A time for Righteous Indignation

Hey Michael,

I'm not sure how far righteous indignation will get you. Sometimes it helps to provide a spark for a fire- if you feel righteously indignant about female genital mutilation and you start a campaign to stop it, or if you tell others about it's dangers and that inspires them to do something about it, I guess it's served its purpose. But if you rail against it in a bar to the same 4 people, and nothing comes of it, I guess it's just mental masturbation. But no one can say either is wrong. It's just how you feel. I guess because I feel that no one person has the penultimate answer to anything, the cacophony of voices about things are ok.

Peace,

Rhiannon

Hi Rhiannon -

Thanks for sounding in. I'm surprised more people didn't. It made for good conversation at another blog site i frequent.

Interesting argument. I tend to believe in states of order and disorder, that one is preferential to the other, and that there are absolutes beyond feelings.

But along the lines of what you first said - i don't think righteous indignation gets anyone anywhere. It is a symptom of chaos and disorder in my estimation.

-Darin Allen Jensen

(not Michael btw) *smiles*

I used to be a pretty regular purveyor of righteous indignation as I watched our political environment spin out of control. At some point I realized that my exercise served only to raise my blood pressure and had little or no effect on the opinions of others. I still slip occasionally but actually feel it more healthy to avoid the conversations, news programs, etc. that might light that spark and pray for sane times to come!

Righteous Indignation & religion.. BRRrrr!!!!

I have a tendacy to get perhaps a lil vocal about things I have some passion about. I liked the suggestion about states of disorder. Now theres something I can be passionite about... Entrophy! 40s is correct in that all to often we just end up raising our blood pressure. Of course, I keep calm by reading thoughts like your and Nannon's. She had me reaching for a dictionary! Mental masturbation.... hee hee hee.... Of course, you could just simply refer to the topic as the indignation of the righteous. It seems the most vocal are speaking from experiences that influenced them the most. And you are on the mark about it often being devoid of compassion. Going to have to remember these salient points, the next time I have a desire to go on a total indignant rant about NOTHING of consequence. Ya'll get one demerit each for making me think, and two kudos each for being cool. Take care!

One problem I have always found with righteous indignation is most of the people I hear spouting off engaging in righteous indignation may not fit all the criterion for "righteous."

It is far easier to become indignant than to engage in critical thinking which often prevents attacks of righteous indignation.

Who of us can lay claim to being "righteous?" I do not feel that following a personal or religious creed and railing against anyone opposed to that particular version of the "true facts" is righteous, at least not by my definition of the word.

At this moment, a third of the world is engaged in a sometimes very uncivil war over whose God is the "correct" God. Which version is righteous because it is obvious that both sides are indignant?

I select just two kinds of people I get an attack of righteous indignation over:

People who stick their noses into other people's business

and

People who stick their business into other people's noses.

That pretty much goes along with my other method of viewing mankind. There are two kinds of people in the world:

People who divide people into two categories

and

People who don't

Following those simple precepts, I am not likely to get my panties into a twist over anything ... especially someone who is obviously speaking without fully engaging his or her full intellectual capacity.

Nearly everything I say in here comes from righteous indignation. I DO NOT just spout off without putting my words into intelligent form that mat be easily recognized by other cognizant beings.

The reason I like this site so much is that there are others who see the same things I do and are righteously indignant. We are intelligent enough to know that "speaking out emotionally" without putting it into a form that is a least recognizable by others with similar observations, is useless. Otherwise it is what Nannon said "mental masturbation".

One thing that righteous indignation seems to do extremely well is raise money for politicians. Unfortunately, that comes at the cost of divisiveness.

Rhiannon's makes the point that emotions that make us take positive action are good. Hmmm... as with most questions like this, we can't get too far without defining the terms. There are things that seem unjust or harmful to such an extent that they rouse strong emotion in us. This is good, right? So what makes something 'righteous indignation' and therefore bad?

I think that is a worthwhile discussion topic.