The issue, then, is not the undesirability of this way of dealing with anger being made universal, when one decides how to encourage one's companions to deal with theirs. Instead, it is the way in which it poisons society, wherever it goes. We have already mentioned the value of enlightened benevolence. When people go through a string of friendships over the years, none ever lasting that long, a weariness, a sense of futility sets in. Each one seems to mean less than the last, and the person's instinctual ties to the rest of humanity loosen. Empathy is diminished, and compassion with it.

Thus, any practice that makes it difficult for people to maintain long lasting relationships, is one that must be passionately opposed, in the name of compassion, and certainly if we are to uphold the values mentioned here. However, there are alternatives that, while highly upsetting to the Lady's Bridge Club of Kenilworth, have worked well for millenia.

When, for example, in Rome or Athens, some outsiders see two friends shouting at each other in the morning, making a tremendous row over some seemingly minor issue, only to be best friends again before lunch, they perceive a lack of maturity. In reality, though, it is they who are the relative primitives, encountering a more developed society.

There is a traditional belief, in Germanic societies, that when one is shouted at, this is a challenge to a fight. Not so long ago, historically, this sort of insult could lead to armed violence, in the ritualised form of a duel. Today, the duel is often replaced by a fist fight, but the expectation of some sort of violence is still there. Even when someone has risen in society, and is expected to see that sort of thing as being beneath him, the expectation is still ingrained, even if he is no longer allowed to act on it. Expectation becomes instinctual anticipation, and open anger is felt as a form of violence.

Such is not necessarily the case, in a Southern European context, any more, and hasn't necessarily been the case for millenia. (Although, I understand that it still very much is the case in some of the Islamic Mediterranean countries, so watch your manners, there). Two friends in Lyons, or Athens may be shouting insults at each other at the top of their lungs at mid day, and be the best of friends again before going home. This mystifies Anglo-Saxon visitors, who often were expecting to see knives drawn, given the heat of the argument. What they don't understand, is that the friends never stopped seeing each other as friends, and that neither had any anticipation that violence might occur.

This shouting was not intimidation, it was catharsis. By giving vent to their anger, they used it up, shouting until exhausted and using up their adrenalin. This is healthy. It also pushes the level of commentary so far into near-comic absurdity, that in the long run, nobody can take it seriously. The fight is over, and the friendship remains.

It is ethnocentricism, the belief that one's ways, are the ways of all, that makes these older ways seem an expression of ignorance, instead of the well tested way of life they are. But, if we are to be serious - is the gut expectation that anger will lead to violence, if openly expressed, a sign of an unusually high level of civilisation, or a sign that the culture embracing it hasn't left barbarism as far behind as it would like to think that it has ? If this is so, should those in that culture feel terribly astonished or indignant if those whose cultures are much further removed from savagery, should feel no desire to import customs that their people have had no need of, for millenia?

It is cheeky to take it for granted that one's own culture is the standard by which all others are to be measured - or to encounter one which was building cities before one's own people even knew how to read and treat its people as ignorant children, because they do not live by the customs that one is used to. But, the uneducated and the unthinking will always do so. It is up to the rest of us to remember that courtesy does not consist of a willingness to allow another to set the rules that one is judged by, but merely to listen to the other's concerns with an open mind, before judging for oneself.

Let us embrace our own ways, without apology, because they work. If this bothers some uptight or anal retentive individuals, they can always seek therapy - it is not up to the rest of us to organize our lives in order to help them avoid having to confront their own personal issues. If another is so self-absorbed as to have trouble with this, let him be shown the door quickly, and never be given a second thought.

Let's return to our previous discussion, now that we're done with this.