Moral outrage is an emotion and a response tendency. The response tendency is to punish. In study after study, the most morally indignant subjects wanted to inflict the most pain on perceived violators of norms. A hundred lashes!
There can be a certain pleasure in moral outrage, especially if it is shared. Oh, those delicious fantasies of evil-doers getting their comeuppance: endless humiliation and pain. Just desserts for lacking sufficient compassion, for being selfish, for causing harm, and for not feeling bad enough about it.
Yet moral outrage is a response tendency that gets us into all sorts of trouble. Like love of sweets, it is a natural inclination that must be managed and restrained. For one thing, moral outrage makes us think in generalities, impairing our ability to think clearly about problems and issues. It reduces complexities to Us versus Them, Good versus Evil. The objects of moral outrage cease to be individuals and become examples, reduced to dehumanizing labels that place them beyond the reach of moral obligation: predators, parasites, malignant tumors.
To the morally outraged, justice is conceived as a righteous Reckoning, a collection of what is due. Punishment is a necessary payment to balance the books. But when is enough, enough? I don’t think moral outrage allows that calculation. When an individual is reduced to a dehumanized category, “enough” will never be reached. As long as the person has been essentialized a predator, parasite or cancer, he will always have to pay.
Moral outrage is a poor foundation for the business of government: crafting policies, laws, and regulations. Moral outrage makes ends absolute: this must stop, that must happen, no ifs, ands, or buts. Governing wisely is about setting priorities, a process that assumes scarcity: the principle that valued ends require scarce resources with alternative uses.
There are two ways to deal with scarce resources. One is to allocate wisely. The other is to reduce scarcity. In economic terms, that means to increase productivity, to get more bang for the buck. Redistribution that undermines economic growth makes everyone poorer in the long run. The policy challenge is to create conditions conducive to economic growth while making sure that no one’s left behind. In practice that means a constant juggling of goals and priorities.
Prioritizing is not just about what we want and what matters – it’s also based on assessments of urgency, opportunity, trade-offs and resources. To frame issues in terms of priorities is to appreciate we live in a complex world. There’s nothing quite like an appreciation of complexity to cool the righteous passions. And you need a cool head to do the right thing.
When we talk about priorities, there’s less “either/or” thinking than when we talk about values. When we talk about priorities, there’s room for discussion and compromise.
References:
Cass R. Sunstein & Daniel Kahneman. Indignation: Psychology, Politics, Law (John M. Olin Program in Law & Economics Working Paper No. 346, 2007).
David Moshman. "Us and Them: Identity and Genocide" (2007). Educational Psychology Papers and Publications. 87. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/edpsychpapers/87