Are You Addicted to Outrage?

Last Tuesday was an amazing day for new releases.  One of the new releases that I was looking forward to was Addicted to Outrage, the new release by Glenn Beck.

As with all of my political reviews, I first need to state my views.  I am a conservative libertarian.  I voted third party in the last election, mostly because I think that character matters.  I’m willing to listen to everybody though.  Somebody who was really smart once suggested that you should never be the smartest person in the room.  I don’t necessarily think that’s talking about IQ.  I think that it means that you should realize that other people know things that you don’t and you can learn from them.

If you want to get the book in a nutshell, I’ll give you a quote from the first chapter: “We many times — not always, but much of the time — are saying almost the same exact thing, just with different words.”  Since we have so much in common, why are we arguing with each other?

Our words can make a difference in other people’s lives.  This is why, lately, I’ve tried to send compliments to authors when I love their books.  I’ve also tried to focus on sharing articles that are less divisive, that more of us can agree with.  I’ll leave the more divisive issues to other people.

Addicted to Outrage is a book that encourages us to calm down and try to treat each other civilly.  There might be things that we disagree with, but arguing with people and calling people names is not going to make them change their minds.  Being respectful of people might actually allow us to get along and help repair this broken country.

We need to look at ourselves.  I love how in chapter 7, Beck calls out both sides on their hypocrisy.  His words contain humor, making the book interesting.

Addicted To Outrage tells us why it’s so important at this time in history to get along with others.  There are a lot of problems that this world will be facing in the next 5, 10, 20 years.  For example, as artificial intelligence is able to do more and more, jobs are going to be lost.  How are we going to deal with this?  Conservatives and liberals have different ideas.  Can we be absolutely sure that our “side” is right?  Rather than fighting about it, we need to get together and try to understand one another in order to try to come up with a solution.  As Glenn states, “we are not talking to each other or growing more compassionate toward our fellow man at a time when we need it most.”

Learning Something

There are some pretty scary things coming along.  The machines that we will be programming to drive our cars (as one example) are going to have to make life and death decisions.  Should it hit the bus of school children, or hit the bus containing Bill Gates and Elon Musk?  China already has a social scoring system; will our AI give priority to the lives of people with higher social scores?

Not only do many of us demonize people on the “other side”, we also demonize historical figures.  The world is a complex place, and our opinions are not always derived from simple facts.  For example, some of us criticize Washington and Jefferson for owning slaves, but it was actually against the law to free your slaves, except upon your death (and you couldn’t even do that if you were in debt, like Jefferson was).  Are we any better?  Almost all of us use some sort of electronics that were created under slave-like conditions.  There are more slaves today than in the days before the Civil War.  I’m sure that none of us like that, but probably a lot of people feel as helpless as I am about doing something about it.

As you read Addicted to Outrage, you might learn about other things, like the tragedy that occurred in “Black Wall Street.”  Or that even though Churchill was a great war hero, he was also a flawed individual that did some not-so great things (maybe the same is true about us).  There are good and bad things about the United States, and this book touches upon a little of both.

Doing Something

We might not be able to end slavery (as an example) but we can do something to reduce the anger in our lives.  It has to start with us, after all.  The last section of Addicted to Outrage talks about what we can do about our problems with anger.

Part of it is to try to acknowledge when someone is trying to find common ground with you, and take what you can get.  Beck tells the story of how his grandfather, who grew up in an age where blacks were discriminated against, once told him00 in the early 1970s “No matter what anyone says about coloreds, they are just like you and me.”  Almost nobody talks like that anymore.  If one did, it would probably seem offensive, but in this case, Glenn’s grandfather was trying.  I love this quote: “Can we not look into one another’s heart and see how hard we are trying?”  We don’t need to vilify people that are trying to understand our point of view and don’t quite grasp what we mean.

I love one of the quotes towards the end of the book:  “We must not become what we say we are against.”

It might be difficult to change, to become nicer people.  Some people might not even like it.  It might not feel good, at first, to be kind to others and bite back a snarky retort, especially if they are not nice to us.  But maybe, like many risks, it’s one worth taking.  As Glenn says on page 303 “Risk big, win big — do whatever homework is necessary, but don’t let your fear prevent you from rolling the dice!”