About Outrageous Outrage

Post 465:

            As humans, we have the tendency to get a little worked up. For evidence, I’ll cite my own proclivities toward rash behavior and the history of everything ever.

            I don’t know that people are more outraged now than they used to be—could be that it just seems that way because of the internet and the fact that there’s 27 billion cameras that can broadcast worldwide at any moment. It’s debatable. I can see that there’s a host of people that are invested in getting the folks’ blood boiling. Tricky, that lot. I’ve always viewed issues as complicated things. Maybe one of the only things I do well is change my mind. For instance, I’ll probably take that statement back in the next few days.

            I was trying to think of an example to illustrate the pitfalls of shock and disgust, and it hit me, as most things do, while I was drinking.

            Actually, it’s rare that anything of note rings in my head whilst imbibing, but drinking actually has a bit to do with this essay, so I left that in.

            Looking into my beer, the idea of prohibition crept in the room. It made me laugh, actually. An actual Amendment to the Constitution saying NO BOOZE. So…free speech, no unlawful searches, habeas corpus, and NO BOOZE. How did this happen?

            This is not a defense of alcohol; we’re just doing a little analyzing, seeing how this happened. Still looking into my drink, it occurred to me that there must’ve been a huge amount of outrage to get this law on the books. I looked it up to see. I knew there were temperance leagues, but I was surprised to see how effective they were at stirring up the anti-booze sentiment.

            Okay. I’m guessing most of the folks back in the day were trying to do good; alcohol isn’t great for you, and it causes a lot of people to turn into complete jackasses. It can ruin families, health, and all the rest.

            So at this point, I can sort of see the logic behind the outrage. There’s usually a certain logic behind every viewpoint, unless the group or people are just barking mad. The issue is that the logic gets twisted or warped when the anger seeps in; it can have a blinding effect, cutting off one’s ability to carry on with the logic. There’s only so much space in the brain; if you’re super pissed, that’s taking up a lot of the real estate that might be used for more rationality.

            The anger business is rough. A little righteous indignation is a fine thing, but sometimes the consequences can be frigging disastrous. The Christian League of No Drinking and/or Fun probably didn’t think about the Tommy guns and the gangland violence that would come from their good deeds, but having succeeded by providing the requisite amount of outrage, laws were passed and the gauntlet had been thrown down.

            Was it a net loss or gain? Maybe there was a lot less drinking and therefore a ton of people gave it up. Could be that the cases of liver disease went down so dramatically that it offset all the dudes blown to bits in Chicago. It’s tricky. We want to make things happen. A perfectly normal and necessary quality, but it seems a common human tendency to conflate anger with effectiveness. I hope that’s not the case.

            I’ve always been a sort of hothead, so I get it. Hopefully equanimity prevails as I reach the years of the gray hairs, but it’s still early to tell. Maybe I’ll just have a drink and try not to think about it. Thankfully, someone got outraged about the outrage back in 1933 and they brought back the booze. Cheers. Literally. See you after.