THE RUSH FROM JUDGMENT
Our political discourse these days seems to get bogged down in mutual accusations of being “judgmental,” “opinionated,” and playing the “blame game.” Liberals and conservatives accuse each other of believing in their own invincible rightness and the other side’s utter wrongness. For anybody who takes such discourse seriously, the result is mental paralysis.
Of course I believe that my beliefs and opinions are right. Why else would I have them? Which means I believe that those who disagree diametrically with them are wrong. How could it be otherwise (as Socrates would say)? I suppose I’m more nuanced than some people, in that I don’t necessarily see everybody on the Other Side as disagreeing diametrically with my position—there are plenty of ways for both of us to be right. (Remember the old Jewish story about the rabbi and two disputants? Disputant #1 sets out his case, and the rabbi nods sagely and says, “You’re right.” Then Disputant #2 states his case, and the rabbi thinks about it a while and says, “You’re right.” The rabbi’s wife, who has been sitting on the sidelines, says, “Wait a minute! They can’t both be right!” To which the rabbi replies, “You’re right, too.”) But it matters to me that my beliefs and opinions are right. If I thought they weren’t, I’d change them.
And of course I believe that people who do bad things are behaving badly. In that sense, I am judging them. Aristotle says that’s one of the most human things human beings do.
Progressives, of course, are the most vulnerable to being paralyzed by accusations of being “opinionated” and “judgmental.” We pride ourselves on being open-minded, tolerant, and willing to listen to the other side. And then, we are suddenly confronted by an issue on which we cannot conceive that there is another side with any valid argument—female genital mutilation, for instance—and we are brought up short. Oops! Conservatives don’t have to worry about that kind of thing; they can denounce “relativism” at every turn, and in addition have the fun of ridiculing the relativists who fall short of their own claims of virtue.
But all of us, I think, on both sides, have lost track of what tolerance really means. Tolerance is not what we extend to the opinions of others. We can and should reserve the right to say that other people’s opinions are wrong, at least occasionally. Tolerance isn’t for opinions, it’s for people. And “judging” other people’s behavior isn’t the same as condemning the people themselves.
Not that we should leap to brand other people’s opinions as wrong or other people’s behavior as blameworthy without careful consideration in the first place. We need to start considering moral/political issues with an open mind. What are the facts? Who are the authoritative sources of information? Has anybody really considered all the angles on this issue?
There is even a situational aspect to all this that rarely gets looked at these days, which the Talmudic rabbis did a pretty good job on. The Bible (in Numbers 5:11-31) describes an ordeal to which a husband who thinks his wife has been fooling around but can’t prove it can subject her, to test her fidelity. It’s unpleasant but does no permanent damage, except perhaps to the relationship between them. Done properly, it should resolve the question one way or another and close the book on the suspicion—at least that’s what the Bible has in mind. But, a couple of thousand years later, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai pointed out that the ordeal contained what had now become a fatal flaw—if the husband who administered it had himself been unfaithful, one could not expect divine judgment to solve his problem. He didn’t deserve it. In short, he said, we are no longer decent enough for this ritual to work.
I think the same thing could be said about the different views on organ donation in the US and in western Europe. In the US, it is presumed that anyone who has not consented in writing to post-mortem organ donation is refusing. In Europe, anyone who does not consent must put his refusal in writing, or it will be presumed that he consents. Some organ donation advocates in this country, gravely concerned about the shortage of organ donors here, suggest that we should adopt the European practice. For a while, I thought that might be a good idea. Now, I’m not so sure. I think that, in a country like the US (and unlike Europe) where there are wide disparities between the rich and the poor, and where one of those disparities is the availability of health care, we are not decent enough to presume consent to organ donation by the most likely prospective donors, the poor. That doesn’t mean I believe the Europeans are wrong. I just don’t think their practice transplants well to this culture right now, and anybody who thinks it does probably needs to do some more thinking.
So let’s start out to form our opinions as carefully and openly as possible. At least let’s be clear about the authorities we rely on if we feel unable or unwilling to start from scratch for ourselves. (The mother of a friend of mine once drove me absolutely nuts by telling me she was opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment, but couldn’t tell me why. What she meant, I suspect, was that she was relying on some authority she couldn’t point me to at the moment. Although what bothered me the most was that she had started that particular line of conversation, and that was all she had to say about it.)
Then, when we have formed an opinion, let’s look at the Other Side to see whether, or to what extent, it is diametrically opposed to our own, and where we actually agree. Only then does it make sense to say, “I’m right. You’re wrong. Here’s why.” And even then, we need to avoid saying, “and that makes you a person I can’t talk to.” The guy on the Other Side may decide that himself, and there’s not much we can do about it. But if at all possible, we need to accept him as a human being like us, some of whose opinions we disagree with.
We also need to try to avoid the sweeping sociological generalizations about the links between belief, behavior, and disposition that are to be found, for instance, in books like The Authoritarian Personality, which presume that we are what we believe, or as the gospels assert, “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” The Jewish position, to which I try to adhere whenever possible, is that we mostly don’t care what people believe, as long as they behave decently.
Similarly, we have the right to judge other people’s behavior. But we don’t have the right to condemn the people who engage in behavior we disapprove of. This problem arises most often today in sexual politics. I have no problem with the behavior of gays and lesbians as such. But when homosexual relationships involve a component of violence, I disapprove of it as much as I disapprove of violence in heterosexual relationships, and for exactly the same reasons.
But how do I deal with people who believe that the sexual behavior of gays and lesbians as such is wrong? Many of them, most notably the Catholic Church, take the “hate the sin, not the sinner” position on this issue that I generally espouse on other issues.
Most gay people I know hate that rhetoric. They think it reeks of hypocrisy, that the Catholics or whoever don’t really mean it anyway, and actually hate gays and lesbians as well as their behavior. Which may be true in many instances, but certainly not all. Catholic institutions do good work for people with AIDS and HIV, for instance, far beyond the demands of mere hypocrisy and public relations.
Possibly the real problem is that we aren’t necessarily good at our relationships with the sinners we claim not to hate. We really are being hypocritical. We want credit for a virtue we aren’t really practicing. This needs more work.
Which is a phrase we need to think about. Back when I was an English teacher, I tried to grade papers carefully, so as to give the student the information she needed to improve her writing, rather than just make her feel bad. “This needs more work” was one of the phrases I used a lot. Maybe it’s an alternative to being judgmental or opinionated. Maybe it’s what we all need.
Of course I believe that my beliefs and opinions are right. Why else would I have them? Which means I believe that those who disagree diametrically with them are wrong. How could it be otherwise (as Socrates would say)? I suppose I’m more nuanced than some people, in that I don’t necessarily see everybody on the Other Side as disagreeing diametrically with my position—there are plenty of ways for both of us to be right. (Remember the old Jewish story about the rabbi and two disputants? Disputant #1 sets out his case, and the rabbi nods sagely and says, “You’re right.” Then Disputant #2 states his case, and the rabbi thinks about it a while and says, “You’re right.” The rabbi’s wife, who has been sitting on the sidelines, says, “Wait a minute! They can’t both be right!” To which the rabbi replies, “You’re right, too.”) But it matters to me that my beliefs and opinions are right. If I thought they weren’t, I’d change them.
And of course I believe that people who do bad things are behaving badly. In that sense, I am judging them. Aristotle says that’s one of the most human things human beings do.
Progressives, of course, are the most vulnerable to being paralyzed by accusations of being “opinionated” and “judgmental.” We pride ourselves on being open-minded, tolerant, and willing to listen to the other side. And then, we are suddenly confronted by an issue on which we cannot conceive that there is another side with any valid argument—female genital mutilation, for instance—and we are brought up short. Oops! Conservatives don’t have to worry about that kind of thing; they can denounce “relativism” at every turn, and in addition have the fun of ridiculing the relativists who fall short of their own claims of virtue.
But all of us, I think, on both sides, have lost track of what tolerance really means. Tolerance is not what we extend to the opinions of others. We can and should reserve the right to say that other people’s opinions are wrong, at least occasionally. Tolerance isn’t for opinions, it’s for people. And “judging” other people’s behavior isn’t the same as condemning the people themselves.
Not that we should leap to brand other people’s opinions as wrong or other people’s behavior as blameworthy without careful consideration in the first place. We need to start considering moral/political issues with an open mind. What are the facts? Who are the authoritative sources of information? Has anybody really considered all the angles on this issue?
There is even a situational aspect to all this that rarely gets looked at these days, which the Talmudic rabbis did a pretty good job on. The Bible (in Numbers 5:11-31) describes an ordeal to which a husband who thinks his wife has been fooling around but can’t prove it can subject her, to test her fidelity. It’s unpleasant but does no permanent damage, except perhaps to the relationship between them. Done properly, it should resolve the question one way or another and close the book on the suspicion—at least that’s what the Bible has in mind. But, a couple of thousand years later, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai pointed out that the ordeal contained what had now become a fatal flaw—if the husband who administered it had himself been unfaithful, one could not expect divine judgment to solve his problem. He didn’t deserve it. In short, he said, we are no longer decent enough for this ritual to work.
I think the same thing could be said about the different views on organ donation in the US and in western Europe. In the US, it is presumed that anyone who has not consented in writing to post-mortem organ donation is refusing. In Europe, anyone who does not consent must put his refusal in writing, or it will be presumed that he consents. Some organ donation advocates in this country, gravely concerned about the shortage of organ donors here, suggest that we should adopt the European practice. For a while, I thought that might be a good idea. Now, I’m not so sure. I think that, in a country like the US (and unlike Europe) where there are wide disparities between the rich and the poor, and where one of those disparities is the availability of health care, we are not decent enough to presume consent to organ donation by the most likely prospective donors, the poor. That doesn’t mean I believe the Europeans are wrong. I just don’t think their practice transplants well to this culture right now, and anybody who thinks it does probably needs to do some more thinking.
So let’s start out to form our opinions as carefully and openly as possible. At least let’s be clear about the authorities we rely on if we feel unable or unwilling to start from scratch for ourselves. (The mother of a friend of mine once drove me absolutely nuts by telling me she was opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment, but couldn’t tell me why. What she meant, I suspect, was that she was relying on some authority she couldn’t point me to at the moment. Although what bothered me the most was that she had started that particular line of conversation, and that was all she had to say about it.)
Then, when we have formed an opinion, let’s look at the Other Side to see whether, or to what extent, it is diametrically opposed to our own, and where we actually agree. Only then does it make sense to say, “I’m right. You’re wrong. Here’s why.” And even then, we need to avoid saying, “and that makes you a person I can’t talk to.” The guy on the Other Side may decide that himself, and there’s not much we can do about it. But if at all possible, we need to accept him as a human being like us, some of whose opinions we disagree with.
We also need to try to avoid the sweeping sociological generalizations about the links between belief, behavior, and disposition that are to be found, for instance, in books like The Authoritarian Personality, which presume that we are what we believe, or as the gospels assert, “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” The Jewish position, to which I try to adhere whenever possible, is that we mostly don’t care what people believe, as long as they behave decently.
Similarly, we have the right to judge other people’s behavior. But we don’t have the right to condemn the people who engage in behavior we disapprove of. This problem arises most often today in sexual politics. I have no problem with the behavior of gays and lesbians as such. But when homosexual relationships involve a component of violence, I disapprove of it as much as I disapprove of violence in heterosexual relationships, and for exactly the same reasons.
But how do I deal with people who believe that the sexual behavior of gays and lesbians as such is wrong? Many of them, most notably the Catholic Church, take the “hate the sin, not the sinner” position on this issue that I generally espouse on other issues.
Most gay people I know hate that rhetoric. They think it reeks of hypocrisy, that the Catholics or whoever don’t really mean it anyway, and actually hate gays and lesbians as well as their behavior. Which may be true in many instances, but certainly not all. Catholic institutions do good work for people with AIDS and HIV, for instance, far beyond the demands of mere hypocrisy and public relations.
Possibly the real problem is that we aren’t necessarily good at our relationships with the sinners we claim not to hate. We really are being hypocritical. We want credit for a virtue we aren’t really practicing. This needs more work.
Which is a phrase we need to think about. Back when I was an English teacher, I tried to grade papers carefully, so as to give the student the information she needed to improve her writing, rather than just make her feel bad. “This needs more work” was one of the phrases I used a lot. Maybe it’s an alternative to being judgmental or opinionated. Maybe it’s what we all need.
posted by WiredSisters at 10:23 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home