Motivation to change and do and be something other than what we are. That’s the upside to anger. You don’t realize it until you lose it. I had a bad concussion and since then, I can’t get very angry or I get tired and weak and pass out. I also don’t have much motivation to get up and do things (hence, hours of internet).

If you’re not angry, you aren’t paying attention or you just don’t really care. Sure, there’s a lot to be said for altruism, kindness and love, but anger with the current state of things is what moves us to seek another level. Anger is the action form of frustration.

We CAN do things out of love and desire for better things, but mostly, we don’t (unless sex is involved). The human being is an animal, and it is activated by emotions. Anger is one of them.

An argument can be made that cooperative behaviors (civilization) are only effective at caring and change when they are motivated to avoid anger somewhere. That’s why protests work. That’s why we build city walls: to avoid risks. Other people’s anger is one of the risks. Take that away, and you have to work very hard to keep motivation up. This is also why civilizations fail: stagnation from lack of tigers and barbarians. Eventually, civilians turn into barbarians because they are bored.

Mathematically, you could probably predict it with a PID (proportional-integral-differential) error graph. The boredom/frustration/inbreeding/apathy builds up gradually until it reaches a threshold, and then the anger wire is tripped and the whole thing resets.