Why does a Man Rage?. Exploring Men’s Suffering, Anger, and…
By: Pranay Chaurasia
Tags: Violence Against Women, Anger, Men, Mental Health, Love

Why does a Man Rage?

Image by Gary Waters via Getty

Why does a man hit a woman? Why does a man shoot up a school? Why does a man burn down a building? Most fundamentally: why does a man hurt another person?

Sometimes it is because a man has been wronged by another man, and he seeks to exact his justice. He is so energized with righteous fury that he feels justified in seeking the death of another. His brother may have been killed by a rival. His family store may have been burglarized. His sister may have been hurt. In response, the man may leave his home with fury in his blood. He will think only of the death of the perpetrator. He will think only of the destruction of the one who has wronged him. He will cast aside everything else in this pursuit. No law or person will stand in his way. In cases like I have described, the instigating force of a man’s rage is clear. It is a singular action by which a man is wronged that causes him hurt and pain.

This kind of anger brings to mind a scene from the movie Braveheart, when the wife of the protagonist, William Wallace, is abused by a colonial bureaucrat. In his rage, Wallace kills the abuser and frees his village from tyranny. We love these stories because they transform the complex rage we feel in our own lives and project them onto a simple villain that we can vicariously kill with a knife to the throat. In Braveheart, the rage is simple. The cause is apparent. The justice is swift. This is why we relish its story.

But modern life isn’t so simple.

Image by William DeFoore PhD

A man can feel wronged in many ways. He could have been neglected by his parents. He could have been bullied as a child. He could have grown up poor and without food. He could be burdened by implacable debt. He could have been laid off from his job. And when the man looks around and he finds no simple explanation for his pain and suffering, feeling helpless, the man finds one, and he seeks to destroy it. He valorizes and deludes himself to be the twisted William Wallace of his own life, and his finger finds an object for his generalized rage.

Often, a man’s rage will find a woman. Other times, a man’s rage will find some kind of “other” who he views as not only beneath him but as the cause of the man’s suffering. Sometimes, his rage will even point to himself, and the man will seek self-destruction. But when all the proper conditions are met, and a man feels that he is hurt by his society and neglected by his people, that he has no one to turn to and no one who respects him, that he has no control over anything in his life, and when there is no one there to Love him and help him, the man will exact his rage explosively. His delusion that there is a simple external cause to the countless problems he faces, which can be reinforced or even manufactured by various media channels, in addition to no one helping him face those problems, culminates in explosive rage.

He will shoot up a public place. He will gang-bang without regard for human life, since long ago he had lost all regard for his own life. Energized by his spite, he will try to cause everyone else to suffer as much as him.

“If we do not Love ourselves and spread Love to our brothers, rage will take us and it will not let go.”

As men, we must realize that this rage is latent within us. If we do not Love ourselves and spread Love to our brothers, rage will take us and it will not let go. And even if we do not shoot up a school, if we fail to spread Love to others and ourselves, then we will forever feel embittered by an unjust world. We will not seek to better the world by helping others, or by fighting for a just cause like the morally righteous warriors we want to see ourselves as, we will seek to sully everything around us and inflict pain upon others. We will feel disillusioned and alienated from Love and we will find it to be laughable — ridiculing it for what we falsely believe is its naivete and being embarrassed by its expression.

I know it is easy to feel lost and alone in a world that increasingly makes those conditions the default condition of every person; I have felt this way myself. I have felt hopeless, and I have felt like there is no one who cares for me. But over time I have come to realize that there is always Love to be found within us and around us if we only implore ourselves to find it.