Be Outrageous So Long As You Speak The Truth

In defense of outrage

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I often say things that are widely regarded as outrageous. I’ve written articles criticizing feminism, arguing factory farming is the worst thing humans have ever done, and that most of the issues of greatest salience are not very important. I’ve written dozens of articles that almost everyone would find outrageous and react extremely negatively to. Sometimes, when I meet people, I’m a bit worried about showing them my blog because of the things that I say on it.

There’s quite a bit of negative stigma attached to saying things that strike people as outrageous. One who does this is labeled a provocateur, and such people are widely regarded as bad hombres. The world is filled with people who write simply to inflame and to irritate. The internet is filled with trolls, whose sole aim is to outrage and unsettle those with whom they disagree.

Despite this, I think it’s good to be provocative.

Let me be clear: one should not say things they do not believe to be true just to be provocative. Nor is there any great virtue in provocative jokes, for instance, that exist just to shock or to outrage. One should be provocative, but only so long as the provocative things they are saying are true.

What is it for a statement to be provocative? Well, it’s for a statement to be widely regarded as shocking or implausible. But suppose a statement is both provocative and true. This means that there’s some point that is true but that dramatically conflicts with common views. It conflicts to such an extreme degree that even uttering the view provokes general outrage.

But if some true view conflicts quite severely with the mainstream view, then the mainstream view is extremely wrong. And if the mainstream view is extremely wrong, then this is worth knowing. The kinds of shifts in view that are most profound are those that significantly shift what a person thinks and cause them to conclude that what they used to believe was very wrong.

For example, I’ve written in many places that factory farming is the worst thing that humans have ever done. I do genuinely mean the worst thing—worse than every war, genocide, and so on. This claim is extremely provocative; it’s not the sort of thing that gets you approving looks when uttered at dinner parties. In fact, it’s one of the most provocative claims that a person could make—that the practice that most people are complicit in multiple times a day is one of the worst crimes in history.

But if it turns out to be true, it’s very worth knowing. Because it diverges so dramatically from common sense, if it’s right, it means everyone else is extremely wrong. And it’s worth knowing if you are extremely wrong. It’s especially worth knowing if you’re extremely wrong so long as the way that you are extremely wrong affects your action. If, say, ancient Rome had never existed, that would make us all extremely wrong, but few would be wrong in a way that affects their life to any significant degree.

In contrast, if something people do on the daily is grotesquely evil, that’s pretty relevant. It would be like if every time you scratched your nose, you killed 46 sheep. Such a thing would be worth knowing—and would make it worth not scratching your nose.

Now, there are lots of things that are technically true but sound very outrageous. I won’t give any examples for obvious reasons, but I’m sure you can use your imagination. But most of the time, when something is outrageous and true, it is important. It shows that our thinking goes badly wrong in some potentially important respect. In these cases, it’s generally worth saying. Your primary concern should be saying things that are important and true; beyond this, you shouldn’t mind much if it ends up being outrageous.