If another child on the playground takes your Oreos, or knocks over your stick fort, and that makes you angry, does that mean it is necessary for you to punch him in the nose?  Of course not.  You are taught early on that your anger does not justify lashing out, that you don’t get to act on that emotion and shouldn’t.  You should be bigger than that.

But everything you will ever read about love—which is to say, everything you will ever read about romantic infatuation, mislabeled as “love” by the poets—assumes that if you love another, you must act as that emotion dictates.  It is natural, it is right, and to do otherwise is to repress or otherwise harm yourself, and, worse, to deny your heart.  You must, they tell you, follow your heart.

But why?  What makes one emotion different from the other?  Why is it that you should not act on your anger, but you should act on your infatuation?  Why do poets condemn the man who lets his heart rule him in the heat of rage but praise the man who lets his heart (and is it his heart, or something lower?) rule him in the heat of eros?  Could it be no more complicated than that poets enjoy the fruits of their own eros and don’t like being beat up as a result of other men’s rage?

It is that simple.  There is no law that says what you do motivated by eros or affection will be good, whereas what you do motivated by anger will be bad.  That’s a wish; that’s how most people wish the world worked, because they enjoy eros and sex and they don’t enjoy violence (most people being not confident that they would come out bettered by a violent encounter).  The truth is that the fruits of eros ruin lives more often than they improve them, and the fruits of anger would improve many situations.  See the fallacy of the bar stool.  One is not superior to the other; each has its place and time, and each must be exercised in context.

Only one ancient source to my knowledge counsels against the poets, saying, “Do not follow your heart, for the heart is sick and deceitful above all.”  That would be the Bible, the lone voice to their contrary, and the lone voice of sanity on the subject.  Heed its warning.