The Impotence of Outrage
On this Election Eve
Bound, by Dan Hillier.
For every thousand hackings at the branches of evil, there is one striking at the root.
- Henry David Thoreau
The latest headlines are carefully crafted to grab your attention. They showcase the latest horror or atrocity to do one thing: sell advertisements by triggering fear responses in your brain, body, and nervous system. The news isn’t designed to give you useful information or to help you live a better life. It’s designed to provoke outrage, because when you are outraged, you’re the perfect carrier for the news. Outrage not only holds your attention but also makes you want to get the attention of others. When you’re outraged, you want others to feel it too. So you share the news, and each time, you capture more attention for it—spending your own time and energy to spread the outrage and helping the news cycle continue. The end result? The news gets attention, and that attention brings money to the platform, the news source, and its advertisers. But what do you get?
Is there any benefit to the outrage you experience from the news? Does it make you more informed? But what does that really mean? For instance, if I hear about a mass shooting in Texas while I live in Ohio, can I actually do anything to stop it? No—it’s already happened. So the event itself is beyond my control. But could I stop the next one? I might think I could change the gun laws. But I’m not a legislator, so I can’t change the law, right? Even if I convince one legislator to act, that’s just one person. It takes hundreds of lawmakers, a president, and multiple court rulings to bring about major changes in law. And don’t forget—there are many people, equally outraged, who passionately believe the government has no right to take their guns. So even if I commit time, energy, and money to the cause, the outcome is far from certain and likely to face intense opposition.
Are there any other possible benefits? Maybe being outraged makes me feel more righteous in my morality. But what does that actually do for me? Is there any benefit to knowing that I find certain acts horrific or immoral? Perhaps I feel morally superior to those who think differently—those who believe, for example, that gun rights are more important than regulation. But wait—does that actually help anything? No, it seems more likely to divide me from others. If I’m divided from others and see my stance as morally superior, how can I hope to come together with those who think differently to find any kind of solution to the issue that outraged me? Likely, I can’t. So what value is there in being “right” if being right leads to nothing being done?
What about the costs of outrage? What happens to my body when I become outraged by the latest terrible news? The outrage triggers a rush of chemicals, creating an acute stress response tied to a primitive mechanism in our bodies that’s useful for emergencies, like escaping a tiger. Chemicals like cortisol are released, which help preserve life in immediate danger but come at a steep cost: inflammation and hormonal imbalances that cause lasting harm to the body and nervous system. Over time, repeated outrage affects your health and immune system, emotions, and can even lead to stress, anxiety, depression, mood swings, anger, loss of sleep, poor dietary choices, lack of motivation—the list goes on. These effects can cause short-term health problems and, over time, contribute to chronic disease. They also take a toll on mental health: if you are constantly exposed to things that trigger outrage, you begin to assume the world is unsafe, that danger lurks around every corner. You start to feel suspicious of others, distrusting them. For a species like ours, which relies on mutual cooperation, this mindset is disastrous. It fosters widespread distrust and tribalism, where we fear or avoid those who don’t share our exact beliefs and values.
When these types of physical and psychological harms happen to you, they’re not confined to you alone, because you likely don’t live in isolation. When you’re full of anxiety or fear, when you’re angry or sleep-deprived, almost every interaction you have with others is affected. So your harm becomes harm to them, and because you are in a relationship with them, their harm cycles back to you. This creates a vicious cycle of harm. And what started it? The news. Yet we act as if this isn’t the case. There’s no regard for the effects of such stories on those who see them, or for the cascading effects across society as stress, anger, suspicion, and broken relationships pass from person to person. Could the harm that outrage causes itself contribute to the problems we’re outraged by? Why did that person commit that terrible act? Perhaps because they lived in a family or a society with broken relationships, where fear, anxiety, suspicion, poor communication, and psychological struggles create a state of constant fear and outrage.
But you mean well, and you’re justified in being upset at the state of things. You’re right to be outraged by the latest war, child trafficking, kidnapping, murder, brutality, violence, corruption—all of it is horrible. Yes, these are terrible things. You are right. But these are terrible things you have little control over. The question is, is there something you do have control over that might actually relate to these larger problems?
The harm that outrages you stems, at its core, from humans doing something harmful to others, right? You likely believe that harming others is wrong. That belief is at the root of your anger. If so, then harming yourself and those around you through your own outrage is doing the very thing you say shouldn’t be done. Outrage is also about holding people responsible for harm, right? If you believe others should be held responsible for harm, then shouldn’t you hold yourself responsible for any harm you cause? So if you stop harming yourself and those around you by letting go of needless outrage, is that not something you can actually control?
Do you have control over yourself? Yes, to a degree. Can you learn to control your attention? Yes. Can you choose where to direct your attention? Yes. Can you choose not to be outraged by avoiding things that provoke outrage? Yes. You can control a lot about yourself. So, what happens when, instead of being outraged over things beyond your control, you turn inward and ask what you can do? Can you examine your life, your way of being, to see if anything you do might be contributing to a world where harm seems to multiply? And can you change what you find in yourself? Yes.
What happens when you do this? When you focus on yourself instead of behaviors of others that you can’t control? Do your emotions improve, your stress levels go down? Do you show up more fully for yourself, your children, and your friends? What happens when you improve your relationship with yourself and, as a result, your relationships with others? Do these changes make the world look a little more like the world you want to live in?
The things that outrage you—at their root, what causes them? Are they due to poor and dysfunctional relationships? Are they due to an inability to see and relate to others with love and compassion? Are they due to selfish desires on the part of individuals, countries, religions? Aren’t these all just relationships that have been damaged? Aren’t our relationships with ourselves, our friends, family, and community the only things we truly control? By addressing the smaller problems here, now, beginning with yourself, aren’t you also addressing the larger problems? If I can change, the world can change. It may not be a quick fix, but it’s a lasting one. So let’s change the channel and make ourselves into the world we want to see.