“I think people
should be angry at things that are worthy of anger.
Injustice is outrageous and
deserves outrage.”
Chris Hayes
Navajo Triptych
I can see immediately how one might not be able to identify
“moral outrage” as a virtue, let alone see how it can possibly relate to art.
But I think if we look a little closer, it will become very apparent. Sam Keen,
in his book “Fire in the Belly” says that possessing the virtue of moral
outrage requires us to plumb the depths of whatever intellectual courage we
have “to think clearly about the nature of evil, and the moral courage to
confront death (or injustice, I’d add) in a heroic manner.” [parentheses mine] Keen
speaks of one of his own heroes – Ernest Becker – and said it was Becker who
raised the question of what constitutes
authentic heroism by “identifying the false heroism of political claims of
absolute righteousness” where “any crime is justified so long as it is for the
fatherland, the motherland, the revolution, democracy, or the people of God.”
The author goes on to
say that the absence of moral outrage is one of the most troubling symptoms of
our time. We have bought into the slogans, the excuses, the justifications for
inequity and hardship with almost no expression of outrage at all – or with a
sense of resignation rather than a determination to action which moral outrage
requires. But to be a hero, to complete that heroic journey as a human being
and as an artist, Keen says, “A man (or woman) who has not been morally
anesthetized cannot have his eyes opened to unnecessary suffering, disease, and
injustice without feeling outrage and hearing a call to arms.” We must in some
way – through our art – become “warriors in defense of the sacred.”
Though he probably would not identify
himself as such a warrior, artist/poet Carl Unruh exemplifies this heroic
virtue in my mind although certainly his art and poetry reflect a sensitivity
to beauty and joy, too. Carl is
able to express outrage while maintaining an attitude of compassion and respect
for the dignity of those against whom injustice may have been focused. But more
than that, he can capture in his poetry, in much the same way as Robert Lowell
and T.S. Eliot in his “Hollow Men” and “The Wasteland,” his dismay and sadness,
but not resignation, in the face of injustice. In “Now I Understand,” Carl
expresses exactly that kind of moral outrage Keen is talking about as a virtue.
Once again, this is a
virtue perhaps best expressed in one art form or another – certainly in protest
song and poetry, but also in photography and art that depicts the plight of the
suffering, the poor, the struggling, the outcast, or the horrors of war, or
even the devastation visited upon the earth by man’s arrogance and greed and
neglect. Surely we have room in our portfolios – and in our characters – for a
little moral outrage to identify ourselves (if only to ourselves) as everyday
heroes as we continue our sacred quest. Perhaps that’s the vital quality that
will, as Sam Keen says, light the flames in our hearts.
Background texture: Gates of Hell by Valerianstock
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