Self-Restraint

What Self-Restraint means in play

The match ends before your magnificent comeback gets started. You type a message explaining whose fault this is. Halfway through, your account of one missed turn has become a review of another person’s entire existence. You select the text and delete it. The missed turn is still worth discussing; the review was going to make that much harder.

Self-Restraint gives you room to choose what reaches another player. Frustration can tell you that you cared about the game. It does not decide the next message for you. With the insult withheld, you can ask what happened, offer one useful observation or end the conversation. The immediate achievement is modest and real: someone else does not have to absorb the first version of your disappointment.

Finding the balance

In ordinary play

A voice channel

After a missed cue, name the signal you expected and ask whether it reached the other player.

A game forum

A useful correction can be one sentence. Leave out the sentence whose only work is to embarrass the author.

Nearby virtues, different work

Composure

Self-Restraint checks the harmful impulse. Composure helps you collect yourself for whatever response follows; you may restrain a message while still feeling upset.

Recognizing a counterfeit

A politely worded insult counterfeits Self-Restraint. “With all due respect” does not change the purpose of humiliating a teammate. Restraint changes the purpose of the message as well as its wording.

Cultivating Self-Restraint

• Notice the point at which a comment moves from a play to a judgment about a person.
• Choose whether a question, a correction or silence best serves the next exchange.

Try it today

Before sending a gaming message, read it for the action you want next. Remove the personal judgment that does nothing to help that action.

Questions worth returning to

• Which part of my frustration identified a real problem?
• What became possible after I withheld the insult?

Choose your practice

These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.

Quotations and further reading

Seven readings, one for each day. All remain available here. Historical arguments and fictional dialogue are identified in their source notes.

1. You must not, when you have gained a victory, use any triumphing or insulting expression

   Benjamin Franklin · The Morals of Chess
   Rule 6
   Benjamin Franklin · 1841 version, Wikisource transcription; original essay 1786; the preserved 1841-version transcription is the display source

   Franklin asks the winner to restrain an insulting response. Another player’s disappointment calls for consideration.

2. … but angry people are not always wise; …

   Jane Austen · Pride and Prejudice
   Chapter XLV, narrator on Miss Bingley’s attack on Elizabeth
   Narrator · Hugh Thomson illustrated edition with George Saintsbury preface, Project Gutenberg 1342; title-page date not identified in Linked text

   The narrator describes Miss Bingley’s attempt to diminish Elizabeth. Her pointed attack exposes how resentment can frustrate the speaker’s own purpose.

3. If the game is not to be played rigorously, according to the rules above mentioned, then moderate your desire of victory over your adversary, and be pleased with one over yourself.

   Benjamin Franklin · The Morals of Chess
   Final paragraph, informal play
   Benjamin Franklin · 1841 version, Wikisource transcription; original essay 1786; the preserved 1841-version transcription is the display source

   Franklin speaks of an informal game in which help is welcome. Restraining the urge to win every advantage can protect that shared purpose.

4. An angry man, if he gives himself liberty at all times, will go too far.

   Seneca, adapted by Roger L’Estrange · Seneca’s Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency
   Of Anger, remedies
   Roger L’Estrange, adapting Seneca · New edition, Belford, Clarke & Co., Chicago, 1882; Project Gutenberg #56075. L’Estrange’s preface identifies an abstract, not a complete translation.
   English adaptation/abstract by Roger L’Estrange; not presented as Seneca’s unmediated wording.

   The draft reply is still a choice. Pausing before sending it preserves the chance to answer with a better purpose.

5. Mr. Darcy smiled; but Elizabeth thought she could perceive that he was rather offended, and therefore checked her laugh.

   Jane Austen · Pride and Prejudice
   Chapter X, conversation at Netherfield
   Narrator · Hugh Thomson illustrated edition with George Saintsbury preface, Project Gutenberg 1342; title-page date not identified in Linked text

   Elizabeth notices how her amusement may be landing and stops. A joking reply can be reconsidered before it adds to someone’s embarrassment.

6. Alice said nothing: she had never been so much contradicted in her life before, and she felt that she was losing her temper.

   Lewis Carroll · Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
   Chapter V, Advice from a Caterpillar
   Narrator · Millennium Fulcrum Edition 3.0, Project Gutenberg 11; no specific historical print imprint identified in Linked text

   Alice notices her rising irritation and leaves a moment unfilled. The pause before a reply can make the impulse visible.

7. Moreover to keep the tongue well under control, no small factor in moral excellence, and to make it always obedient and submissive to reason, is not possible, unless by practice and attention and painstaking a man has subdued his worst passions, as for example anger.

   Plutarch · Morals: Ethical Essays
   How a Man May Be Benefited by His Enemies, VIII
   Plutarch · Arthur Richard Shilleto translation, Bohn’s Classical Library; Project Gutenberg #23639; preface Cambridge, March 1888.
   English translation by Arthur Richard Shilleto

   Plutarch treats control of speech as something to practise. Deleting one insulting draft is a small occasion for that practice.

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