Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Today we'll talk about collective rage.
[00:00:03] Importance of knowing what is collective rage and why is necessary.
[00:00:12] Collective rage is natural.
[00:00:16] It is part of human collective feeling.
[00:00:20] And it has existed throughout all history.
[00:00:24] Collective rage rises from shared grief, from shared harm.
[00:00:32] Collective rage rises when we witness injustice.
[00:00:38] It emerges when human dignity is violated, when our human rights are stripped, when we are mistreated, erased or controlled.
[00:00:54] And as you can see now, and you can sense that there is rising of collective rage. And collective rage is born from collective moral injury inflicted by tyranny, dictatorship and power over systems.
[00:01:15] And now, more than ever, globally, we can feel that it's touchable, it cannot be ignored. Collective rage is born from authoritarian regimes that make decisions about where and how you will live without asking you, without even considering you.
[00:01:48] There is no consent coming from you.
[00:01:54] And collective rage carries righteous power.
[00:01:58] It is justifying anger. It's deeply human.
[00:02:03] Don't be confused about you feeling this way because it's innate.
[00:02:11] If you're looking at animals, they do feel collective anger when a member of the pack is harmed. And we are no different.
[00:02:24] We are no different.
[00:02:28] Anger born from injustice has always been a force of necessary change.
[00:02:36] No one would have fought Hitler without collective rage, right?
[00:02:42] Just look at that.
[00:02:45] What would history look like if no one felt collective rage during World War I or World War II?
[00:02:59] And every revolution march protest is rooted in collective righteous rage.
[00:03:10] And that's the response of people whose moral compass is alive.
[00:03:16] It's alive, it's present. And it's saying, this is not right. This is not okay.
[00:03:25] And people are saying, not under my watch.
[00:03:30] Not to me, not to my family, not to the country I was born in, not to the country I love, to the people I love, and not to those who come after me.
[00:03:53] And you cannot neutralize rising anger in the face of injustice because your nervous system will respond.
[00:04:04] Your ancestral memory will also respond.
[00:04:08] Your DNA will respond.
[00:04:13] Your grandmothers and grandfathers in your bones will respond.
[00:04:21] It is in our biology.
[00:04:23] And no amount of reality shows, tarot readings, funny memes or spiritual bypassing will make your innate response disappear.
[00:04:37] You can pause in that, you can rest, and you absolutely can look away for a moment to restart.
[00:04:52] But your body will look again to the injustice.
[00:04:58] Because your standards will not allow you to remain blind.
[00:05:04] It won't be possible.
[00:05:08] Your values will not allow permanent ignorance.
[00:05:16] Your dignity will not allow.
[00:05:20] Your moral compass will not allow indifference.
[00:05:27] And because we are, we are very wired for order, for protection, for justice, for dignity, for respectful treatment. This is who we are as humans.
[00:05:44] We need Order, but not from power over and tyranny order.
[00:05:52] We know the difference in power over. You don't feel that you are in control of any choice, human choice in your life.
[00:06:06] And collective rage is the demand for what is in need.
[00:06:13] When we feel collective rage, we demand accountability, justice, peace, change, for progress, for humanity.
[00:06:29] And it's saying, no, you will not have your way.
[00:06:38] And think about your parents or grandparents who lived through war protests.
[00:06:45] Or maybe you are the one who lived already through the war, through the protest.
[00:06:53] I did.
[00:06:55] I had over a hundred protests under my feet during bombing where there was no choice.
[00:07:04] It was, you need to resist because you're already dying under the regime of tyranny.
[00:07:14] So I deeply know that place of collective rage coming for better life, for human rights, for peace.
[00:07:27] And there is no choice but to do the right thing.
[00:07:34] And that's to say no to the tyranny.
[00:07:42] And collective rage is not chaos. It is resistance.
[00:07:47] It is your body response. Your intelligence is responding. Your survival is responding to bullying, to domination and moral violation.
[00:08:01] And it is innate power rising against tyranny that assumes people are shallow, that you are shallow, that you are obedient, that you are disengaged.
[00:08:18] Are you?
[00:08:23] And this is why authoritarian regimes work so hard to discredit any collective movement against injustice.
[00:08:38] And collective rage is labeled dangerous. It is criminalized, as we can see in us, in Iran, in some parts of Europe, it is framed as the problem.
[00:08:54] Justice seekers, advocates for human rights, you, me, you're framed as the problem.
[00:09:07] So attention is diverted away from injustice itself.
[00:09:12] It's so obvious, manipulative tool, right?
[00:09:19] We can all see it if you're using your critical thinking.
[00:09:24] And collective rage is not the threat.
[00:09:28] The threat is a population that feels nothing.
[00:09:34] And that is why listening to unspoken silence to detect what's behind or to the rage matters now more than ever. Why restoring rage to its rightful place as a healthy collective regulating force, not a pathology, not a moral failure, and not endangered itself is important because we can see authoritarian systems are expanding.
[00:10:12] Injustice is increasingly visible. Just look at the news and it will be normalized.
[00:10:22] So I lived in a war for a very, very long time.
[00:10:27] At the beginning, I clearly remember, injustice was shocking.
[00:10:34] By the fourth year, living in a war and witnessing mass killing, mass destruction, it was just another news.
[00:10:46] It was so normalized in human psyche.
[00:10:52] And we cannot get to that place.
[00:10:57] When we get to the place of normalizing, genocide, killing, it's too late.
[00:11:10] It's too late.
[00:11:12] So when is the time? The time is before beginning, before the Beginning and why is important because we, as a society, we are subtly trained to disengage, to numb out, or to self police your emotional responses. They're even feeling angry or feeling rage means by spiritual bypassers that now you're not enlightened enough, you're not spiritual enough.
[00:11:50] And those people who are saying this to you, they don't even know Dalai Lama was in so many marches for human rights, quote unquote. Buddhists forget that spirituality means acting on it, not only sitting on meditation cushion and hiding in retreats.
[00:12:12] So collective rage is not abnormal.
[00:12:19] And in dominant cultures, especially in wellness, spiritual or clinical spaces, anger is often framed as something to work through quickly, something that must be softened, reframed or released, something that signals personal imbalance.
[00:12:42] But rage arising, uh, in response to injustice is evidence of an intact moral compass.
[00:12:58] And it means your nervous system is still capable of registering violation.
[00:13:06] And this is critical because a society that no longer feels anger in the face of harm is not evolved.
[00:13:17] It is in a deep state of anesthesia.
[00:13:21] But that doesn't mean you will act on your rage with contempt and destruction, uh, where you will harm another.
[00:13:35] So you're not following your reach in uncontained manner.
[00:13:41] But you have right to assess, to feel and act on it in the ways to make changes, to seek accountability, to seek response, to speak out, to march and protest in contained manners, not destructive and collective rage. If you're looking, it is in our biology, we are, uh, wired to respond.
[00:14:23] All social mammals, right?
[00:14:29] Humans, animals, we are wired to respond when a member of the group is harmed.
[00:14:40] If you have cats, if you have dogs, you witnessed that many times when boundaries are violated, when dignity is threatened.
[00:15:01] People of color, minorities, ethnic groups, you experience that, um, many times.
[00:15:15] Same as your parents, same as your grandparents, same as your grand grandparents. It speaks into your bones.
[00:15:26] So rage is somatic and it's ancestral.
[00:15:33] And it is instinctive protection, right? So we know in a treatment, we know we need to work with the clients.
[00:15:49] Who doesn't have healthy aggression?
[00:15:54] Mom protecting a child.
[00:15:58] She needs to have healthy aggression to say no, stop, back off.
[00:16:04] And this needs to be developed and maintain in adults, where we need to hiss back on intrusion, when we need to detect and assess who is violating moral values right now. And this is very important because authoritarian power depends on convincing people that in your innate responses are irrational, dangerous or wrong.
[00:16:40] Also very important, neutrality is not neutral.
[00:16:48] So let's dismantle this neutrality because numbness, disengagement, both sides thinking emotional withdrawal are not sign of objectivity. They're not sign that you are spiritual, that you are enlightened.
[00:17:14] These are the signs of shutdown.
[00:17:17] And when, uh, injustice persists, neutrality is often the nervous system last defense against overwhelm. And it comes at a cost.
[00:17:32] It comes at a cost because population that cannot feel collective rage cannot mobilize, cannot protect vulnerable, cannot interrupt harm.
[00:17:48] Think about this. Please check my other episodes on tyranny, apathy, spiritual bypassing.
[00:17:57] So numbness is real danger, not anger.
[00:18:05] Again, this is all in the frame of contained anger rage, not destructive rage with contempt and violence.
[00:18:20] Please check the history, how marches and protz are done, what brought big changes for better. Also what's very important.
[00:18:39] There are many insidious forces, behaviors working against collective action, collective response to injustice.
[00:18:53] And that's distraction disguised as a coping.
[00:18:58] So you might be encouraged, and probably you are by AI, by the algorithms, by this culture of dissociation, scrolling self soothing, endlessly consuming entertainment, spiritualized pain, or retreating into personal growth, quote unquote, instead of staying present with what is happening.
[00:19:34] And my point here is not that we need to rest. So we need rest, we need joy, we need to reset.
[00:19:45] But constant avoidance of collective pain fractures moral continuity.
[00:19:58] Uh, so take time, scroll, watch your favorite TV show, read books, but do not dissociate and numb yourself in it, because your body, something will resist in you. So that's that innate intelligence to protect knows when something is too important to ignore.
[00:20:28] And no amount of distraction can override that knowing forever.
[00:20:33] Because suddenly you might start to feel unexplained panic attacks, that's very common.
[00:20:43] Okay, that's very common. We also have collective rage as ancestral memory. Uh, look back into your own history of your ancestors.
[00:20:55] What did they survived wars, survived occupations, resisted rights, fought for dignity, defended.
[00:21:07] It's in you, it's in your bones. Let's reframe rage as responsibility, not impulsivity.
[00:21:16] And very important, authoritarian systems, they don't fear chaos.
[00:21:28] What they fear is coherent anger and resistance.
[00:21:35] And this is why collective rage is by authoritarian systems labeled dangerous, criminalized, pathologized, reframed as instability or extremism.
[00:21:54] And if rage can be discredited, attention could be diverted away from the injustice that authoritarian regime caused it.
[00:22:12] So recognize this tactic so you don't internalize the narrative that your response is the problem.
[00:22:25] Feeling anger and rage as, uh, response to the moral injury, collective injustice is not the problem.
[00:22:37] It is your humane responsibility. This is not call to violence or uncontrolled expression.
[00:22:46] This is the call to stay connected to felt sense.
[00:22:54] What's arising in your body to be emotionally available, to refuse numbness, to honor your biology response to moral injury, to teach containment but not suppression, to hold your rage as information, as a signal that something must change without letting it turn inward as shame or outward as distraction.
[00:23:38] It is invitation to do good, to be good, to do good.
[00:23:48] It is to remind yourself of your moral values, to teach your kids of the moral values. And we need to remember how to stay human in the difficult times, to remind ourselves what's our civic responsibility when there is moral collapse before it's too late, before we go way too deep into collapsing, apathy and disengagement.
[00:24:24] So as I close, uh, this piece today, we are not glorifying rage.
[00:24:35] We are reminding that restoring collective anger, rage is a rightful place as your biological signal, as a moral response, as a protective force.
[00:25:02] And a precursor, uh, to justice.
[00:25:06] And the danger is not that you feel too much.
[00:25:11] The danger is that you are trained to feel nothing by a system which is authoritarian and is not humane.
[00:25:26] As I close today episode, take a moment, pause.
[00:25:32] Remind yourself how your ancestor is did good to be good to do good.
[00:25:42] And how can you do the same? I am Ana Mael, This is Exiled and Rising. I am Somatic Experiencing Therapist for PTSD and Trauma Recovery and I am founder of Somatic Trauma Recovery Center.
[00:25:58] Please Share Support Donate so we can spread this content to everyone who needs to hear it.
[00:26:07] And I feel everyone needs to hear it.
[00:26:13] Until next time, be gentle with yourself.
[00:26:19] Much care, much career.
