Outraged

We’re living in a post-modern utopia of sorts, where thanks to our resolute predecessors, we’ve checked a bunch of items off our outrage shopping list. Slavery? Abolished. Apartheid? Not anymore buddy. Women’s suffrage? Nailed it. But what do you do when you keep winning your battles? Well, you pick new ones, of course. Ours is a society where many get by on provocation, the tactless but effective tool of pedalling outrage – and we all too quickly take the bait. If outrage has become abundant, activism has definitely become subdued. Are we so exhausted from our hashtags that we simply don’t have the energy to be outraged in the real world? Or are we simply pretending to be bothered? There is still much to be outraged by in our final frontier – the gender pay gap, racial bias, gun control – but in order to enact change, we must learn to channel our responses.