Moral Health

There is much to be said for the view that persons with self-respect do not tolerate being treated wrongly.  Indeed, this is a view to which I mightily subscribe.  Unfortunately, there is a very distorted and perverted way of understanding this view; and it is that very distorted and perverted rendering that has become increasingly popular in recent years.  Why, to hear some people tell it having self-respect consists in wallowing in the fact that one has been a victim; and on this view, doing nothing to help oneself is deemed justified because doing something to help oneself is somehow interpreted as a negation of one’s victim’s status.

On the warped view of not tolerating wrongdoing, blaming others for having been wronged is seen as an irrefutable sign of having self-respect—an undeniable affirmation of one’s moral personhood.  So people almost rush nowadays to obtain victim status.  Indeed, we have come dangerously close to making being a victim a sort of performative utterance, whereby all it takes to be a victim is simply that one declares that one is.

Here is an example cut from the cloth of reality.  Several years ago I announced to my 400-student class that two students have been caught cheating.  Well, guess what?  They claimed to be victims.  In what way were they victims?  Well, so the story goes, I had “outed” them as cheaters.  You will quite naturally wonder whether I had unwittingly mentioned their names or described them in sufficient detail that one could infer who they were.  In two words, the answer is: Absolutely not. (more…)

Equality is all the rage.  Yet, it is far from clear what we actually want.  This is because there is multitude of ways in which we can have equality.  At one extreme, we can have eviscerated equality: that is, equality shorn of any and all forms of excellence.  At the other extreme, we can have ennobling equality, namely equality that embraces moral and intellectual excellences.  Our naiveté consists in thinking that we have all that we need just so long as we have equality.  Surely not.   Equality in Dante’s inferno does not turn hell into paradise.

So it is not enough that we are all equal.  We must, of necessity, address the ways in which we all want to be equal.  In this regard, it would seem that modern democracies have not done a very good job; and for precisely this reason, they are losing their power to inspire

Cesspool equality seems to be the order of the day in democracies across the world.  Stupidity, impoliteness, thoughtlessness, crass indifferences along with inexcusable and absolutely flagrant self-indulgence are all constitutive of what I call cesspool equality.  This horrendous collective precludes any semblance of either honesty or responsibility or integrity.

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I like women who are feminine and men who are masculine.  Now, I understand that femininity and masculinity admits of degrees.  I understand also there is a kind of femininity and masculinity that is not about much more than sexuality.  I am not talking about that.  What is more, what I am talking about is hardly limiting; for countless are the ways in which a person can exhibit femininity and countless are the ways in which a person can exhibit masculinity.  I do not know any two women or any two men who, respectively, exhibit femininity and masculinity, in exactly the same way.

In the past, of course, femininity has been associated with weakness/submissiveness and masculinity with power/dominance.  When I think of femininity and masculinity, I do not think of any of these things.

At the simplest level, the female body and the male body are two fundamentally different types of human bodies.  Most basically, then, femininity in a woman and masculinity in a man is simply a reflection of this reality—something that can be done with grace and aplomb in either case.  So, the appreciation of femininity, on the one hand, and masculinity, on the other, has about as much of a claim to being sexist as does the appreciation of the difference between infants and adults have a claim to exhibiting some form of bias.

What does have a claim to being sexist is the view that women are intellectually inferior owing to just the fact that they are women and men are intellectually superior owing to the fact that they are men.  That is just so much nonsense.  And whatever else is true, technology has increasingly obliterated the relevance of physical strength in a variety of instances.

There can be no denying the reality of sexism.  After all, it was not so long ago that women did not even have the right to vote in the United States.  This is really quite stunning when one thinks about it.  For even if one held that the smartest woman was never quite as smart as the smartest man, there has never been any doubt whatsoever that there have been lots and lots of men with less than stellar intellectual abilities; and if men with lack-luster intellectual abilities were entitled to vote surely women, who were certainly no worse-off in that regard, ought to have been allowed to vote.

Sexism has been and, in various ways no doubt, continues to be ever so real.  But what, alas, does the end of sexism portend?  And sometimes, it sounds as if ending sexism is about eradicating the very difference between women and men.  And that is what I am protesting.

Indeed, it is very much a mystery to me that people who are so besotted with the idea of ethnic diversity often seem hell bent to denying the feminine-masculine divide.

Equality at its very best is about synchronization of differences, which contribute in a variety of ways to the greater good, rather than the elimination of them.  Certainly, that is the idea across ethnic groups.  I cannot for the life of me see why this very same idea does not hold between women and men.

Freud introduced the idea of penis envy; and every now and then it seems to me that feminists validate his point.  The idea that (1) women and men should be equal with respect to social, moral, and intellectual privileges is one thing; whereas the idea that (2) women should be more male-like or that men should be more female-like is another thing entirely.  Advocating for the first has nothing whatsoever to do with “penis envy” and everything to do with taking oneself seriously as a human being.  Advocating for the second, by contrast, strikes me as very much a form of what Freud called “penis envy”.

It is typically claimed that femininity and masculinity are nothing more than social constructs.  But that cannot be quite right.  To be sure, the present representation of femininity and masculinity in contemporary society is undoubtedly a social constructive.  But from this truth what surely does not follow is that femininity and masculinity are nothing more than social constructs.

Consider that we expect people with very long legs to take long strides.  It would be very odd indeed to see such a person taking little itty-bitty steps.  We get a difference in bodily movement simply in virtue of a difference in length of legs.  Why on earth would anyone would think that the we would not get a difference in bodily movements between, on the one hand, human beings with a vagina and breasts and, on the other, human beings without these but who possess a penis.  From a purely experiential point of view, we have a substantive difference here.

Whatever else is true, a man of sound mind cannot think that he is walking about with a vagina and a pair of breasts.  Whatever else is true, a woman of sound mind cannot think that she is walking about with a penis.  We arrive at this truth about the difference between women and men in the matter of walking without an ounce of social construction.  By contrast, who should wear pants versus dresses, and the like, is very much a matter of social construction.

Now, if one thinks that how one experiences one’s body has some bearing upon how one experiences the world, then the bodily differences between women and men can be carried even further.  From disease to physical harm, there are important differences between the bodies of women and men—differences that hardly make one body-type superior or inferior to the other.  And once more, this holds true without an ounce of social construction.

Without a doubt society has embellished femininity and masculinity; and it has often focused more upon femininity more than masculinity, thus burdening women in a way that it has not burdened men.  But notice that as brute strength has become increasingly irrelevant in society, the idea of masculinity has also become more embellished.  Thus, the level of concern that men have regarding their appearances has shot up dramatically.  Brute strength is one thing; being sculptured is quite another.

But what can I possibly say?  A man with pecks is one thing; a woman with breasts is quite another.  And ne’er a man wants his pecks to be mistaken for breasts; for pecks are meant to exude masculinity rather than femininity.

Femininity speaks to what is constitutive of having a female body.  Masculinity speaks to what is constitutive of having a male body.  The difference, far from being a curse, gives rise to an endlessly resounding richness in human interaction.  We are all better off for appreciating the differences rather than destroying them by imposing, of all things, a vicious and unworkable social construction of the self.

Androgyny, like some forms of medication, is tolerable in small doses.  Writ-large, it is surely a vice.

In his very provocative blog on Kant, Glenn Beck in “I Kant Explain” raised the question of citizens being scared into silence.  There was a time, or so Mr. Beck pined, when a person’s honor was tied to his saying what he believed.  This does not mean that a person was brazen or, as we now say, “in your face” with his beliefs.  But the idea was that in general one knew where a person stood, if only because the person’s silence made it clear that he did not stand where one supposed that he did.

The essence of Mr. Beck’s point is that in the throes of modernity there has been an extraordinary disconnect between honor and truth.  Why is that?  Mr. Beck failed to answer that question.

On my view, the explanation is tied to the fact that we no longer live in a world in which we can expect others to take our words in the way that we meant them, even if we did not say things just right.  The honor that was once associated with being a forthright person has been eroded by a world in which there is almost a rush to distort what we say.

We live in a society in which it is nothing for others to take a string of words out of context and brand the person as racist or sexist or antisemitic.  A person could heap praise after praise upon another and yet end up being called a sexist or a racist because he made one infelicitous slip of the tongue.  Here might be an example: Suppose that during a speech a white person, call him John, had nothing but praise for a black who is a public figure who is 47 years old.  That would all be for naught if John ended his speech with “I love this boy”.

All sorts of people would seize upon the fact that John referred to a 47 year old black man, call him George, as boy and entirely set aside all the praise that John had for George.  It would be irrelevant that George wasn’t offended and understood that John meant nothing malicious by it, because they both affectionately referred to one another as boy.

Honor in speech is a two-way street.  We are honorable in what we say when we can count on others to be honorable in grasping what we meant by what we said.

To be sure, there are times when it is not at all clear what a person meant to say.  Just so, there are lots and lots of times when we are absolutely clear what a person meant to say even though he fumbled all over the place in the choice of words used.  Specifically, we are clear that the person meant to say something kind even if his word choice was less that felicitous.  Between people of goodwill, what a speaker can count upon is that the listener(s) will make every effort to understand his (the speaker’s) words in the spirit that they were intended.  Against this backdrop, honor in speech is natural and can be expected.

Not so, when people are chaffing at the bit to use any excuse whatsoever to excoriate our character and so to discount our goodwill.  Against, that backdrop silence becomes a rational choice in a hostile social environment.  And honor in speech (which is tied to truth) is sacrificed for safety.

Like Mr. Beck, I am fortunate in that I do not have to sacrifice honor in speech for safety.  But it is a simple truth that most people are not as fortunate as either one of us is.

Mr. Glenn Beck has an extremely successful radio program; and he is particularly artful at pushing the envelope without crossing the line.  Moreover, he is masterful in his use of humor and humor coupled with “different voices” to raise questions about the ways in which people are lambasted for a single slip of the tongue.

I, on the other hand, am a black professor; and that gives me considerable latitude.  I can be conservative without being racist; and I am generally perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being quite capable intellectually; and this shelters me, to some extent, from the charge of being the white man’s lackey.  Moreover, it is generally conceded that I am too fiercely independent to be anyone’s lackey.

There are other alternatives.  For instance, a person could be known for her ideological beliefs that, in turn, speak to many public issues.  So there is a very real sense in which one already knows what she is going to say.  Alternatively, a person could simply be known for her outspoken views.

But here is the substantive point: Society is no longer nurturing of honor in speech.  There are those who will find a way to maintain honor in speech no matter what.  Most, however, will bow to reality and become what I think of as social zombies: they merely say what it is expected of them to say.  In the words of Mr. Beck: Most people are scared into silence.  Rather, they are scared into speech conformity.

The chilling consequence of all of this is that, in the matter of freedom of speech, we as a nation are not as free as we once were.  In one sense, then, religious conservatives and liberals are but two sides of the same coin.  Each is about suppressing speech.  They merely differ with regard to which kind of speech it is that gets oppressed.  Liberals will take just about anything out of context to raise the spectre of racism and religious conservatives can see brimstone and the fires of hell in the slight reference to sexuality.

There is a difference, however, between the two sides.  Religious conservatives are in this regard quite honest about what they are up to.  Liberals will insist that next to life itself, they hold nothing in higher esteem than freedom of speech.  This they say all the while casting aside the honor that comes with freedom of speech.  They will excoriate and ostracize the white who does not trip over himself saying “African American”, no matter how legitimate her or his reasons might be.  They will lambaste the male who extols the virtues of the stay-at-home mother, as if he were for some form of slavery of women.  The issue is not up for debate.  In general, one is properly reflective only if one speaks in support of the ideology of the status quo.

Do we want honor in speech or submissiveness?  History shows that wherever we have the later, we have the makings for a totalitarian state.  The problem lies in folks thinking that this truth does not apply to the views that they cherish.