Toward an Archaeology of Anger

In this case, your anger isn’t necessarily rooted in a perceived direct personal threat; rather, it is rooted in your sense of values, and your schema of ideals regarding the kind of world you want to live in.

For many of us, there is an enormous gulf between “the way the world [currently] is” and “the way it ought to be.” “The way it ought to be” is, presumably, a world in which we would feel at home — a place that would feel comfortable and psychospiritually nourishing to us, where we could live the rhythms of our lives spontaneously alongside people we care about, and who share our values.

You might be experiencing an underlying sense of anger or distress because of social isolation, loss of work, or other side effects of the restrictions; or because of the loss of stimulating experiences and social events that normally bring joy to your life and relieve stress.

In a heavily symbolic world, our emotions often become triggered by abstract or distant events that have little direct impact on our daily lives; these events stand in as symbols for some personal or ego-driven cause or motivation.

The first is to consciously and reflectively master our own anger, so that we have a concrete and functional understanding of exactly what it is we see as beautiful and sacred in the world; and so that we can respectfully and sincerely, from the bottom of our hearts, recount to others our losses and ask them to help us respect what we are trying to protect.

Our anger, in the face of these vast and impersonal systems, may delude us into (unconsciously) thinking we can simply will the world to be the way we want it to be; as if, by asserting our desires with enough emotional energy, the world around us will eventually capitulate.

If our anger is exacerbated by a constant feeling that we are not at home, or that the world is not “the way it ought to be,” then perhaps we can attenuate this feeling somewhat by recreating microcosms of the world we want to see.

You might be personally angry — partially because of direct, immediate losses you’ve experienced in your life that make the world in general seem more unstable and threatening; and partially because this particular event seems to exacerbate the relevance of that threat to you specifically.

You are angry, perhaps, because you don’t want to live in a world where people are punished for standing up for what you believe to be moral goodness; or because you don’t want to live in a world where being “trans” is considered to be normal.

You want people around you to uphold the moral standards you believe in, because it would be a more hospitable place for you to live; but also because — from a transcendent perspective — you believe this would make the world more beautiful, and would create more overall happiness. 

https://brownstone.org/articles/toward-an-archaeology-of-anger/