Outrage

Sometimes when we back down from our positions in the face of outrage, we do more harm than good. For a start, we send to the world this message: outrage is a currency that can buy you out of seeing things you don’t like.

A comedian on television says something ‘offensive’. A viewer is outraged and complains to the station. The station censures the comedian and issues an apology. In this series of events, the only possible result is that the viewer (and the person who learns from the viewer’s experience) is given an incentive to display outrage in the future.

This leads almost inexorably to the situation that we now find ourselves in, where people think democracy is just about getting the greatest number of shrill voices to scream the same things you scream. It’s a kind of democracy, but so, in a way, is a pitchfork-and-torch-wielding mob.