This post is going to make you angry.
In fact, if I do my job right, you will feel a tight, hot spike of resistance in your chest while reading it. You will want to argue with me. You will want to tell me I’m defending the indefensible.
Good.
Hold onto that feeling. Don’t push it away. Because that feeling, that spike of outrage, is exactly what we need to talk about.
This isn’t a post about whether the world is right or wrong. It’s a post about why your reaction to the world reveals more about you than it does about the world.
The Purple Kangaroo
If I walked up to you right now and said, “You are a purple kangaroo,” you wouldn’t get mad. You’d be confused. You might laugh. You’d be annoyed that I was wasting your time.
Why? Because there is NO part of you that suspects you might be a purple kangaroo. The jibe hits nothing. It misses you completely.
Now if I said, “You are arrogant,” or “You are a bad parent,” or “You are a fraud,” and you feel a flash of hot outrage? Bullseye. For my friends who consider themselves “grammar police” simply correcting their grammar (even if I incorrectly correct them) is enough to outrage them.
When the arrow hits home, it means part of you suspects the jibe might be truth.
Here is the rule: You don’t get outraged by things that don’t touch your identity. You get outraged when something threatens who you think you are.
The Maestro in the Machine
I lived this ten minutes ago while writing this very post.
I was brainstorming with an AI. It analyzed some of the logic we were working on and said, “The other AI did solid work here.”
Immediately, I got pissed. A sharp, hot annoyance in my chest. My inner voice screamed: “Dude! What about ME? I’m in control of this conversation! Those were MY ideas! I’m the Maestro!”
I wanted to type a snarky reply, to put the machine in its place.
Why? Was the AI rude? No. Was it wrong? Yes, but who cares?
I was outraged because it touched a live wire: The fear that I am obsolete.
These machines have gotten so good, so fast, that deep down I worry that they don’t need me (or soon won’t). That my identity as the “Visionary Leader” and even “blog post writer” is being threatened by a text prediction algorithm.
My outrage wasn’t about the AI. It was an immune response deployed to protect my ego.
Identity on Fire
We love to feel morally outraged. It feels righteous. It feels like we are standing up for the truth.
But look closer at what you’re actually defending.
Moral outrage is just identity on fire.
You don’t feel outrage because something is wrong. You feel outrage because something wrong threatens who you believe you are.
This doesn’t mean the “wrong thing” didn’t happen or that the insult or injustice didn’t happen. That is the spark.
But the size of the explosion tells you nothing about the spark. It tells you everything about the fuel.
When you’re secure in who you are, the spark hits water. You see the wrongness, you act to correct it, but you don’t burn. When you’re protecting an untested story about yourself, the spark hits gasoline. The explosion tells you where your insecurity lives.
Think about the political figure you despise most. The one whose very name makes your blood pressure spike. Your moral indignation may be justified. Your sense of injustice may be correct. Your feelings of ethical violation may be spot on.
But the intensity and the way it keeps you up at night? The way you can’t stop thinking about it? That’s not about them. That’s about you. That’s about your identity as a good person, a smart person, a person on the right side of history being threatened. Reality has lived up to your expectations and rather than think and instead of wondering about potentials in your mental model, you assume reality is in the wrong.
The wrongness is real. The outrage is yours.
The Remedy
The remedy isn’t to stop feeling the spike. The remedy is the slow, hard work of facing the fear.
It’s exposure therapy.
When I felt that spike of annoyance at the AI, I had a choice. I could have ranted. Instead, I sat with it.
I said to myself: “I am feeling like I might be obsolete right now.”
It sucked. It felt wrong. It felt like emptiness in my chest.
But I recognized it. I stayed in the room with it. I let it burn. And because I didn’t run away, the fever broke. I realized that even though I will become obsolete one day, either from AI or old age. For now, I’m still here, still creating.
The moment I looked the fear in the eye, the anger lost its job. It packed up and left.
Like all phobias, every time you avoid facing your insecurity, either by using outrage or running away, you teach your brain that the insecurity is a monster that must be avoided. You make the fear bigger. You make your skin thinner. You become more fragile, not stronger.
In Wishing vs. Wanting, I talked about how we protect untested stories about ourselves. Outrage is just another shield. It keeps you from testing whether the story is true.
The Autopsy
The next time you feel that hot spike of offense, don’t look at the person who lit the match.
Don’t fire back. Don’t tweet. Don’t vent.
Outrage feels righteous, but it is always personal. It’s always more about you than them.
If you have the courage to trace it to its source, you will find your fear, your story, and your next evolution.
Most people avoid or seek to drive off what offends them. They protect the comfortable story. They keep the wish safe.
The ones who don’t? The ones who lean into the offense and ask why it landed?
Those are the ones who learn who they really are.
Troy Lowry is President & CTO of Acon AI. He is still learning to sit in the room with his fears. Read more at LowryOnLeadership.com.
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