I want you to judge me morally by what I say and do. If you see me being kind and considerate or, by contrast, mean and exploitive, then I want you to judge me accordingly. For that is how I shall judge you. Again, if my words and deeds are racist or sexist or antisemitic, then I want you to judge me accordingly. For surely that is how I shall judge you. But I have gotten ahead of myself.
Somehow, it has come to be held that judging others is one of the most inappropriate things that a person can do—an absolute failure to show another the appropriate respect. As far as I can tell this is just so much nonsense. There is, to be sure, talk in the Bible about not judging others. However, for anyone who reads these passages carefully, two things are clear. One is that all sorts of judgments are made in the Bible, and rightly so. The other is that one should not draw conclusions about another if one fails to have adequate information. This, however, does not apply to anything whatsoever that a person might do.
There are lots and lots of times when people rush to draw conclusions. And this, needless to say, is wrong. Unless you know a lot more, if all that one sees is a single instance of me coming out of a woman’s home at 3 a.m. in the morning, what one most certainly does not know is that she and I are having an affair. On the other hand, if one sees me doing this regularly or if one sees that she and I are in the throes of an extended romantic kiss, then the judgment that she and I are having an affair becomes vastly more plausible, from which it does not follow at all that one should gossip about it.
But what on earth could I be doing in a woman’s home at 3 a.m. in the morning, even on a single occasion, but carrying on an affair? Well, if you had asked me that you would have found out that I was there helping her to deal with several bats that had found there way in her apartment. By the same token, I cannot engage in an extended romantic kiss, and expect someone who sees this not to draw the inference that there is some romance going on between me and her. For we have no account of human behavior that warrants an alternative interpretation. Not even mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is plausible unless she is lying on the ground, in which case, it is most unlikely that I would be on top of her with her arms around me.
Animals are the only creatures on the face of this earth who have freedom without responsibility, and so whose behavior does not warrant moral judgments. This holds because it is understood that animals cannot distinguish between right and wrong, let alone exercise foresight so as to ensure that they behave accordingly. A dog, for instance, does not, and cannot, make the moral judgment that it is barking too much, let alone come to the conclusion that it should avoid the neighbor in order to put an end to all the barking that it is doing and then act accordingly.
Were dogs able to behave in the manner just described, we would no longer be taking them home. Rather, we would invite them to visit us.
Thus, the only way not to judge a person in the face of many forms of behavior is to regard the individual as an animal. And when I think of the Jerry Springer show, I think to myself that perhaps this is precisely what some people want: to be regarded as animals.
The elevation of feelings to some sort mind-control status is part of the problem. It is no longer the devil makes one behave in a despicable way. Rather, it is this or that feeling. The truth of the matter is that with rare exception feelings do not make a person do anything at all. Whether a person feels like it or not, the individual can get up in the morning and can arrive to work on time. No matter how sexually aroused a person is, the individual is not compelled to engage in inappropriate sexual behavior. In fact, time was when it would have made little or no sense for a person to excuse morally irresponsible behavior by reference to feelings. For the very idea of any sort of determinism of behavior owing to feelings was rejected outright.
So what explains the shift between now and just a few decades ago? I suggest that is twofold: misplaced compassion coupled with the concern to make psychology practically relevant by turning just about every long-term feeling into a compulsion. So now one can be addicted to gambling or to McDonald’s food or the internet or whatever.
I suggest that much of this talk about addiction is just so much nonsense. One you have not noticed that no one seems to have an addiction to engage in some form of moral or intellectual excellence. How is that people are addicted to gambling or to buying things, but no one is addicted to give money to charity? The other observation is has to do with racism and sexism. Given all these addictions, is it not plausible that someone is addicted to racist or sexist behavior, and so has an excuse for so behaving? Addictions seem to apply only to despicable behavior. Yet, there are limits even here.
On everyone’s account, sexism and racism have been around for millennia. If anything is “in the bones”, these two vices ought to be. Yet, we expect people not behave in either manner. Suffice it so say that if we can have this expectation, we can surely expect people to refrain from gambling. .I assume that not a soul reading this entry thinks that sexist and racist behavior admits of an excuse. And notice that I said behavior. For the ultimate measure of your respect for me is how you treat me regardless of how hostile your feelings towards me might be on this or that occasion. This is preferable any day to a bunch of warm marvelous feelings that cannot be relied upon to express themselves in the appropriate forms of behavior towards me.
I am no animal. Nor are you. So judge me where this is appropriate. For I can assure you that this is what I am doing with respect to you.
