ANGER: is superheated and compressed disgruntle

Anger is an overpowering impatience accumulated from the residues of at least one thwarted expectation. In any circumstance where an individual is attempting to achieve an outcome or retain a status quo and the result continues to be either entirely frustrated or entirely unpredictable, each unsuccessful trial contributes a quanta of resentful irritation. Admittedly, although the repetition of unsuccessful trials does not necessarily result in anger... failing to find mammals in traps on an island designated to be mammal free would result in some satisfaction for example... it is more often than not a significant contributing factor. The incremental growth of dissatisfaction will eventually reach a level where patience for further trials is exhausted. This final state is usually one of temperature and pressure-elevated disgruntle.

Whether it has gradually accumulated over a period of time involving numerous disappointments, or is instantaneously precipitated by an intolerant displeasure with immediate events, anger is an extreme form of dissatisfaction with circumstances... usually one's own but may be more socially and politically generalized... The existential situation is so contrary to the desires and expectations that would be preferred, that the extrapolated resentment attains such elevated pressures that venting it becomes imperative.

To some extent the number of thwarted aspirations necessary to induce a significant anger is inversely proportional to the effort or investment involved in each of the trial events. Thus, although one may be resentfully philosophical the first time a letter-box is blown-up for fun, and only builds up to a fully pressurised anger after the severalth time, a single home or country invasion or terrorist act, which involves the destruction of people and irreplaceable heirlooms, is probably going to induce an instant and irreconcilable anger.

Although it is unquestionably useless to give expression to an anger that is provoked by the random fiats of an exasperating technology, never-the-less the equilibrium of some individuals can be partially restored by a release of pressure. The motor mower that refuses to start fully deserves the venom and retribution of a well-placed gardening boot. The software that regularly performs random and unrequested operations needs a brick thrown thru its inadequacy. Automated parking-building pay-stations that reject the ticket, most money denominations, and eventually tender the incorrect change and invalidate the ticket, can best be punished with a judiciously placed explosive charge. Malfunctioning technology merits every quantum of anger it attracts.

In terms of occupational safety and health, it would be prudent to recognise that the vicinity of pressurised disgruntle is a hazardous environment. Although different individuals have quite variable anger fuses, depending upon the weather, the hormones, social constraints, maturity, philosophical outlook, et al, never-the-less lurking around the containers of evident disgruntles should be regarded as being fraught with considerable potential danger. Whilst some individuals fully deserve any unconstrained expressions of social anger... like the hit-man that abstractly murders for financial gain... it remains the case that much anger directed against another individual is counter-productive. Extreme dissatisfaction with the behaviour of someone else... because it does not conform to your own personal expectations... is too egotistical to be socially acceptable. In a social environment, one's own expectations cannot always be realized... and that is the end of the matter.