Why Are We So Angry?

Here are some answers to that question.

The breakdown in civil society means we must make personal decisions in public when we are not sure what is right, or what seems right is more dangerous than is apparent at the moment.

Driving on a two lane country road that is narrow and curved, a driver ahead of me had stopped for a few seconds. I just waited. After a few seconds the driver moved forward and stopped again. Because of the curve I couldn't safely overtake them so I waited, congratulating myself on being patient. Then the driver started backing up quite fast, so I backed up, then they made a left turn down a narrow road.

Afterward I was impressed with the sense of entitlement shown by this driver for not indicating via lights or signals what they needed to do, or for doing the safe thing and driving forward until the next turn off where they could have turned back in the right lane to make the turn they missed. The driver appeared to expect or hope that I would accommodate their needs.

Later I realized I was complicit in this dangerous driving - it could have been a mess if another had driven up around the corner as I was backing up. Later still I realized I didn't know what to do at that moment. Should I have just remained in that spot refusing to move back, honked my horn, got out of the car? There is something about being in a vehicle which makes us isolated in our decisions. In a fraction of a second we can destroy lives even if we don't want to.

Later I felt angry - not so much at that particular driver, but because I didn't know what the right thing to do was. It's easy to dismiss any social or safety discomfort as being someone else's fault. Blaming is even encouraged in hierarchical societies as long as we blame those on the bottom of the power spectrum.

We see so many big problems and grave dangers to our future, that billions of isolated egos can't seem to fix. Nevertheless there is an undercurrent of outrage and disappointment when the mind becomes aware of the broad scope of injustice which is mostly felt when a child starts looking beyond the immediate family to the larger society.


Ann Jones, in her article "After I lived in Norway America Felt Backward Here's Why" relates her experience of being a journalist in Afghanistan then travelling to Norway and returning home to America. What she finds is this:

"I had, in fact, come back to the flip side of Afghanistan and Iraq: to what America’s wars have done to America. Where I live now, in the homeland, there are not enough shelters for the homeless. Most people are either overworked or hurting for jobs; the housing is overpriced, the hospitals crowded and understaffed, the schools largely segregated and not so good. Opioid or heroin overdose is a popular form of death, and men in the street threaten women wearing hijabs. Did the American soldiers I covered in Afghanistan know they were fighting for this?"

I include this here to compare the small experiences of learning how to live with one another peacefully, with the results of centralized power that destroy millions of lives through war and neglect. For centuries marauding tribes has destroyed the civil societies they conquer and proceed to replace what might be intelligent behaviour with trauma and chaos. Here we are either exploitable resources or refugees.

Now hate groups are flourishing with their malevolent prescriptions that deflect the real causes more fear and hatred.

Orthodoxy of War

On Canada’s military contribution to the campaign against Islamic state, Peggy Mason of the Rideau Institute said:


"We’re playing a symbolic military role, [within the context of ] a very short-sighted military strategy, when what we could be doing is playing a much more meaningful role in the broader political strategy that must be put in place if we are going to have anything other than a very long conflict, a quagmire."


Why would that be? Why would the federal government want to play a "symbolic" role instead of attempting to bring peace in such a dangerous area. How would we or the government of Canada benefit by this? What are we trying to attain?


William Astore in The Nation lists seven reasons why America will not be ending war anytime soon. That is to say that Washington intends to keep the war going on for as long as it can.

The reasons given in this article, are the privatization of war, embrace of the national security state by both major parties, "Support Our Troops” as a substitute for thought, fighting a redacted war, threat inflation, defining the world as a global battlefield, and the new "normal" in America is war.

We have seen how our federal government is eager to support Washington wherever it can.

The purpose of war is not to defend the people of a nation but simply to enable the war industry to get rich while the citizens, or taxpayers, pay for it with money and the lives of their children.

Andrew Bacevich writes in Tom Dispatch from his book How Washington Rules:


"By temperament and upbringing, I had always taken comfort in orthodoxy. In a life spent subject to authority, deference had become a deeply ingrained habit. I found assurance in conventional wisdom. Now, I started, however hesitantly, to suspect that orthodoxy might be a sham. I began to appreciate that authentic truth is never simple and that any version of truth handed down from on high -- whether by presidents, prime ministers, or archbishops -- is inherently suspect. The powerful, I came to see, reveal truth only to the extent that it suits them. Even then, the truths to which they testify come wrapped in a nearly invisible filament of dissembling, deception, and duplicity. The exercise of power necessarily involves manipulation and is antithetical to candor."

Rather than a global threat Peggy Mason reminds us that we are fighting civil wars in other nations and: "The way you end these civil wars [is] not through a military victory …[but] through the negotiation table. There is no solution here without dealing with Assad, and the only way to deal with Assad is to negotiate with him."

Which do we want? For the future of our children and the future of our planet? Peace or the threat of oppression by the centralized power of the arms industry.