strange it is a wonder it works in our favor at all any of the time we are lodged inside a clump of soft tissue that we don't even understand experiencing a reality made of particles that we can't perceive all made and governed by a universe that operates in chaotic contradiction to the meaningful order we so desperately desire the very same desire the universe forced onto us we were set up destined to have everything fall over and over we can tend to resist and reject any sort of softer acceptance and sadness in response to this and instead many of us can become calloused over with a sort of brute and frequent anger this has its place in purpose but at a certain point like a callous on the hand we can become numb and unfeeling less able to properly know and deal with the truer conditions of our circumstances those who are often angered reveal to be a strange sort of optimist still in denial of the tragedies of this life and the death of their youthful innocence the belief that life can be what it can't despite all evidence we are if we are this in some non-traditional way still hopeful hopeful that things should and will go well in our favor most of the time and thus we are constantly angered by life's incongruency we become angry about everything because we refuse to let ourselves be sad about some things a theory in psychology known as appraisal theory initially developed by psychologist magna arnold suggests that our emotional responses are in large part created by our conscious evaluations of events how we view interpret and label stimuli rather than the stimuli themselves in other words in between our primary experience of an event and our emotional experience of an event there is a filtering process that occurs through and based on our cognitive faculties in this space what we think based on our experiences perceptions views and values determines what we feel for example if we have a fondness for cats and believe cats are sweet and harmless seeing or holding a particular one will likely be a favorable emotional experience however for someone who believes cats are threatening or devious this experience will likely be a negative one the emotional responses will be completely different while the stimulus remains the exact same of course since our emotions are so wide-ranging complicated and partly rooted in consciousness a topic largely uncracked by science a comprehensive understanding of our emotions is still yet to be seen and this model remains a theory and even in the case that this theory is correct some of our appraisals will still likely be more unconscious and immediate than others making them harder if not potentially impossible to get into and control and perhaps sometimes for good reason however it is still fair to argue that in many cases often the more common cases the concept suggested by appraisal theory has immense value and practical use especially when we are angered frequently or remain angered for long drawn out periods of time there is likely large opportunity to change out our mental filter in favor of better more productive emotional experiences in the words of american author david foster wallace learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think it means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in life you will be totally hosed this idea also coincides with principles central to the philosophy of stoicism for the stoics events in the world are objective and neutral and our qualitative emotional experiences are merely a product of the narratives we tell ourselves
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