Toward a braver and juster new world
Activism
Answering a comment got very long very fast, so I’m putting it here.
https://www.loc.gov/item/42027732/
I don’t know whether you realize how much “it can't just be a system I like. It needs to be one that the bullies will live within. Because the alternative is just to kill all of them, which seems like a really bad idea to me.” reads to me like an attempt at a reductio argument in which you try to equate what I’ve been saying to brutality or nonsense.
I have taken pause and put in some effort and will be addressing your commentary strictly as commentary.
I suggest starting by sorting things out.
1. You ask what we should do. Whom do you mean by “we”? A governing state?
By Constitution_Pg1of4_AC.jpg: Constitutional Conventionderivative work: Bluszczokrzew (talk) - Constitution_Pg1of4_AC.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11078481
There’s the “we” that’s “a society of a whole bunch of individuals of whom I am one and act individually, as do we all.”
There’s the “we” that’s civil society that’s typically assumed—I don’t know why—to have to proceed on a basis of unanimity.
There’s the “we” of social expectations, manners, standards, and mores.
There’s the “we” of our society’s, societies’, or polity unity’s government, its laws, rules, and administrative procedures.
I don’t understand this as a useful time for civilian anti-fascists to decide what governments should do in setting new procedures. I do think that government leaders and officials who don’t want to collaborate with white supremacists, fascists, or legalistic misogynists (hereafter “the bullies”) can and should use the laws that exist to hinder “the bullies,” and where possible to erect bulwarks against them and indeed, where possible, to advance sustainability and equity.
I am making observations about the social expectations, manners, standards, and mores that are currently in operation and I am explaining what sorts of changes I think that the “we” of an ambient set of societies should impose. I don’t know of a better way for the society(ies) composed of human beings to work intentionally to alter social expectations, manners, standards, and mores than by recognizing how asymmetric they are. I hope to be part of work to decenter the current ones, and that starts with noticing them. We have seen social expectations, manners, standards, and mores change not merely across centuries or decades, but across presidential administrations and even across months.
I don’t think there’s any reason to imagine that any but very tiny US civil societies operate on a unanimity basis, and I certainly don’t expect that for any large ones. It makes change forbiddingly difficult, which is why it is seldom selected formally. I do not select it as a criterion to bother with in discourse.
And there’s the “we” of one as an individual in some set of societies. Few of us have much individual power. We all make our choices. Some of decide that every system is the same or something like that, and keep their heads down. Some communicate with politicians, agencies, voters and potential voters. Some with legal standing initiate lawsuits. Some demonstrate. Some use their economic agency. Some march in protests. Some—empirically very largely “the bullies”-- bomb buildings. Some go around like trolls to try and convince their opponents of their side’s inevitability and shut them up and down. There are other paths.
Me, I try to lay the way for people to say, “You have said that three times and continuing is bullying,” or “No, I don’t have to convince you/them,” or “The door is that way,” or “I’m done. Bye.” And I try to lay the way for people to hear those things said and take them as reasonable-enough things to be said—which clearly doesn’t currently happen. Though I have known discourse regularities worse than they now are.
2. There is a distinction between formal rules or laws, which are levers, and social regularities, which are typically unstated.
In High-Change in Bond Street, – ou – la Politesse du Grande Monde (1796), James Gillray caricatured the lack of etiquette in a group of men who are depicted leering at women and crowding them off the sidewalk. By James Gillray - Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZC4-8766 (color film copy transparency), uncompressed archival TIFF version (49 MB), level color (pick white point), cropped and converted to JPEG (quality level 88) with the GIMP 2.4.5., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4352835
I believe and hope it’s been made clear how a law intended to do something like politically empowered Black people can be turned around used to reimpose oppression and marginalization of Black people and empower “the bullies.”
I happen to think that looking for a law or rule that can’t be misused is a fool’s errand. Certainly as compared with working for a culture that will use the laws and rules as helpful tools toward sustainability and equity.
It is that sort of culture and its expectations that I’m trying to work at. From my margin.
3. There is a distinction between behaviors and persons.
David Garrick as Richard III on stage. By William Hogarth - 8AHFGbq7ICVHbA at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21878659
It is currently common in discourse to talk about “criminals” rather than actions that are against a law, and about what to do with “criminals” rather than how to handle illegal acts.
In an evil twin of that first evil, it is currently common in discourse to talk about “good guys” rather than about their actions, which from a “good guy” are preemptively presumed to be “good,” or at least “well-intended,” so that the “good guy” should not be caused any suffering.
While it is common in discourse to act as if limiting a behavior requires suppressing or eliminating someone or everyone who exhibits it, we as a nation of societies and individuals know perfectly well how to distinguish the actions of a privileged person from their being as a person.
And sure, some people are habitual offenders, and they may even claim that they cannot behave differently. People who persist beyond some determined perseveration can experience sanctions or ejection as individuals at that point.
4. The possibility of exit is extremely important.
Ancient Greek door carved on the Hercules sarcophagus from the Kayseri Archaeology Museum (Kayseri, Turkey). By Carole Raddato - File:The Hercules Sarcophagus depicting the Twelve Labors of Hercules, 150-160 AD, Kayseri Archaeological Museum, Turkey (26261172056).jpg, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=102550839
“Why didn’t you just leave?” is a classic and sneering question to abuse victims.
Well, the easier the exit, the easier to leave abuse, which limits both the abuse one experiences and possibly the amount of abuse inflicted on the world. And the better the options to escape *to*, the easier the exit.
When I was growing up, our family rules meant that I was not allowed exit from any negotiation with my younger sister until she was satisfied. (I could have run away from home altogether or temporarily, and likely she wouldn’t have pursued me in that, but that would have been pretty costly.) Accordingly, within that constraint, she decided that smart bargaining was raising her ante if I didn’t immediately comply with her initial request. Negotiation would continue until I complied.
When I was going to take oral comps I was really bothered by knowing that any candidate could be caused to fail. I was so bothered that I was worried that the concern itself would impede my performance. But then it occurred to me that if the invigilators were revving up that way, I could and would stand up, say, “Well, this is pointless, as you’re too evil,” and leave. Not too costly an exit, and with that in my mental pocket I did fine and tranquilly.
Under current rules of discourse it is ordinary both for “the bullies” to demand that their victims stick around, and for “the bullies” to eject their victims. Crowds chuckle.
But the possibility to “the bullies” of getting to exit should also be remembered. “The bullies” are no longer so much complaining about being denied access to some platforms, because they’ve been ceded the right both to enter and to run amok on most major platforms. That doesn’t have to continue.
Platforms and polities can and do make rules and limits about what can be communicated through and in them, and in what way. Those rules have been changed over the past three or four decades, and then can be changed again. And if “the bullies” don’t like it, they can exit the platforms and maybe the polities, or choose silence.
Just as no medium or polity needs to platform me, and I can seek or build another, or I can fall silent.
I do not perceive that “the bullies” have to agree with every set of institutions for it to become a regularity and persist. But they’d like everyone to imagine that.
Furthermore, temporal planning horizons must be extended.
Illustration: John Martin's c. 1823–1827 engraving, Satan Presiding at the Infernal Council, served as the design of the Galactic Senate in the 1999 film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. By John Martin - The Bridgeman Art Library (images.bridgeman.co.uk) [1]http://www.thehistoryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Satan-presiding-at-the-Infernal-Council-1824.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6893061
I thank you very much for taking the time and effort to engage with me on this. You're right. it was hyperbole to talk about "obey my idea of a good system or we'll kill you." Except that it also isn't. That's essentially how the "utopian" aspect of tyrannical regimes works: all the modern monster tyrants had some sort of vision of how people ought to be in their new kingdom, especially on the left, and if you didn't like it, you should consider yourself lucky to go to the gulag instead of being summarily executed. I don't think you think that way. I don't think any of my friends think that way... but that way doesn't mostly burst fully formed from people's forehead, and so I am interested in how people get to that point, and not addressing how to live in the same polity with appalling people is, I contend, one of the ways we get there.
Explicating the kinds of "we" is useful, but I also am really interested in slicing it a related but maybe slightly different way: what "we's" form organically through regular contact (e.g. a neighborhood), what "we's" form from relative strangers gathered for a specific task or ritual or other focused behavior (e.g. morris dancers, church), what "we's" form around that hazy line between actual shared experience and what Kurt Vonnegut called "granfalloons" (e.g. alumni or veterans), and what "we's" form around a clear mission and moral purpose and code of behavior (in theory, a government). In this range from organic to (for lack of a better word) engineered, the kind of moral leverage you're talking about varies, and the options available in terms of personal action to respond to bullies varies too. I think of organizations (actual member groups with laws and such) as having a kind of range between something like the UN General Assembly, in which you don't get kicked out even necessarily for launching a war on someone else, and NATO, which is specifically about mutual defense. US citizenship means you don't get kicked out for murdering another citizen. Being a member of my Friends group on Facebook sure does.
All of which is to say, the things you are laying the groundwork for people to say (and I'm with you on this aspect, to be clear) doesn't work in all these "we" contexts and I think we need to pay attention also and especially in this kind of political moment, to the cases where we can't kick the bullies out. I feel like liberalism is frankly paralyzed exactly by the "can't kill them" quandary: what do you do when you personally don't feel able to kick the bully to the curb, but they feel perfectly justified to kick you?
It seems like a lot of what you are talking about is the equivalent of "setting boundaries" which has been a big part of my adult life, dealing with my parents, and which I have seen is similar for a lot of my friends. The option to walk away is a big part of this, as you suggest. And one of the great challenges then is to make it possible for anyone to walk away. Why don't people walk away? Sometimes it's because they love the bully. Sometimes (this was the case with my parents) someone they care about loves the bully and is not leaving, and they don't want to leave that beloved without any allies. Sometimes—and here we get into public bullying/oppression in addition to physical personal abuse—there is physical coercion and threat. And sometimes they just can't imagine our way to that place—their worldview doesn't include the option of walking away.
In the last two cases, absent the first two cases, the moral course is clear, and you lay that out clearly. Your second two points (which I am on board with) are on point here: there is no engineered system that will save us from malicious intent... but there are systems that can encourage or discourage that intent. And behavior rather than persons gives people the choice to behave differently. But what if then they don't take you up on that? It's kind of the flip side of free will: sometimes people use it to behave heinously. Valuing free will in a society doesn't really take sociopathy into account.
I think we actually come to a similar end point, or in any case I agree with you. I think once again we maybe differing on different emphasis on words. "Living with bullies" to me means they aren't simply going to go away—I'm not going to execute them, though that is clearly a fantasy we carry around culturally (see under Batman or any number of other vigilante fantasies, or shows like Dexter). But as you are emphasizing, my own sphere is not the same as this whole wide world. And that's where the difference lies between my life and the national/global political and social order: I can and do have an outside that I can exile bullies to. That is not true of the USA. You can beat the Confederate States in war, but unless you commit total genocide, they are still there once you win. Hyperbole? Sure. Except that genocide happens. And so the question maybe is how to clearly differentiate between the NATOs and UNs of our world, and have different expectations and rules for them.
I actually keep going back to the Good Samaritan story as an example of this. The Samaritan doesn't bring the injured fellow back to his house, make him his brother, all the things that bond him into close obligate relationship. They are neighbors, and not kin. Jesus is asking that that neighborly relationship be treated as a sacred one, not that it be transformed. He's asking that we make that sacred relationship between strangers central to what we are, which is different from trusting strangers to behave well. I think we Americans, in our long-time aversion to formalized rank and distinction and a culture that has increasingly emphasized casualness, have lost something important there, and you actually seem to be getting there from a different direction: trust is not a right. Behaving like a jerk destroys trust. And some relationships not only can but should be broken and recognized as broken when that trust is gone. I don't have to trust all US citizens, but I do need to trust my friends. And they are therefore fundamentally not the same.