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