In a recent edition of The Ethicist, a letter to the editor style publication from the New York Times, Kwame Anthony Appiah responds beautifully to a difficult question a reader asked about whether they should cut off an acquaintance who has committed racist acts.
Like you, I favor a bit of grace in a world full of sinners. And cutting off everyone who is morally flawed would leave you with a very small coterie of friends — who might then be tempted by the flaw of moral vanity. (In which case you’d have to get rid of them, too.)
You say you’re an equality-minded liberal. The way to live your creed isn’t by curating a spotless feed of spotless minds but by helping people do better. Hew to the norm; judge the person by what he does next; show grace where it stands a chance to help someone grow. That’s the difference between moral vanity and moral work.
This dovetails nicely with my last post, Counterproductive activism. I would never defend racist acts, obviously, but I agree that moral work demands helping others to be better, if at all possible. The rest, as he says, is moral vanity. Gosh, what a great term.
By the way, helping others to be better means approaching their wrongdoings with kindness, curiosity, compassion, understanding, and forgiveness. It's a slow and painful process, but that's how change happens. This approach is needed even when others cause severe harm. In fact, it's needed especially when others cause extreme harm. Just ask Megan Phelps-Roper, who left the incomparably hateful Westboro Baptist Church only after others had the idea to challenge her with patience and curiosity. Telling someone off in the form of “advice,” when you know the message won't be heard, because it makes you feel better about yourself? That's not moral work. That's moral vanity.
Am I guilty of moral vanity? Yep, in ways I both do and don't notice. Even this post might convey a kind of moral vanity. If you notice times when I'm guilty of it, though, let's talk about it.
I have some stickers that say, “Nobody cares about your fake life on social media.” I don't think anything sums that up better than this collection of people looking ridiculous, desperate for likes, as they pose for Instagram photos. The collection is focused on men who take photographs of their girlfriends, but men pose like this, too.
Likes aren't worth much. You just look ridiculous.
“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”
—John Lennon paraphrasing others in his song “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)
I don't remember where I first heard this. It may have been spoken in a conversation about road rage. I think there's something very true about it, though, and it speaks to much more than driving.
When someone is unkind to you, they're probably not reacting to you. They're probably reacting to the last person who upset them.
In other words, when one is unkind or behaves strangely toward you, especially when there is no obvious explanation for their behavior, their annoyance may be misdirected. They may be treating you the way they wish they had treated someone else, someone who came before you. It's not fair, but that's life.
Apparently, psychologists call it displacement.
[The] social internet is, I would argue, not a net positive for humanity, even if it has greatly benefited some of us who use it a lot.
—John Green in Am I Cigarettes?
People are package deals; you take the good with the confused. In most cases, strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin.
—Steve Jobs
The new Ghost album, Skeletá, is pretty good, even if it's not my favorite of theirs. Meliora may be at the top, and I definitely think it's their most even and refined. The lyrics on Skeletá can occasionally be cringey, not unlike Impera, but like all Ghost albums, there are some hits, and they're not all singles.
The rock ballad Guiding Lights may be my favorite song on the new album. It sounds like something that belongs on a film's soundtrack. It also contains what I consider to be genuinely useful insight. I'm embarrassed to quote Ghost, but as Seneca said, “I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.” (Not that Tobias is a bad author. He's just not who most people think of when they think of life advice.)
Anyway, the line is:
The road that leads to nowhere is long.
In other words, if you find yourself stuck, you may be on the wrong path, and continuing down it may never prove that to you. In fact, the continual belief that the reward is “just a little ways ahead” is a pretty good indication that you'll never reach it. Although it can be painful, in circumstances like those, you'd be better off turning around and trying something else. You might even find that another approach gets you to your destination more quickly than anticipated.