What did you feel the last time you clicked through news? Bitter? Cynical? Judgmental? Numbed? Outraged?
If these words hit the mark, it might be time to admit you’ve joined the countless throngs addicted to one of the world’s cheapest sources of dopamine. Moral outrage.
Moral outrage, according to psychologists at the University of Kansas, is “anger provoked by the perception that a moral standard—usually a standard of fairness or justice—has been violated.”
If you signed up for this newsletter, chances are you believe in some standards of justice, and when those standards are violated, you care. And I’m glad you care. Sometimes we need strong emotions. Emotions can focus our attention and move us out of stasis. People who care get stuff done.
But sometimes along the way, we get sucked into cesspools of debilitating outrage. Moral outrage can swamp our nervous systems with stress hormones, physically blocking our neurological capacities to empathize, collaborate, be patient, and make decisions. As some researchers wrote,
We are all susceptible to moral outrage, but far fewer of us are skilled at harnessing its power constructively.
Here are a few tips to kick your outrage addiction so you can harness a more constructive response to injustice.
Admit you are a product
The first of the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous reads, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” We might do well to admit the same with addictive outrage. Specifically, admit there’s a profit incentive behind the media outlets keeping you morally outraged. If there’s one thing media on the left and right can agree on, it’s that anger makes money. Outrage keeps you clicking, and clicks bring in advertising money. Is handing over control of your emotions a price you want to pay for news? Watch The Social Dilemma to learn more, and consider finding news sources designed to avoid bias and anger. (One of my favorites is the 1440 daily news email).
Train for marathons, not just sprints
To fix social injustice, we need more than just a one-by-one approach. We need to think about systems. That’s great. But sometimes in all the justice conversations about systems and scale, we forget that scale is meaningless if we don’t have longevity. This is a long road. Learn to pace yourself.
Contribute to continuous communities
For longevity, you also need community. The thing about social problems is they require social groups to do the solving. You’re not meant to do this alone. You’re going to need what Potawatomi philosopher Kyle Powys Whyte calls collective continuance. That is, communities that don’t just tear down what’s wrong, but who build what’s better.
Start with you
There’s a catchy phrase in justice work, Start where you are, but don’t stop there. Outrage tends to skip over the start where you are part.
Alcoholics Anonymous has some good advice in this regard, too. They say to take a “searching and fearless moral inventory” of yourself, apologize, and make amends. And don’t forget to accept forgiveness. Some of us “take a searching moral inventory” pretty much daily and then beat ourselves up. Stop that right now. Accept you can be forgiven.
As a Christian, I sometimes wonder what kind of conversations Jesus had with the disciple referred to as Simon the Zealot. Historians disagree over what that title meant, but let’s assume he got the moniker for a tendency toward moral outrage in response to the seriously unjust colonial oppression of Jewish people in his time. Piecing together bits of Jesus’ conversations, we might imagine this conversation with a zealot.
“Let’s go for a walk. Let’s slow down for a minute. Let’s look around. See this child here? See this woman who cooked us dinner? See this man with the puss leaking from the boil on his leg? See this grumpy Pharisee asking the same question he’s been asking me all week? Let’s just sit here a bit with them. Let’s remember some good stories. Let’s remember that God reigns over a different kind of kingdom. And that kingdom is ever unfolding, here and now. Like seedlings sprouting. Like bread dough rising. Like a woman who searches all day for a coin and throws a party when she finds it. Let’s take another breath. And let’s get up and keep walking.”
And let’s hold each other accountable in this outrage recovery program.