The Age of Rage is over.
Humankind (that word probably enrages a few) has lived through many different ages and eras.
The Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron age…
We went through the Middle ages, Early Modern Era, and then around 1750 we apparently switched fully into the Modern Era.
Some would argue that we’re now in our Eras Tour age…
but that would just be a lazy Taylor Swift joke (sorry, shake it off… sorry).
Of course, a lot of things have changed since 1750.
We got cars, modern medicine, side parts, Paramount+, and best/worst of all… social media.
The advent of social media launched us into a new era.
The Age of Rage.
So, why did we get so angry all of a sudden?
That’s easy.
We know too much and we think we should feel it all.
Seriously.
The human brain can do amazing things but it also often doesn’t know when to turn the fuck off.
At any given time on Earth there are a multitude of things that rightfully demand our rage.
Social Media delivers every single goddamn one of those things to our eyeballs with a flick of the thumb.
It’s disproportionate.
The effort required by our thumb and eyes to experience a never ending scroll of trauma, pain, suffering, injustice and more, far exceeds the effort required by our brains to process it.
Does this mean social media is something we should stay away from?
For some, maybe.
For most, it just means we need to learn to use it differently.
I’m no scientist, despite my planet-like head size, but I feel confident that our brains can only care about so many things at once.
Like mixing all the paint colours together when you were in kindergarten, mixing all the emotions you may have after consuming the highs and lows from multitudes of people leaves you with the sludgy brown of rage.
Rage… that most useless of emotions that can embody fear, anger, pain and confusion all at once.
Stupid, useless rage.
These days?
We’re in a constant stage of rage… or our rage is on a hair trigger.
Every fight feels like it’s ours.
But it’s not.
We simply can’t maintain that level of investment in issues that we have little to no control over.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a LOT of reasons to be enraged.
There are many worthy causes.
There are many people who need us to care.
And we can… for some of them.
You’ll be able to care for some while I care for others.
The Age of Rage is over.
If it isn’t evidently over for you personally yet, it will be soon.
Trust me.
It is for me.
I can’t keep it going anymore.
It’s untenable.
We learn to prioritize those things that we know we can affect and deprioritize those things that we know we can’t affect.
And that’s okay.
Our capacity to feel and emotionally invest is finite.
Beyond a point we go from caring and concerned to combative and confrontational.
Because we’re exhausted.
24/7 rage, it turns out, is toxic.
Who knew?
News and staying informed about real and unpleasant issues is important.
Being consumed by news and issues is futile.
Feeling personally responsible to teach every dipshit out there how to be a better human is not your job.
Don’t take on board every horrible thing happening in the world.
Make the proclamation for yourself if you have to.
The Age of Rage is over.
###
This is fucking brilliant!! (Excuse my over exuberant language, but sometimes in order to truly express my emotions, that word is my fave!)
As someone who is 64, I feel like my generation kinda blew it on a lot of stuff we should have fixed, or at least we should have tried harder to stop breaking stuff, and sometimes that can become overwhelming.
Thank you for the reminder. I try to live by "kindness matters" .....I will continue to try despite the constant barage of Rage 😉
On a serious note, I had to stop watching Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert and pretty much all late night TV during the Trump years. I found myself exactly as you so eloquently put it being enraged all of the time.