“It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.”

I have been reflecting on this quotation from C.S. Lewis. It seems to contain a warning for our time, when people are inclined to gorge themselves on the nectar of “righteous indignation”. Intoxicated with the sensation of apparent virtue, the “righteous” then set upon anyone who falls beyond their moral pale.

Indignation has no natural political or ideological home. It can be found in equal measure among so-called “progressives” and “conservatives”. Each group has its own ranks of “shock troops” ready to do the most terrible things in the firm belief that they are justified by the rightness of their cause. They are like the sans-culottes of the French Revolution or the Nazi “Brown Shirts” of the last century — convinced that callous indifference should rule the fate of those whom they bully until their targets either retreat or break. Any sense of common decency, based in a recognition of a common humanity, is dissolved in the acid of resentment.

Fortunately, in Australia, righteous indignation rarely gives rise to violence on the streets. Instead, it is enacted, for the most part, in an online environment made all the more vicious by the fact that one can cause harm at a distance (and often cloaked in anonymity) without ever having to confront the awful reality of what is done.

My colleague, Tim Dean, has written about the ethics of outrage, which touches on a number of the matters that I point to above. My intention, here, is to look at a particular philosophical problem with righteous indignation — namely, its tendency to destroy (rather than express) a capacity for virtue. This is not simply a matter of philosophical interest.

The implications of this argument also have practical implications, especially for those who are truly committed to changing the world for the better.

In my experience, most of those who ultimately embrace the excesses of righteous indignation start from an entirely reasonable and defensible position. This is typically grounded in some form of ethical insight — usually relating to a genuine instance of wrong-doing, often involving the oppression of one group of people by another. For example, the ancien régime swept away by the French Revolution was corrupt. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement begins with a true insight that some lives (black lives) are being discounted as if they do not matter either at all or as much as the lives of others. Which is to say, BLM is based on valuing all lives. And so it is with most movements: they begin with a genuine and justifiable grievance, which risks being converted into something far less subtle and far more dangerous.

Robespierre undermined the integrity of the French Revolution by harnessing “The Terror” in service of his ideal — the creation of a “Republic of Virtue”. He unleashed the mob to ravage those who differed from them even to the slightest degree of privilege. To be “privileged” was to be doomed — as Robespierre himself discovered when the mob eventually turned on him and despatched him to the guillotine.

Unfortunately, every movement has its “Robespierres”. They amplify the general sense of there being a wrong that needs to be righted. They exploit the sentiments of those with a sincere desire to do good in the world. They fashion an “index of commitment” where you are judged by the extremity of your action — the more extreme, the more committed you are shown to be. Excess of zeal becomes a badge of merit, a token of sincerity.

So, what might this have to do with I’ve called the destruction of virtue? The answer lies in the implications of “excess”. For Aristotle, the phrōnimos (the person of practical wisdom, or phrōnēsis) attains virtue when they rid themselves of the distorting lenses of vice so as to see (and act according to) the “golden mean” — a point between two vicious extremes. For example, the virtue of courage lies between the poles of “reckless indifference to the risk of harm” at one end and “hiding away from danger” at the other. That is, a courageous person has a clear appreciation of danger and takes a measured decision to overcome their fear and stand fast all the same.

Righteous indignation disavows the golden mean. Instead, it creates a counterfeit version of virtue in which the extreme is presented as the ideal.

This distortion leads otherwise good people, with good motives, in the service of a good cause, to do abominable things.

Worse still, those who act abominably are encouraged to think that their conduct is excused because done “in good conscience”. Yet another counterfeit.

It is easy enough to justify all manner of wrongdoing by an appeal to “conscience”. That is why one of the greatest exponents of conscience, St. Thomas Aquinas, insisted that we are only bound to act in conformance with a “well-informed conscience” — and as my friend Father Frank Brennan, SJ, would add, a “well-formed conscience”.

I think it sad to see so many people being sucked into a world of “righteous indignation” that has little, if any, relationship to a conscientious life of virtue. People of virtue exercise ethical restraint. They are not wantonly cruel. They do not index the intrinsic dignity of persons according to the colour of their skin, their culture and beliefs, their sex and gender or their socio-economic status. They know that “two wrongs do not make a right”.

Instead of tormenting others for their own good — and, perhaps, for the good of the world — the virtuous will seek to engage and persuade, exemplifying (rather than subverting) the ideals they seek to promote. If ever there is to be a “Republic of Virtue”, it will have no place for the righteously indignant.

This article originally appeared on ABC Religion & Ethics.

As it stands, the term “freedom” is being utilised as though it means the same thing across a variety of communities.

In the absence of a commitment to expand discourse between disagreeing parties, we may regrettably find ourselves occupying an increasingly polarised society, stricken with groups which take communication with one another as being a definitively hopeless exercise.

Freedom and its nuances have come poignantly into focus over the past two and a half years. Ongoing deliberation about pandemic rules and regulations have seen the notion being employed in myriad ways.

For some, freedom, and one’s right to it, has meant demanding that particular methods of curtailing viral spread remain optional and never be mandated. For others, the freedom to retain access to secure healthcare systems and avoid acquiring illness has meant calling for preventative methods to be enforced, heavily monitored, and in some cases made mandatory. Across most perspectives, individual freedoms are taken as having been directly impacted to degrees not previously experienced.

The concept of freedom, for better or worse, reliably takes centre stage in much political debate. The ways we conceive of it and deliberate on it impacts our evaluation of governmental action. It appears however that the term often comes into conflict with itself, forming what may be characterised as a linguistic impasse, where one usage of freedom is evidently incompatible with another.

Canonical political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the largely elusive (albeit valorised) term in her paper, ‘What is Freedom?’. In it, she emphasises its inherent confusion: “…it becomes as impossible to conceive of freedom or its opposite as it is to realize the notion of a square circle.” Despite the linguistic and conceptual red flags which freedom bears, Arendt, and many others, persist in grappling with the topic in their work.

I am also sympathetic to the commitment to ongoing deliberation on the matter of freedom. Devoting time to understanding visible impasses which arise in its usage appears vital. Doing so aids in encouraging productive discussions on matters of how states should act, and to what extent a populace should comply with political directives.

As these are discussions central to the maintenance and progression of liberal democratic societies, we should feel motivated to formulate responses in situations where one conception of freedom comes into conflict with another.

The seemingly inevitable inaccuracies embedded within the concept of freedom and the difficulties inherent in the project of discriminating between the emancipatory and the oppressive remains evident across recent political rhetoric and subsequent public response. From 2020, many politicians began using the term freedom to emphasise the need to make present sacrifice for future gain, and to secure safety for vulnerable populations by curtailing the spread of COVID-19. For some, this placed politicians in the camp of the emancipators, working to defend our freedom against a looming viral force. In contrast, those who opposed measures such as lockdowns took the relevant enforcers to be oppressors, acting in total opposition to a treasured freedom of movement and individuated determination.

Both those in favour of and those opposed to lockdowns were seen utilising the term freedom in the public arena, yet freedom to the former necessarily required a certain degree of political intervention, and freedom to the latter firmly required a sovereignty from political reach. This self-oriented sovereignty is one in which freedom is experienced not in our relation to others, but individualistically, through the deployment of free will and a safety from political non-interference. While these two differing utilisations of freedom are broad and not immutable, they do provide a useful starting point from which to assess contemporary impasses.

Commitment to sovereignty as necessary for a commitment to freedom is not a new position, nor is it reliably misplaced. The individual who decries re-introduced mask mandates, or vaccines being made compulsory in workplaces evidently takes these actions as being incompatible with the maintenance of freedom, and a free society more broadly. Their sovereignty from political interference is necessary for their freedom to persist.

Both historically and contemporarily, many have seen it essential to measure their own freedoms by the degree to which states did not unduly intervene upon realms of education, religion, or health. We know countless instances where political reach has chocked public freedoms to undesirable extents. Those in opposition to vaccine mandates, for example, may take freedom to begin wherever politics ends, thinking it best to safeguard their liberties with one hand while defending against political reach with the other.

In contrast, politicians and individuals who deem actions such as vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and the like as necessary for the maintenance of long-term social freedoms are seen as upholding a competing notion of freedom. For this group, politics and freedom are beyond compatible, they are deeply contingent upon one another. On this conception, emancipation from political reach would result in a breakdown of society, where inevitably some personal liberties would be infringed upon by others.

This position of the compatibility between freedom and politics is articulated and advocated for by Arendt. Arendt argues that sovereignty itself must be surrendered if a society is ever to be comprehensively free. This is because we do not occupy earth as individuals, but as communities, moreover, political communities, which have been formed and continue to be maintained due to the freedom of our wills. “If men wish to be free,” she writes, “it is precisely sovereignty they must renounce.”

The point here is not to say that individual rights are of no importance to political systems, or to freedom more broadly. Rather, it suggests that a comprehensive freedom cannot flourish in systems in which individuals remain committed to sovereignty above all else. Freedom is not located within the individual, but rather in the systems, or community, within which an individual operates.

We do not envy the freedom a prisoner possesses to retreat into the recesses of their own mind, we envy the person who is free to leave their home, and is safe in doing so, because a system has been politically and socially established to make it as such.

When debates are being waged over freedom, we must begin with the acknowledgement that we (as individuals) are only ever as free as the broader communities in which we operate. Our own freedoms are contingent upon the political systems that we exist in, actively engage with, and mutually construct.

Assessing the disagreement, or linguistic impasse, which exists between those who take political action as central to securing freedom and those who take freedom to begin to where politics ends has certainly not fully allowed us to realise the notion of a square circle to which Arendt alludes. Though from here, we may be better equipped to engage in discourse when we inevitably find one conception of freedom being pinned against another.

We are luckily not resigned to let present linguistic impasses on the matter of freedom mark the end of meaningful discourse. Rather, they can mark the beginning, as we are able to make efforts to rectify impasses that turn on this single word. Importantly, we have more language and words at our disposal, and many methods by which to use them. It is vital that we do.

Rarely a day goes by without Twitter, Facebook or some other social media platform exploding in outrage at some perceived injustice or offence.

It could be aimed at a politician, celebrity or just some hapless individual who happened to make an off-colour joke or wear the wrong dress to their school formal.

These outbursts of outrage are not without cost for everyone involved. Many people, especially women and people from minority backgrounds, have received death threats for simply expressing themselves online. Many more people have chosen to censor themselves for fear of a backlash from an online mob. And when the mob does go after a perceived wrongdoer, all too often the punishment far exceeds the crime. Targeted individuals have been ostracised from their communities, sacked from their jobs, and in some cases taken their own lives.

How did we get here?

Social media was supposed to unite us. It was supposed to forge stronger social connections. It was meant to bridge conventional barriers like wealth, class, ethnicity or geography. It was supposed to be a platform where we could express ourselves freely. Where did it all go so horribly wrong?

It’s tempting to say that something must be broken, either the social media platforms or ourselves. But in fact, both are working as intended.

When it comes to the social media platforms, they and their owners thrive on the traffic generated by viral outrage. The feedback mechanisms – ‘like’ buttons, comments and sharing – only serve to amplify it. Studies have shown that posts expressing anger or outrage are shared at a significantly higher rate than more measured posts.

In short, outrage generates engagement, and for social media companies, engagement equals profit.

When it comes to us, it turns out that our minds are working as intended too. At least, working as evolution intended.

Our minds are wired for outrage.

It was one of the moral emotions that evolution furnished us with to keep people behaving nicely tens of thousands of years ago, along with other emotions like empathy, guilt and disgust.

We may not think of outrage as being a ‘moral’ emotion, but that’s just what it is. Outrage is effectively a special kind of anger that we feel when someone does something wrong to us or someone else, and it motivates us to punish the wrongdoer. It’s what we feel when someone pushes in front of us in a queue or defrauds an elderly couple of their life savings. It’s also what we feel just about any time we log on to Twitter and look at the hashtags that are doing the rounds.

Well before the advent of social media, outrage served our ancestors well. It helped to keep the peace in small-scale hunter-gatherer societies. When someone stole, cheated or bullied other members of their band, outrage inspired the victims and onlookers to respond. Its contagious nature spread word of the wrongdoing throughout the band, creating a coalition of the outraged that could confront the miscreant and punish them if necessary.

Outrage wasn’t just something that individuals experienced. It was built to be shared. It inspired ‘strategic action’, where a number of people – possibly the whole band – would threaten or punish the wrongdoer. A common punishment was social isolation or ostracism, which was often tantamount to a death sentence in a world where everyone depended on everyone else for their survival. The modern equivalent would be ‘cancelling’.

But take this tendency to get fired up at wrongdoing and drop it on social media, and you have a recipe for misery.

All our minds needed was a platform that could feed them a steady stream of injustice and offence and they quickly became addicted to it.

Another problem with social media is that many of the injustices we witness are far removed from us, and we have little or no power to prevent them or to reform the wrongdoers directly. But that doesn’t stop us trying. Because we are rarely able to engage with the wrongdoer face-to-face, we resort to more indirect means of punishment, such as getting them fired or cancelling them.

In small-scale societies, the intense interdependence of each individual on everyone else in the band meant there were good reasons to limit punishment to only what was necessary to keep people in line. Actually, following through with ostracism could remove a valuable member of the community. Often just the threat of ostracism was enough to prevent harmful behaviour.

Not so on social media. The online target is usually so far removed from the outraged mob that there is little or no cost for the mob if the target is extricated from their lives. The cost is low for the punishers but not necessarily for the punished.

Social media outrage isn’t only bad for the targets of the mob’s ire – it’s bad for the mob too. Unlike ancestral times, we now have access to an entire world of injustice about which to get outraged. We even have a word for the new tendency to seek out and overconsume bad news: doomscrolling. This can leave us with an impression that the world is filled with evil, corrupt and bad actors when, in fact, most people are genuinely decent.

And the mismatch between the unlimited scope of our perception, and the limited ability for us to genuinely effect change, can inspire despondency. This, in turn, can motivate us to seek out some way for us to recapture a sense of agency, even if that is limited to calling someone out on Twitter or sharing a dumb quote from a despised politician on Facebook. But what have we actually achieved, except to spread the outrage further?

The good news is that while we’re wired for outrage, and social media is built to exploit it, we are not slaves to our nature. We also evolved the ability to unshackle ourselves from the psychological baggage of our ancestors. That makes it possible for us to avoid the outrage trap.

If we care about making the world a better place – and saving ourselves and others from being constantly tired, angry and miserable – we can change the way we use social media. And this means we must change some of our habits.

It’s hard to resist outrage when we see it, like it’s hard to resist that cookie that you left on the kitchen counter. So put the cookie away. This doesn’t mean getting off social media entirely. But it does mean being careful about whom you follow. If the people you follow are only posting outrage porn, then you can choose to unfollow them. Follow people who share genuinely new or useful information instead. Replace the cookie with a piece of fruit.

And if you do come across something outrageous, you can decide what to do about it. Think about whether sharing it is going to actually fix the problem or whether you’re just seeking validation for your own feelings of fury.

Sometimes there are things we can share that will do good – there’s a role for increasing awareness of certain systemic injustices, as we’ve seen with the #metoo and Black Lives Matter movements. But if it’s just a tasteless joke, a political columnist trolling the opposition or someone who refuses to wear a mask at Bunnings, you can decide whether spreading it further is going to actually make things better. If not, don’t share it.

It’s not easy to inoculate ourselves against viral outrage. Our evolved moral minds have a powerful grip on our hearts. But if we want to genuinely combat injustice and harm, we need to take ownership of our behaviour and push back against outrage.