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I’ve been saying for several — edging onto many! — years now that it seems like people get up in the morning, pick up their phone and go looking for a hot cup of outrage to help them wake up.
I’m pretty uncomfortable with outrage. I mean, _obviously_ I experience it, but whenever I experience it, I pre-emptively feel guilty in a really complicated and unpleasant way. I’m like, “am I over-reacting?” “Am I doing something wrong that this is happening _to me_ or _around me_ or _that I care at all_?” “What can I do to make this better for me and/or other people?” Probably worst of all: how many times have _I_ done something functionally equivalent to what I am outraged by and is it even remotely possible that I could find the people I harmed and apologize to them without making it worse?
Basically, when I get ratcheted up about something, all that hot, unpleasant, anger/shame goes looking for anything like it I might have ever done so I can purge that from me or at least try to figure out how to do better next time.
Anyway. I don’t like it. I’d rather we focus on how we can take effective action cooperatively in the present to make the future better for all of us. Goals! LOL
I searched on (not in quotes) “addictive qualities of outrage”, and found this:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/jerkology/202108/maddiction-addiction-self-righteous-outrage
Apparently, I can’t even do outrage right.
“Outrage at other people’s failings evaporates all recollection of our similar failings. When outraged, we feel pure. Feel dirty? Bark at someone. You’ll feel cleansed.”
This is like when I was a kid, and still consuming milk products (which I am allergic to) and sick all the time and a member of a cult and so forth. They gave me a lot of a cough medicine that isn’t really prescribed anymore called hycomine, and to say that it could be abused is a real understatement. At one point in jr hi or hi school, I caught myself thinking, I’d really like to take some of that. I couldn’t believe I was thinking that. It was a rare moment when I _wasn’t sick at all_. And I wanted some cough medicine. Pretty much from that point, I did everything I could to avoid taking it (which meant I coughed _a lot_ more, among other things).
Now that I think about it, that cult has a whole lot of focus on other people’s sins resulting in feelings of personal cleanliness. I spent so much time thinking about Matt 23:27.
“Maddiction is the source of common undiagnosed madness, a mental illness because, though it makes one feel purged of sin, it’s an indulgence in the greatest violation of all: Ignoring reality.” Disconnecting from reality does really bother me.
“People who get maddicted feel moral but they’re really just high the self-aggrandizing buzz of moralizing at others.” I think of this as a category of “at-ing”. “Shaky finger” is a version of “at-ing”. Apparently, outrage is a version of “at-ing”. It’s when a person takes their own feelings and pushes them out at. Textbook projection, probably?
“Holy warrior” gets a paragraph. For sure, my image to go with “outrage” is a paladin. I looooooovvvveeee the idea of being a woman paladin, and also wow such a terrible idea. Never do that.
“High ideals fuel both outrage at others for falling short and more guilt about falling short oneself.” That seems helpful to know.
Apparently, Glenn Beck (yes, that one!) has written a book lamenting the influence of outrage on America. LOL. Mark Manson (yeah, him) has also posted on the topic of the addictive quality of outrage.
In 2019, the Globe had an article about it:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2019/05/01/are-addicted-anger/SkrH8k390jgtkY0JBObJ0K/story.html
(Probably behind a paywall, sorry!)
““The nature of anger is that it shuts off your cortex, your logic center, your thinking — it’s literally overriding that center of your brain,” said Dr. Jean Kim, a psychiatrist for the US Department of Health and Human Services.” Again, another thing I can’t seem to do right any more. Altho I actually have a pretty good idea _why_ — pay somebody to not-quite-beat-you-up twice a week for several years and teach you how to respond appropriately, and it rewires your brain and nervous system is super weird ways.
“Rage goes viral quicker than any other emotion. A study from Beihang University in China found that on Sina Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, joy spread faster than sadness, but outrage outran them all. Researchers from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who analyzed the most emailed New York Times articles over a three-month period for their emotional tone found that the only feeling that outpaced anger was awe. “Anger is a high-arousal emotion, which drives people to take action,” Jonah Berger, the marketing professor who conducted the study, told Smithsonian. “It makes you feel fired up, which makes you more likely to pass things on.””
Being raised in a cult is a helluva vaccination program against awe, let me tell you.
“However, the polemical nature of right-wing rhetoric may be pushing people on the left to react accordingly.”
Honestly, whenever you try to respond to someone in a super different tone / modality / you name it, someone is going to adjust to move you to the same wavelength or you won’t be able to sustain the connection. And if you are trying to be reasonable around someone who is outraging — help them do perspective taking, draw their attention to their own values of compassion and letting people have their own opinions and so forth — man, the outrage splashes all over the person trying to be reasonable.
The Globe piece also observes that as with more traditional addictive stuff, it takes more over time to get the same effect. I would add, maybe you need some _all_ the time, just to feel alive. Maybe if you don’t have that hot cup of outrage in the morning, you get a massive headache from not having had your outrage.
I think I’m mostly through this. (Altho who knows what another search string might find! There’s always more.) Outrage is a powerful motivational emotion, like lots of negative emotions (fear, anger, jealousy, revulsion). It’s helpful to not only _feel_ the motivating emotion, but to know how to take action. If feeling outraged is the thing that helps us feel better about whatever it was that outraged us, that’s kinda circular and self-defeating. Altho probably better than motivating someone to do something wrong and insane like that pizza thing or the more recent violence in SF. And honestly, it’s probably much _more_ helpful to avoid the feeling entirely, and go more directly to effective action.
I’m pretty uncomfortable with outrage. I mean, _obviously_ I experience it, but whenever I experience it, I pre-emptively feel guilty in a really complicated and unpleasant way. I’m like, “am I over-reacting?” “Am I doing something wrong that this is happening _to me_ or _around me_ or _that I care at all_?” “What can I do to make this better for me and/or other people?” Probably worst of all: how many times have _I_ done something functionally equivalent to what I am outraged by and is it even remotely possible that I could find the people I harmed and apologize to them without making it worse?
Basically, when I get ratcheted up about something, all that hot, unpleasant, anger/shame goes looking for anything like it I might have ever done so I can purge that from me or at least try to figure out how to do better next time.
Anyway. I don’t like it. I’d rather we focus on how we can take effective action cooperatively in the present to make the future better for all of us. Goals! LOL
I searched on (not in quotes) “addictive qualities of outrage”, and found this:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/jerkology/202108/maddiction-addiction-self-righteous-outrage
Apparently, I can’t even do outrage right.
“Outrage at other people’s failings evaporates all recollection of our similar failings. When outraged, we feel pure. Feel dirty? Bark at someone. You’ll feel cleansed.”
This is like when I was a kid, and still consuming milk products (which I am allergic to) and sick all the time and a member of a cult and so forth. They gave me a lot of a cough medicine that isn’t really prescribed anymore called hycomine, and to say that it could be abused is a real understatement. At one point in jr hi or hi school, I caught myself thinking, I’d really like to take some of that. I couldn’t believe I was thinking that. It was a rare moment when I _wasn’t sick at all_. And I wanted some cough medicine. Pretty much from that point, I did everything I could to avoid taking it (which meant I coughed _a lot_ more, among other things).
Now that I think about it, that cult has a whole lot of focus on other people’s sins resulting in feelings of personal cleanliness. I spent so much time thinking about Matt 23:27.
“Maddiction is the source of common undiagnosed madness, a mental illness because, though it makes one feel purged of sin, it’s an indulgence in the greatest violation of all: Ignoring reality.” Disconnecting from reality does really bother me.
“People who get maddicted feel moral but they’re really just high the self-aggrandizing buzz of moralizing at others.” I think of this as a category of “at-ing”. “Shaky finger” is a version of “at-ing”. Apparently, outrage is a version of “at-ing”. It’s when a person takes their own feelings and pushes them out at. Textbook projection, probably?
“Holy warrior” gets a paragraph. For sure, my image to go with “outrage” is a paladin. I looooooovvvveeee the idea of being a woman paladin, and also wow such a terrible idea. Never do that.
“High ideals fuel both outrage at others for falling short and more guilt about falling short oneself.” That seems helpful to know.
Apparently, Glenn Beck (yes, that one!) has written a book lamenting the influence of outrage on America. LOL. Mark Manson (yeah, him) has also posted on the topic of the addictive quality of outrage.
In 2019, the Globe had an article about it:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2019/05/01/are-addicted-anger/SkrH8k390jgtkY0JBObJ0K/story.html
(Probably behind a paywall, sorry!)
““The nature of anger is that it shuts off your cortex, your logic center, your thinking — it’s literally overriding that center of your brain,” said Dr. Jean Kim, a psychiatrist for the US Department of Health and Human Services.” Again, another thing I can’t seem to do right any more. Altho I actually have a pretty good idea _why_ — pay somebody to not-quite-beat-you-up twice a week for several years and teach you how to respond appropriately, and it rewires your brain and nervous system is super weird ways.
“Rage goes viral quicker than any other emotion. A study from Beihang University in China found that on Sina Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, joy spread faster than sadness, but outrage outran them all. Researchers from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who analyzed the most emailed New York Times articles over a three-month period for their emotional tone found that the only feeling that outpaced anger was awe. “Anger is a high-arousal emotion, which drives people to take action,” Jonah Berger, the marketing professor who conducted the study, told Smithsonian. “It makes you feel fired up, which makes you more likely to pass things on.””
Being raised in a cult is a helluva vaccination program against awe, let me tell you.
“However, the polemical nature of right-wing rhetoric may be pushing people on the left to react accordingly.”
Honestly, whenever you try to respond to someone in a super different tone / modality / you name it, someone is going to adjust to move you to the same wavelength or you won’t be able to sustain the connection. And if you are trying to be reasonable around someone who is outraging — help them do perspective taking, draw their attention to their own values of compassion and letting people have their own opinions and so forth — man, the outrage splashes all over the person trying to be reasonable.
The Globe piece also observes that as with more traditional addictive stuff, it takes more over time to get the same effect. I would add, maybe you need some _all_ the time, just to feel alive. Maybe if you don’t have that hot cup of outrage in the morning, you get a massive headache from not having had your outrage.
I think I’m mostly through this. (Altho who knows what another search string might find! There’s always more.) Outrage is a powerful motivational emotion, like lots of negative emotions (fear, anger, jealousy, revulsion). It’s helpful to not only _feel_ the motivating emotion, but to know how to take action. If feeling outraged is the thing that helps us feel better about whatever it was that outraged us, that’s kinda circular and self-defeating. Altho probably better than motivating someone to do something wrong and insane like that pizza thing or the more recent violence in SF. And honestly, it’s probably much _more_ helpful to avoid the feeling entirely, and go more directly to effective action.