What You Should Know About The Outraged Before You Respond
THEIR ANGER ISN’T WHAT IT SEEMS
Facebook has this feature of showing posts from years back. You have the option to share those posts.
I must say that I’ve not had the guts to share any of my posts from 10 years ago. I’d be embarrassed to say the least.
Back then I identified myself as a Marxist. I read books depicting the revolutionary Karl Marx. I didn’t care much about his economic analysis.
I riled against Capitalism, Imperialism, and Neo-colonialism.
In my world, most of the injustices in the world, the poverty and under-development of Africa were a consequence of the West, its leaders and the billionaires. I identified myself to the left of Lenin, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.
Outrage against injustice was my way of life, at least on Facebook.
But if you took a look at my personal life; close family, friends and intimate relationships, it was a mess.
Hanging out with friends, we’d drink beer all day and never saw any threat to our health, meanwhile we’d pontificate about how the world is on the brink of destruction from weapons of mass destruction or poverty or climate change.
Looking back at my life and concerns about the planet, this is what I learned about some people riding the outrage treadmill.
The Outrage Had Nothing To Do With The Perceived Injustice
During our late twenties to early thirties we realize what is possible with our lives. Most importantly, we realize what we cannot do.
For some this knowledge is obvious, but for some of us, it is unconscious and we fail to come to terms with it. These limitations we have not accepted become a thorn in the thigh of our soul and the only way we can manifest this internalized pain is through outrage and resentment.
The resentment may take many forms, from lashing at innocent workmates or close family members to taking up complicated political causes.
By far, the most common outlet for resentment is politics. It is far much easier to rally the world around seemingly noble causes like justice, human rights, and global inequalities.
However, the vast majority of us are far more driven by resentment than compassion.
You see, we have it in us to compare ourselves with others. We don’t compare ourselves to the likes Elon Musk, but to those within our communities. And because of our genetic, cultural and historical differences, our outcomes will always be different.
Siblings brought up by the same parents in the same house with the same cultural context have different outcomes. The same person may actually have different levels of productivity on different days. You may write 10,000 words today for your essay on medium and suffer writer’s block tomorrow.
At a deeper level, we feel these limitations and end up with a sense of inadequacy that breeds resentment.
Meanwhile, there are diminishing returns to how much one can resent himself; the easy solution is to jump on a pedestal of moral exhibitionism and rile against the injustices of the world.
Most of this happened when I was in medical school in a foreign country, a rare privilege for someone coming from a third world country. Instead of some gratitude for such an opportunity, indignation and outrage was my way of life.
I think there are many people genuinely concerned about social justice (all justice is inherently social anyways). I also think they’re many more who are confused about their priorities like I was.
Whenever I see someone pontificate on Facebook or anywhere else, I wonder if they truly stand for a better world or there’s something deeper, some anger hidden about their own reality that they have failed to come to terms with.
We’re a very strange species, capable of hiding our motives not only from others but also from ourselves. But we keep secrets from ourselves only up to a certain time, and when they come out the explosion and outrage is usually blown out of proportion.
For sure, most of us in today’s world wouldn’t enjoy peace had it not been for our forefathers who fought hard for our political freedoms. Had they been ambivalent to the harsh realities of their times, the story for us would have been different. But when I think of the moral angst I invested in my Facebook posts, most of the anger came from my personal issues that I failed to face.
I wasn’t alone in the outrage boat then just as I see many in the same Titanic. Young people from all over the world, and especially the developed countries, flooding the streets in anger. The type of anger that is both self destructive and contagious. It just moves from one person to the next and never ends. These are people that by most metrics, are well to do; they have air-conditioning, a car, a decent education, color television, a microwave and so on. But they are stuck on the outrage treadmill.
The media (social media or mainstream) is handy to fuel our fancies. I adored the news. Flipping the channels and feeding my “anger bank.” There’s a certain way we’re wired to be incentivized by bad news. That could be the reason the media is out to show us all the bad things in the world. It could have something to do with our hunter-gatherer brains; always on the look out for a lion to pounce on us. But of course the lions are caged in the zoos, a fact that has not reached our primitive brains.
I still watch the news. But through a completely different lens. I try as much as possible to filter the information from the noise. And most of all, I don’t join in the anger.
How To Jump Off The Treadmill
The best medicine for the things we don’t like in the world is discernment. With discernment you will know which fights to pick first. For me, it was more important to put my personal relationships in order before I go about trying to organize the messy reality of the world.
This advice may seem trivial, but you would be shocked how many people are out on the street fighting climate change when they can not get hold of their alcohol or drug problem.
Over the past few years I’ve tried to put my life in order first and things are so much better. There’s more clarity in my life. My priorities are better oriented.
This does not mean I do not care about the big-picture problems of the world. It just means that I have better discernment of which problems are worth my energy. With that energy totally focused on those problems, I stand a better chance of solving them and be a net good to the world.
Before you help someone, you should find out why that person is in trouble. You shouldn’t merely assume that he or she is a noble victim of unjust circumstances and exploitation. It’s the most unlikely explanation, not the most probable. In my experience — clinical and otherwise — it’s just never been that simple. Besides, if you buy the story that everything terrible just happened on its own, with no personal responsibility on the part of the victim, you deny that person all agency in the past (and, by implication, in the present and future, as well). In this manner, you strip him or her of all power — Jordan Peterson
