I say good.
I disagree with people who say anger is just an irrational emotion. I view it as our social response to a rational perception of injustice.
Generally, I don’t think animals are rational enough to be angry. If you take food away from a hungry dog, the dog might respond with a form of instinctive rage, but I doubt that the dog is thinking, ‘‘Hey, that’s not fair!’’ Judgments about fairness are rational and therefore, in my opinion, a mostly human trait.
The problem, I think, is that some people let their anger and their rage blend together. When we are able to separate rage from our anger, then I think we can use anger effectively as a social tool.
Every society has different protocols for expressing anger. If you know how to express anger in socially acceptable ways, it can be a very effective method of helping to right a wrong.
If we dismiss our anger as nothing but an irrational emotion, then we deny an important part of our social humanity.
Anger is like pain. If we feel pain, we know something is wrong. If we were unable to feel pain, we would constantly be suffering physical injuries without realizing it, until we died from them. Unlike physical pain, however, anger is something over which we can have great personal control.
Anyone want to take the con position and argue that anger is bad?