Anger

Law of equal and opposite advice: some people are socialized into repressing anger/turning anger inward toward the self which makes it easier for people to take advantage of them. These people need to pass through a phase of recontacting their anger before trying to 'let go' of it.

One thing that strikes me here is you seem to be talking more about "angry people" (i.e. people who are somehow persistently tending towards "angry"), as opposed to "anger, a transient state that an otherwise healthy person is in."

One purpose of anger AFAICT is to build game theory into the psychology of social organisms, without them having to have a fully idealized game theoretically sound approach. 

It's useful to have punishment and threats as a tool in our coordination toolkit. Punishing someone generally requires you to burn resources of some kind. Sometimes it's locally worth it to punish someone, because even though you will burn resources, you'll almost immediately start reaping rewards from the next steps in an iterated PD or Stag hunt. Other times, the payoff is extremely diffuse, and it's honestly just worse for you to spend resources of tit-for-tatting. BUT, it's still overall better for defectors to know that they risk the possibility of someone "disproportionately, 'irrationally' punishing them", so they don't bother defecting in the first place

At least one of anger's roles, I think, is to facilitate that. 

I think a downside of anger is that our native implementation of it isn't designed to handle complex coordination problems of the modern world. So I think there are reasons to be dissatisfied with that native implementation, and to want to change it in some way. But I wouldn't try to remove anger from your arsenal, or encourage others to do so, unless you/they have actually fully "replaced" the job that anger was doing. (and honestly I'm not sure I know anyone who is at this level, I think anger is doing lots of subtle things, and trying to replace native emotional software is pretty likely to go wrong in various ways).

The problem of "the guy who yells at you for digging the hole and then yells at you for filling it back" isn't that he's angry, it's that he has miscalibrated anger and some maladaptive patterns with it.

I largely agree that anger and emotional happiness (but not ultimate Happiness) are quite incompatible, doing 1200 hours of meditation over two years has reduced both the frequency and half-life of any anger I feel and it made me realise just how unpleasant it actually was. However, let me try to steelman anger:

First, very advanced meditators actually seem to report that even moments of anger are "perfect" in some way, just like all other moments. I've certainly seen Shinzen Young and other zen masters get somewhat angry, not at anyone, but to emphasise a particular point in an emotional way. So anger is certainly useful for communicating your values to an audience. Hearing someone say "I really care about this" in a neutral tone doesn't quite have the punch of someone getting mildly angry.

There also seems to be a relationship between anger and a sort of aggressive motivation. I notice that my bench press sets seem a lot easier if I get angry first, and they're also a lot more pleasant, being angry without doing anything is unpleasant, but expending that "angry energy" towards a goal does seem to be pleasant. Being angry about things like the existence of cancer can certainly help with motivation to solve these problems. 

This feels like it is strawmanning anger pretty bad (and focusing on places where anger has particularly gone-wrong). I'll have more stuff to say later but wanted to flag that for now.

I think you are confusing anger with hate.

Like all emotions, anger is adaptive - though it may have been more so in the ancestral environment. Even today anger tells you something. Quick google: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mindful-anger/201606/4-reasons-why-you-should-embrace-your-anger  

Hate was presumably also adaptive but I think its purpose is mostly lost in modern society. There I agree that it amounts to useless destruction. 

Except that, if I am alone with the person, the target will eventually become me no matter what I do.

I don't know what you do but I might have an idea why you become the target (because this happens to me too): You seem to be the type of person who has their own ideas, own plans, and are not easily influenced or persuaded. For some - maybe many people - ramping up emotion is one (unconscious) way to make you (or other people) understand the urgency or distress they are in. If you ignore or otherwise do not respond or acknowledge other people's stress you make it worse for them. You may not have an obligation to do something about it but you also shouldn't be surprised if it happens.

Do you think this might relate to your experience?

I was reminded of this post when I came across fictional example of developing anger as a constructive force and a sign of healing . The triggering was very conditional on conduct. The angerer has the target person and conduct clearly in mind before expressing the anger. The target of the anger was not angry. The target conduct was not targeted to the anger expresser.

The most important step for the bad forces to win is for the forces of good to do nothing. To not get angry means there is no conduct or agent that you would deconstruct. This means letting the most horrendous monster to thrive in peace. To dismiss that anybody could get legitametely angry at you is to claim you are incapable of evil. Sure we like to be the hero of our storym but genuine mistakes on whether we are a constructive force happens (nice job breaking it, hero).

Sure it is a more common problem to be overtly angry. And one can spin it in a way that some times making holes actually creates rather than destroys, to interfere in a process can be constructive rather than destructive. But that shouldn't mean that we exclude supression from our toolbox, or that we start calling destruction creation.

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I'm not sure I've ever felt anger in the way it seems to be described here. As in, anger as an uncontrolled emotional response to disliking something/someone. I have felt something close to violence-instinct where I thought that a person was a danger/bad and it was time to hurt them but that seems different.

While I tend to agree with you that anger is bad an should be avoided that seems like an extension of the general rule of "You should decide what you feel' rather than letting feelings just randomly happen to you as if they're something external to you like the weather over which you have no control.

One point of disagreement, "If you cannot diffuse the situation then fight as a last resort". I'm not sure this is the correct approach. Let's say a bad person walks up to you and demands you apologize for a perceived slight. Should you do so if the alternative is violence? I realize many people here would say yes but to me giving in to evil/injustice in that way seems intuitively deeply wrong and I would rather choose to fight.

Some people bring out the anger in others more often. Some people can talk others out of anger, while some people fan the flames. What can be said for that?

I am mostly a placid, very-hard-to-anger person, and that's something I do pride myself on.

There are some things that get to me, though, and I've often wondered if it's healthy, and if it's a call to action that I've been suppressing.

I hate social injustice and cruelty, and I know the negative emotions it provokes is a sign I should either do something about it, or learn to adjust my responses.

But there is something that I cannot bring myself to feel might be wrong -- cruelty/tragedy involving children When this comes to my attention, I feel deep anger, hate, and despair against the person and the world, and I don't think I can ever let go of that without losing something core to myself.