Mishandled Fuel, or Near Enemies of Righteous Indignation

I continue to turn over in my mind Amy Olberding's meditations on civility and incivility. Warning of the dangers of righteous incivility, Olberding cites 5th century philosopher Buddaghosa, who writes about the "near enemies" of virtues:

Virtues, Buddhaghosa argues, do not simply have corresponding vices, they also have near enemies – seductive, plausible counterfeits that closely resemble the virtues but are nonetheless distortions of it. This is why, he explains, we can mistake indifference for equanimity, or attachment for love. These can look alike, and the risk is that we aim for one but hit the other. Worse still, because of their resemblance, we can call a bullseye when we miss. I can think I have achieved the unperturbed poise of equanimity when in fact I simply fail to care enough – I enjoy the dubious peace that indifference to the world and all its woes can bring. The near enemy is a far more subtle form of error than plain vice, for it is moral failure taken as success.

When we act uncivilly in the name of righteous indignation, in other words, we often mistake as righteous a pique that is merely petty or even selfish. Just about all the recent works celebrating the power of anger and rage--especially the rage of women and people of color--acknowledge that rage may be misdirected. Rebecca Traister, for example, suggests that anger is like an explosive fuel: useful, even essential, to move big things but destructive when mishandled. Traister et al. come down on the pro-anger side, however, as a corrective to cultural (patriarchal, white supremacist) disciplines that shame, belittle, or suppress anger.

Olberding works from the other direction. She nods to the occasional necessity of incivility, and she rejects configurations of civility that would prohibit anger. But the argument she makes--the one I find compelling--is that angry actions and reactions are less likely to result in productive uses of incivility. To extend Traister's analogy a bit, rocket fuel is useful rather than destructive in a relatively narrow range of uses. It's much easier to make fuel explode, all things being equal, than to make it explode in precisely the controlled manner necessary for internal combustion engines. To call anger "in many ways exactly like fuel" as Traister does (Good and Mad xxiii) surely suggests that anger requires an immense amount of discipline, machine-precise contexts to calibrate and direct its force.

Yet righteous indignation, Olberding notes, elicits pleasure in part because it refuses such discipline. It's a release. It blows the machine apart.

And I think it's largely a fantasy--or at least an exception--that such combustion brings about a better situation all by itself.

Let me clarify: sometimes an outburst destroys a machine that was causing misery. Setting a boundary in a relationship or social system where harm or oppression has been normalized can feel explosive. A statement like I want you to stop belittling me in front of my co-workers or Hands off of me can seem out of control. It's a show-stopper statement, an angry expression that violates the norms of politeness and comity. Yet many abusive relational systems depend upon the appearance of civility to thrive. Boundary-setting acts that disrupt that system often get taken as rude behavior by the boundary-setter. Why are you being so sensitive? You really hurt my feelings and made everyone uncomfortable when you said that! In fact, it's the system, the situation before the boundary was set, that was insensitive, hurtful, and uncomfortable. The boundary-setter simply surfaces those feelings, returns the awkwardness to the sender, and refuses to participate any more.

Surely that's righteous indignation-fueled incivility working, right?

Yes, but. In those times in my life where I've set a boundary or had a boundary set against me effectively, the situation feels anything but thrilling. Most of the time, I've rehearsed carefully just what I'm going to say, how I'll say it, and what I'll do to handle the various expected responses to my boundary. Effective boundary-setting, in other words, consists of anger channeled through discipline. And even then it often blows up in my face (though sometimes even that is better than the status quo ante).

More often, though, my outrage fails to draw a good or clear boundary. I instead fight fire with fire, abuse with abuse. Or I just lash out indiscriminately at everyone. I'm frustrated at X, but I scream at everyone. It's the opposite of the controlled kind of angry response that gets me results that improve the situation that angered me in the first place.

Or, rather, indiscriminate rage shotgun-blasted out is a near enemy of effective righteous indignation and boundary-setting.

More tomorrow,

JF