An Epidemic of Manufactured Rage

  •   Thu, Apr 10 2025
  •   By Glaxson D'Lima

April 10, 2025

A philosophical analogy about an ant jar has gained traction in recent times. This theory, also known as “red ants and black ants in a jar” scenario, serves as a metaphor to illustrate how disturbances by someone in position of power or influence could cause discord among otherwise peacefully co-existing groups.

For the uninitiated, here’s an explanation of this theory: Picture a clear glass jar inhabited by two kinds of ants: red ants and black ants. The ants coexist peacefully, moving about doing their business without bothering each other. They're just doing what ants naturally do.

But then, someone, a human that is, comes along and shakes the jar violently. Suddenly, faced with trouble in their peaceful order, red and black ants start attacking one another. They view each other as enemies and fight viciously, biting, hurting each other. These ants believe that the other group is to blame for the chaos.

Neither the red ants nor the black ants caused this discord. It was the person who shook the jar. However, ants don’t understand this. They address all their energy on fighting each other instead of identifying the real cause of their turmoil.

But this is not really about ants; it is about this looming, silent epidemic that has pervaded human society – an epidemic of manufactured rage. For a village, town, city, nation or the entire civilization, it is imperative for peaceful coexistence to be the natural state. On the contrary, we witness multitude of manipulation, provocation and misinformation spiked materials diffused across social media news feed, messaging forwards, inflammatory feature films, sensational news debates, voyeuristic reality shows and so forth.

Every piece of content consumed today is meant to rile people up, very often than not under the disguise of meaningful discourse. Similar to how palate tastes food, the eyes taste words and visuals, and the ears taste noise of bias and hate.

Ants lack the cognitive ability to see the manipulators at play, but what intellectual limitation restricts human society to see the engineered antagonism of their neighbor?

Reality shows stars, popular influencers and virtue signaling news anchors, have skewed the idea of what a hero is, what a credible figure is and what an authentic, unbiased fact is. They get their views, their fame, their box-office, and laugh all the way to the bank without making a speck of consideration how their content has fueled fire that was already lit in the eyes of their biased, target audience. Digital tribalism is dramatically on the rise.

Populaces are being subconsciously swayed to be fearful of those who don’t look like them, speak their tongue, eat like them, dress like them or believe in divinity that they do. They are expected to take sides without allowing them to take a bird’s eye view on a contentious subject.

A contrarian, though innocuous, opinion on social media is enough to spur a flood of confrontational comments from individuals with whom they have the privilege of enjoying long-time acquaintance. Having a mere opposing view is taken as a desecration of sentiments.

While the obvious is out there, media narratives continue to feed biases, stoking divisions and ensuring that people remain at odds with one another so the smokescreen and potpourri of inflammatory content can continue to persist and distract everyone from questioning who is quaking the jar or why?  

Societies being fallible to instability is something that was established throughout history, but it is compounded by disregard from masses as well as the higher powers of many large nations across the world on what really matters.

One must drown in the bone marrow of naivety to imagine a utopia of ever-lasting blind harmony, but it does not take an institute of rocket-scientists to discern that the call to despise others based on rational difference or their roots is not spontaneous but engineered.

The distraction of manufactured outrage offers a conduit to all those who have pent up frustrations of daily lives. As masses end up immersed in this distraction, it veers them from making to call to address real crisis situations that stand at the door.

As we witness people fall prey to noxious narratives fed through the screens, the true challenge here, for societies that claim intellectual superiority over ants, is to resist the urge to be provoked, take a step back, feel the tremor in the jar and look up. Perhaps, then they could end up learning what they are being distracted from.

 

 

 
By Glaxson D'Lima
Glaxson D' Lima hails from Santhekatte. He is currently working for a firm based in Doha-Qatar.
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Comment on this article

  • Shanti Quadros, Puttur/ Kuwait city

    Sun, Apr 13 2025

    Fantastic write -up! enjoyed reading it.

  • Renita Pinto, Bejai

    Sun, Apr 13 2025

    Well written and thought provoking.

  • Santhosh Santhu Vasaam, Mangalore / Bangalore

    Sat, Apr 12 2025

    Good article, well researched & the story of the ants in the jar is precisely what is Halle I g in our good country today. The day we Indians realise that the inky agenda of the elected representatives is to amass wealth and stay in power is to keep stoking communal issues .


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