We live in an era of mass frustration.

In a Harris poll last month, 86 percent of American voters gave Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, a negative rating. This week, a Gallup poll showed President Obama’s approval rating at 47.3 percent, his lowest since taking office.

Of course, most of us don’t need polls to know that an ominous cloud of frustration and anger has settled over America. We feel and see it daily. In conversations with friends recently laid off or about to lose their home. In the headlines reporting another murder-suicide or revealing growing tension between races. In the heated and vitriolic rhetoric between political and media rivals. In the surge of nationwide public protests (from both the right and left), often attended by tens of thousands. And, since 2009, in the sudden emergence of the hugely popular tea party movement—a political phenomenon that has come to embody the frustration and anger of millions.

The feeling is palpable: America is a volcano welling toward eruption.

Newsweek journalist Evan Thomas said recently that it’s “hard to imagine a time when Americans felt so helpless.” A “malaise” has settled over the country, Charles Krauthammer noted. Although he admits that America, and even the world, is facing multiple crises, Thomas believes the mass frustration is an overreaction. “I don’t quite understand why people are as mad right now as they seem to be,” he said.

Others believe they can explain the widespread frustration. Conservatives say America’s problems, and the frustration they are causing, are primarily the fault of President Obama and his radical leftist agenda. Democrats say America’s problems were inherited from the previous (Republican) administration. Some say Americans are disenfranchised because of the ailing economy; others say it’s because they think they’ve been duped by Barack Obama; still others say it’s because of the impotence and corruption of Washington. These explanations are reasonable, but they only partially explain the anger.

There is a deeper psychological dimension to this mass frustration.

Consider for a moment the black curse in the Gulf of Mexico. In recent days we’ve been told that the oil will soon stop gushing, that the end is in sight. That’s good news. Still, over the past three months, tens of millions of gallons of crude oil have poured relentlessly into the ocean. During this time millions of Americans have grown frustrated and angry—some, at the arrogance and greed of industry; others at the impotence and paralyzing bureaucracy of the federal government. Yet as maddening as BP’s bungling and the White House’s political incompetence are, there is a deeper reason for our frustration.

For nearly three months, we were utterly incapable of plugging the hole!

It wasn’t that we didn’t try. Tens of thousands of people were activated to fight this “assault,” as the president termed it. An armada of ships and engineers and robots were mustered. Hundreds of millions of dollars were tossed into the Gulf. Miles and miles of protective boom were laid. Tens of thousands of gallons of synthetic chemical dispersants were dispersed. But for weeks—despite all the money, manpower and technology—BP and the U.S. government had nothing to show for all their effort.

Now that’s frustrating!

Some of the smartest scientists and engineers in the world worked around the clock with the most sophisticated technology available, and it still took nearly three months before the flow of oil even began to be stopped. For weeks there was nothing we could do. We were totally helpless.

A crisis was unfolding and we were incapable of solving it!

Now look around. To one degree or another this lesson is embedded within every crisis America faces. Frustration and anger are welling as Americans look at all these crises and realize—perhaps consciously but in most cases subconsciously—that we have no solutions. Financially, for example, voters are upset by high unemployment, unchecked government spending and the paralyzing national debt. But what’s most frustrating is the realization that our leaders and bankers and professors cannot and will not fix the problem. When it comes to the economy and finances, we’ve reached the limit of our ability to create and maintain a stable, successful economic system. And the one we did create is now failing.

The same applies to national politics and our relations with other states. And education. And the environment and agriculture. America is experiencing a crisis in all these arenas, and we simply can’t fix them. Truth is, this problem plagues humanity in general. Mankind is facing disasters of every kind imaginable—and we’ve reached the limit of our ability to save ourselves!

When we look at all these disasters, we come face to face with our own shortcomings!

Such a realization is sobering, and often leads to frustration and anger as we butt our heads against the wall over crises we cannot fix. For those with a humble attitude, such a glimpse of our own incompleteness and ineptitude provides an opportunity to learn something truly astounding about the human mind and human existence.

For decades, the late Herbert Armstrong discussed mankind’s problems and the true cause of the crises we face, individually and collectively. Armed with biblical passages such as 1 Corinthians 2, Mr. Armstrong explained that “man’s problems, troubles, evils, are all spiritual in nature” (Plain Truth, June 1985). Despite its spectacular ability to think and create, to build and develop, the human mind is woefully incomplete, Mr. Armstrong taught.

“All humans have been born with only a human spirit, limiting human knowledge to the physical and material. Man … is not mentally complete—actually ‘not all there,’” he wrote. “Human consciousness is limited to the physical and material, yet all his problems are SPIRITUAL and beyond his comprehension!” (ibid.).

Ultimately, the fact that the human mind is limited and incomplete is the true source of the swelling frustration in the U.S. and in populations around the world.

Perhaps you are frustrated and angry, maybe with a personal crisis or perhaps with the incompetence of your boss, or the politicians leading us. Some of that frustration and anger can be removed. You can purge yourself of a general state of anxiety and frustration and anger. To begin this process you must first accept the reality that the human mind is incomplete, that you and those around you are deeply flawed, and that you lack the ability to solve your problems alone.

If this is hard to accept, then take a long, hard look at the world around us!

Anyone willing to look honestly and thoughtfully at this planet and the insoluble problems mankind faces must admit that the human mind lacks something. What is it? Whatever it is, can that lack be filled? Can you have it, even now? To learn precisely what it is the human mind lacks, request What Science Cannot Discover About the Human Mind. And to learn how you might acquire this missing element, study Repentance Toward God.