Anger = Fear?

When I went to work this morning, I had a lot of ideas about posts for my blog. I still had them when I went back home. I'm quite sure I even still had them while going over the last chapter of my current "web-master"-booklet about web-design. But then I read a thread in the MangaSzene-Forum and suddenly they disappeared. They were, in fact, overwhelmed by this one.

What was I reading, you ask?

One of the other people posting in this forum said that anger always equals fear and thus people who are angry always are afraid of something. I can't agree with that.

Yes, there are situations in which we get angry because we're afraid, sometimes we get afraid before we get angry, sometimes we get angry before we get afraid (mostly because of what we've done while we've still been angry).

"Don't get afraid, get angry" was a watchword of Susan Sto-Helit (a character of the "Discworld"-novels by Terry Pratchett) - in her case that leads to beating up a bogeyman instead of hiding from him under a blanked. To me this suggest you can either be angry or you can be afraid. This seems right to me, because from my experience fear makes me want to hide or even paralyzes me. Anger on the other hand propels me forward, makes me do things and start fighting (in my case usually with words, I'm not a big believer in physical violence).

If, of course, you see the primal survival instinct of every creature as fear, then you're probably right. A lot of our anger, I think, comes from there. But that's not what I would see as fear. Fear suggests for me that there is something (a person, a situation, a thing) to be afraid of. I've found I've been getting angry (and started bitching in this blog) a lot without being afraid.

I watch the world around me and see things which are amiss - for me, not because they threaten me in any way, but because I hate injustice. And if I hate things, I get angry about them - most of the time, that is.

But injustice is not fear, and neither is it in any way related to it. I don't see something as 'not just' because I fear it, I see it as 'not just' because I have a list of 'just' stuff in my head and it doesn't fit with that list.

Animal getting treated badly are on that list of 'unjust' stuff, because I see animals as living beings and thus they, for me, deserve respect. The same goes for women - or men, it starts these days - getting treated like things, because they look good, or don't. It's unjust to judge a being by it's looks alone. Sharks, spiders or snakes usually aren't 'pretty' or 'cute', but the are useful and deserve to live - and to be respected. The same goes for an ugly man or woman who have their use (in other words their talents and suchlike) as well.

Sometimes we attack out of fear as well, yes, but that's not anger than, it's just a reaction because of the fear itself. So even in those cases the equation 'anger=fear' does not work.

So by now I wonder about two things: what happened to all those ideas for posts I had until around eight this evening and what kind of life do you have to lead in order to think this equation is right? I doubt I'll get an answer to any of those questions...