Outrage is different from anger.
In which I consider a possibly unpopular take on the popular outrage trend
So I love my anger. It arises when I sense Injustice or injustice and guides me towards understanding and informed, effective action.
But outrage? I feel it, don’t get me wrong. But it’s different from anger. It’s different because outrage mixes anger with self-righteousness.
And self-righteousness changes everything.
Anger, for me, is like an arrow. It points to the wrong. But it’s not a weapon to be shot into a target. It’s a signal. This is very important: Anger signals that I need to figure out where the injustice is. But, at its best — well, actually, when I’m at my best — it also signals that I need to look inside myself. For my sense of being wronged. For my contribution to the sense of being wronged. How is my interpretation of events fueling my anger? What are my assumptions? What might be going on over there, where the injustice lies, that can explain my anger and possibly birth compassion? What am I willing to do about what I see and understand? What’s my plan of action?
Anger really is a powerful signal. Super helpful when it’s used properly.
But add self-righteousness? Now you got outrage. And, more often than not, the arrow of anger turns into a weapon. Which means now you also got objectification.
And non-consensual objectification is an act of violence.
I’m not sure which is worse: self-righteousness or objectification. Maybe they’re flip sides of the same coin. When my self rears up in an all-eclipsing sense of rightness, then everyone else is one or the other. Right or wrong. You’re either with me or against me.
Emphasis on the me. Because, after all, we’re talking self-righteousness.
And if I deem that you’re against me, you become a target for my arrows of outrage. And the issue, while ostensibly about injustice (big or little ‘i’), actually becomes about power. Specifically, a power struggle that the rightness of my cause ensures I win. And, because winning feels SO GOOD, I’m going to keep winning by pinning you to the wall as the perpetual object of my rage. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what you actually think. What I care about is keeping you in the bogeyman role, the object-of-my-wrath role, so I can keep the dopamine hits coming.
Now it’s time for an example. How ‘bout a story from one of the worst years of my life?
I was a doctoral student at a university whose teacher education program was in some trouble. The trouble came because the university, which was firmly white, male, and patriarchal, was proudly accepting students of color into the teaching program. And the students of color were calling out the university’s multitudinous racist blind spots. Amidst the ensuing tumult, the director of the teacher education program quit.
And the university asked me to fill the void. For one year. As the interim director.
Of course I took the job. Because back then I was a compulsive void filler. Even when friends tried to talk me out of it, I grandiosely believed I could carry this program to health and happiness.
Was I ever wrong.
Because the students’ outrage needed an object. And I was the obvious target, being a liberal white woman with all the responsibility for the students’ program and no actual authority. And being, of course, a third-year doctoral student who was just filling in.
I did my best to hear the students’ complaints and respond to them. Having drawn up a proposal addressing their stated needs, I invited the ringleader of the outraged students to join my advisory board so we could hone the proposal into a good working plan. (That plan, by the way, was eventually shot down by the senior faculty on the board. This is what I mean by all the responsibility but no actual authority.)
Here’s what the ringleader said to me when I asked him to join the board:
“I’m trying to figure out if I’d rather be in the center of power, or on the outside, throwing Molotov cocktails in.”
Guess where he chose to be?
Correct! He spent the rest of the year throwing Molotov cocktails.
This happened almost 25 years ago. But the story still gets my heart pounding.
OK let me break this down according to my definition of outrage:
As the director of the teacher education program — and, by the way, as a student at the university myself — I believed the students’ anger at the institution they found themselves in was justified.
I listened to their complaints and teased out what appeared to be the content — experiences of racism and unfairness — from the emotional bedrock. That is, I looked past their anger and the many nasty ways they directed it at me to the wrongs, the injustices, they sensed.
I thought about the accusations, sought support, did anti-racism work behind the scenes and with the students, and crafted a proposal that I thought addressed the students’ needs. I tried to join with the students, to work together with them to make the changes they wanted and needed.
But no: self-righteousness engulfed the justified anger and turned it into outrage. Which became an end in itself. Which turned grievance against injustice into displays of power (“I’d rather stay out here and throw Molotov cocktails at you”) that, frankly, destroyed — relationships, collaboration, any chance of problem-solving.
Note that these outraged students had direct access to decision-makers. I was available to them. The dean of the School of Education met with them several times. But the outrage, as I see it, locked the students into opposition, where their energy was devoted to intimidating, shocking (as in a meeting with me and the dean where the same ringleader I invited onto the advisory board swore lustily, blowing the dean’s mind), and — this is very important — avoiding any sign of colluding with whoever is designated as the enemy.
I must say, as someone who has headed up a few teaching programs in my time, I have experienced a fair amount of objectification from outraged students and even faculty. And I have felt my share of outrage. I am not alone, of course.
Outrage seems to be a popular trend these days. It is everywhere: On Twitter. On Facebook. At Trump rallies. In town halls. On college and university campuses. Massive, self-righteous objectification right and left. Red and blue.
What I wish would happen is that the outrage would be downgraded to anger, which, in my view, is always legitimate, whether it stems from fear or anxiety or hurt or evil. Or bad decisions or acts or attitudes on my (or anyone else’s) part. Downgrading outrage to anger, doing honest introspection about the source of the anger, and opening up space for the issue to be discussed, for substantive rather than reactive and fear-based changes to be made, is
the only way
I can see that Injustice or injustice can be repaired in a healthy, fair, and lasting way. Emphasis on lasting.