moral outrage

Someone tweeted this morning, referring to a talk by Roshi Joan Halifax, that moral outrage is one of the enemies of compassion. It struck me, because I'd recently been having a discussion about moral outrage with a friend. She was trying to sort out what she was learning about meditation from her ideas about compassion and ethics. One thing she said is "if during my meditation I'm supposed to pay attention to right now, and then during the day I maintain a general mindfulness, when do I get to think about all the horrible stuff in the world? my personal traumas? war and famine? injustice and corruption?"

I wondered what would happen if she tried setting aside a specific time of day just for that? Like an hour in the afternoon for dwelling in moral outrage. What dawned from that was her realization that she actually was pretty attached to dwelling in moral outrage a good percentage of the day. This led to some other ponders that we bounced around: what happens to the memory of a past injustice if we don't think about it all day long? what happens to this or that war or famine if we don't dwell in moral outrage about it? Moreso, what happens to that same injustice or war or whatever if we *do* dwell in moral outrage all day long? Does that make it go away? Does it fix it? Does it change our feelings about it? Does it help in any way?

The assumption might be that if we are not constantly outraged then we must not care anymore. If that time spent in moral outrage were being spent actually doing something (whether that something is fundraising, providing physical assistance, or metta practice/prayer) - does that not have more of an actual effect?

What does it say about who we think we are and how we see ourselves if we think that ongoing moral outrage is something we can't put down?

Thoughts on this?

What does it say about who we think we are and how we see ourselves if we think that ongoing moral outrage is something we can't put down?

-ona

Maybe it says that we're human? I find myself grabbing for all sorts of things in my attempts to avoid fear and unpleasantness. Some of those things are actually quite painful and yet it can be hard to let go. Moral outrage appears to be just one more way to clearly define self vs other or us vs them.

Jack Kornfield has a lot of good things to say about forgiveness. For example: forgiving does not mean forgetting. He also points out that the only person hurt from holding on to anger (and I guess moral outrage as well) is the person holding on to that feeling not the person who transgressed in some way. Here's a good interview he gave on KQED just a few days ago where he touches on that topic: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201109011000

Another point of view, from my teacher, Tempel Smith, who pointed out that working from a source of anger or rage leads to burn out. Working from a source of compassion is a much more sustainable option. So if you want to make a change, let go of your outrage because it may be a source for a short burst of energy but it's not something you want to base a life of activism on.

I was recently talking about this with a friend of mine who has historically been very politically active, especially in the moral outrage sense, but has recently been getting into the dharma and investigating how those things interact. I'll post what I wrote to him.

"

To be honest I don't find it useful to spend a lot of my processor time on political thought. I think one can spend years of one's life on getting really whipped up over all the assholes in the world, and similarly getting really depressed over all the political imperfection in the world, both to no real practical effect. And I think one can spend years of one's life really cultivating an identity as a political individual, without ever getting an iota more peace out of life.

Unfortunately I think that Buddhism, and the counseling of equanimity—and further, having to come to grips with the fact that suffering is a fundamental quality of the world, and the fact that millions of people across the globe are being brutally, systematically cruel on a daily basis is of the exact same ontological fabric as any more civilized state of affairs—is not good for politics, or at least politics as they seem to be practiced in my society, which consists of one part responsible participation in the political system, and ten parts endless agita and rage over what other people are doing in places you can't affect.

In other words, I don't think my beliefs, or my politics, are really compatible with Buddhism, because my beliefs only take the form of my arguing about them, or declaiming them. Buddhism is incompatible with ALL beliefs, because Buddhism only believes in action. When you talk about action, Buddhism becomes compatible again: volunteering, voting for whoever you think will do the common good, building houses, giving tsedakah, whatever. I think it's painful for a lot of us to relinquish our political identities, and become just some schmuck who helps out where he can and tries to get the right people in office, but I think it's very necessary.

"

In other words, my intuition is that moral outrage, or at least, our clinging to moral outrage, often has a lot more to do with our habits of self-view—what does it say about me as a person? i am a moral person—than our sense of active compassion.


EDIT: Come to think of it, my intuition is that a LOT of our clinging to various forms of suffering has to do with self-view. I was just talking about this earlier tonight, and it keeps coming up for me: myself and so many people that I know cling or have clung to some silly suffering, to some Sam Spade-like misanthropy, some miserable hungover bitter solitary oppositional stance, because it provides such a compelling identity, such a powerful sense of self. Sure, it hurts. But I think the majority of us are more than happy to cling tighter to the pain, including moral outrage, as long as it provides other things for us.

Yeah, if moral outrage is too heavily tinted with anger, it likely contains a deeper hurt and subsequent pushing away or lack of engagement/communication. Emotion without action is really a coping device. Action without communication/engagement is really just a reaction-formation kind of thing, where the expression of moral outrage takes in a form that's pretty similar to what caused the outrage in the first place.



Maybe the distinction between morality/moral action and moral outrage is a good one.



"But I think the majority of us are more than happy to cling tighter to the pain, including moral outrage, as long as it provides other things for us. "



So true, myself included.

(don't know why the font is big in the post above, all I did that was tricky was cut and paste from crux's post)

Yes, fascinating the clinging to pain! You think that surely you would be inclined to reject unpleasantness, but if you look you sometimes are actually clinging to it. Figuring out what you are getting from that is a fascinating process.

There's a book title that explains a lot: War Is the Force that Gives Us Meaning.