OK, Poly – I was confused by your replies more than anything. If you believe “love your enemies” is hyperbolical (which shares it’s root with ancient Greek for devil – diabolical. The Devil “throws across”, you say Jesus “throws up and over”, the ball ends up in the same place?) fine. Yes, it rubs me the wrong way. I consider love to be an absolute – and you just aren’t making sense.
I understand this understanding. You believe people, or at least some quorum of people collectively, have the right to judge and punish people for their actions. But then you turn around and say:
But you don’t think God is the only judge, because you just said you believe people have the right to judge. The “who someone is” qualifier is completely meaningless. Why is John in prison? Because John is a murderer. Right? No one says, “well, we don’t know whether John murdered someone or not, since only God can determine that, but we are going to keep him locked up in here for 20 years just in case.” Ipso facto you are saying God is not the only judge of who a person is.
But you don’t have any obligation to deal with those acts though. How can you surrender what you don’t have? You go from saying “God is the only judge” to saying everyone has an obligation to judge (and punish) bad people and I can’t fathom the train of thought that gets you between these points.
I appreciate that, and I make a point of reading yours.
But, sometimes you drive me nuts anyway, my friend! and sorry for being snippy.
A person’s actions reflect who he is. Just like a fig tree produces figs or a thorn bush produces thorn. I don’t think there is a requirement to pretend we can’t know what kind of tree we have because only God can truly know (??).
Of course, people can change, unlike trees. We have souls / free will / what-have-you.
See – I think you can say that. What you can’t say is someone who has made mistakes in the past can not change and will never change. Or will only change if you torture him into it. Or that torturing them into it is the best policy – or that it is OK as long as you can blame society and wash your hands of any complicity.
But, Hitler never killed anyone (well, maybe when he fought in World War One, but you know what I mean)-- so what makes him a bad person? All he did was pay people to torture and kill other people with money other people were more than willing to pay to have those people tortured and killed. He’s a facilitator – why does that make him worse that an actor or a collaborator?
One can pass judgment in a court of law. That involves an evaluation of acts as well as motives. No problem there.
One can evaluate a person’s behavior in more casual circumstances. No problem there either.
One can evaluate a person’s character. It’s useful to understand your associates so that you can anticipate their behavior.
Another variant: One can condemn another’s character, to wit, “Ted is slime.” Now to summarize an individual’s soul based on the worst thing you know that they did, to say that a person is of the most base and reprehensible quality without adding caveats or qualifications, is to come close to saying that the person lacks grace or spiritual potential. And the latter is unchristian, possibly blasphemy.
But, hey, I’m an agnostic. In fact, I’m so coastal that I’m inclined to evaluate this uncompromising stance on the basis of its costs, benefits and alternatives. To make things more interesting (and to avoid straw men), I’ll discuss a more qualified variant, “On the basis of what I know, Ted is reprehensible.”
Net advantages: IMHO, none. Condemnation of behavior can be as memorable as condemnation of character, without the added implication of irredeemability. One of the virtues of punishment is its deterrent value. Symmetrically, the possibility of redemption provides incentive for the fallen to reform their behavior.
Ah, but extra-strong punishment gives extra-strong deterrence. So I’m left with my guess that the added value of condemning the person, as opposed to their behavior, is small.
Regarding the sicko:
Just to clarify, I trust you’re not saying that the accused doesn’t have a right to an energetic defense. Any you’re not saying that the jury shouldn’t consider all mitigating factors during the sentencing phase that the law provides for, and consider them well. You may be saying that upbringing should be considered irrelevant when meting out punishment. I disagree, but that would be another thread.
BUT, I think the context you had in mind was at a current events roundtable at the proverbial water cooler / watering hole. And I must admit that the practical effects of these sorts of attacks on this week’s televised mayhem provider are likely to be small. I’m beginning to wonder whether the real topic here (ok, the real topic in this paragraph) falls under the heading of gossip, as opposed to formal and informal structures of justice.
Sure we have a right to make individual judgments about it… in fact, nothing is going to stop us. But what is the need or point of having a “group judgment” about it? Apart from harm you might do to the animal, which I have a problem with, I really don’t give a rat’s ass (heheheh) whether you are into bestiality or not. And actually, apart from harm to the animal, I don’t see where morality enters into it anyway. Disgusting, yeah. Immoral? Nah.
As for other people’s infidelity… I’d like to know more before I pass judgment, but assuming all the worst, it’s still a judgment I make for myself, I see no value in making it “society’s” issue.
Well, I don’t think it is arguable at all: choices that hurt people should be punished, censured, and people who make such choices shouldn’t be teaching them to their children. But I don’t think there’s much disagreement on that point, is there?
Unless you can come up with a context or example of when and how social censure would be a positive, productive, necessary thing, I’d have to say you’ve answered your own question with a resounding…yes! It is enough! And I believe that has been proven time and again throughout human history.
First of all, I never said this and am not certain I believe it. I would not describe it as “my” view because I frankly haven’t given it enough thought to be able to claim it or disavow it. But it does underline one point I would like to make, which is that I do not believe that placing “indiviual empathic understanding” above the welfare of society is the way to go. And that, IMO, is what underlies the “victimhood” that appears to be more prevalent in our society – that we exhalt “understanding” the perpetrator over judging him, and in the process may well injure society by punishing him too leniently out of misguided empathy. I realize there must be some tension between the two extremes, but I am not convinced we have not tipped too far towards individual empathy at the expense of societal good. I do not advocate the total exhaltation of pragmatism; I merely ask whether a little more pragmatism might not be a good thing.
And I think that I, to a certain extent, simply disagree with this. I do not think that disregarding the personality of a person constitutes “reducing another human being to a lifeless element,” when in fact the personality is irrelevant to the simple question of whether Person A committed Crime B (or Bad Act B). Perhaps (and I’m trying to think this through as I type) the difference is that I would advocate judging initially (yes, this person did this wrong thing and that is worthy of censure) and then seeing if there are mitigating or extenuating circumstances, while I perceive you to be saying that no judgment may take place, not even initially, until all the mitigating and extenuating circumstances are known and discussed and the personality of the person weighed. Again, this to me would appear to be unwieldy in the extreme and possibly equate to a long-term suspension of judgment or opinion, which in turn leads to such equivocation as a child asking “was that man in the paper wrong to kill his wife?” and receiving the answer “maybe; maybe not” (implying that killing your wife is sometimes okay) – as opposed to “yes” or even “probably, yes.” Do you see why I continue to suspect this might present a problem?
I understand this and I agree, but I would comment parenthetically that it seems to me that it is the perpetrator – the one on trial or subject to possible public censure – who receives all of the efforts at empathy, while the victims of his actions are often ignored.
Which is of course the general definition. I continue to fail to see however, why I must put myself in touch with the feelings (which are subjective) as opposed to the motivation (which is quasi-subjective), or circumstances (which are objective) of an individual before judging him. Ted cheated on his wife – how did that make him feel? I don’t care how it made him feel, and I continue to maintain that how he feels is largely irrelevant to the justice of his actions.
Again, and we may be quibbling, I do not believe that I need to “identify” with a molester at a subjective, vicarious, empathic level in order to understand his drives and motivations.
POLYCARP:
So again I ask you: What then defines what a person is? You appear to be discounting what they do as only “one small element” but giving more weight to their “potential,” which to me is obviously not about who they are, but rather who they might be if circumstances were different – which of course we can assume they aren’t. And I also again ask you: If the forebearance to judge is based on part on the belief or the hope that at another time and place my respond differently, what happens when, after myriad chances, the person doesn’t act differently, but acts precisely the same (i.e., badly)?
Obviously. But if we can never apply them to individuals, no matter how richly they may deserve it, does that not render the moral principle essentially valueless? It devolves to, “well, yeah, I think murder is wrong, but that’s just me.”
I guess if I have a problem with this at all – and I’m not sure I do – is that I perceive a potentially dangerous refusal to judge actions on the grounds that we should not judge people – a misguided misapplication of the distinction you are making. I’m not sure that others as readily make the distinction between who people are and what they do as you are able to – certainly I, apparently, cannot, since I’m at a loss to determine what people “are” if it is not, in large part what they do. (Or, rather, that what they do is the best manifestation of who they are.) And if we cannot readily distinguish, and we decide we should not judge the are, then we run the risk of failing to judge the do, precisely because we can’t separate the two. That, to me, is dangerous. Mind you, I am not then advocating the judgment of both, necessarily, but I do think it is better to judge both than to judge neither.
FLOWBARK:
Actually, I wasn’t referring to a legal defense at all, but rather the tendency to argue that actions automatically become defensible because of circumstances, and that such arguments are automatically entitled to be heard and considered, as opposed to dismissed out of hand. A better example might be the recent mauling dealth by dogs by the woman in San Francisco. The owners’ immediate response was to defend the dogs saying, among other things, well, maybe the woman was taking steroids, which could have set the dogs off – as if that could possibly justify having her throat torn out but ungoverned mastiffs. To what extent must we take seriously such statements, as opposed to laughing derisively and tossing them out?
STOID:
But what is a “group judgment” except the collective judgment of individuals? If I live in a society that believes that bestiality is morally wrong – and, having functionally the same upbringing and experiences, we all individually decide it is wrong – then what is the rationale for withholding such judgment on a “group” level, if you admit that we are perfectly free to apply it at the individual level?
The point is that if we refuse to judge such actions as wrong, then we implicitly teach to our children that they might be right. And, of course, we have no way to prevent anyone else from teaching their children whatever reprehensible dreck they choose, unless we give them an incentive not to teach it by making clear that the behavior in question (criminal or not) is not accepted by society.
You want an example? Here’s one: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The deaths of 100+ young women who had been locked in a sweatshop led to a public outcry regarding working conditions that in turn led to improvements in worker safety. Here’s another: The civil-rights movement, where social protest, coupled with societal outrage over televised images of people being beated and assaulted with water cannons and fire hoses, led to significant gains in racial equality. For that matter, any extra-legal protest of movement would qualify, from temperance to anti-war to anti-slavery to anti-apartheid would be an example. Social change comes in part through social censure of existing means deemed no longer justifiable, be it because they are immoral or because they are out-moded. You see no value in that at all?
Fair enough. You did say, “His shoes” is not where I need to be when judging him, in either the personal or legal sense; I need to be in society’s shoes." I interpreted that as arguing that it was better to consider the society’s welfare than to practice individual empathy. If you will parse it for me as you intended it to be read, I will respond accordingly.
As I stated above, it increasingly seems that rather than asking me what my views are you wish me to answer for the ethical behavoior of American society. I am not particularly interested in doing so, since my influence over the ethical behavior 300 million individuals is miniscule (to say the least). I have explicitely argued for empathy as a precursor to judgment, not a substitute for judgment. I am fairly certain that I have been unambiguous in that regard.
It is irrelevant to the question of fact, “did person A commit act B”. Whether it is irrelevant to the moral quality of act B depends upon whether you reduce a human being to the external effect of his actions. “Lifeless”, perhaps, was too loaded a term, but it illustrates the idea that you have removed consideration of the individual as a thinking/feeling being in favor of an objective catalogue of his actions.
Here we seem to be arguing semantics. I am not at all interested in judgung the moral quality of an act as a separate issue from the moral quality of the human decision to act. I see the idea of deciding that an act is “worthy of censure” but later deciding that the individual performing the act should not be censured for said act (due to mitigating or extenuatig circumstances) as an empty exercise.
Not quite. From my very first footnote: every judgment therefore carries with it an inate level of uncertainty. That should not disuade us from making judgments, nor from being secure in those judgments. It should make us willing to revise our judgments as our understanding evolves. What concerns me greatly about what I perceive you to be saying is the idea that it is good for us to make judgments before understanding as much as is possible about the act to be judges. What do you see as beneficial about forming judgments before gaining understanding?
Well, depending upon the circumstances of the action the proper answer might be “maybe” or “probably” or even “I think so”. Why do you see a problem with giving a child an honest answer? (Again, I understand that at early ages children require the unequivocal rule.)
No, I don’t. Early on in this discussion you said, “I think we can agree [that rigid codifications of immoral acts are] not the way to go.” Yet ever since then you seem disturbed by the idea that we shouldn’t make rigid moral pronouncements about generalized human actions.
I would paranthetically observe that the problem exists on both extremes. The idea of a lynch mob does not exist because society has overly empathized with a perpetrator. I reiterate, though, I am not interested in answering for the ethical mistakes of American socity as a whole. I freely admit that both applying empathy only to a perpetrator is an ethical mistake. I feel the same about applying no empathy to the perpetrator.
You cannot understand the motive if you do not understand the feelings. The very idea that some circumstances can mitigate or extenuate an act is based upon an empathetic understanding that we might feel pressured to perform the same way in the same circumstances. (Or else in a pragmatic societal cost/benefit analysis, but you have stated, I believe, that you do not argue from such a position.)
I see no justification for the adjective vicarious. It seems self-evident to me that you cannot understand his drives and motivations without practicing empathy. If you see another way to gain such an understanding, please share it.
Perhaps, again, this is a problem of definition. Earlier, you stated, if I truly “put myself in his shoes” then I would presumably conclude, as he does, that his actions are excusable. This seemed to imply a deeper meaning to empathy, so I posted the definition under which I was working. You seemed to accept this, but now you argue that it you can understand a person’s drives and motives without Identification with and understanding of [his] situation, feelings, and motives.
Perhaps so, but, as Jodi and I got into over stereotypes (in a round about way), its all fine and good to pass judgement without action. That is, matter-of-factly then pass it away. However, to condemn the action is to condemn the actor(I said, if you recall), I can’t say this enough. There is no way to punish an action. Practiced judgement is an act toward the person who committed the act which was originally judged. You can’t jail murder, only ther murderer.
spiritus sigh After the Ayn Rand thread I’m still trembling over morality arguments. Leave that to the determinist in me, and I think I will not broach the subject again until I have some better arguments.
For what it’s worth, I’d like to make a few comments.
I don’t see anything wrong with being “judgmental” in Jodi’s sense. Actually, I believe we shouldn’t abstain from forming judgments, for the same reasons expressed by Spiritus in his first post to this thread.
There are, however, some criteria that our judgements should meet. They shouldn’t be rushed. We have to be aware that a lot of times things aren’t what they seem to be, and it’s probably best to withhold judgment altogether. We should be willing to revise them in light of new information, as Spiritus said in his footnote to said post. We should also be objective, meaning that we should derive the same conclusions from the same information, regardless of who we judge, including ourselves. Finally, we should act, within the perimeter of our responsibility and legitimacy, like Polycarp has.
I think the reluctance of today’s society to condone “judgmentalism” comes in part from the many circumstances where it led to wronging people. After being wrong in our judgment so many times, we are afraid to exercise it anymore for fear of making mistakes. However, I think we should fear, but sometimes judge nevertheless. We will be wrong, reconsider, be wrong again, reform judgment, be wrong again, etc.
I need to judge at least some of the time, if only to have a basis for my own actions. I need to articulate my own notion of good and bad, in order to be able to act according to a well-defined value system. I can only learn by interacting with other people, assuming the consequences of those interactions, and forming judgments about them. They will judge me, too. That’s how it goes. It’s conflictual, we make mistakes, but equating everything with everything else doesn’t get us anywhere. Human actions are simply not all the same morally. What exactly is the difference is what we are supposed to learn, and we learn by failing.
Okay, IMHO who someone is is between them and God. (Atheists may read “known only to themselves” if at all.)
I submit that it is entirely appropriate for me to make a value judgment about another person’s actions, and to act upon it within the constraints of my own moral code. If chosen by our society to serve in a judicial capacity (not necessarily “judge”: a policeman or a prosecutor can and often must make decisions as to whether a situation warrants further action), I may judge the gravity of the action, the likelihood of further problems, etc., as appropriate in determining what to do as regards this person. I do understand that it is difficult to separate a person from his or her actions, within our mortal capacity for perception.
At rock bottom, however, nobody is a noun; we are all people who have adjectives modifying us. When you assign people nouns, you have dehumanized them to the extent of placing them in a category. Saying “Matt_mcl is a homosexual” at first appears ethically neutral. But saying that to someone with a preconceived notion of “those perverted people who are trying to subvert the morals of our nation with the Gay Agenda” has just dehumanized him. And it does not define him: his interests in politics, Esperanto, his collection of wise and witty remarks, all go down the tubes as you restrict knowledge of him to what happens to stimulate his libido (and you haven’t done a great job with that, either – he’s no more turned on by Jesse Helms’s body than you or I are). Describing him as “gay” (an adjective) on the other hand, imparts the useful information that he is attracted sexually to people of the same sex, while not pigeonholing him as “one of them.” (There ain’t no “them” – there’s just more of “us” with different interests and tastes.)
To bring this one right home, Jodi, let me observe that I’ve told you in the past about having been brought up in a Methodist church my family belonged to, and us having been declared personae non gratae by a pastor with an Edifice Complex – and that my consequent dislike for that particular church can be extended to the denomination through the laxness of a District Superintendent and a Bishop who failed to exercise the oversight they were appointed/elected to exercise. But for me to hold you, a committed Methodist from 2000 miles away, in complicity for those misdeeds to my family, would be quite wrong – because you are not “a Methodist” – you’re a person who belongs to the United Methodist Church, but whom I know from other context would have been right in there fighting for our rights if you’d been aware of them back when. In short, in judging you as “one of those Methodists (who dumped on me and my family)” I would be unfairly stereotyping a woman whose stance would have been far different than those for whom, despite best efforts to give true forgiveness, I still feel a bit of a grudge.
My child molester friend was able to change his behavior. But even if he had not, and in consequence would have been confined where he could not molest small children, he would still have been a person with good points as well as bad – I still recall the occasion when I passed out from the side effect of medicine lowering my blood pressure, and when I came to, he was carrying me physically, in his arms, to our car, with an expression of loving concern and fear for me on his face. To know him is to know the good and the bad, and realize that some of each is in you as well, and therefore refrain from setting up a pigeonhole and judging him into it, just as you would not wish to be judged exclusively on your own faults.
“Judgmentalism” as the term gets used around here is quite different from judiciousness – fair evaluation with all known circumstances taken into account – it’s that tendency to pigeonhole and dehumanize, to make into “one of them” rather than admitting that he or she is just another one of “us,” with his or her own problems, joys, goals, sins, worries, loves, and hates.
While I appreciate what you are trying to do, Poly, I don’t think eschewing nouns is the way to do it. I think one can encourage the realization that any group you define a person as being part of is not monolithic without avoiding classing that person as a part of the group. Frankly, I don’t see much difference between saying “matt_mcl is a homosexual” and describing him as “gay”–and I doubt your theoretical bigot would see any difference either; he’ll hate the gay Matt just as he hates Matt the homosexual. No noun and no adjective can possibly compass all of a person’s being, but I don’t think it dehumanizes people to say that they are any particular thing. You are a Christian, Jodi is a lawyer, Matt is a homosexual. ::shrug:: Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that labels are a tool, and people are not their labels; if certain people are unclear on this, I think the solution is to teach them how to use labels properly, rather that avoid their use altogether. I don’t think I’ve dehumanized you by calling you a Christian, and I’d rather not use the sort of awkwards phrasing that would be required to avoid such usage. Sometimes people may like being something, too; I greatly prefer to be called an artist rather than simply being described as a “person who makes art”.
(No, it’s not Nitpick Polycarp Day where I live–why do you ask? )
All I was saying in that was that nouns are labels, and all labels dehumanize to some extent. You’re entirely right that adjectives can do the same thing, but they’re less apt to. Check Deacons Trucked’s comments over in Matt’s Pit thread for a same-sex-oriented man who doesn’t identify as “a gay person” under whatever noun you care to use. And well presented, too, I think.
“Polycarp is a Christian” to someone like Nocturne means that I’m a judgmental asshole who considers that because his clothing and taste in music doesn’t correspond with mine, he is therefore on the road to Hell, tripping merrily over the good intentions. So it can be a detriment to classify me as that.
Are you sure? In addition to your posts, I just got a message from somebody in Chicago who wants to know why we are forecasting growth in a particular market sector in one suburban area. The guy who wrote that is retired. I don’t have a clue. ::: digging into source data ::::
I fail to see how saying you have Christian beliefs would somehow avoid having Nocturne classify you as a Christian. If Nocturne is biased against all Christains because of the actions of a few, a little syntactical legerdemain isn’t going to fool him. We could eliminate all nouns as labels for humans, but then all that would happen is people would be bigoted against “gay people” rather than “homosexuals.” People will use categories and generalizations and sterotypes because they are generally useful. The nouns are simply a tipoff that they may be doing it–they’re a symptom, not a disease. I think educating people about the failings and proper uses of stereotypes is the only real solution, not fussing about phrasing; besides, I love my language and get tetchy when people try to restrict it, even with the best of intentions.
and sorry for being snippy.
I think one can encourage the realization that any group you define a person as being part of is not monolithic without avoiding classing that person as a part of the group. Frankly, I don’t see much difference between saying “matt_mcl is a homosexual” and describing him as “gay”–and I doubt your theoretical bigot would see any difference either; he’ll hate the gay Matt just as he hates Matt the homosexual. No noun and no adjective can possibly compass all of a person’s being, but I don’t think it dehumanizes people to say that they are any particular thing. You are a Christian, Jodi is a lawyer, Matt is a homosexual. ::shrug:: Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that labels are a tool, and people are not their labels; if certain people are unclear on this, I think the solution is to teach them how to use labels properly, rather that avoid their use altogether. I don’t think I’ve dehumanized you by calling you a Christian, and I’d rather not use the sort of awkwards phrasing that would be required to avoid such usage. Sometimes people may like being something, too; I greatly prefer to be called an artist rather than simply being described as a “person who makes art”.