ABSTRACT
In Matapato, anger is an emotion normally associated with crying and its significance varies with age. Among moran, anger is associated with the ideals of warriorhood. When elders recall their moranhood, it is the fights and fracas between tribal sections that are the highlights, and they blame the meat and soups and the intransigent mood that caught them in the forest. From earliest boyhood, the heroic image of moranhood has provided an ambivalent stereotype torn between conformity and competition. Altruism is associated with an unswerving loyalty that is exaggerated to a point where individuals may lose any sense of independent identity and willingly give their lives in the wider interest. At the opposite pole, egoism arises when they are so remote from the constraints of society that they lose any sense of involvement or group identity, and life itself loses its meaning.
