{"id":35131,"date":"2022-02-12T00:01:24","date_gmt":"2022-02-12T08:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=35131"},"modified":"2026-06-06T09:56:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T09:56:04","slug":"grievance-and-outrage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/grievance-and-outrage\/","title":{"rendered":"Grievance and Outrage — Good in Small Doses"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"mouth-of-<\/a>
Grievance and outrage. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last week my dear readers were kind enough to put up with the blast of grievance and outrage coming from my writing room here in the Bay Area.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t help myself. I was annoyed. Angry. Insulted. I felt dismissed by the conversation I’d had<\/a> with a technical support person. When I\u00a0 told her I was having trouble with the touch screen on my brand new cell phone, she proposed that I get “someone younger” to help me.<\/p>\n

It turned out, as I had suspected, the problem had nothing to do with my age, my competence, my technical smarts, or even my aging fingertips. My new phone needed calibrating. It got calibrated, and now it works just fine. (Knock on wood.)<\/p>\n

Note to Self: Take a Minute to Chill<\/strong><\/h5>\n

In writing that post last week, I broke a rule I’d set for myself years ago. The rule informs both my writing and my outlook on this world of ours. And that is, when feelings of outrage or grievance show up, take a minute to chill.<\/p>\n

Grievance and outrage. There’s far too much of it floating around in the ether these days. In conversations among friends. On social media. On cable TV news. And even in the narratives contestants present to the judges on otherwise well thought-out TV shows like “Project Runway.”<\/p>\n

It’s as though there’s some weird kind of status you get when you’ve been wronged.<\/p>\n

I’d like to see things calm down around here. I’d like to see people talking to each other — with each other. I’d like people on the left side of things as well as on the right side of things to quit inflating their grievances.<\/p>\n

The Uses of Outrage<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Yes. There’s a lot of injustice out there. In the past and in the present. And grievance and outrage are a good thing in measured doses. Otherwise, there would never have been a civil rights movement, a women’s movement, an anti-Vietnam War movement, or a Stonewall uprising. The human race needs to hang on tight to its capacity for outrage.<\/p>\n

What I’m talking about here is knee-jerk outrage. The kind that gives you that frisson of secret satisfaction. The kind that feels so good you want to stoke it and fan it and keep it going.<\/p>\n

(Oops. I see that right here, right now I am giving in to my outrage. It’s true. I am<\/em> outraged at the outrage that has soured American discourse, public and private, for the past five years. I truly am. Mea culpa.)<\/p>\n

Those 1970s Male Chauvinists<\/strong><\/h5>\n

My personal wariness of grievance and outrage dates to the 1970s, when I was active in the women’s movement<\/a>. The more I discovered about how women — how I — had been discriminated against, stereotyped, and limited by cultural barriers in work and in love, the angrier and the more outraged I became.<\/p>\n

For a few years, I lived on a diet of grievance and outrage — until one day I realized that, although my anger was energizing, it did not actually feel good. Nor was it helping my work life or my love life.<\/p>\n

I decided to try something else. Which was that, yes, I might be facing discrimination and diminishment on a daily basis, but I personally was just fine just as I was. I knew it, and it didn’t matter whether anyone else knew it.<\/p>\n

Armed with that knowledge, I could set about righting some of the wrongs, the injustices, I saw out there. Thoughtfully. Calmly. Respectfully. And with just enough outrage to keep me awake.<\/p>\n

On related topics: “Does Islam Scare You? If So Here’s Why.”<\/a>\u00a0 And here’s one about Barack Obama, “The Rhetorician in the White House. Or, How I Learned to Love the Passive Voice.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"when<\/a>
Chill. Step back. Look for the big picture. NASA photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"mouth-of-<\/a><\/p>\n

Grievance and outrage have soured American discourse, public and private, for the past five years. And, yes, I find that outrageous. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,52],"tags":[2566,2567,34,148,2568,2569,2570,282,2230],"class_list":["post-35131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-the-writing-room","tag-culture","tag-culture-wars","tag-dont-miss","tag-feminism","tag-grievance","tag-mental-health","tag-outrage","tag-politics","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49360,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35131\/revisions\/49360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}