Let’s talk about why people are so angry. Not the political “anger” they sell you on the news. I mean the real kind. The bone-deep, acidic rage that comes from a place of profound, personal pain.
Part 1: The Parable of the Fall
It’s not a grand political theory. It’s a story as old as the first scraped knee. It’s a story about a kid on a bicycle.
We’re all born with a need to trust. We ride along, we learn, we’re a little wobbly, but we’re moving. And then someone we trust, someone we believe in, looks us dead in the eye… and shoves a stick in our front wheel.
We go flying. We hit the pavement. Hard. People probably saw that fall. And the humiliation that one feels, the need to shake it and play it off at that exact moment just right.
And in that moment of searing pain and humiliation, our brain isn’t logical. It’s just a raw, screaming nerve of self-hate, of shame, and of a burning desire for revenge. We look up, blinded by our own failure, and we point at the nearest person—the one who happened to be standing there, the one who maybe laughed or smiled at our fall—and we decide that they are the ones who put the stick in the wheel.
This is the sickness. This is the root. It is a profound, unhealed trauma.
Now, what happens to that kid? They grow up. They’re angry. They feel left behind. They feel dismissed by a world that seems to be laughing at them. They are in pain. Its almost like a line of people and sticks have always been just right there. Like they know where that person would be. And they are angry. Not because of a single fall, but the repeated ones. The failures due to others and their priorities.
Part 2: The Analysis of the Anger
It can’t always be the individual’s fault, not with their ability to process their hostile environment. You cannot appreciate what their plight has been. And allow me to remind you that humanity has not been outside of the trees, truly, outside except for the last few hundred years. The technology that has fed that self righteous anger and hatred telling them their belief is true, the world is ready to fall apart.
The connection to humanity is being severed in an act of a few hundred million slices.
They are angry at an unjust world and you may be their next environmental hazard as they grow up.
There is a coldness that they have had to develop to live in this world, and with it, a form of dehumanization. It hurts them at first, they want connection, but the more it is dismissed be it their failures or those of another. It becomes easy to think all humans are this way, only concerned about themselves while showing the world their true self. Usually unaware of their own ignorance.
And then, a salesman comes along.
A person, or a group, who doesn’t just see their anger; they celebrate it. They walk up to that hurt person sitting on the curb, bloodied and bruised, and they say, “You were right to be angry. You didn’t fall. You were pushed. And we know who did it. Join us.”
This group gives them something they have been starving for: a ‘good’ feeling for just being who they are. It gives their rage a target. It takes their self-hate and gives it a scapegoat. It is a powerful, comforting, and deeply poisonous lie.
And this is where we are. We’re a nation full of people who have fallen off their bicycles, pointing at their neighbors, convinced they are the enemy. The constant, manufactured outrage is just a butterfly effect, a ripple of pain and misunderstanding that started with a simple, personal betrayal.
To add another label to someone already feeling disconnected enables their hatred, and why wouldn’t it? Do you like people who don’t know you labeling you? This is a thing we all do, and we probably won’t be able to just stop it, either.
The work of The Human Covenant is not to scream at these people that they are wrong. It is not to call them “Nazis” or “fascists,” because those are just labels they can deny and fuel their fires of why they feel justified. In their world, they might be literally justified.
Part 3: The Solution (The Work)
The work is to be the adult in the room in listening without judgment. To have the courage to walk over to the kid who just fell, to sit on the curb with them, and to say, “I see that you’re hurt. I see that you’re angry. But you are not pointing at the right person. That person you’re screaming at? They fell off their bike, too.”
It’s about having the compassion to stop the cycle of blame, and the strength to hold up a “dirty mirror” that shows them the real source of their pain: the self-hate and the desire for revenge. That is the only way we heal. That is the only way we get back on the bike.
Give someone a chance is to allow you to earn some respect, and then cherish it as an token of good faith. Even from the angry people. By listening, you are giving them not an excuse, but a blow off valve to release some pressure, help them to reframe their plight without fixing it for them, and maybe, just maybe, you can help them to be the person they have always wanted to be.
Mental illness isn’t a terminal disease, it is a thing someone has to live with. It is a thing they will fight. This all will take time. You have a part to play in whether you really want what you say you want, the ‘freedom’, but by ignoring those around you, walls are being built, and that makes your life a whole lot more linear.