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“Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.” – Mahatma Gandhi. Elucidate.
Correct understanding is a disposition to appreciate or share the feelings and thoughts of others. The quote above speaks to the importance of understanding in our relationships, including the relationship we have with ourselves and the world around us. Understanding anger and intolerance mean that we can channel them into constructive, not destructive, actions. It also means that we can more effectively empathize with people who are angry or intolerant and help them find constructive solutions instead of destructive ones. Learning to understand others may take time and effort, but it can certainly pay off in the long run,
Anger affect understanding
- Biasness: Anger is a negative emotion that often leads to bias and clouds moral judgement. For eg. Under provocation people resort to violence and fail to understand the repercussions their actions may cause.
- Loss of calmness: Anger makes a person lose calmness and forces them to take hasty decisions which may not be correct. Anger makes a person lose patience which drives him towards intolerance. Angry person is a constantly stressed person, such a person cannot think with clarity.
- Emotional decisions: Anger leads to an influenced, non-objective and emotional decision, which is not based on well thought outcomes and understanding of consequences of such decisions, which could be dangerous. E.g. In anger, mobs may lynch an innocent without knowing or verifying his crime.
- Contiguous: Anger affects the person who is angry as well as all the people who are touched by that person’s anger. An angry person is likely to speak harshly. Sometimes angry people hurt themselves if they are unable or out of reach of the people at whom they want to direct their anger.
- Prevent rational thinking: Evils like honour killing, acid attack by spurned lovers is because of anger at the moment. Anger does not allow rational thinking and people take up extreme steps and kill their own children/loved ones due to uncontrolled emotions.
Intolerance affects understanding
- Ignorance: An intolerant person will remain ignorant to diverse opinions and belief and thus act according to narrow ideals. For example, generally politicians with religious background are ignorant towards issues like LGBT rights.
- Contagious: Intolerance is contagious just like anger and can encourage others to be blind for diverse views too.
- Cloud thinking: Intolerance makes a person blind to other opinions and narrow down a person’s thinking and judgement marred by biased views.
- Prevent correct understanding: Intolerance in society prevents correct understanding as people only see one side of the coin. For example, not all Muslim are terrorists as are branded by some individuals which lead to development of intolerance against them and may lead to violence.
Looking forward
- Emotional intelligence: It is very necessary for a person in a position of authority and responsible for decision making to keep their negative emotions in check. It requires development of emotional intelligence.
- Sensitivity training: To manage emotions sensitivity training can be given to the individuals.
- Interaction: Encouraging sarva dharma sambhava by making people of diverse cultures to interact with each other.
- Meditation: Yoga and meditation techniques to control anger is a must in a way it gives one control over one’s own mind.
- Acceptance: It is important to accept other views and thoughts so as to develop as a rational human being. For this education and awareness about other’s rights also plays an important role.
It is common to find people and leaders losing steadiness of mind when faced with stress. Thus, in today’s world administrators need to be emotionally intelligent to act in a fair and unbiased manner. Balanced decision making for social progress and development can only be made with an objective and unbiased mind, which can be achieved by controlling anger and being tolerant and open.