A scarred face and broken teeth stared out at me from my Facebook feed. The headline read, “Is this acceptable?” and plenty of people had jumped in to answer an emphatic “no!” Because that face had been created when a policeman threw the young woman to the ground, many added varying opinions of the police and policing.
How many then read down to see that the story was from 2013? That an incident over two years old was being recycled in the current anti-police climate to add an extra dose of outrage?
And how many clicked on the Facebook concatenation of similar stories, offered as a main course of outrage after the teaser?
Another face: some harried public official defending Planned Parenthood after the leak of videos where its officials spoke of selling fetal organs. And another invitation to outrage. And a response. One comment called supporters of abortion rights the successors of Hitler’s genocide, called for the burning down of every Planned Parenthood office, and looked forward to seeing its employees burn in the fires of hell.
And again, below the Facebook post, and list of similar posts designed to fuel further outrage.
Need I say that the same kind of things happens when there is a story about some clueless conservative attack on pro-choice politicians, or about ISIS and Muslim terrorists, or about opponents (and supporters) of immigrant rights.
Facebook’s marketing of stories based on perceived interest, which is non-different from that of Twitter, Instagram, and virtually every other form of social media feeds right into our contemporary American love of being outraged. Particular forms of outrage have become the primary means of identifying the members of one’s own tribe, and as a nation may be our only shared experience.
It’s just that outrage is no more effective in changing things than is the warm glow that comes from watching endless videos of cute puppies, clueless cats, or silly children is a cure for real depression.
What Facebook and its online imitators are offering is events without analysis, and facts without context. And the result is not merely outrage, but prejudice and bigotry.
Humans are genetically programmed to remember violent behavior and the people who create it. And two or three similar events is all we need to conclude that a particular group is dangerous to us. So social media concatenations of events are a truly effective way of playing on visceral emotional responses to create prejudice.
Show me a hundred Islamist terrorist attacks and I know nothing about Islam, but I’ll certainly have deepening prejudice against Muslims. Show me every case of police brutality from Rodney King to Sandra Bland . . . and I won’t learn any more about how racism but I will certainly have a deepening distrust and even loathing of the police. (Or, and let’s be honest, exactly the same video feeds can stoke by own racism as again and again African Americans are associated with violence and crime.)
Worse, Facebook outrage, or even that outrage that spills out into the streets in protest, does little to actually affect social change. Outrage is too unfocused, to undirected, to actually begin to shape human behavior. Often it is completely dissipated by simply clicking the “share” button. It contents itself, like most emotions, with simply being expressed.
The effects of outrage, whether real or merely worn like slogan covered t-shirt for the camera, are negative. Outrage clouds the mind, debilitates public discourse, creates bigotry and hate, and ultimately erodes our humanity. It turns us into fang-bared beasts gathered into our ravaging packs looking for blood.
Those of us who for whom Facebook remains a great way to catch up on events, and Twitter a platform for significant conversations, need to ask before we post: am I feeding my addiction to outrage? Or am I passing on the angry drug that addles our collective mind?
I offer a favorite poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, wise now as it was then. I suggest you look up the entire poem.
The Brewing of Soma (final verses)
“These libations mixed with milk have been prepared for Indra: offer Soma to the drinker of Soma.” –Vashista, translated by MAX MULLER.
Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.
In simple trust like theirs who heard
Beside the Syrian sea
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise up and follow Thee.
O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
The silence of eternity
Interpreted by love!
With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown
The tender whisper of Thy call,
As noiseless let Thy blessing fall
As fell Thy manna down.
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!
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