Taken from: I am - A blueprint for sentience by Krys Norman
Of all feelings, anger is the most misunderstood. It is associated with generally bad things: violence, destruction, shouting, abuse, wars etc... These are all sources of strongly negative emotions in recipients of an individual's angry behaviour and often the perpetrators themselves end up equally, if not more, damaged. An explanation for this lies in understanding the relationship between emotions, anger and rage.
Anger itself is much better described as a positive feeling, albeit with different ramifications than the other feelings. It can be a reaction to a situation (or imminent threat thereof) that is of detriment to an individual. A loss of physical capability is the most obvious case. Something might want to reduce that in order to increase their own chance of survival and prosperity; i.e. maim, kill or eat it. An individual will need to respond such that they can be come as capable or more so than their assailant. It might even be that the weather elements or random chance have the same threat. In either case, the best way to respond to this is to bring on the threatened individuals’ abilities to the maximum possible. In humans this is by using adrenaline to raise the heartbeat, heighten the muscle response, speed up reactions and focus the brain. The anger response very rapidly sets the individual into the best state to maintain its capabilities. Any loss, actual or potential, is reacted to as negative and to be angry is positive due to the association with the cessation of this. The individual may fight, may kill, may shout, snarl and move in order to protect itself. This is inherently a benefit. The greater the ability to harness anger, the better the protection.
There are also many other losses that a brain, in a more sophisticated and complex situation, has to contend with, though. The individuals who prosper best in groups have a benefit in maintaining connections in control. They also have a deep desire for legacy and invest highly valuable resources into aiding their offspring's route to maturity. Any loss of these are also the product of negative emotion and defended against using anger. This very natural and healthy response to quite sophisticated threats can come unstuck. In more complex situations there can be multiple varying threats requiring conflicting responses. Also, relatively stronger situations may arise where the anger response is generated but the individual is relatively too week to stop the threat. They lose. The negative reaction is added to each time this happens and associates with every similar occurrence. After a while a response may occur following a relatively weak threat. The strength of anger produced maybe highly disproportionate to the naturally or logically required amount. It may stop the immediate threat in its tracks but be, in itself, a very strong threat of loss to all in the immediate vicinity. With the anger response designed to ensure the greatest strength possible within their particular physical confines the angry individual may dominate any weaker ones at that moment.\
Anger may be highly disproportionate, barely relevant and create many negative emotions. No matter what collateral damage is done it is still reacted to as positive by the perpetrator as long as it gets its primary desired result. This could be in stopping the cause of many built up, dissociated negative emotions being released. At that point in time there is a positive reaction in the angry individual and they have won. There is no point wasting any more energy into this and the perpetrator calms down.\
If the anger response doesn't work, however, the individual will continue to pour energy into winning. This can not only fail, as with an equally strong angry responder, but it can lead to a response that has different built up associations. The situation has not just failed to resolve but now provides an ever increasing anger response. This does not resolve and flares to full-blown, unstoppable, anger. This is rage.\
Rage can subsequently flare up from seemingly nothing and produce an overwhelming strength of outburst that is both physical and emotional in context. As it is an un-damped feedback state, during which there is no point where all the causes of negative emotion are stopped, the rageful individual does not reach a calming state. They stay rageful until they have decimated every response in the vicinity. This can often be catastrophic, both seen with physical damage and unseen with emotional negative reactions associated with the event. As the negative emotions build up and they are associated more and more generally with varied situations and resulting loss, rage will flare ever more readily. Eventually it may be catalysed by virtually anything and produce a randomly psychotic individual.
The Primary Care Manager has very specific reactions to anger and rage. It develops an ability to protect against the debilitating effect of negative emotions. As such it is often at its most effective around anger. It can amend both the rationale's logical understanding of the reason for an event, the type and strength of feelings arising from it and, most eerily, the memory details of a past event.
A response from a threat can be both disproportionate and inappropriate. In both cases the Primary Care Manager will have allowed the rationale to create its anger response and can justify its belief that it is being proportionate and accurate.
If there is a history of negative emotion being created with very similar situations and a genuine, albeit slight, threat comes along then the respondent could explode with anger. It would be appropriate but highly disproportionate. The Primary Care Manager would allow the logic of the reason for the response but amend the strength of it. a great example is road rage.
If a situation had an affect on an individual in a way that released many widely associated negative emotions the Primary Care Manager could amend the logic to find some elements, maybe just one reason alone, for the response. It might even create a logical conclusion that an element that wasn't even present was reason enough for the anger response. This will produce a highly inappropriate response irrespective of how proportional it was.
The Primary Care Manager will allow rage to occur up to the point where the sum total of negative emotions being avoided is exceeded by the total negative emotions being generated. As built-up associated emotions can become very strong over repeated events, a particular situation has to involve an incredibly intense negative component to curtail rage. External logical reasoning will have virtually no effect whatsoever at this point in time.
There will always be strong negative emotions generated from a rageful event and these, themselves, will result in the Primary Care Manager acting to protect the individual from perceiving them. Logic and justification will be amended if there is irrefutable evidence and the perpetrator is being held to account by a stronger force, person or group. If this justification is logically dismantled externally the Primary Care Manager will call on the belief that the individual was simply born bad. They will be ashamed of who they are and it will hurt. This will be allowed by the Primary Care Manager as is it still protects them from the much greater stored negative emotions. Once an event has happened and the anger subsides the Primary Care Manager can amend the memory of any details surrounding it (if the actual facts are not brought up by others). Within minutes of seeing red, there can be an entire change of mood, laughter even. The event itself will not be allowed to be remembered, (even if the actual facts are brought up by others) either internally to investigate the reason other than shame or externally to allow any reason including shame. The rageful event that happens between just two adults, or includes weaker individuals that will not be believed, will evaporate from reality of the rageful one. Each and every event will still be recorded, though, by all parties and be the cause of very strong negative emotion in every individual concerned.