Extrapolating this concept to more profound examples, what about a person who rots in jail for years on charges from which DNA evidence suddenly exonerates him/her? How does such a person finally leave their reactionary anger behind and move on with the proactive version of their life? That is, in these extreme cases, how do they avoid emotional reactions which usurp years or even the remainder of their lives? When I studied in Germany on foreign exchange, I met a very old German who had been alive when Berlin fell in 1945. In 1945, his life and nation were in ruins in most any dimension; physically, philosophically, spiritually, and so on. I asked him what the first meaningful interaction with others – connecting with other people emotionally or philosophically – might have entailed. He said it amounted to searching for potatoes and shelter. Obvious. Yet he gave the remainder of his life over to fighting Nazism as a professor. That is to say, he had some insight, but he nevertheless sublimated by telling his story to others in a classroom for 60 years, essentially forfeiting the rest of his life to a reaction. Is it possible he may have been more competent and happier if he had instead become a dentist, supposing that’s what he wanted underneath the understandable and justifiable outrage he felt about the destruction of his country by the Nazis? If so, and if it’s correct that people who find ways to eventually be happy make great contributions to a society, could he have contributed more as a happy dentist than as a reactionary professor “fighting” defunct Nazism? On one view, the answer might be “yes”. On this view, the angry woman who suffers a break-up earlier in the day gets me laid for a night but is a greater contributor to overall society once she regains her happiness a couple weeks later. Apparently, it’s a conundrum to find a mental process which defuses reactionary impulses. Most appear to simply drift into reactionary detours equivalent in size to perceived injustices.