Introduction
An arbitrary norm by which many live is this– a person should never be angry.

 

Anger is a normal human response that tells us that something is wrong. Trying to not be angry is like trying to not be hungry. It will happen because it addresses a need—for anger it is safety and trust and for hunger is it sustenance and survival.

 

The challenge is in what we do with the anger. If we internalize the anger, it will become depression. If we externalize the anger, it will lead to cynicism. There are extreme expressions of depression and cynicism. Depression can lead to self-harm. Cynicism will lead to the harm of others.

 

We are living in a time of intense anger. Professor and author Karthik Ramanna calls the time in which we live, The Age of Outrage.

 

This intense anger is cementing barriers between people within the workplace, the political arena, the community, the family, and the church.

 

A certain type of leadership is required to lead in this age of outrage. This blog is a second in a series titled Leadership in a Polarized Time. It will explore the roots of outrage and what intensifies that outrage.

 

Overview
There are 3 root causes of outrage, and all 3 are at work simultaneously.

 

We live in an age of outrage. This is a statement from professor and author Karthik Ramanna. In the cover summary of his book, The Age of Outrage: How to Lead in a Polarized World, it reads, “People are angry with the world—in some cases, rightfully so—and now view companies as they do governments, as targets of their wrath and potential forces for social change. Managing outrage has moved from being an occasional leadership challenge…to a necessary and critical leadership capability, like strategic thinking or finance acumen.”¹

 

While Ramanna’s book is written for those in business leadership, the situation in which we as the church find ourselves is the same. Being able to address outrage is no longer an occasional leadership need. It is now a capacity that is required in all areas of leadership.

 

So, what causes this outrage? For Ramanna, “Outrage can stem from multiple causes”—all of which are rooted in human fears.

1. Fear of the Future: A decision affects a particular stakeholder’s economic and social prospects—perhaps depriving them of a future they had taken for granted.
2. Fear that World Leaders Can’t Be Trusted: An historical grievance that makes the stakeholder suspicious of the decision-maker’s motives.
3. Fear of the Other. A perception that the decision-maker is in some sense removed or alien to the stakeholder in terms of values and interests, siding with some other inimical stakeholder group.²

 

While there has been reason for outrage in the past, usually based on one of the above causes, we are at a moment when all three causes of outrage are at play simultaneously.

 

In addition, the concerns “are being collectively amplified through modern communication technologies, which enable people with shared ideas and goals to form information bubbles and reinforce each other’s fear, grievance, and identities.”³

 

Leaders in a time of outrage are called to discern which concerns are at play at the moment.

 

In this blog, we will explore each of the 3 fears.

 

Fear of the Future
In the last 2 decades, the world has moved from a place for optimism to a place filled with fear.

 

The world has moved from an optimistic place to a place of fear in 20 years, from 2000 to 2020. Capitalism seemed capable of creating prosperity for more and more people. There appeared to be worldwide stability. In those 20 years however, we have seen the impact of climate change, a massive global migration from Africa and Asia to Europe and the USA, and the financial pressures that creates on both. There was the financial crisis of 2008-2009. The increase in the use of automation and AI has raised concern about a democratic process being able to understand the technology, let alone regulate it or speak of the moral issues around AI. One only needs to listen to members of Congress questions CEO’s of large tech and social media companies to recognize that the political don’t know much about the area they are seeking to regulate. These issues raise serious concerns about whether the world can really be a healthier and prosperous place for humanity.⁴

 

Fear that World Leaders Can’t Be Trusted
There is a growing resentment of those who are benefitting from the economy and a lack of confidence in leaders to address those inequities.

 

“The inequalities of wealth are steadily increasing, and absent reforms, would continue to increase.”⁵ Household debt is increasing which is reducing the impact of consumer spending. There is a resentment of those who have most benefited from the free market system. Human capital is seen as important, and people want to believe that over time the economic system increase return on their hard work. If so, they will have confidence in the system. However, if “they feel the system undervalues their human capital and …favors others at their expense, they will lose confidence in the system and seek redress elsewhere, such as through political outsiders and radicals.”⁶ Those with cognitively demanding occupations have benefitted over the last 40 years, but those who are in more physical/manual occupations have not. In fact, their situation has become worse.⁷ Not only have earnings decreased, but so has life expectancy.⁸ “Americans have experienced an economic system that, over a fairly long period, has left a least one-third of the population worse off.”⁹ Over time, those who have lost over time will not be supportive of free-market policies since they are seen as creating unequal growth.¹⁰ “In the absence of trust in the political system, the social and economic progress that might benefit those left behind becomes virtually impossible to achieve.”¹¹  For example, people will see the use of lower skill immigrants as the collusion between political leaders and other elites to benefit themselves.”¹²  They then ask of  the current politicians have the credibility to sell genuine reform? Perhaps the 2024 election gave us an insight to what a large portion of our country believes about genuine reform by the current political establishment. For that reason, “the political process for change all too often reduces to barter between special interests.”¹³

 

Fear of the Other
The very presence of a person who is different from us can be seen as a threat and invoke fear.

 

The fear of the other is seen in “the growing degree to which different social groupings increasingly blame each other both for a decline in their economic and social prospects and for perceived historical injustices.”¹⁴ There is a diminishing belief that the capacity of scientific inquiry to aid in making prosperity possible.¹⁵

 

The Change of Authority
We are engaged currently in a godless battle between gods.

 

To be an authority is to determine what is right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, moral and immoral.

 

That which has assumed the authoritative role in America has changed over the generations of our nation. A helpful way to look at the changes in authority comes from Karl Menninger, who asked, “Whatever became of sin?” In his book of the same title, he draws a trajectory from the time when the church was the authority over spiritual and secular life. In time, the United States began to be governed by laws instead of the authority of the church. Punishment was handed out for actions that broke the law, not for sins. As the field of psychology grew and with it the redefinition of the word empathy, people started to see cases where people broke the law for understandable reasons and under extenuating circumstances. Thus, we see the development of the verdict, “Not guilty by means of mental defect.” Phyllis Tickle, in her book, The Great Emergence, gives us the most recent stage of authority in American life. “Commonly accepted values and natural law” write our story.¹⁶ I do not believe that she is referring to the common good when she writes of commonly accepted values. Instead, commonly accepted values are those values which are held by smaller groups of similar people who are like-minded people.

 

Each of these smaller groups of people have determined that their commonly accepted values—backed by either non-existent facts or emotional reaction and fact—is vying for the position of power to assert their values as authoritative over all people. These groups are most likely, in our anxious times, drawn together out of fear. The need for self-preservation draws them together and leads them to assert that the values to which they cling are the solution to a broken world. The characteristics of cohesiveness, cooperation, and altruism are set aside for the purpose of survival. Each group has its ultimate trust. Each group has its god. In many ways, our nation is seeing a battle between gods. These gods are not ultimate, so this battle between gods is a godless battle.

 

The above battle is made possible because humans make the assertion that their viewpoints on life are objective and reached logically. In writing about the thinking processes in the human brain, Daniel Kahneman claims that many human decisions begin as snap judgments. Logic is laid over the judgment–after the fact–to justify the judgment.¹⁷  Members of small groups with commonly acceptable values who are asserting those values as authoritative over all people will be hard pressed to change their minds, for they presume they have reached those values through objectivity and logic. This is our sin.  It is this sin that makes civil public conversation impossible. 

 

The Complication of Social Media and a Lack of Diverse Community
When there is a lack of diversity in a community, the capacity for compromise decreases significantly.

 

Many years ago, I read an article from a study conducted at Johns Hopkins. I wish I could find the article I read about the study. The conclusion of the study drew a conclusion about communities that consisted solely of people who were similar—if not almost identical. Without diversity in the community, compromise is not possible.

 

Groups gathered around commonly held beliefs are built “around their individual identities.”¹⁸ When groups are gathered around commonly held beliefs and individual identities, those outside the group are seen as other. When overcome with fear and anxiety, those who are seen as other are seen as an enemy. This is a dysfunctional and harmful way to be in relationship with others.

 

Social media has exacerbated that dysfunction. Those of a common mind can find each other more quickly through social media yet have a relationship that does not require being physically present with one another. There are regulatory functions that can happen when people are gathered physically that may not happen on social media. The regulatory functions include non-verbal cues that may let a person on a rant know that what they’re saying is making others uncomfortable, to being able to leave the group without making a statement as to why. Human behavior is better regulated when we are physically present with one another. “Back in the old days,” it was easier to write someone a nasty letter than it was to say what you needed to say face to face. Social media is our nasty gram of the age in which we live.

 

Ramanna writes, “When social grouping required a physical presence, it was harder for toxic groups to form, as people could not keep their identities concealed and travel to and from meetings. In order to socialize, they needed to make connections with others they might not agree with and find common ground. In online forums, they can remain incognito and check in from anywhere, which means that they can find and mix with people who closely mirror and reinforce their existing opinions, no matter how offensive And people leave (or are shut off of) social media groups rather than negotiate across and live with disagreement.”¹⁹

 

Challenge
“Leaders can navigate…rough waters, where a large proportion of the population has begun to feel like they are on the cusp of war.”

 

A colleague of mine from the doctoral program at Duke University wrote a book entitled “There’s A Storm Comin: How the American Church Can Lead Through Times of Racial Crisis.”²⁰ He explored the work that FEMA does in preparing for natural disasters and proposes that as FEMA prepares for a disaster, so too can leaders prepare for conflict in other areas of work. Ramanna proposes the same in response to outrage. He writes, “…so organizations and their leaders need an equivalent for managing the stakeholder hostilities that now contextualize nearly all their decisions.”²¹ The end game is simple, make a very difficult situation better instead of worse.

 

As leaders feeling overwhelmed, Ramanna offers these 2 realities. First, “no matter what you do, you can never fully address the demands made of you.” Second, ‘no matter what you do, you will be seen as the problem.” Why does he offer these insights? He writes, they ‘enable one to move away from an ultimately self-defeating mindset in which the manager or leader figures as a heroic problem-solver toward a recognition that there will always be work unfinished and disagreement over certain critical issues.”

 

Next Month: In next month’s blog, I will continue to explore Professor Ramanna’s book by looking at how we can turn down the temperature during a time of outrage.

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Endnotes:

¹ Ramanna, Karthik, The Age of Outrage: How to Lead in a Polarized World, Cover.
² Ibid., 5.
³ Ibid., 6.
⁴ Ibid., 6-7.
⁵ Ibid., 11.
⁶ Ibid., 12-13.
⁷ Ibid., 14.
⁸ Ibid., 15.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Ibid., 18.
¹¹ Ibid., 19.
¹² Ibid.
¹³ Ibid., 21.
¹⁴ Ibid., 21-22.
¹⁵ Ibid., 22.
¹⁶ Tickle, Phyllis, The Great Emergence: How Christianity Is Changing and Why, 2008.
¹⁷ Kahneman, Daniel, Thinking Fast and Slow, 2011.
¹⁸ Ramanna, 24.
¹⁹ Ibid., 26
²⁰ Briscoe, Harold Dorrell,  There’s a Storm Comin: How the Church Can Lead Thorugh Times of Racial Crisis, 2020.
²¹ Ramanna, 28.
²² Ibid.
²³ Ibid., 30