Year of the Fist

By historical measures, there’s really not all that much to be angry about. Since 1981, the proportion of the developing world living in extreme poverty has fallen from 50 percent to less than 20 percent, according to the United Nations. Infant mortality is down across the board; the number of girls in school is up. Terrorists and tyrants get their comeuppance with toe-tapping regularity. The chances of dying in war have never been lower. In 2011, the 7 billionth person was born into a world that’s richer, healthier, and safer than at any time in history.

None of which kept a sizable portion of the planet from open revolt. The uprisings that rippled from Cairo to California and back again were linked not by a common enemy but by a common emotion. We should have anticipated (though few did) that rage would boil over in the Middle East, a region at once the world’s youngest and its least free. But who envisioned throngs marching down Broadway holding signs that read “Turn Wall Street into Tahrir Square”? What distinguished the anger of the past 12 months was its comprehensiveness, the rate and intensity with which expressions of discontent spread across the planet. The last comparable outburst of people power, in 1989, transformed Europe but stopped at its borders. In 2011, volatility went viral.