Objectively Bad Ideas
Just a brief note: I am currently working on a rather long piece of fiction, for me anyway. So, I will most likely be distracted from writing things like the following for a while. That may be for the best. Who knows?
Creating a hierarchical taxonomy of Human Beings based on external characteristics and using it to define the moral worth, capacity for change, social status, legal rights and educational/economic opportunities of individuals based on the taxa to which they appear to belong.
Asserting that a just society must accept an individual’s subjective perception of him or herself as real and binding on the society, facilitate the realization of that perception and insist that all other individuals accept it as true.
Correcting past injustice by means of present injustice.
All of the above ideas are objectively bad — terrible in fact — and we have nearly limitless historical and present-day evidence to demonstrate this to anyone’s satisfaction, providing they care to look at it. However, these ideas continue to be remarkably popular even in the “liberal West”, and each one has been and is being invoked in the name of various causes and ideologies ranging from cultural domination to humanistic compassion. No matter the ostensible motivation for employing them, these ideas are always bad and always lead to suffering on a scale proportionate to the extent of their influence in the social/political discourse and their application within the society as a whole.
They are, in my opinion, mostly unimportant on the level of individuals or voluntary associations, but are inevitably destructive when codified in Law, Public Policy, Social Morality or Intellectual Dogma, as well as when they guide or support the policies and objectives of political movements or parties.
In other words, we may think and believe whatever we wish and act on those beliefs in our personal lives as long as we don’t impose them on others. We may live in a racially, ethnically or religiously homogenous community should we choose and do so because we believe it is superior, or for any other reason. We may spend our time, energy, passion, creativity and money helping one group over all others because we think they deserve it or to correct what we see as past injustice. But in our role as citizens of a Democracy in the pursuit of a vibrant and free society for each person we must work to set aside our prejudices and avoid creating categories of Human Beings or arrogating to ourselves knowledge and discernment we simply cannot have in Law, Politics and public practice. Failing to do so is sure to bring bad outcomes from even the best of intentions.
As a brief example I would like to mention the struggle for adults to be able to marry whichever adult person they choose. The only necessary argument for this, and the one that ultimately won the day legally, is that the freedom of human beings to do as they will can only be limited by government where there is a clear, compelling, and commonly agreed upon reason to do so for the greater social good. The idea that there actually was such a reason to restrict certain types of marriages became untenable and unacceptable for most Americans as it became clear through experience with family, friends, neighbors, etc. as well as changing social morays, that there was nothing inherently destructive to society at large in these unconventional relationships. We rightly decided and enshrined in Law that any adult may marry any other adult for any reason because they are inherently free to do so. This was, in my opinion, a necessary and natural extension of the principles upon which the USA was founded.
However, during the final 10 or 15 years of this social struggle, Objectively Bad Idea #2 began to be employed to generate sympathy and compassion for men and women who wished to marry someone of the same sex. The argument was that homosexual people were born homosexual and thus could not help but to be attracted only to adults of the same sex. Therefore to deny them the opportunity to marry whom they chose was cruel and a violation of their “nature” or “identity”. In other words, they should be allowed to marry someone of the same sex not merely because as free adults they chose to, but because they were a certain kind of person that the society at large had to accommodate in order to be just. Beyond the rather nasty implication of this argument that if they could choose differently they probably should choose differently, it enshrines the idea that our actions should be measured and permitted not on the balance of their merits, our inherent liberty and the common good, but rather with respect to the category of people we are said to belong to or claim to belong to. This has led to many arguably very bad outcomes, especially for our young people. When the argument is used in the reverse to attribute to an individual a constellation of characteristics based on the category to which they “reveal themselves” to belong based on whom they love, well, we really are right back where we started from aren’t we?
These objectively bad ideas are seductive and persuasive because they present a simplistic and reductionistic view of human society that clearly defines the “enemy” in a way that confirms our biases, discourages self-criticism and often result in the imposition of significant social penalties on those who disagree. They are well suited to inciting strong emotional responses and outrage as well as exploiting and encouraging envy, bitterness and a desire for revenge. Ironically, they often engender a sense of helplessness in the face of History and a dependence on a yet-to-be-realized “Benevolent State” to “free us” as well. They are inherently and profoundly antithetical to liberal Democracy and we must, I believe, call them out wherever we encounter them, especially when we find them in our own thoughts and judgements. This is not an easy thing to do. These ideas have found their place in the minds, words and works of many of our “elite intellectuals” and political leaders, unfortunately.
The simple truth is that we are incapable of elaborating and measuring the relative value, importance and virtue of all individuals so as to determine their “proper” place within society or to distribute “justly” its fruits. Trying to use group membership as a proxy for individual worth is at best lazy and convenient and at worst a justification for the most heinous of crimes.
What we can do is create and defend social/political/legal/economic processes through which individuals in community may seek their best lives as they see fit, encourage and allow space for the error correction necessary to adapt to new conditions and priorities peacefully, and which free us as individuals and communities to seek the best trade-offs available to us so as to work towards our necessarily contingent and localized visions of the Common Good. I imagine that this will seem very unsatisfactory to many.