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Is anger a sign of righteousness?

Webster informs us that righteous is “acting in accord with divine or moral law”.

We often see US citizens, in our streets and byways, expressing their anger at certain actions taken by our government. On occasion this anger is directed at Big Bankers or some other group but generally it is directed at some action of government institutions.

“I’m mad and I won’t take it anymore” seems to be the general attitude often displayed by these demonstrators. I have concluded that most people identify the connection of anger to an argument signifies the righteousness of the argument and the person making the argument. Perhaps this is because anger often accompanies the pronouncements of preachers, priests, imams, rabies, and talk show hosts.

Do you think that anger necessarily signifies righteousness?

Do you think that anger signifies righteousness; but only for those protests for which you agree?

What part of losing your temper signifies divine or moral law?

I think if a protestor said "I'm not really worried but it would be nice if they changed things" then they'd get less attention.

I personally see anger as a sign of helpessness, or in an argument as a sign of being wrong but afraid to admit it.

Anger is an emotion.

Emotions equal instinct. First, there is emotion, then comes feeling, then comes consciousness of feeling.

What are the emotions? The primary emotions are happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust. The secondary or social emotions are such things as pride, jealousy, embarrassment, and guilt. Damasio considers the background emotions are well-being or malaise, and calm or tension. The label of emotion has also been attached to drives and motivations and to states of pain and pleasure.

Antonio Damasio, Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, testifies in his book “The Feelings of What Happens” that the biological process of feelings begins with a ‘state of emotion’, which can be triggered unconsciously and is followed by ‘a state of feeling’, which can be presented nonconsciously; this nonconscious state can then become ‘a state of feeling made conscious’.

”Emotions are about the life of an organism, its body to be precise, and their role is to assist the organism in maintaining life…emotions are biologically determined processes, depending upon innately set brain devices, laid down by long evolutionary history…The devices that produce emotions…are part of a set of structures that both regulate and represent body states…All devices can be engaged automatically, without conscious deliberation…The variety of the emotional responses is responsible for profound changes in both the body landscape and the brain landscape. The collection of these changes constitutes the substrate for the neural patterns which eventually become feelings of emotion.”

The biological function of emotions is to produce an automatic action in certain situations and to regulate the internal processes so that the creature is able to support the action dictated by the situation. The biological purpose of emotions are clear, they are not a luxury but a necessity for survival.

“Emotions are inseparable from the idea of reward and punishment, pleasure or pain, of approach or withdrawal, of personal advantage or disadvantage. Inevitably, emotions are inseparable from the idea of good and evil.”

Emotions result from stimulation of the senses from outside the body sources and also from stimulations from remembered situations. Evolution has provided us with emotional responses from certain types of inducers put these innate responses are often modified by our culture.

“It is through feelings, which are inwardly directed and private, that emotions, which are outwardly directed and public, begin their impact on the mind; but the full and lasting impact of feelings requires consciousness, because only along with the advent of a sense of self do feelings become known to the individual having them.”

First, there is emotion, then comes feeling, then comes consciousness of feeling. There is no evidence that we are conscious of all our feelings, in fact evidence indicates that we are not conscious of all feelings.

Human emotion and feeling pivot on consciousness; this fact has not been generally recognized prior to Damasio’s research. Emotion has probably evolved long before consciousness and surfaces in many of us when caused by inducers we often do not recognize consciously.

The powerful contrast between emotion and feeling is used by the author in his search for a comprehension of consciousness. It is a neurological fact, states the author, that when consciousness is suspended then emotion is likewise usually suspended. This observed human characteristic led Damasio to suspect that even though emotion and consciousness are different phenomenon that there must be an important connection between the two.

Damasio proposes “that the term feeling should be reserve for the private, mental experience of an emotion, while the term emotion should be used to designate the collection of responses, many of which are publicly observable.” This means that while we can observe our own private feelings we cannot observe these same feelings in others.

Empirical evidence indicates that we need not be conscious of emotional inducers nor can we control emotions willfully. We can, however, control the entertainment of an emotional inducer even though we cannot control the emotion induced.

I was raised as a Catholic and taught by the nuns that “impure thoughts” were a sin only if we “entertained” bad thoughts after an inducer caused an emotion that we felt, i.e. God would not punish us for the first impure thought but He would punish us for dwelling upon the impure thought. If that is not sufficient verification of the theory derived from Damasio’s empirical evidence, what is?

In a typical emotion, parts of the brain sends forth messages to other parts of the body, some of these messages travel via the blood stream and some via the body’s nerve system. These neural and chemical messages results in a global change in the organism. The brain itself is just as radically changed. But, before the brain becomes conscious of this matter, before the emotion becomes known, two additional steps must occur. The first is feeling, i.e. an imaging of the bodily changes, followed by a ‘core consciousness’ to the entire set of phenomena. “Knowing an emotion—feeling a feeling—only occurs at this point.”

Quotes from The Feelings of What Happens by Antonio Damasio

Emotions are attachments to programs of belief or interpretation of ones self and conditions of ones self. The Human instinct is to live in expanding waves of love and experience of love (the universal force that propels creation and creativity, or evolution in life). Fear is a program based on the limitations of belief surrounding mortality and pain or suffering. Emotions do not equal instinct but they do coincide with points of reference or programs running in the subconscious and identified with as self or ego.

Disgust is a judgment often accompanied by an emotion as a reaction.
As a fear based function they can be misleading such as in superstition or delusion. From clear comprehension of reality emotions are responses of the body as the extension of comprehensive language exuded by the body, just as there is language in the neuropeptides excreted from cells and collected by cellular receiver sites.

This might be contradicting to the idea of them being evolutionary or an instinct, if they are easily modified by ones surroundings, or the sensory levels of comprehensive or intellectual understanding.
Which then begins to reveal that the choices one makes thru conscious awareness, determines at what level of influence we build the foundations of identification. That it is what we make real, that creates a point of reference. And instinct is something superior to emotional response or attachments to beliefs and opinion.

Evidence compiled from a lack of conscious awareness would reveal a lack of conscious awareness based on what you put ahead of consciousness. Just like doctors used to put the body before the mind, saying the mind was secondary to the mind. It has only been in the last few decades that science has found the mind influences the body and that the conditions of the body can be changed by changing the mind.

What you focus on grows. If you give emotion power over consciousness then you do not know consciousness but instead know emotion.
The people of the world used to believe the sun rotated around the earth.

Not without becoming conscious of consciousness which is in everything and letting go of personal programs based on personal attachment to emotions as they are attached to memories of the past and projected into possible futures. The mind that is never present can not be self aware of consciousness as it exists within the present moment untouched by programming the way it knew itself as in childhood without programs and expectations.

Empirical evidence collected in a jar without having experienced the outside of a jar leaves one with a limited perspective of containment within a jar.

Evidence of what creates the jar and the field of emotions, would be nice...
My thought would be that there are lots of perspectives and no one clearly replaces the experience of what we are. We can write about our experiences and collect a bunch of experiences and say something about them being empirical. But there is going to be change in the evolution of awareness in self perspectives and new books get written and new data to support new theories. So if you focus on what doesn't change and observe from such a platform of awareness change can be observed as well as ideas of reality within change, but more importantly consciousness itself is revealed at a level that is far superior thru the experience of consciousness than one that is projected in theory that is constantly changing with experience and belief.

“It is through feelings, which are inwardly directed and private, that emotions, which are outwardly directed and public, begin their impact on the mind; but the full and lasting impact of feelings requires consciousness, because only along with the advent of a sense of self do feelings become known to the individual having them.”

First, there is emotion, then comes feeling, then comes consciousness of feeling. There is no evidence that we are conscious of all our feelings, in fact evidence indicates that we are not conscious of all feelings.

Antonio Damasio, Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, testifies in his book “The Feelings of What Happens” that the biological process of feelings begins with a ‘state of emotion’, which can be triggered unconsciously and is followed by ‘a state of feeling’, which can be presented nonconsciously; this nonconscious state can then become ‘a state of feeling made conscious’.

Human emotion and feeling pivot on consciousness; this fact has not been generally recognized prior to Damasio’s research. Emotion has probably evolved long before consciousness and surfaces in many of us when caused by inducers we often do not recognize consciously.

The powerful contrast between emotion and feeling is used by the author in his search for a comprehension of consciousness. It is a neurological fact, states the author, that when consciousness is suspended then emotion is likewise usually suspended. This observed human characteristic led Damasio to suspect that even though emotion and consciousness are different phenomenon that there must be an important connection between the two.

Damasio proposes “that the term feeling should be reserve for the private, mental experience of an emotion, while the term emotion should be used to designate the collection of responses, many of which are publicly observable.” This means that while we can observe our own private feelings we cannot observe these same feelings in others.

Empirical evidence indicates that we need not be conscious of emotional inducers nor can we control emotions willfully. We can, however, control the entertainment of an emotional inducer even though we cannot control the emotion induced.

I was raised as a Catholic and taught by the nuns that “impure thoughts” were a sin only if we “entertained’ bad thoughts after an inducer caused an emotion that we felt, i.e. God would not punish us for the first impure thought but He would punish us for dwelling upon the impure thought. If that is not sufficient verification of the theory derived from Damasio’s empirical evidence, what is?

In a typical emotion, parts of the brain sends forth messages to other parts of the body, some of these messages travel via the blood stream and some via the body’s nerve system. These neural and chemical messages results in a global change in the organism. The brain itself is just as radically changed. But, before the brain becomes conscious of this matter, before the emotion becomes known, two additional steps must occur. The first is feeling, i.e. an imaging of the bodily changes, followed by a ‘core consciousness’ to the entire set of phenomena. “Knowing an emotion—feeling a feeling—only occurs at this point.”