I wish our culture would take a moment to think before it opened its collective mouth. We learned it when we were three years old: Think before you speak. It amazes me, the destructive cycle we enter by ignoring that advice.
In the last month alone we’ve been bombarded with so much tragedy in the world. Religious extremists killing en masse. Mentally unstable individuals using guns to injure and kill with reckless abandon. Regular instances of white cops killing black men and women. Every single time we cry out in outrage, “Why is this still happening?!”
It’s good to be outraged by these things. We need to be. Outrage is the first step towards impact, toward change. That’s the thing though, outrage is only valuable as a kickstarter for change. As a result, how we channel our outrage matters. In fact, it’s arguably the most important piece of the puzzle.
Nowadays, it seems like our culture uses these tragedies to give itself a nice little “outrage high”. We scream our outrage and spew out our opinions as loudly and quickly as possible. We then give ourselves a gold star, pat ourselves on the back, and call it a day.
In spewing out our opinions and walking away so quickly, we never stick through to the end. We add the instance to our evidence for some pre-determined argument of ours before the truth ever surfaces. We add it to the case for gun control before we know how the gun was obtained. We add it to the case for more national security before we understand who the religious extremists were who attacked. We simultaneously become more misinformed, more unwavering in our opinion despite this, and therefore less and less capable of understanding the complexities of the issues. How the hell can we find a solution if we don’t understand what the real problem is, what really happened?
In getting our high and walking away, we never make change happen. The only way to stop these things is to look at the system and create negative incentives for doing so. We have to make it so the consequences of murder, whether due to religious extremism, racism, or mental instability doesn’t pay. We need to understand why and how it happens, and how to stop it. We need to follow through. We need to show up and make change happen.
Right now, the world doesn’t need more gutteral reactive nonsense. It needs more people thinking before they speak. It needs more people taking the time to carefully deliberate the issues and say something thoughtful, something impactful. We need people to say things that make us follow through. That motivate us to push for change.
Yes, we need outrage, but less of the short-sighted and temporary and more of the considerate and change-oriented variety.
Honestly, I don’t know how to do this. Writing this is my first step. Our culture lives off of the outrage high. It screams for 3 days and then the story falls by the wayside. If you know of a way to help, send me an email or share in the comments.
Let’s speak for the sake of improvement and solutions, not for the sake of outrage alone.