I don't know about you, but I’m thinking of logging off social media. One minute I’m watching a Frenchman play his guitar to donkeys, and the next I’m caught in a digital pile-on against someone who has made a bad joke or – God forbid – a politician with a dodgy past.
This is the ethics of outrage. Our public discourse is getting less and less about justice and more about performance; and this is damaging our ability to live together.
Martha Nussbaum, an American philosopher, argues that outrage might feel like a step toward justice, but it nearly always slips into a ‘payback’ mentality. In her book, Hiding From Humanity, she warns that using shame as a tool – whether by the state or the public – is dangerous, because it targets a person’s fundamental standing in society.
Carl Sargeant, the Welsh politician, is a good example. He resigned his post after he was accused of sexual misconduct, and later committed suicide. For Sargeant, the shaming was so psychologically devastating that he could neither defend himself nor recover from the mass outrage.
Jonah Lehrer (who was shamed for plagiarism) described the experience as a ‘spinning machine’ designed to test the limits of human stress. Some don’t survive it, like Sargeant.
If we truly care about justice, if we want to talk out against sexual misconduct, plagiarism and other iniquities, then justice should be about rebuilding lives and society, it should be an act of generosity.
Sadly, outrage is addictive, so much so that some have coined it ‘outrage porn’. People don’t engage in it to solve problems; they do it for the pleasure they get from feeling morally superior. This is made worse by the echo chambers they get caught in. Here they learn to actively mistrust anyone who is outside the ‘chamber’. Inside it, outrage can be a badge of membership and it takes willpower to escape. As with any serious addiction, people have to reboot their entire belief system to get free.
When a group turns its fury on an individual, the costs are devastating. The person might not kill themselves, but they can lose their ability to ‘personate’. This is a new word for me. It was defined by Philip Pettit and is the ability to speak for yourself and have others rely on the persona you project. When you’re publicly shamed and stigmatised, you lose the ‘status to claim a status’. You can apologise or try to change, but the community might interpret your efforts as mockery or self-interest, and silence your voice forever.
I’m not saying we should never be angry. There are many things in the world that should enrage us, but it is how we express that outrage that is important.
Aristotle tells us to find the ‘golden mean’ – the sweet spot between excess and deficiency. As he says, anyone can get angry, that’s the easy part. The hard part is being angry with the right person, at the right time, to the right degree and for the right purpose. It is a skill we learn through observing others and practising it. The concern is that, today, many people see the middle path as a vice.
I have a friend who is so angry about a political situation, that any attempt to lessen her anger results in more outrage. It is obvious, in her mind, that she is morally right. The fact that I don’t share in her extreme emotions, points to my moral deficiency.
Now I am not saying the political situation that infuriates her is good; it isn’t. And I too am angry about it. The question is whether the anger is ‘apt’. For my friend, even if her anger is counterproductive – it won’t achieve her political goal – it is still a fitting response to the situation. I agree. What is not fitting, however, is the intensity of the anger, the outrage.
I might be wrong, of course. I might also be wrong about public shaming. James Edgar Lim suggests it can be justified as a ‘moral self-defence’. If someone attacks my dignity (perhaps they are sexist), I can regain my voice and assert my moral worth through publicly expressing my anger. This is especially important if society won’t deliver justice.
Yet, still I agree with Nussbaum. Even if anger is ‘apt’, it shouldn’t be our permanent home. If we want our society to flourish, then we should do as Aristotle advises and find the golden mean.
If we don’t, then anger loses its justification and becomes an addiction. We are no longer seeking justice but indulging in outrage porn instead. And that should concern us all.
