OUTRAGE

If you’re not outraged about something – about ANYTHING – you probably need to have your pulse checked! 

 Disaffection with the way things are, or just happen to be – or are contrived to be or are perceived to be – is part of our innate makeup.  It’s what drives us on – sometimes “up the wall”, but sometimes up the ladder of personal achievement.  

However, increasing numbers of journeymen are taking less and less salient disaffections to a high art of outrage.  Politicians (mainly male) are exceptional practitioners of this new high art!  Radio talk show hosts may even be the superstars of outrage … of course, they’ve got to foment flaming disaffection to keep their edge as “Go To” savant sentinels of the Republic.

Unfortunately, opportunists and fringe practitioners go to extremes in simply being cynical and critical of everything, owing to the common conceit that distrust and disapproval are the sole prerogative and prime province of sages and sovereigns. 

“A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn't enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong.”  Lewis H. Lapham, editor and writer (b. 8 Jan 1935)

And anti-social social media has made it de rigueur; if you haven’t been disaffected to a point of outrage about someone or something, you can’t expect much of a “following”.  It’s the new paradigm for assertive self-expression and self-actualization, not to mention self-promotion.

Even before social media, Earl Pitts, “Umurikan” was the poster person for outrage, beginning each tirade with his trademarked preamble, “You know what makes me sick; you know what makes me so angry I could eat a bucket of nail – points first … ?” 

Earl Pitts, American

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOGoCb0SKrU

  

Conspiracy theory provides prime foundational fodder for outrage … and the more “conspiratorial” and the more “outrageous”, the better.  Fabrications are fair game, since novelty/innovation/shock value trumps (sic.) rationality and reasonability!

Pathologic obstination can be a formidable driving force for malignant outrage.

NEWS FLASH January 6, 2016: Florida Atlantic University Professor James Tracy took outrage to a new low, claiming the Obama Administration fabricated the massacre at Sandy Hook in order to justify government control over guns.  (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/florida-atlantic-university-fires-james-tracy-professor-who-questioned-sandy-n491431)

Healthy skepticism is a learned but friable art.  The educational process encourages, supports and cultivates critical thinking skills.  Combined with creativity, critical thinking skills are largely responsible for every major advance in the world.

Scientists are admonished to be trustworthy in ferreting out sound understandings of the universe – allowing that interpretations of data are fraught with pitfalls; thus, “rigged conditions”, selective circumstances, subjectivity and limited frames of reference often leave us with only circumstantial truths to be doggedly pursued to their logical or illogical conclusions.

Of course, the United States of America was founded in the wake of outrage against tyranny/oppression, injustice, religious intolerance, and taxation without representation.  Free speech – i.e., freedom to vent one’s outrage – is a cornerstone principle in the US constitution.  In fact, it can easily be seen as an obligation:

“He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth

 makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.”

Charles Peguy

However, knowing for sure that one has the Truth, and nothing but the Truth is the nub of the question.  It’s worth periodically revisiting “The Blind Men and the Elephant” for reference …  http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_elephant.html 

The suppression of outrage can, itself, become an outrage:

Dateline January 4, 2016: Saudi Arabia's leading Shiite cleric, Nimr al-Nimr, was sentenced to death in a closed trial on [trumped-up?] charges such as being disloyal to the ruling family, using violence and seeking foreign meddling. Nimr al-Nimr was executed, along with 46 supporters/sympathasizers.  (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/05/opinion/saudi-arabias-barbaric-executions.html?_r=0)

FINAL THOUGHT:  There’s plenty enough legitimate fodder for outrage – both in the world at large and in ourselves – to keep the vigilante fires burning for the duration without trumped-up fabrications.  Outrage against poverty, injustice, ignorance, rationalization, inequality, indifference, mediocrity and ineptitude … and against fabrication, itself … is more than fair game for venting.

Let’s get REAL, get agitated, and get righteously OUTRAGED about things that really matter, and then let’s go DO something to make the world better.  Quartermaster