The Malice of Perpetual Outrage
Written for Covenant, the blog od The Living Church, June 17, 2016
A good deal of digital ink was spilled over the incident at the Cincinnati Zoo, and it is already fading from our collective consciousness: the 4-year-old boy who fell into the enclosure, and the 17-year-old western lowland gorilla, Harambe, who was put down by the zoo in order to protect the child. There were the usual recriminations when tough decisions have to be made and the usual outrage about the death of an animal, particularly an endangered one.
Taking the time to analyze situations — investigating, asking questions, or playing “what if,” assuming we don’t couple those things with outrage, threats, or abuse — can be helpful. One of the few ways our response to challenges may improve is through asking tough questions. But in this and other recent situations, few people are actually engaging in anything constructive (though some pretty good memes were inspired by it; see below).
Several articles have discussed the situation from Christian perspectives; our friends over at Mockingbird wrote two of them. Sarah Condon’s piece was a thoughtful and compelling plea for grace, reminding us that we are all closer than we realize to our own 15 minutes of public shame and scorn:
Life is full of gorilla pit failures. But we live in a culture that is only interested in talking about failure if there is a perceived victory to absolve the mistake. We long to control and to rise up from our lives, but there is no victory here. A boy was almost killed and his parents will be wounded forever. There is no “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” that will fix their hearts after such a terrifying moment. Certainly the newsfeed backlash must make the entire experience so much worse. Sometimes terrible things happen, and there are no mechanisms for blame that will make anyone feel better. (“You Are One Day Away From Being Tabloid News: Why We Are All the Gorilla Pit Mom,” Mockingbird [June 1])
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And Eric Dorman (full disclosure: a friend and parishioner of mine) has written about how the response to this event and our culture of perpetual outrage reflect our own failings and sinfulness:
And before anyone starts to feel smug, let’s remember that Outrage’s psyche comprises more than one part. Right and left, young and old, religious and non, Buckley and Vidal — we’ve all created this monster. The beast is our child. (“Feeding the Beast: Grace for an Outraged World,” Mockingbird [June 2])
Indeed, Dorman reflects, we aren’t just purveyors of outrage, we’re addicted to it. But why? Why are we so quick to show outrage? Why does our collective blood run so hot at the deaths of animals, or the latest offense against public sentiment, yet so lukewarm or cold at the deaths of our fellow human beings, whether it be people dead from war, famine, gun violence, or other forms of murder? Some have tried to answer the question, arguing that we react so strongly to the deaths of animals because we anthropomorphize them, and we get caught up in the mob mentality. Meanwhile, we have been conditioned to accept human suffering, and are perhaps only jogged from our stupor by events of outstanding horror and brutality, such as the mass shootings in Orlando.