Against Biting Bullets (700 words)

Jephthah's Vow, Edwin Long (1829-1891)

Back in spring 2019, I listened to a talk by an undergraduate who defended prison abolition before it was cool. The presenter capably argued that, given the deplorable condition of American prisons, all prisoners are morally justified in trying to escape. My memory of the talk is quite muddled now, but perhaps his argument was based on the right to self-defense: If a specific person puts me in physical danger, then I am justified in defending myself with force, and sometimes even lethal force. As long as I didn't initiate the violence in this particular situation, my right to defend myself does not depend on anything I've done up to this point. Shouldn't it follow that, when prisoners face an exaggerated risk of physical abuse, murder, and sexual assault, and when even their normal conditions threaten to damage their health in the long term, they are justified in simply walking away? 

During the Q&A, a professor asked whether this argument applies to even the very worst and most dangerous offenders, such as Ted Bundy. The presenter thought about this for a moment and said, "I'm going to bite the bullet and say that Ted Bundy has a right to escape, too." 

I don't mean to pick on this presenter: I really liked his talk, I roughly agree with him, and I enjoyed speaking with him that weekend. Still, I think that his presentation will be helpful for articulating my problem with biting philosophical bullets, that is, accepting an undesirable or unintuitive outcome of one's views while also acknowledging that the view is costly. Although this move is common in analytic philosophy, we should jettison it entirely.

Suppose it's true that Ted Bundy had a moral right to escape from prison. Far from being an undesirable outcome of the theory, this would be an important moral insight. The student would not have bitten a bullet so much as found a diamond in the rough. There would be no cost and no need to apologize. 

Suppose, however, that this view is false, and that it would have been immoral for Bundy to escape from prison. If a theory entails a false view, then it must be wrong; logic leaves no room for differences in taste. At a minimum, the student would have to explain why his arguments apply to most prisoners but not to Ted Bundy.

"Biting the bullet" is a rhetorical move that creates the illusion of philosophical content. It's as if the speaker says, "I recognize that you have distaste for this feature of my view. I have distaste for it, too. However, I suspect that you like the rest of my arguments enough to accept them anyway. I'm content with this outcome, and I think you should feel the same way." This move often succeeds at quieting concerns that should be taken more seriously, trivializing the implications of good arguments while obscuring problems for weak ones.

Even when they don't use this phrase, philosophers make a similar error when they evaluate theories based on their preferences for some conclusions over others. Peter Forrest, for example, argues against a view in the metaphysics of time partly on the basis that it implies that we are distressingly cut off from other people, each of us occupying a different time-slice. Our emotions clearly have no bearing on the nature of time; in fact, if Forrest doesn't like this outcome, then he should probably be very displeased with the conclusions of modern physics. Just as bullet-biting is a non-rational means of relieving anxiety about a view, Forrest uses a non-rational strategy to create worries for his opponent.

I don't mean to suggest that philosophers need to have ready responses to every possible worry for their views; it's perfectly fine to set aside some questions for later consideration. The student presenter might have said, "I haven't fully thought this through, so I'll have to think about whether the theory makes sense for Ted Bundy. I might need to make a few modifications, but I'm not sure yet." Rather than giving the impression that the speaker has somehow dealt with the problem, this response acknowledges that there are important questions he hasn't addressed and flags those questions for further consideration.

Arguments About 'Life,' 'Choice' (650 words)

Pericles' Funeral Oration, by Philipp Foltz (1805-1877)

In a previous post, I criticized a form of argument which is common in public discourse about abortion:

By being selectively vague about which values are relevant to particular issues, it’s easy to attribute inconsistency to almost any set of values that we dislike. Consider this argument: “There’s nothing ‘pro-life’ about the party that supports the death penalty but opposes gun control and universal health care.” Alternatively, “Democrats claim to care about ‘choice,’ but they don’t think I should have any say in where my kids go to school, whether to get the vaccine, or what the government does with my money.”...Neither set of views is actually internally contradictory or self-defeating. ‘Life’ and ‘choice’ are rhetorical inventions; nobody is actually for or against them in general. 

My friend Kiran Lloyd pointed out that the arguments I'm criticizing are more reasonable than I’ve given them credit for (though I don’t think that the following is a perfect reconstruction of his view). When people say things like, "There's nothing 'pro-life' about letting people die of treatable illnesses," they probably don't mean that these views are literally incompatible with each other, as if opposition to abortion implies support for universal health care. Rather, they're disputing Republicans' claim to be the party of 'life' as well as the implication that Democrats are 'anti-life.' In political disputes, it’s normal for people to make arguments that are not exactly valid, but which nevertheless highlight a feature of the debate that the speaker considers to be important. This is not irrational or inconsistent; it is competent political discourse. 

Imagine that Republicans claimed to be 'pro-equality' because they favor a policy that would tax all Americans ‘equally’–that is, at exactly the same rate. Obviously Democrats would not let this stand, but would immediately attempt to block this rhetorical move; they would argue that a flat tax is actually much less ‘equal’ than a progressive tax, and they would highlight other important issues on which Republicans are less egalitarian than Democrats. 

Consider also the role of ‘freedom’ in arguments about gun control. At first blush, it seems obvious that the ‘pro-freedom’ position is to oppose gun control–the government ought to protect the freedom of citizens to distribute and own firearms. Still, it would clearly be a mistake for proponents of gun control to concede that their side is ‘anti-freedom.’ They can instead make the case that more restrictive gun laws permit different and better forms of freedom, such as freedom from the fear of violence. In an argument about which of these sides supports ‘freedom,’ it’s likely that many of the arguments would not be valid as expressed (at least if we filled in their implications enough to make them substantive), but the argument is not vacuous, either. Arguments about ‘freedom’ often serve as shorthand for more sophisticated arguments that the speakers hold in reserve. 

I do think that my criticisms apply to some arguments in this area. I stand by these lines:

If I could show that my opponents’ views are inconsistent, then I wouldn’t have to bother making more substantive arguments–they would already be proven wrong...Before I object to beliefs in this way, I should ask myself, “Do I really think these views are inconsistent, or do I just think that these people are wrong about multiple things?”

It's very satisfying to feel that you've caught your opponents in a contradiction, so people are motivatedly sloppy in the service of framing their political opponents as inconsistent or hypocritical. I concede that these particular arguments about ‘life’ and ‘choice’ are more intelligent than I gave them credit for, but I still think that it's good to be reflexively suspicious of arguments that sound like "gotchas."

What Hypocrisy Isn't (3100 words)

Christ and the Pharisees, Lawrence Ladd

"No one has ever died from contradictions." 

– Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

"Consistency is the playground of dull minds." 

– Yuval Noah Harari

Linguistic prescriptivism has gotten a bad rap. In some of my circles, at least, it’s become common knowledge that since language naturally evolves over time, attempting to "correct" common speech is as futile as it is elitist. This characterization of prescriptivism is partly right–some people wield the rules of Standard English against others in order to denigrate their intelligence or character. Although descriptivists are right to condemn this linguistic bullying, I think that it would be a mistake to reject all attempts to prescribe rules of language. Rather than abandoning the idea that some linguistic norms are more correct than others, we should redistribute the power to shape rules of speech, embracing a form of prescriptivism that is both egalitarian and democratic. You and I, being competent speakers of the same language, give each other reasons to coordinate and modify our shared rules; rather than deferring to a handful of elites, we work together to develop norms that serve our shared purposes. If some descriptivists want to replace the aristocracy with anarchy, then I think we should have a republic. It’s in this spirit of equality and fraternity that I turn toward ‘hypocrisy,’ a term that is abused more often than it is used correctly.

How is this possible? Meaning derives from use; if everyone used ‘hypocrisy’ to describe a rare African bird, then it could have an odd number of feathers. I think it would be a mistake to stop there, though. Words are hidden inferences, and my use of ‘hypocrisy’ reliably conveys an attitude of scorn that is appropriate in some situations but not in others. If ‘hypocrisy’ describes a specific transgression that matches the word’s connotation, then it would be a mistake to use this word against people whose behavior does not merit that level of criticism. This “verbal abuse” would allow me to persuasively criticize people who don’t deserve to be criticized. This post, then, is an attempt to unsheathe the inner logic of hypocrisy, explain the meaning behind the emotion, and urge people away from statements that invoke this idea inappropriately.

I’ve framed this as an argument about which uses of 'hypocrisy' are correct, but if you really dislike that idea, then you could instead read me as making an argument about what we should do with this word going forward. To paraphrase Sally Haslanger, I mean to ask, “What is hypocrisy and what should it be?” Even if other people are “correct” to speak in the way that they do, we can still do better. I think we’ll all be better off if we can achieve clarity about this confusing and dangerous word.

Hypocrisy is Not Inconsistency

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." Inconsistency is inescapable. We never see the whole picture at once; by the time we’ve focused on one thing, we’ve already forgotten something else. If you think that your beliefs and actions are wholly consistent, then you haven’t even begun to get things right.

“If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing.”

Hypocrisy is not inconsistency. ‘Hypocrisy’ and ‘hypocrite’ have severely negative connotations, so we should reserve them for behaviors that merit severe criticism. Given that it is practically impossible to make our moral beliefs consistent, let alone to make our beliefs perfectly consistent with our actions, it is inappropriate and unhelpful to describe every example of inconsistency as hypocrisy. ‘Inconsistency’ is a perfectly good word for this concept, one which diagnoses a problem but does not ascribe severe wrongdoing to the inconsistent person.

I’m reminded of an evangelical Christian talking point: The evangelical will ask, have you ever lied or stolen? Yes and yes. Would you allow a liar and a thief into your home? Well, that’s what God, in His infinite grace, has offered us. It never helps to point out that most people who have lied are not liars and most people who have stolen are not thieves. If the word ‘thief’ were inclusive enough to describe someone who stole a pen fifteen years ago, then it would be worse than useless. The word would make it too easy to criticize people who have done almost nothing wrong, and it would trivialize the moral wrong of more serious cases of theft. Likewise, it’s unacceptable to define ‘hypocrite’ so broadly that it would describe every person or to define ‘hypocrisy’ in a way that describes an involuntary, inexorable deficit in our moral reasoning.

This problem gets worse because we are overly quick to attribute inconsistency to our ideological opponents. (If you don’t want to read about abortion, skip to the next paragraph.) By being selectively vague about which values are relevant to particular issues, it’s easy to attribute inconsistency to almost any set of values that we dislike. Consider this argument: “There’s nothing ‘pro-life’ about the party that supports the death penalty but opposes gun control and universal health care.” Alternatively, “Democrats claim to care about ‘choice,’ but they don’t think I should have any say in where my kids go to school, whether to get the vaccine, or what the government does with my money.” I see variations on these arguments frequently, and they’re pretty bad. Neither set of views is actually internally contradictory or self-defeating.¹ ‘Life’ and ‘choice’ are rhetorical inventions; nobody is actually for or against them in general. (You claim to be pro-life and yet you use hand sanitizer? Curious!) In both examples, the accusation of inconsistency adds rhetorical heft to an argument that has not actually been made. If I could show that my opponents’ views are inconsistent, then I wouldn’t have to bother making more substantive arguments–they would already be proven wrong. Typically, these arguments also imply that my opponents are stupid, dishonest, or both. Before I object to beliefs in this way, I should ask myself, “Do I really think these views are inconsistent, or do I just think that these people are wrong about multiple things?” If I want to find out whether someone’s views are consistent, I’ll have to leave the realm of abstract concepts and focus on their specific reasons for holding the views that they do. (EDIT: I've eaten some of these words in response to good criticisms, see here. )

So, inconsistency is very common, but it’s also more evenly distributed than you might have thought. Every person and every political coalition has some inconsistent ideas, but most people’s views are not so horrifically inconsistent that you can explode them with a pithy observation. We should be slow to accuse our ideological opponents of severe inconsistency and even slower to accuse them of hypocrisy: We are probably perceiving more inconsistency than is actually there, and the inconsistencies that do exist within their beliefs may not be especially unreasonable or culpable. We usually aren’t justified in concluding that our opponents are extremely irrational or dishonest.

Hypocrisy is Not Falling Short of One’s Values

On this point, I have some powerful enemies. Oxford Languages defines hypocrisy as “the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform,” and Merriam-Webster defines it as “a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not…behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel...especially the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion.” Egalitarian prescriptivism gives me the flexibility to borrow from these definitions without recognizing dictionaries as final authorities, and in fact, I think that these dictionaries and others have recognized part of the meaning of ‘hypocrisy’ while overlooking another crucial element. We should not accuse people of hypocrisy just because they fall short of the moral views that they express.

Louis XVI, the king with two faces. On one side he vows to defend the constitution, on the other he vows to destroy it.

Suppose that, all things considered, it’s morally wrong for Eleanor to eat meat. Eleanor 1 continues to eat meat and thinks that it’s ethical for her to do so. Eleanor 2 continues to eat meat, but she’s uneasy about it. She concedes that eating meat is immoral, and she even argues with other meat-eaters that it would be better for them to become vegetarian or vegan.

Given my assumption that it’s wrong for Eleanor to eat meat, Eleanor 2 is better than Eleanor 1. Since she’s worried about the ethics of eating meat, she is more likely to become vegetarian in the future and also to influence other people to eat less meat. In fact, this stage might be a necessary step for Eleanor before she becomes vegetarian or vegan. However, if ‘hypocrisy’ means “falling short of one’s expressed values,” then Eleanor 2 is actually more criticizable than Eleanor 1; she deserves criticism specifically because she is more willing to criticize herself. Why is that? ‘Hypocrisy’ connotes selfishness and dishonesty, but Eleanor 2 is probably a bit less selfish and more honest with herself than Eleanor 1. Hypocrisy describes an abuse of moral concepts for selfish ends, but Eleanor 2 is using these concepts appropriately to describe a gap between her actions and her conscious moral beliefs.

Since ‘hypocrite’ has a very negative connotation, I have a strong incentive to avoid feeling or looking like a hypocrite. Ideally, this should motivate people to be honest–I won’t represent myself as being better than I actually am. If we’re not careful, though, then it could instead have the effect of pushing people toward moral mediocrity, punishing most actual attempts to raise moral standards.

First, people typically need some time to make significant changes in their moral behavior. Suppose that I’m struck by an argument that makes me think that I should behave better than I currently do–I should give more money to charity, I should stop eating meat, and I should call my parents more often. If I’m initially reluctant to do these things, then it will be difficult for me to accomplish them in just one “move”--most likely, I will have to spend some time thinking about it before these actions become a major part of my life. This is the way that people usually make significant moral changes in their lives; it’s comparatively rare to change your actions immediately in response to a good argument. It’s very important for people to have the option to entertain or express views that don’t match their current conduct, both to build their courage and to see how other people react to the choices that they’re considering.

Second, by expressing a value that I don’t (yet) live up to, I might influence other people to move closer to that ideal. If I’m intellectually persuaded that I should be vegetarian, but I haven’t yet found the willpower to change my diet, then my only remaining options are to either advocate actions I don’t actually take or to rationalize arguments in favor of eating meat. The second option is obviously worse: I might persuade other people that it’s okay to do something morally wrong. Likewise, suppose it’s true that, as Peter Singer has argued, we should donate all of our expendable income to high-impact charities. I’ve never heard of a person who lived up to this ideal–by his own admission, Singer does not donate all of his disposable income, although he does come much closer than most people. By advocating this moral standard, Singer has motivated numerous other people to donate more money to higher-quality charities. It seems highly unreasonable to criticize Singer specifically for expressing a moral ideal that has done a lot of good; it’s strictly better that he expressed this view at the risk of being perceived as a hypocrite. The more we punish people for falling short of their expressed values, the less likely we are to hear challenging moral arguments which might be true.

Hypocrisy is Moral Duplicity

Hypocrisy derives from the Greek hupokrisis, meaning ‘the acting of a theatrical part.’ Hypocrisy is moral stagecraft, an abuse of moral language and concepts that allows people to receive moral credit because they appear to meet a standard when they actually fall short of it. A hypocrite is not someone whose sincere values are inconsistent, nor someone who admits to falling short of their own values, but rather someone who playacts morality in order to carve out special privileges for themselves. Consider Eleanor 3, who claims to be vegan in public but eats meat in private. Even worse, she’s extremely judgmental toward other people who aren’t vegan: She scolds a friend for putting cream in his coffee and then she goes home and eats a steak.

In Dante’s hell, the hypocrites wear sparkling white robes that are lined with lead. Print by Gustave Doré (1832-1883)

Eleanor 3 sucks. She’s abusing morality because she’s a selfish person. Whereas Eleanor 2 criticizes herself and thus risks causing other people to think less of her, Eleanor 3 lies in order to gain moral standing that she doesn’t deserve. The connotation of ‘hypocrisy’ is exactly appropriate to describe her behavior.

In the last section, I argued that self-criticism is valuable because it allows people to push in the direction of raising moral standards even if they don’t currently meet the higher standard. You might think, then, that Eleanor 3 is doing something good by causing other people to think that she’s a vegan even though she isn’t; if people think that veganism is very common, then they might become more likely to become vegan themselves. Although Eleanor 3’s hypocrisy might have some positive consequences, it is much more fraught than Eleanor 2’s decision to be honest about her failure to live up to her own ideals.

First, when a person is honest about their moral shortcomings, other people acquire evidence about how easy or difficult it is to live up to that same standard. Suppose that Eleanor 3 and I are in the same Ph.D. program in a small town, and that it’s not actually possible to sustain a vegan diet on our income in this region. Alternatively, suppose that Eleanor and I share a medical condition that severely restricts what we can eat. Under these conditions, it would actually harm my health to become vegan; I might need to compromise by consuming some dairy alongside vegetables. If Eleanor claims to eat a vegan diet but actually doesn’t, then I might think that becoming vegan is manageable for me even if it really isn’t. If I ask Eleanor for advice about maintaining a healthy vegan diet under these constraints, then she’ll be forced to lie to me, with potentially serious consequences for my health.

Second, Eleanor 3 may also mislead me about how emotionally easy it will be to become vegan. Suppose that I’m in a transition period where I am revving up to become vegan, but I haven’t yet gotten up the nerve. If becoming vegan would be very hard for me, then the best strategy will be to begin only once I’ve understood and accepted that fact and taken steps to make myself more comfortable during the transition. If I’m under the misapprehension that going vegan will be very easy for me, then I’m more likely to attempt it in haste, burn out, and conclude that it’s a miserable experience that nobody should attempt.

Third, hypocrisy can also make it more difficult to notice that a moral rule is undesirable and should change. Suppose that we live in a community where most people think that it’s wrong to have sex before marriage, but about half of them do it anyway. If everyone were forthright, then it would be widely understood that it’s difficult for people to follow this rule, whether or not they should. (Per my other arguments, though, it would not be hypocritical for these people to say that waiting until marriage is morally correct even though they failed to do the right thing.) But if everyone puts on a show, pretending to be sexually virtuous when they actually haven’t been, then it will look like the rule is working–abstaining from sex appears to be a manageable task that most people succeed at, and everyone claims to be better off for having done it. Under these conditions, it would be difficult to acquire enough evidence to realize that the rule is not working.

Dante’s hypocrites walk endlessly along a narrow track in their leaden robes.

What If Hypocrisy Isn’t That Bad?

Maybe we’re all using ‘hypocrisy’ correctly, and the problem is that it has an overly negative connotation? You might think that, rather than changing the current dictionary definitions, we should just try to keep criticisms of hypocrisy in perspective. Since she continues to eat meat, Eleanor 2 is a hypocrite, but that doesn’t have to be a severe criticism; we can simply choose to see that as a very mild criticism on the order of calling her conduct inconsistent.

Although this approach is logically consistent, it’s impractical. In practice, it would be much more difficult to change the connotation of this word than it would be to change the way that we apply it. If I say “Eleanor is a hypocrite,” then I’m responsible for making you think that Eleanor is a duplicitous jerk. It’s no good to say, “Eleanor is a hypocrite. [...] Oh, sorry, what I meant is that her values aren’t perfectly consistent with her behavior, just like everyone else. I don’t have a serious problem with her.” Since it would be onerous and ineffective to use ‘hypocrisy’ without regard for its connotation, we ought to accept the connotation as given and modify our use of the word instead. Once we make those adjustments, I think we end up with a definition like this: A hypocrite is someone who claims to live up to moral standards that they don’t actually meet. Just as a person who rarely lies is not a ‘liar,’ a ‘hypocrite’ is someone who does this especially often or in especially repugnant ways. Although this is similar to the first part of Merriam-Webster's definition--“a feigning to be what one is not"--their definition also implies that this meaning is equivalent to "behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel." I've attempted to improve their definition by prying these meanings apart: "Feigning to be what one is not" is the core of hypocrisy, while "contradicting what one claims to believe" is something broader.

Thanks to Nicko Boylan for commenting on a long draft of this post.

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1 I oppose the death penalty and I think it’s a tragedy that Roe is likely to be overturned, but this pro-choice argument plays dumb about the reasons that many people disagree with me on both of those issues–namely, they think that fetuses are morally innocent while murderers aren’t. I think that the disagreement about gun control and health care can be explained by a perceived difference between doing and allowing harm: It’s wrong to actively kill a fetus, but not to passively allow someone to die of a treatable illness. Likewise, I think that opposition to gun control tends to have a deontic justification: It’s morally acceptable to own a gun, so the government must protect this right regardless of the downstream consequences.

The second set of values is consistent because reproductive freedom is much more important than most other kinds of choice. Being forced to give birth is objectively a larger imposition than the other restrictions on choice that this Republican finds objectionable, so there’s no internal problem here.

These criticisms might be correct for some versions of each argument, though. If someone opposes abortion because of “the absolute sanctity of human life,” then it really does seem like they should support universal health care. On the other hand, I think that liberals and leftists sometimes defend abortion in terms that fit more easily with libertarianism than within a left worldview, which generally does expect people to sacrifice some of their autonomy for the greater good.^↩

Undermining Apologies (1600 words)

Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, Claude Vignon (1593-1670)

Before I left Twitter two years ago, I was disturbed by a pattern I noticed in cases of mass public criticism. I’m sure you’re familiar with the dynamic where subsets of Twitter choose a “villain of the day” to brutally criticize and mock; if someone lands in this situation, it’s almost impossible for them to apologize in a way that others will broadly accept. The goal of this post is to evaluate some popular reasons for rejecting apologies as insincere, giving them credit for what they get right but also identifying cases where they fail. I’ve drawn from my memories of Twitter because I saw this process unfold many hundreds of times on that platform, but I think that these observations are also applicable to apologies between people who know each other. 

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to give clear guidelines that will work out in every case. Some people are already too strongly inclined to trust people who have mistreated them; these people need to become less charitable, and the last thing I want is for someone to be worse off because they followed my advice. Still, I suspect that most people can safely rule out the possibility that they are far too forgiving, and this post is directed at that vocal majority. 

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Here are a few examples that I can remember being cited as evidence that an apology was insincere, reconstructed for an apologizer named Abigail:

1. Abigail uses a phrase which is often flagged as evidence of an insincere apology–for example, the phrase ”I’m so sorry that [group] felt trivialized by my comments” may be read through the standard line, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” 

2. Abigail’s apology contains an error unrelated to the mistake for which she is apologizing. For example, her apology uses the phrase “he or she” to refer to a generic person, whereas “they” is considered superior because it includes people who use other pronoun sets.

3. Abigail mentions other positive things about herself or her history, perhaps to demonstrate that whatever she did is not indicative of her character to the extent that other people have assumed.

4. Abigail apologizes for some portion of the accusations against her, but rejects some other accusations as illegitimate.

5. Abigail falls short of an arbitrarily high standard of penance, such as donating a very large portion of her income or quitting her job.

6. Someone asserts, without even citing evidence, that Abigail is only apologizing for personal gain, and that any apology she makes is not to be trusted.

7. Abigail took too long to apologize (even a few hours of delay can earn this criticism).

8. The act is simply declared to be unforgivable; to seek an apology is to downplay its moral wrongness.

People know about this post and still use Twitter!

The first five arguments are kind of latching onto something real:

(1) Some people really do make “I’m sorry you feel that way”-type apologies in an attempt to gain the social benefits of apologizing without the psychological burden of feeling bad about their conduct. Still, I’ve seen some apparently heartfelt apologies torn to shreds over minor accidents of phrasing that merely remind people of bad conduct.

(2) Of course it’s possible that Abigail ought to apologize for something she said while apologizing-–apologies aren’t immune to criticism. But again, if her apology for X is apparently sincere, then Y should be treated as a totally different matter. 

(3) Some apologies are unhelpful because Abigail focuses more on defending her character than she does on redressing harm. Ideally, people would criticize Abigail for doing X, and their criticism would remain proportionate to that particular action; then, when Abigail apologizes for X, both the action and the apology play a modest role in determining her reputation in X-like affairs. The problem is that, when Abigail is accused of X, she is also accused of being an X-er, a person who loves doing X, X-es whenever she can get away with it, and kicks puppies. Under these circumstances, it’s very reasonable for Abigail to let us know that she doesn’t do X all the time, and that in fact she has a long history of not doing X and campaigning against the people who do. Most people are not rhetorically savvy, so we should expect Abigail to have some trouble raising this point in a way that perfectly balances her intention to apologize against her need to defend herself against brutal criticism.

(4) As you likely know, people sometimes apologize for relatively mild accusations against themselves in order to distract from more serious accusations. In situations like this, where an accused person has obviously overlooked a serious, plausible accusation in order to address a lesser one, I think it’s reasonable to view that person’s apology with suspicion. However, it’s also extremely common for a person who has been legitimately accused of one thing to be illegitimately accused of others. When a person becomes infamous for some particular reason, it’s very likely that people will find additional reasons to hate them. Once you reach the point that many and diverse criticisms are circulating about a despised person, it’s extremely likely that some of these criticisms are false, even if the earliest or most significant accusations are true. Accusations must be considered separately, and accused people must have the option of apologizing for some wrongs while denying others.

(5) If I am known to have a lot of money, and especially if I profited from doing something immoral, then it could be reasonable for other people to expect me to “open my wallet” as a show of contrition for a wrongful action. First, the demand must scale with income–a poor person’s contrition should be acceptable without a donation, and a middle class person can only be expected to donate some amount that she can reasonably afford.

Second, these calls must be proportionate and consistent. In practice, this move is almost always bad because people make up standards idiosyncratically; any random person could say, “I don’t trust this because you haven’t donated to [X charity].” Even if Abigail has donated to a relevant charity, her critics are likely to disagree about which one she should have chosen. (Imagine that Abigail said something offensive about autistic people and subsequently donated $5,000 to Autism Speaks, a charity which many autistic people dislike because it frames autism as a disease in need of a “cure.” Rather than successfully demonstrating her contrition, Abigail now has to deal with criticisms like, “Of course she supports Autism Speaks.”) Even if she chooses an appropriate charity, people might insist that she should donate more money; they may tell each other that she is much wealthier than she actually is, and thus set the standard at a level which is unreasonably or impossibly high.

Lastly, a large majority of transgressions are too trivial for this approach to be reasonable. Everyone makes moral errors frequently. Imagine living under a degree of scrutiny where you’re expected to give up thousands of dollars every time you say something unintentionally hurtful. There should be a strong presumption against demanding donations as proof of contrition; anyone making this argument should be on the hook to support it extremely well.

(6), (7), and (8), however, are useless. (6), the evidence-insensitive claim that Abigail is only apologizing for personal gain, is a fully general argument–it sounds plausible every time someone apologizes, regardless of any other relevant information. The truth is that almost all apologies are partly selfish: Even if I really am contrite, of course I also want to be accepted and forgiven. I think that almost anyone who tries to be honest with themselves will notice that they, too, have some selfish motives when they apologize. Maybe there are a handful of sages who act with a mindset of selfless moral clarity, but I doubt that even one such person is rationalizing hatred on Twitter. 

(7), the tendency to punish delayed apologies, makes it even more difficult to escape the first six criticisms. It’s completely unreasonable to expect someone to apologize perfectly according to these standards within a few hours of becoming a target of mass criticism. We should actively expect people to cool off before apologizing, and any delay should not be considered a mark against their sincerity. 

Do I even need to explain the problem with (8), the tendency to declare an act unforgivable and to blame a person for seeking forgiveness? This is naked cruelty. I’m personally disposed to think that there are no unforgivable actions, but even if we disagree about that, I think we should agree that there are very few things a person can do to become unforgivable. Even if someone has committed an unforgivably heinous action, it is cruel to punish them specifically for apologizing, especially when other people have threatened to punish them for failing to apologize.

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We’re too worried about accepting fake apologies, and we aren’t worried enough about rejecting real ones. When you’re tempted to reject an apology, stop what you’re doing immediately and think: Why specifically do I want to reject this apology? How sure am I that I know what’s going on in her head? If she’s really sorry, how would I know? Is it possible that I just want to hurt her, or that I’m afraid other people will judge me if I let her off too easily? Is there any apology she could possibly make that I would recognize as legitimate, and how would she know to apologize in that way? Challenge yourself at every step, and don’t give up on apologies so easily. 

Is Encanto Catholic? (650 words)

Source: "Encanto Teaches Us to See God in Ourselves and Others"

No, but I wish it were!

Encanto is the best Disney canon movie since the mid-90s, and I had a lot of fun watching it. One of the movie’s strengths is its rich ensemble cast, a sprawling multi-generational Colombian family who have received a mixed blessing: Every person born into the family possesses a unique magical talent, and it’s assumed that this will carry on for generations so long as they “keep the miracle burning.” Only the protagonist, Mirabel, is born without a power.

The movie takes place in a Catholic community. As of 2017, Colombia was 73% Catholic and 14% Protestant; since Encanto takes place vaguely in the 20th century, I’m guessing that the proportion of Catholics was even larger at that time. Luisa mentions that she helps the community by building churches, and at least one scene prominently depicts a Catholic priest in uniform:

Un sacerdote catolico.

I think it would have been great if Encanto had taken place in an explicitly Christian universe! The characters pray for and receive miracles, but they never explicitly talk about the source of the miracles. Abuela says that the family must “earn the miracle / that somehow found us,” and Mirabel’s “I Want” song, “Waiting on a Miracle,” closes with a plea that sounds like a prayer: “Bless me now as you blessed us all those years ago—when you gave us a miracle!” Who is “you”? Mirabel must mean God, right? How strange that the characters never consider the cosmic significance of the magic that dominates their lives! What is God telling them, what does He want them to do? Encanto is already one of the most emotionally mature Disney movies, but it would be even more interesting if the filmmakers were willing to explore emotions such as resenting that God chose you for something you don't want, worrying that you've fallen short of God's standards, or wondering why God didn’t choose you at all.

(Bonus: In that same scene, you can see Mirabel clasp her hands together in prayer at 2:26—but her hands are obscured because the camera is behind her, and when we do see her from the front she immediately pulls her hands apart! Her hands aren't quite in the right position, but I still think it's what they were going for.)

Not praying, just thinking.

Of course, I can’t actually blame the filmmakers for playing down the religious implications, since the movie I want would have been much more controversial than the movie they actually made. I don't know whether many non-Christians would have been offended if they did this, but I think that some Christians would have been upset to learn that, for example, Bruno’s prophetic powers are a gift from God. (Take a moment to read about the fate of seers in Dante’s hell!) I’m glad that the movie at least acknowledges religion rather than scrubbing it out of the setting entirely, but I wish that our popular media were more comfortable engaging with religion and depicting religious worldviews. I especially like it when children’s movies take religion seriously, and (as unlikely as this is right now) I would be especially pleased if major animated studios set movies in the worlds of Islam, Buddhism, Shintoism, pre-colonial native religions, and other traditions outside of Christianity and Judaism. All of us have religion—either we are religious, or else our thoughts and values are shaped by (or built against) the religions that live alongside us. In a religiously pluralist society such as ours, the ideal is not for our popular media to be thoroughly secular, but for media to reflect the experiences and values of many different people.

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Movies that take place within a religion or folk tradition: Spirited Away, Coco, The Color of Paradise, The Prince of Egypt, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Other movies and shows that take religion seriously (without supernatural elements): Spotlight, Doubt, Amadeus, Jane the Virgin.

New YouTube Video!

Sam Golden (IG: @samuelbgolden) edited a YouTube video where I discuss my views from this post about sexual orientation. We had a lot of fun recording this, and I make several arguments that the blog post didn't cover, so I hope you'll check it out! We've already recorded a few other videos, so there should be more soon. 

The Aesthetics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Fascism (1000 words)

Willem van Heythusen, Kehinde Wiley (b. 1977)

[Epistemic status: This is a quick attempt to work something out based on what I already know, but I haven’t done a lot of research yet.] 

Americans broadly disapprove of monarchy, and yet we love monarchy in popular culture.¹ The popularity of Disney princesses, Game of Thrones, and the literal British monarchy all speak to a fascination with the idea of absolute rule. We yearn for the unity of power and goodness within a single person, and we feel a sense of loss that our own institutions are so young, historically discontinuous, and incapable of acting with single-minded clarity and purpose.

I first noticed this tendency in myself when I took a class about politics in Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare has written some truly humiliating depictions of royalty, and his histories depict British monarchs as flawed and sometimes despicable. Still I found myself arrested whenever a character named king was speaking, not because those characters were especially wise or interesting, but because they were so powerful. A moment in Richard II captures my feeling perfectly. Richard has just sentenced Henry Bolingbroke—later to become Henry IV by violently displacing Richard—to ten years of banishment, but when Henry’s father intervenes on his behalf, Richard reduces the sentence to only six years. Henry says in an aside,

                        How long a time lies in one little word!

                        Four lagging winters and four wanton springs

                        End in a word: such is the breath of kings.

Henry is at once humiliated, jealous, and awed. This is how it feels to recognize a sovereign power.

There are endless disputes about the identity politics of Disney Princesses (literally ™), but how often have you heard people criticize Disney for depicting so many princesses to begin with? Besides that The Lion King, probably the most popular Disney animated movie, is fully a monarchist film. When the divinely chosen hereditary monarch is on the throne, the Pride Lands are phenomenally beautiful. Lions rule over the other animals in a just hierarchy which ultimately benefits everyone. When a usurper takes the throne, nature itself revolts against him, as the Pride Lands inexplicably suffer a drought until the end of Scar’s rule. The movie borrows numerous beats from early modern monarchist literature: The device of nature revolting across a false king is straight out of Macbeth, and other works suggest that it’s acceptable for the king to hoard wealth because he, too, will eventually die. (Sorry I don’t have a source for this—I just remember it from a college class. I think it’s somewhere in Hamlet in Purgatory.) Compare the scene where Mufasa tells Simba that when the lions die, their bodies become grass which is eaten by the antelopes. Incredibly, the entire concept of the “circle of life” is based on a morbid soliloquy from Hamlet—“A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king.” This is fascinating because the creators of the film are almost certainly not monarchists; they created a monarchist film because that was the natural result of creating a beautiful film. If the movie had problematized the divine right of kings, then it wouldn’t be nearly as wonderful or compelling.

Democracy has an aesthetic, too, but it’s generally much less beautiful than the aesthetic of monarchy. Under monarchy, we can fantasize about the monarch combining wisdom, virtue, and power within a single person; under democracy, it’s just too difficult to imagine that all of our legislators are wise and virtuous. At best, we can fantasize about opposing sides working together to compromise for the good of the country. This is sometimes quite nice—Parks and Recreation, The West Wing, the Simpsons episode “Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington,” and numerous campaign ads are good examples—but it’s never phenomenally beautiful. Ideal democracy is also less compelling and efficient than ideal monarchy: “The king speaks and it is so” is more interesting than “Our democratically elected officials argued for a few hours before reaching a compromise.”

As I was writing this post, my friend Jake Wasinger pointed out that I had overlooked the most aesthetically compelling part of democracy: Narratives about protests that begin with ordinary people who succeed in making a positive difference. Selma, The Hate U Give, How to Survive a Plague, Les Misérables, Hamilton, All the President’s Men, and Spotlight are compelling in part because they help the audience to feel like citizens. Ideal monarchy invites us to enjoy the idea of being cared for by a wise sovereign; ideal democracy invites us to feel powerful and then urges us to do something with our power. I agree that this is an important aesthetic advantage that democracy has over monarchy. 

My views about the aesthetic of fascism are more speculative because I don’t spend a lot of time watching fascist media, but my impression is that fascist media depicts a world that is frightening and disordered because no one is powerful enough to prevent evil. The divine monarch is the crown jewel of a well-ordered universe, but the dictator is the only thing standing between his people and an unstoppable threat. Although both aesthetics serve to make absolute rule seem desirable, monarchy accomplishes this by inspiring awe and gratitude, while fascism provokes fear and then offers to resolve that fear. I think that this interpretation fits well with actual Third Reich propaganda as well as more recent fascist media such as Dirty Harry.

(A friend who has read one million Wikipedia articles says that Nazi aesthetics never resolved the tension between “returning to an imagined idealized, idyllic, pastoral past on the one hand and valorizing youth, energy, technology and violence on the other.” This is fascinating. What tensions exist in the aesthetics of contemporary American democracy?)

What do you think, and what should I read next? I think this topic is wonderful, and I’m excited to hear what you think about it.

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1 As I was writing this post, I was surprised by a poll which shows that 5% of Americans think that an American monarchy would be a good thing, and that only 69% said that it would be bad. I’m guessing that most of these people want a symbolic monarchy rather than a true monarchy, but I wonder if true monarchism is also more popular than I thought.^↩