Moral outrage–moral, or outrageous?

Our world is divided. Our countries, our cities, and—for many of us—our families are rent apart. Have you had a conversation recently in which you knew you didn’t agree with the other party? Do you remember the dread you felt when that topic got brought up again?

It’s possible you ended up exasperated, but I’d bet my best watch on this: At least one of you was fuming at the end of that conversation. Moreover, whoever was angry felt his or her indignation was righteous.

You’ve probably seen people raging on social media, too. They’re often angry about their pet topics, and their sustainment of their anger would be positively impressive if it were an endurance sport.

What are we to make of all this morally fueled anger? Should we feel angry? How should we feel about feeling angry? What should we do with our outrage?

Cletus helped us hone our understanding of the nature of morality in a previous post. This time, we’ll turn to the village of Knuf and our protagonist, Adeline.

Adeline stepped out onto a muddy street and turned west toward the river that ran right through the center of Knuf. She strode toward the produce market, running through the list of things she’d need to do before sundown in her head. After crossing a bridge and a couple of intersections, she turned onto Wide Street.

After a couple more steps down Wide Street, Adeline felt something was amiss. She stopped, looking around and seeing people staring at her and whispering to each other. She felt as though she’d forgotten to do something. She racked her brain for the forgotten thing, and slowly, she began to feel awareness of the forgotten thing in her hands. The balance of the weight in each of her hands felt wrong for this side of the river. She pulled her eyes downward and, to her horror and dismay, saw her basket for collecting produce in her left hand. She looked up again at the starers and whisperers and saw baskets only in right hands.

Now you’ve done it, Adeline.

Knowing it was already too late, she desperately swapped her own basket to her right hand. You see, East Knufers like Adeline carried their baskets in their left hands, except when they crossed the bridge into West Knuf, because West Knufers carried their baskets in their right hands. West Knufers expected East Knufers to adopt their basket-carrying custom whenever they crossed the bridge connecting the two sides, and vice versa.

The origin of the split custom was a little murky. Some said the custom originated after a brawl between two farmers from each side of the river. Things had gotten out of hand, costing the West Knuf farmer his left arm when the East Knuf farmer decided a sickle would do the job that words wouldn’t. Out of respect for the West Knuf farmer’s loss of his left arm, West Knufers thenceforth carried objects in their right hands. East Knufers carried objects in their left in a show of support for the East Knuf farmer.

Another story had it that the people who’d first arrived in Knuf did so on boats from upriver. They’d had a disagreement toward the end of their river journey, so they decided to land on opposite banks of the river. As the river flowed to the south, the West Knuffers had turned right, while the East Knuffers had turned left. Each party then carried objects in the hand of the direction they’d turned at that first landing.

There were about a dozen stories, though, and the reality was that probably no one really knew why the custom existed, although you’d have thought the believers of each of these stories had seen the events with their own eyes based on how strongly they believed it. What people did know, though, was that Adeline was the first to violate this custom in living memory.

I wish the street would open up and swallow me, Adeline thought. But she needed to eat, and the much longer walk to the East Knuf market would have left her to-do list untouched by sundown. She picked up her pace, kept her head down, and rushed to the market.

Her first stop at the market was the tomato stand. When she asked the vendor how much for a half dozen of them, the vendor replied gruffly, “Six crowns.”

Apparently, I didn’t beat word of my error here, thought Adeline. “Sir,” she said, “that’s more than twice what it was last week.”

“Twelve then,” he replied.

“Sir, please…” she began.

“Forget about it. Turn around, take your basket, and go back across the bridge.”

“Please, sir, I need to eat tonight.”

“Then there’s a market in East Knuf that you and your left hand can take your basket to.”

Adeline, wanting to avoid further enraging the man and drawing more attention to herself, moved on to the next stall. But she was met with a similarly cold reception there, along with the next stall, as well as the one after that.

Noticing that a hostile crowd was beginning to gather around her, Adeline decided she’d better not push her luck. She pushed through the thinnest part of the crowd and scurried toward the bridge back to East Knuf.

“Take yourself and your basket back to East Knuf!” shouted a middle-aged West Knufer standing in her doorway. “And don’t come back!” Others started to yell out of their own windows and doorways.

Adeline broke into a run, not stopping until she reached her door, entered her home, and collapsed on her bed, hungry and in tears. Now I’ve gotten nothing done, and tomorrow I’ll have to walk all the way to the East Knuf market, she thought. I’ll sleep hungry tonight, too. She sobbed in waves for a few hours, alternately beating herself up for her error and resenting the lack of understanding on the part of the West Knuffers. I probably won’t be able to go back to West Knuf until I give this a few weeks to blow over. And that was the last thought she had before she finally drifted off to sleep.

How wrong she was. Nothing whatsoever blew over, but the flames of West Knuff’s anger were certainly fanned, mostly by the West Knuffers themselves. All the talk in West Knuff was of that disrespectful East Knuffer who had the nerve to carry her basket in her left hand in West Knuf. She had clearly meant to taunt West Knuffers with the memory of that heinous sickle attack on the West Knuf farmer. Or she’d meant to dredge up those ancient divisions that had separated the original settlers in the first place. For every origin story about the custom, there was a related explanation of Adeline’s nefarious motivations.

The outrage continued long after the initial emotional reaction would have died naturally. Gossip was exchanged, essays were written and distributed, and the flames of West Knuff’s anger grew hotter. When those flames grew hot enough, East Knuffers began to get angry as well.

The markets were made off limits to villagers from the other side of the river. Soon, East Knuffers had to do without tomatoes entirely because only West Knuffers grew them. West Knuffers went without certain fruits and vegetables as well. Within a matter of weeks, very few people saw any reason to cross the river and interact with the people on the other side.

Then, in the middle of the night, someone—no one knows who—destroyed the bridge connecting East and West Knuf. Even those who wanted to cross would have to do so by ferry. By that point, being on the opposite side of the river was considered more dangerous than crossing the river.

And just like that, the village of Knuf tore itself apart.

Adeline and Knuf leave us with a few things to ponder. First, what basket-carry customs do we have in our lives? How many things do we believe or do without fully understanding why? How many times do we become outraged by events we don’t really understand ourselves, but we think we’re supposed to be outraged because—duh—everyone else around us is, too? It’s hard to make the case that this sort of moral outrage is moral at all.

Second, there are things that cause us to be outraged that we do understand. Our anger is not always misplaced. But what do we gain from sustaining it beyond its natural course? The West Knuffers who thought that they were honoring the memory of the farmer who’d quite wrongfully been attacked generations ago no doubt thought their outrage was the morally correct emotion to feel. Perhaps that’s why they went to such great lengths to sustain it. Yet our artificial sustainment and fueling of long-term outrage inevitably leads to a desire to destroy the object of our anger, even if that destruction would also entail great cost to ourselves. This remains true even when our anger is completely justified. Is there perhaps a better way to respond to outrageous events than maintaining a permanent state of anger?

This brings us to our third lesson from Knuf. Given the rather arbitrary and unknown origin of the basket carrying custom, what if some West Knuffers had begun carrying their baskets in their left hands as a show of forgiveness for one East Knuffer’s mistake? Alternatively, what if the origin of the custom was known and more clear-cut? Could some West Knuffers have stood at the bridge and gently reminded crossing East Knuffers to change their basket-carrying hands? Perhaps some vendors in West Knuf could have continued to serve Adeline at normal prices. Or they could have met her at the bridge to throw her a picnic on the very public and central feature, showing that at least they’d forgiven her mistake.

Even amid deep offense, there is almost always a way to find an opportunity to make whatever Knuf you live in more connected and united. Don’t get me wrong, there are real offenses. There are even circumstances, I think, that call for a fight. So be angry if you must, and fight if you absolutely must. But whenever we have the chance, we will do far better spending our time and energy making the world wonderful, beautiful, and kind for our fellow Knuffers instead of fanning the flames of anger beyond its expiration date.

Let me know what you think in the comments below. I’d love to have you join in on the conversation!

-Parmenides