Why We’re Primed For Anger Right Now
I’m a lot angrier than I used to be since the start of the pandemic, and I suspect I’m not alone. There are nine potential triggers for anger most people experience, and the one that inevitably catches us off-guard is being stopped. We are hard-wired to respond to any subversion of our forward progress by an outside party with an adrenaline dump and stress hormones. This makes perfect sense when our primitive answers feared being immobilised by a bigger, stronger predator, but those same instincts now fire up when faced with a slow-moving queue, call-waiting muzak, or a change in the expected delivery time changes on our Uber Eats order. It’s also triggered by systemic cultural oppression, by circumstances where we want things to change but can’t see a way out, and the denial of opportunities we’re convinced should be ours. We’re living in an era full of anger right now. The pandemic thwarts our forward momentum in real and
