to
my body is wanting me to make some kind of
coreaction and protect itself. But Faith has argued that really
(16:36):
understanding how anger works also requires a better grasp of
what causes our wrath to unleash in the first place.
So Faith has come up with a handy acronym, ahen
ah e N that she uses with her patients to
help them understand the kinds of things that tend to
piss people off. The asans for anger, and the idea
is it comes from one, two, or three of the
(16:59):
following variables, which is H hurt E expectations not met
or N needs not met or any combination thereof, and
so unpacking it very simply, you know where your feelings hurt.
Are you angry at your partner because they were supposed
to be home for dinner and you had planned a
nice dinner and then they had gone out drinking after
(17:20):
work and whipsie daisy, You're hurt. Your anger is coming
from being very hurt by somebody and wanting you in
your body reacting in a way to express that. Did
you have an expectation for them to show up. It's
a really good and simple tool for parsing out what's
the underlying emotion, but that helps us figure out our
patterns of responses. Faith's Ahan acronym seems to fit Achilles
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a situation perfectly, as classicist Greg Naj explained before. When
over king Agamemnon takes Achilles as war prize, it violates
his expectations and his needs is a decorated war hero.
He's really hurt. He experiences a really severe loss of honor.
Faith thinks that this is one of the features of
anger that we often forget. It's a social emotion. Anger
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happens not just in life or death situations, but when
we feel like we're not getting what we need from
the people around us. And I think a lot of
that goes back in the fact that we are hardwired
for connection, and we are hardwired to be protective of
our people, and so insult to that or disrespect of
that is a threat. Right. I am also a human
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being to be respected and you're not, and we're going
to We're going to have a problem if you can't
correct yourself. Is what the body is doing, and that's
where the anger is coming from. But even when anger
comes from a big personal slight like Achilles received, it
often occurs in different degrees of severity. You know, there's
multiple layers to any strong emotion. We can be like content,
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or we can be completely blissed out right, it can
be irritated. It can be like, you know, going back
to like parking lot lady, was I angry? Like was
I pissed off? No? I was irritated, But it would
be really very easy for me to continue to feed
that and it turned into a rage of thod and
Home would definitely recognize this feature of our emotional psychology.
(19:09):
Classics professor Greg Naj explains Homer used different words for
different levels and kinds of anger. So one of them
is mannis. That's the first word of the Iliad, and
that's a cosmic anger. So when you have that, well
only Achilles and superhumans like that habit, it has cosmic repercussions.
Then there's that slower burn kind of anger that the
(19:31):
Greeks called kuotos. You have a bad interaction at work
which is followed by lots of traffic on your commute,
and then you finally get home and see that no
one did the dishes, and your emotions go boom, and
kotos is like a time bomb tick tick tick doesn't
necessarily go off at the right time. And finally, there's
the worst kind of anger a hero or any person
(19:53):
can experience, which Homer called holos, which is what happens when,
for example, Achilles goes on a rampage and just kills everything.
He's a killing machine. He reacts in a way that
damages his own people and damages himself. Just horrifying, right,
So that's holos, which is imagined as bile explosions of bile.
(20:14):
It's an explosion of all the bad humors in the body. Now,
I'm guessing that most of you listening right now may
not have gone full on Achilles berserker mode. The last
time you hit Holos level anger, you probably didn't murder
your annoying boss or mutilate the guy who stole your
parking place and drag his corpse around the lot. But
I'm also guessing that at least some of you probably
(20:35):
remember a situation in which you felt that chaotic ti
koto stress bomb about to go off, or maybe even
times when you're angry words towards a spouse or colleague
did feel like an explosion of bile. These angry moments
are ones that we're not proud of. They make us
feel like bad people and lead to decisions that are
usually not great for our happiness. Letting our anger run
(20:55):
wild can also lead us away from being the kind
of people we want to be. So what does the
science say about how we can control our pathos before
the bile and kotos bombs go off? And what, if anything,
can we learn from the ancients about how to do better?
Achilles goes into a rage and does all sorts of
morally questionable things that we should be shocked about. And
(21:16):
then the question is, how does a person like that
ever achieve a happy ending? We'll hear the answer when
the happiness I returns from the rake. So you know,
I'm always trying to get my clients, you know, people
(21:39):
who read my book to recognize, like, what are those
early signs that there's something that needs to have you
know that you need to pay attention to that there's
something different that needs to happen. Therapist Faith Harper's first
tip for regulating our anger is to take advantage of
an important feature of anger. Like many emotions, it often
takes place in degrees. When we experience a small violation
(22:00):
of our needs or expectations, we usually don't jump into
full holess bile explosion mode, and that means we have
a chance to do something that Greek hero Achilles fail to.
We can nip our frustration in the bud before an
anger bomb goes off, because once we're in this full blown, big,
big emotions, it's far harder to control anybody who has
(22:23):
you know, just like seen red, anger can attest to that,
you know, we can attest to that. And the path
to noticing that negative sense early on involves a practice
we talk about a lot on the Happy Toes s lab.
We need to be mindful of how an emotionlike anger
feels in our bodies, and so paying attention to those
early warning signs of like, oh, like I've noticed that
my jaw gets tight, or I noticed that my shoulders
(22:45):
go up, you know, seeing like a body difference, I'm like, okay,
so something's going on with your body? What's going on
right now? And you know, really trying to pay attention
to it sematically so we can attend to what needs
to be attended to before it gets into a full
blown rage fit, because anybody who has tried to calm
themselves down in a full blone reache fit knows that
it's nigh impossible and you just kind of have to
(23:06):
let it wear itself out. We also need to notice
whether the emotion we're dealing with is truly anger alone,
or whether other negative feelings are part of the emotional mix.
In her therapeutic practice, Faith finds that many of her
clients express other emotions like fear or overwhelm or sadness
via feelings of rage. We have some cultural narrative issues
(23:27):
around anger. Anger is considered appropriate, it's considered powerful, it's
considered effective, it's very masculine emotion and energy. We really
struggle socially to let men have a wide range of
emotional experiences. Men aren't supposed to cry, men aren't supposed
(23:48):
to be sad or hurt or disappointed or depressed. They're
allowed to be angry. That's macha. So a lot of
time the anger is masking that all that other stuff
going on is that we're not allowing this free range
of expression of emotions and being able to work with
them and have them be validated and understood. You're allowed
to be angry or you can be a pussy basically.
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I mean, we know we can talk about testosterone. But
a lot of it is also cultural in what's acceptable
and what's not. These modern cultural constraints on which negative
emotions are and are not appropriate to express also came
up in ancient Greece, and Harvard professor Greg Naje thinks
that this is one of the big psychological insights that
Homer gives us in his famous works. It shows how
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misguided some people are in thinking that the Homeric Iliad
and the Homeric Odyssey are men's entertainment. I just don't
see it. Achilles was pissed when Agamemnon took his war prize,
But he only really hit Holos level bile spewing anger
when he experienced extreme grief when he learned of the
death of the person he cared about most, and that's
(24:51):
Patrick Less, his best friend, who is his alter ego,
his other self. They're that close. Achilles winds up expressing
the pain that comes with losing his dear friend as rage.
To control that anger, Achilles really needed to do what
Faith Harper suggested. He needed to find a way to
tend his sadness. He had to cry and more in
the loss of his best friend, which was probably a
(25:13):
hard thing for a macho war hero like Achilles to do.
But by the end of the Iliot and Rhapsody twenty four,
Homer does provide a path for Achilles to let out
his sadness over the death of Patroklos. I'm so glad
you're focusing on twenty four and that's the rhapsody where
Achilles is rehumanized, where he can start seeing the sufferings
of the father of the person he hated and was
(25:36):
more angry at than anybody else. That father was Trojan
King Priam. If you recall, Achilles had not only killed
Priam's son, Hector, but had taken his body and mutilated it.
In the final Rhapsody, Priam, who was working through his
own grief after the tragic death of his son, makes
the brave decision to try to get Hector's body back
from Achilles. But Prime didn't have a cell phone back then,
(25:58):
so in order to contact Achilles and ask for his grace,
he and his men had to make a treacherous journey
from the Citadel and Troy, through enemy Greek lines and
into Achilles' headquarters. Here's the father of the man that
Achilles hated so much that at Actor's dying moment, he
said that I would be ready to cut you up
and eat your flesh raw. I mean, that's as barbaric,
(26:22):
as brutal, not even barbaric, it's just brutal, animal like,
that's how bad the hatred is. But something changes. When
Achilles sees the old man crying, his brutal rage finally softens.
He thinks of how his own father would react if
he himself had been killed as dishonorably as Actor had. Oh,
that father is crying. My father would be crying. And
(26:44):
why is that important? Because then he starts crying and
there's Priam crying for his son, and he's crying for
his father because he's thinking of his father, but he's
also crying for Patricklys. By feeling compassion for Priam's mourning
the loss of his son, Achilles was finally able to
let out his own emotions about the death of his
best friend, and Laurie, you're going to love this. Patrickless's
(27:07):
name is what a Latinist like Stephanie would call a
no man. Loquain's a speaking name, so it's a name
that actually means what his function is in Homeric poetry,
and the name means he who has the claus of
the ancestors of the fathers, So it's he who has
(27:29):
the claus of the ancestors. That's what Patricks means. Greg
argues that the final message of the Iliad isn't just
about seeking glory and chlaos through strength in battle. Homer
wanted us to realize that klaos comes from achieving other
virtues too, especially ones that are necessary for regulating our passions.
So what we translate as virtue from Greek arete really
(27:53):
means striving. It's something that you don't accomplish one hundred percent. Ever,
you just strive towards a goal, and some people are
more successful, some are less, But it's all a matter
of trying to reach a balance. And yes, claus is
one of the things you strive for. But another thing
is compassion, which is can you feel the sorrow of
(28:16):
somebody else? And in the end, it is compassion. It's
figuring out that the father of Hector Priam is crying
at the loss of his son and is weeping just
as much as achilles father would be crying for him
if he had been the victim. And suddenly Achilles is
transformed from the depths of brutality, which we have to recognize,
(28:38):
to the heights of humanity, even humanism. Achilles's wrath is
a cautionary tale. It's Homer's way of telling us what
not to do when you're feeling pissed off. But Achilles'
epic also shows that there are strategies we can use
to regulate our anger. We can use virtues like compassion
as a sort of psychological check and balance in order
to feel and act better. All these virtues that have
(29:01):
to have a chemistry of their own, And you hope
that in the trajectory of a hero They'll work outright.
It's a hope that Greg has experienced time and again
after teaching his Heroes class for more than forty years.
Decades on, he still marvels at all the psychological insights
he continues to get from Achilles and the other ancient heroes. Well,
(29:21):
you know, it gives me a sense of wonder that
these emotions, these larger than life emotions. And I like
the way you describe this kind of psychological checks and
balances and has a life that keeps on living, which
amazes me. I think that would be my lesson for
myself in my life. But I think another lesson is
(29:42):
to be talking to former students who are now colleagues.
Is that the story goes on, doesn't it. It doesn't stop.
Greg's right here, thirty years after taking heroes back in college,
I'm still learning new insights from the stories of the ancients.
And I hope that hearing about Homer's Iliad has given
you some hints about how you can regulate your own anger.
(30:02):
When you feel that first twine of frustration kicking in,
take a moment to notice what you're feeling. Unlike Achilles,
you can commit to starting that regulation process early on
before you get to Holos level rage. But you should
also pay attention to what's causing your anger in the
first place. Are you really feeling like your needs have
been violated? Or is there another emotion like sadness in
(30:23):
there that you also need to address? And can you
maybe harness other virtues like compassion for yourself and others
to address all those yucky feelings. I'm so humbled that
my favorite college professor, Greg Naje was willing to take
time out of his busy schedule to share all his
insights about the Greek heroes. And I'm super grateful to
my friend might professor Stephanie Frampton for setting up our conversation.
(30:47):
But I was also kind of sad that we didn't
have time for Stephanie to share all her insights about
the ancient heroes. So when the Happiness Lab returns next week,
we'll get to hear Stephanie's happiness tips that come from
a different old schoolwriter, Virgil and his famous story of
the Latin hero Eneus. We'll get to hear what Virgil
said about using the power of stories and narrative to
(31:07):
shape happier thoughts and happier decisions. So I hope you'll
join me and Stephanie back here again for the next
edition of Happiness Lessons of the Ancients on the Happiness
Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos. If you liked hearing
about today's Ancient happiness insights, you should make sure you're
signed up for Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is our subscription
(31:29):
service which allows you to enjoy ad free listening to
this and other Pushkin podcasts, and as a special gift
to Pushkin Plus subscribers, I'll be sharing some of my
favorite passages from the original texts that you heard about today,
So be sure to sign up today at Apple Podcasts
or at Pushkin dot Fm. The Happiness Lab is co
(31:49):
written by Ryan Dilley and is produced by Ryan Dilley,
Courtney Grano, and Britney Brown. The show was mastered by
Evan Viola and our original music was composed by Zachary Silver.
Special thanks to Greta Kone, Eric Sandler, Carl Migliori, Nicole Morano,
Morgan Ratner, Jacob Weisberg, my agent, Ben Davis, and the
rest of the Pushkin team. The Happiness Lab is brought
(32:11):
to you by Pushkin Industries and by me, doctor Laurie Santos.
Pushkin, you shouldn't never do anything in front of Alive Mike,
because I'm already recording. Ye wait, where you're supposed to
tell me when he started reporting, I've started recording. One
(00:37):
of the most fun things about hosting this podcast is
that I get to share stuff that I absolutely love
with my listeners. I of course get to tell you
about all my favorite findings from psychology and cognitive science
on how we can all feel happier, but I also
get to tell you about other topics that I adore,
academic subjects that go beyond the science of well being.
Especially in this new Happiness Lessons of the Ancient series,
(00:57):
I get to share stories about my favorite thinkers and
the insights that I've learned from reading all their classic texts.
But this series means that I also get to introduce
you to some of the people that I love too,
So we have for the podcast to say your name
and your title. I am Associate Professor of Literature at
A Mighty and your name is Stephanie Frampton. This is
(01:20):
my friend, Stephanie. Stephanie and I met over a decade
ago when she first started dating a friend of mine.
At first, I was a little skeptical of this new
girlfriend that had joined our social circle, but she quickly
won me over when I learned that she served as
a graduate teaching assistant for my favorite class when I
was in college. It wasn't a course about happiness or
anything having to do with psychology. It was literature and
(01:42):
art c fourteen Concepts of the hero in Greek Civilization,
taught by famed Harvard professor Greg nah. If you want,
you can check out a version of the course for
free on Harvard's at X platform. Back when I was
in college, Greg Nag and his class were legendary. Every year,
hundreds and hundreds of students would try to sign up
for the course, which was lovingly known on campus as Heroes.
(02:05):
Because of such high demand, Heroes had to be taught
in a huge amphitheater twice a week, Naj would stand
up front on a giant stage and regale his students
with stories of the classic Greek heroes. In Naj explained
that Greek heroes weren't like modern superheroes like Superman or
Wonder Woman or Captain America, characters who generally do morally
(02:25):
good things that lead to a happy life. Greek heroes
were more like cautionary tales. They got a lot of
stuff wrong, but in doing so gave us some important
hints about the kinds of things we should be going
for in our own lives to be happier, better people.
I loved hearing about all of Naj's tales of heroes,
but my favorite part of the class was when he
covered the Greek poet Homer and his masterful epic saga
(02:47):
known as the Iliad. The Iliad is Homer's classic story
of the Trojan War, the famous battle between the Greeks
or the Achaeans as they were known back then, and
the Trojans. The poem is divided into twenty four chapters
or rhapsodies, which tell the story of the mighty but
volatile Greek warrior Achilles. Achilles is pretty much the textbook
case of what not to do when you're dealing with
(03:08):
strong emotions, but the Iliot also gives us some surprisingly
science backed hints about how we can regulate our rage
and feel better. So as we began planning this new
series on happiness Lessons of the Ancients, I knew I
really wanted to include Homer and the Iliot and my
list of classic texts to share with you, and so
I asked my friend Stephanie, a former teaching assistant for
(03:29):
my beloved Heroes class, if she'd be my guest for
the episode. But Stephanie thought that I should go a
little bigger with my guest choice this week. She thought
I should ask the man himself, Greg Nash, and I
told Stephanie, no way, Greg Nash not going to happen.
He's far too important. Plus I'd be way too nervous. Hi, Greg,
(03:50):
I hope this note finds you well. One of your
former Heroes students, Laurie Santos, is host of a podcast
called The Happiness Lab. We'll be doing a series of
chats about the psychology of the ancients for the podcast,
and I wondered if you might be interested in joining
us to discuss happiness in the iliad? Do let us
know all that? Definitely. A few hours later, Greg Naj
(04:13):
emailed back and said he'd love to join the two
of us for a conversation. I was thrilled and kind
of terrified. I mean, Greg Nash, my Harvard professor legend.
I demanded that Stephanie sitting in on our conversation just
to give me some moral support because knowledge as well, Nash,
I remember him being kind of scary. Greg. Hello, Hello, Hello,
(04:35):
Hi Greg. I'm so happy to see this merry group
Stephanie reunited, and it feels so good. I know it's
been a long time. Turns out Greg wasn't as scary
as I remember, Little pointed you. Dear Laurie. Oh my goodness,
it's been too long. Seeing my old teacher turned me
right back to the keener student I was back in
(04:56):
the nineties wanting to impress the professor. I even showed
him my course notes that I'd kept for decades. So
this is my notebook from like nineteen ninety three. You
see all that's beautiful. I still have all. It just
warms my old heart. So here reunited with you. With
(05:20):
that somewhat cringeworthy reintroduction to my former professor out of
the way, Welcome to the latest in our Happiness Lessons
of the Ancient series, where the Happiness Lab explores what
we can learn about regulating our anger from Homer's famous
epic The Ilian. I wanted NOAs to begin by explaining
the ways that Greek heroes differ from the sorts of
(05:40):
all powerful Marvel type superstars that we know in modern times.
What I think is most interestingly different about ancient Greek
heroes is that we expect a hero to bee hundred
percent admirable, but actually there's that I'm going to make
up this percentage. There's five percent or ten percent, sometimes
(06:01):
even more in the hero's behavior, whether it's a he
or a she, that is so shockingly bad, so shockingly dysfunctional,
that you say to yourself, as a modern or postmodern,
how can I admire somebody like that? But heroes weren't
there to be admired. Heroes were larger than life humans
(06:22):
who experience things that are kind of ordinary for us
in a larger than life way. So even when they're dysfunctional,
they're more dysfunctional than we can ever be. And that
larger than life dysfunction definitely comes out when Greek heroes
experience emotions, so much so that the ancients had a
different word for extreme hero level feelings. When you and
(06:45):
I talk about our emotions love, hate, anger, the ordinary
word is pathos. Pats just pathos, and for us, that's
an emotion. When a larger than life hero experiences these
larger than life passions, you call them passion paths for
(07:07):
a larger than life hero is the passion of the hero,
and Homer's Iliad is a cautionary tale about the dysfunctional
passions of one hero, in particular Achilles, the most glorious
of all Greek warriors. Achilles A story begins towards the
end of the Trojan War. The Greeks had been attacking
the Trojans on their home turf for a long time,
(07:28):
trying to lay sage to that great city, but the
fighting had to stop because a terrible plague had taken
over the Greek camps. It turns out that the Greeks
had offended the god Apollo because Agamemnon, a sort of
uber king on the Greek side, took one of Apollo's
beloved priestesses as a war prize to stop the plague.
Agamemnon was forced to give that priestess back, but Agamemnon
(07:50):
was pretty bummed that he lost his war bride, so
he decides to use his uber kingley power and pull
rank and take someone else's war prize instead. And who
does he choose to steal from Achilles? So the over
king insults Achilles in a horrible way and justin take it,
and Achilles was understandably really pissed. He feels betrayed not
(08:15):
just by the over king, but by the fact that
all the Achaeans go along with the insult by not
standing up to the king, and so basically he is
so hurt that he sits out the Trojan war during
most of the twenty four performance units of the Eliot
(08:36):
called Rhapsodies. Even after getting pleased from many of the
other Greek kings, Achilles refuses to head back to the
battle and help his fellow comrades who were dying in droves,
and so, for example, you never see him in his
glory days as a chariot fighter, and he was the
best of chariot fighters, but he doesn't get to do
any of that because he's sitting it out for a
(08:57):
lot of the Eliot. The fact that Achilles spends most
of the poems sitting out the war means that there's
a chance he'll also lose something much more important than
some lost war prize. If Achilles doesn't return to the fight,
he stands to lose out on what the Greeks called cleos,
the theme and the glory that heroes achieve after they die.
In contrast to people today, the ancient Greeks really cared
(09:20):
a lot about how they'd be viewed after death. They
wanted to be immortalized for the virtue and brave deeds
that they showed in life and especially in battle. They
were hyper aware of their legacies, and at least some
modern thinkers have argued that we might be a bit
happier ourselves if we followed the ancient Greeks lead. Here,
the journalist David Brooks has this kind of contrast that
(09:41):
he talks about between resume virtues and eulogy virtues, like,
resume virtues are the skills you know, all our college
students are building up. But but we shouldn't care about
you know, what people are going to say about us,
what our legacy is going to look like after the fact. Yes,
that's so true. And there's this question of what is permanence,
and Lauria, you and I sit down and read the
(10:02):
Iliot and we're still experiencing it. We're still witnesses of
the clause that Achilles got into. But achieving immortal Greek
cleios involved a difficult trade off. Most Greeks only got
cleios when they risk their lives to achieve glory in war.
It was a deadly bargain that really bothered Achilles so
much so that he talked about it in a pivotal
(10:23):
part of the poem. In Rhapsody nine, he's sitting there
on the shores of the water and he's singing about
the klaiadrawn, the deeds and the fame of the heroes.
All of achilles friends come to him and say, you
better come back to the fight, and he sort of
(10:43):
makes this bargain with himself. He says, I'll have a
short life, but I'll have that undying Clios. So what
Achilles is saying is okay, and I'm willing to die
young if I can get at Klaus. And if I
do that, that will be a consolation, and that will
be for me like a beautiful flower that never loses
(11:04):
its aroma, never loses its luster, the vibrant colors even
stay because it's not just Klaos, it's Klaus Afton. Flowers
live and die, but this flower will live forever, unwilting.
But in order to get that unwilting flower of Cleios
and fame, Achilles needed to actually show bravery in battle,
(11:28):
which he wasn't doing for most of the book because
he was still pissed at Agamemnon and refusing to fight,
So that's why Eventually Patrick Lys, who is the kind
of kinder, gentler version of Achilles Patricks, Achilles's best friend, says, look,
you can't let your people be slaughtered like this. Let
me at least take your place. Achilles is right hand man,
(11:50):
decides to perpetrate a bit of a ruse. Patriklos sneaks
into battle against the Trojans using achilles armor for a while,
the Trojans are fooled and freaked out that the great
warrior Achilles was finally back, but the ruse didn't last long.
Patriklos's helmet falls off and he's revealed, and since pat
Close is not as good of a fighter as Achilles,
(12:11):
he quickly gets killed by the Trojans. He dies at
the hands of Hector, who is then the one Trojan
hero that Achilles hates more than anyone else in humanity.
And when Achilles finds out that the guy he hates
most in the world killed his best friend, he absolutely
loses it. The rage he was feeling before goes from
bad to worse. Achilles doesn't just go back into battle.
(12:35):
He goes full on berserker on the Trojans. He tracks
down his mortal enemy, Hector and kills him on the spot,
but he doesn't stop there. His anger causes him to
go off the moral deep end. He attaches Hector's dead
body to the back of his chariot and drags him
around the walls of the city in front of Hector's
entire family. He wants to mutilate the corpse of Hector
(12:57):
and the cruelty he inflicts, which includes things like executing
prisoners of war, slaughtering enemy without mercy, and then Laurie
this is the worst part. After the slaughter is over
and he and his men come back to the headquarters,
there's going to be a feast, and he says, don't
(13:19):
bother washing up, so he thinks that his own men
can just start eating while they haven't washed off the
human blood. Achilles' rage meant that he was violating all
known standards of virtue and decorum. His extreme anger meant
that he was yet again on the verge of losing
his chlaos, of being remembered not for his bravery and
(13:39):
virtue or for his wrath and debauchery, And then the
question is how does the iliad resolve all this anger,
all this hatred. When we get back from the break,
we'll see that the answer involves understanding how anger actually
works psychologically so that we can successfully regulate it during
times of frustration and rage. To help us down that path,
(13:59):
we'll meet a psychologist who will explain how strong emotions operate.
She'll share some evidence based tips we can use to
deal with anger, strategies that will see the great Greek
heroes used to control their own passions, and ones that
can help us out when we're having a frustrating day too.
The Happiness Lab will be right back. The wrath sing
(14:25):
goddess of Peleaius's son Achilles, that destructive wrath which brought
countless woes upon the Achaeans and sent forth to Hades
many valiant souls of heroes. One of the reasons I
love Homer's famous poem is because there aren't many books
(14:46):
that start with the word wrath or mannus as it's
written in Greek, but that's how Homer begins the Iliot.
He asks the muse to sing about the wrath of
Achilles and how it could cause so much destruction. To
better understand the psychology of anger, for this episode, I
decided to take a page out of Homer's book. I
decided to call upon my own muse, a therapist who's
(15:07):
an expert on the science of anger and who can
help us make sense of where Achilles went wrong with
his rage. I got a great last night because I'm
trying to pull into a parking spot and somebody opens
their car door and then leaves it open while they're
digging around in their truck. I don't know what they're
doing move by trying to park, I'm trying to go
grocery shopping. This is psychologist Faith Harper. You may remember
Faith from a previous episode that we did on negative emotions.
(15:29):
She's written several fantastic books on strategies we can use
to control all forms of emotional pathos, including our anger.
It just feels like there's this idea of how things
should be, and when people break the contract, we get mad.
Anything that doesn't align with how we expect the world
to work can create these feelings of distress, but this
(15:51):
need for movement to create change. Faith's work can help
us learn from Achilles's cautionary tale of wrath and perhaps
can help us apply the lessons of ancient Troy and
the modern grocery store parking lot. I wanted to start
with Faith's definition of anger. It comes from the Latin
route meaning to outmove. It's creating energy to propel action.
(16:13):
It's the nervous system getting wound up enough to do
something with it. Anger is your body directing you to
create change. And I think that's a good neutral definition
because we have these ideas about anger being very negative
and something that we shouldn't have, versus paying attention to
my body is wanting me to make some kind of
coreaction and protect itself. But Faith has argued that really
(16:36):
understanding how anger works also requires a better grasp of
what causes our wrath to unleash in the first place.
So Faith has come up with a handy acronym, ahen
ah e N that she uses with her patients to
help them understand the kinds of things that tend to
piss people off. The asans for anger, and the idea
is it comes from one, two, or three of the
(16:59):
following variables, which is H hurt E expectations not met
or N needs not met or any combination thereof, and
so unpacking it very simply, you know where your feelings hurt.
Are you angry at your partner because they were supposed
to be home for dinner and you had planned a
nice dinner and then they had gone out drinking after
(17:20):
work and whipsie daisy, You're hurt. Your anger is coming
from being very hurt by somebody and wanting you in
your body reacting in a way to express that. Did
you have an expectation for them to show up. It's
a really good and simple tool for parsing out what's
the underlying emotion, but that helps us figure out our
patterns of responses. Faith's Ahan acronym seems to fit Achilles
(17:42):
a situation perfectly, as classicist Greg Naj explained before. When
over king Agamemnon takes Achilles as war prize, it violates
his expectations and his needs is a decorated war hero.
He's really hurt. He experiences a really severe loss of honor.
Faith thinks that this is one of the features of
anger that we often forget. It's a social emotion. Anger
(18:04):
happens not just in life or death situations, but when
we feel like we're not getting what we need from
the people around us. And I think a lot of
that goes back in the fact that we are hardwired
for connection, and we are hardwired to be protective of
our people, and so insult to that or disrespect of
that is a threat. Right. I am also a human
(18:26):
being to be respected and you're not, and we're going
to We're going to have a problem if you can't
correct yourself. Is what the body is doing, and that's
where the anger is coming from. But even when anger
comes from a big personal slight like Achilles received, it
often occurs in different degrees of severity. You know, there's
multiple layers to any strong emotion. We can be like content,
(18:47):
or we can be completely blissed out right, it can
be irritated. It can be like, you know, going back
to like parking lot lady, was I angry? Like was
I pissed off? No? I was irritated, But it would
be really very easy for me to continue to feed
that and it turned into a rage of thod and
Home would definitely recognize this feature of our emotional psychology.
(19:09):
Classics professor Greg Naj explains Homer used different words for
different levels and kinds of anger. So one of them
is mannis. That's the first word of the Iliad, and
that's a cosmic anger. So when you have that, well
only Achilles and superhumans like that habit, it has cosmic repercussions.
Then there's that slower burn kind of anger that the
(19:31):
Greeks called kuotos. You have a bad interaction at work
which is followed by lots of traffic on your commute,
and then you finally get home and see that no
one did the dishes, and your emotions go boom, and
kotos is like a time bomb tick tick tick doesn't
necessarily go off at the right time. And finally, there's
the worst kind of anger a hero or any person
(19:53):
can experience, which Homer called holos, which is what happens when,
for example, Achilles goes on a rampage and just kills everything.
He's a killing machine. He reacts in a way that
damages his own people and damages himself. Just horrifying, right,
So that's holos, which is imagined as bile explosions of bile.
(20:14):
It's an explosion of all the bad humors in the body. Now,
I'm guessing that most of you listening right now may
not have gone full on Achilles berserker mode. The last
time you hit Holos level anger, you probably didn't murder
your annoying boss or mutilate the guy who stole your
parking place and drag his corpse around the lot. But
I'm also guessing that at least some of you probably
(20:35):
remember a situation in which you felt that chaotic ti
koto stress bomb about to go off, or maybe even
times when you're angry words towards a spouse or colleague
did feel like an explosion of bile. These angry moments
are ones that we're not proud of. They make us
feel like bad people and lead to decisions that are
usually not great for our happiness. Letting our anger run
(20:55):
wild can also lead us away from being the kind
of people we want to be. So what does the
science say about how we can control our pathos before
the bile and kotos bombs go off? And what, if anything,
can we learn from the ancients about how to do better?
Achilles goes into a rage and does all sorts of
morally questionable things that we should be shocked about. And
(21:16):
then the question is, how does a person like that
ever achieve a happy ending? We'll hear the answer when
the happiness I returns from the rake. So you know,
I'm always trying to get my clients, you know, people
(21:39):
who read my book to recognize, like, what are those
early signs that there's something that needs to have you
know that you need to pay attention to that there's
something different that needs to happen. Therapist Faith Harper's first
tip for regulating our anger is to take advantage of
an important feature of anger. Like many emotions, it often
takes place in degrees. When we experience a small violation
(22:00):
of our needs or expectations, we usually don't jump into
full holess bile explosion mode, and that means we have
a chance to do something that Greek hero Achilles fail to.
We can nip our frustration in the bud before an
anger bomb goes off, because once we're in this full blown, big,
big emotions, it's far harder to control anybody who has
(22:23):
you know, just like seen red, anger can attest to that,
you know, we can attest to that. And the path
to noticing that negative sense early on involves a practice
we talk about a lot on the Happy Toes s lab.
We need to be mindful of how an emotionlike anger
feels in our bodies, and so paying attention to those
early warning signs of like, oh, like I've noticed that
my jaw gets tight, or I noticed that my shoulders
(22:45):
go up, you know, seeing like a body difference, I'm like, okay,
so something's going on with your body? What's going on
right now? And you know, really trying to pay attention
to it sematically so we can attend to what needs
to be attended to before it gets into a full
blown rage fit, because anybody who has tried to calm
themselves down in a full blone reache fit knows that
it's nigh impossible and you just kind of have to
(23:06):
let it wear itself out. We also need to notice
whether the emotion we're dealing with is truly anger alone,
or whether other negative feelings are part of the emotional mix.
In her therapeutic practice, Faith finds that many of her
clients express other emotions like fear or overwhelm or sadness
via feelings of rage. We have some cultural narrative issues
(23:27):
around anger. Anger is considered appropriate, it's considered powerful, it's
considered effective, it's very masculine emotion and energy. We really
struggle socially to let men have a wide range of
emotional experiences. Men aren't supposed to cry, men aren't supposed
(23:48):
to be sad or hurt or disappointed or depressed. They're
allowed to be angry. That's macha. So a lot of
time the anger is masking that all that other stuff
going on is that we're not allowing this free range
of expression of emotions and being able to work with
them and have them be validated and understood. You're allowed
to be angry or you can be a pussy basically.
(24:09):
I mean, we know we can talk about testosterone. But
a lot of it is also cultural in what's acceptable
and what's not. These modern cultural constraints on which negative
emotions are and are not appropriate to express also came
up in ancient Greece, and Harvard professor Greg Naje thinks
that this is one of the big psychological insights that
Homer gives us in his famous works. It shows how
(24:29):
misguided some people are in thinking that the Homeric Iliad
and the Homeric Odyssey are men's entertainment. I just don't
see it. Achilles was pissed when Agamemnon took his war prize,
But he only really hit Holos level bile spewing anger
when he experienced extreme grief when he learned of the
death of the person he cared about most, and that's
(24:51):
Patrick Less, his best friend, who is his alter ego,
his other self. They're that close. Achilles winds up expressing
the pain that comes with losing his dear friend as rage.
To control that anger, Achilles really needed to do what
Faith Harper suggested. He needed to find a way to
tend his sadness. He had to cry and more in
the loss of his best friend, which was probably a
(25:13):
hard thing for a macho war hero like Achilles to do.
But by the end of the Iliot and Rhapsody twenty four,
Homer does provide a path for Achilles to let out
his sadness over the death of Patroklos. I'm so glad
you're focusing on twenty four and that's the rhapsody where
Achilles is rehumanized, where he can start seeing the sufferings
of the father of the person he hated and was
(25:36):
more angry at than anybody else. That father was Trojan
King Priam. If you recall, Achilles had not only killed
Priam's son, Hector, but had taken his body and mutilated it.
In the final Rhapsody, Priam, who was working through his
own grief after the tragic death of his son, makes
the brave decision to try to get Hector's body back
from Achilles. But Prime didn't have a cell phone back then,
(25:58):
so in order to contact Achilles and ask for his grace,
he and his men had to make a treacherous journey
from the Citadel and Troy, through enemy Greek lines and
into Achilles' headquarters. Here's the father of the man that
Achilles hated so much that at Actor's dying moment, he
said that I would be ready to cut you up
and eat your flesh raw. I mean, that's as barbaric,
(26:22):
as brutal, not even barbaric, it's just brutal, animal like,
that's how bad the hatred is. But something changes. When
Achilles sees the old man crying, his brutal rage finally softens.
He thinks of how his own father would react if
he himself had been killed as dishonorably as Actor had. Oh,
that father is crying. My father would be crying. And
(26:44):
why is that important? Because then he starts crying and
there's Priam crying for his son, and he's crying for
his father because he's thinking of his father, but he's
also crying for Patricklys. By feeling compassion for Priam's mourning
the loss of his son, Achilles was finally able to
let out his own emotions about the death of his
best friend, and Laurie, you're going to love this. Patrickless's
(27:07):
name is what a Latinist like Stephanie would call a
no man. Loquain's a speaking name, so it's a name
that actually means what his function is in Homeric poetry,
and the name means he who has the claus of
the ancestors of the fathers, So it's he who has
(27:29):
the claus of the ancestors. That's what Patricks means. Greg
argues that the final message of the Iliad isn't just
about seeking glory and chlaos through strength in battle. Homer
wanted us to realize that klaos comes from achieving other
virtues too, especially ones that are necessary for regulating our passions.
So what we translate as virtue from Greek arete really
(27:53):
means striving. It's something that you don't accomplish one hundred percent. Ever,
you just strive towards a goal, and some people are
more successful, some are less, But it's all a matter
of trying to reach a balance. And yes, claus is
one of the things you strive for. But another thing
is compassion, which is can you feel the sorrow of
(28:16):
somebody else? And in the end, it is compassion. It's
figuring out that the father of Hector Priam is crying
at the loss of his son and is weeping just
as much as achilles father would be crying for him
if he had been the victim. And suddenly Achilles is
transformed from the depths of brutality, which we have to recognize,
(28:38):
to the heights of humanity, even humanism. Achilles's wrath is
a cautionary tale. It's Homer's way of telling us what
not to do when you're feeling pissed off. But Achilles'
epic also shows that there are strategies we can use
to regulate our anger. We can use virtues like compassion
as a sort of psychological check and balance in order
to feel and act better. All these virtues that have
(29:01):
to have a chemistry of their own, And you hope
that in the trajectory of a hero They'll work outright.
It's a hope that Greg has experienced time and again
after teaching his Heroes class for more than forty years.
Decades on, he still marvels at all the psychological insights
he continues to get from Achilles and the other ancient heroes. Well,
(29:21):
you know, it gives me a sense of wonder that
these emotions, these larger than life emotions. And I like
the way you describe this kind of psychological checks and
balances and has a life that keeps on living, which
amazes me. I think that would be my lesson for
myself in my life. But I think another lesson is
(29:42):
to be talking to former students who are now colleagues.
Is that the story goes on, doesn't it. It doesn't stop.
Greg's right here, thirty years after taking heroes back in college,
I'm still learning new insights from the stories of the ancients.
And I hope that hearing about Homer's Iliad has given
you some hints about how you can regulate your own anger.
(30:02):
When you feel that first twine of frustration kicking in,
take a moment to notice what you're feeling. Unlike Achilles,
you can commit to starting that regulation process early on
before you get to Holos level rage. But you should
also pay attention to what's causing your anger in the
first place. Are you really feeling like your needs have
been violated? Or is there another emotion like sadness in
(30:23):
there that you also need to address? And can you
maybe harness other virtues like compassion for yourself and others
to address all those yucky feelings. I'm so humbled that
my favorite college professor, Greg Naje was willing to take
time out of his busy schedule to share all his
insights about the Greek heroes. And I'm super grateful to
my friend might professor Stephanie Frampton for setting up our conversation.
(30:47):
But I was also kind of sad that we didn't
have time for Stephanie to share all her insights about
the ancient heroes. So when the Happiness Lab returns next week,
we'll get to hear Stephanie's happiness tips that come from
a different old schoolwriter, Virgil and his famous story of
the Latin hero Eneus. We'll get to hear what Virgil
said about using the power of stories and narrative to
(31:07):
shape happier thoughts and happier decisions. So I hope you'll
join me and Stephanie back here again for the next
edition of Happiness Lessons of the Ancients on the Happiness
Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos. If you liked hearing
about today's Ancient happiness insights, you should make sure you're
signed up for Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is our subscription
(31:29):
service which allows you to enjoy ad free listening to
this and other Pushkin podcasts, and as a special gift
to Pushkin Plus subscribers, I'll be sharing some of my
favorite passages from the original texts that you heard about today,
So be sure to sign up today at Apple Podcasts
or at Pushkin dot Fm. The Happiness Lab is co
(31:49):
written by Ryan Dilley and is produced by Ryan Dilley,
Courtney Grano, and Britney Brown. The show was mastered by
Evan Viola and our original music was composed by Zachary Silver.
Special thanks to Greta Kone, Eric Sandler, Carl Migliori, Nicole Morano,
Morgan Ratner, Jacob Weisberg, my agent, Ben Davis, and the
rest of the Pushkin team. The Happiness Lab is brought
(32:11):
to you by Pushkin Industries and by me, doctor Laurie Santos.
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