What’s Going On?

I was chatting with a friend in my usual voluble manner when he suddenly lowered his head while still looking at me, assumed a serious tone, and said softly, “I’d like to say something too.”

            I immediately was annoyed. Not by his interrupting (if that’s what it was). Rather by his manner or attitude. Clearly this was not only a request but also a rebuke. I was annoyed by the rebuke because I see moral criticism (or praise) as nothing but a rhetorical move…analogous to cursing someone. In the latter case there is no God; in the former case there is no right or wrong. They’re all myths, but useful if believed in. But what they are useful for can be better achieved by other (and more truthful) means, I maintain. They also bring their own ills, beginning with making the judge feel superior and the judgee feel either guilty or resentful (or afraid, as of God’s wrath).

            Fortunately I was able to hash all this out with my interlocutor, who is open-minded. I said that I felt I was just being myself and not doing anything wrong, and could attribute my manner to having grown up in New York City. And in New York what I would expect if someone else wanted to get a word in (and, note also, I might myself have had to wedge my own way in in the first place to get my word in, and would then want to make sure I said my fill before someone else denied me the opportunity again) is that, instead of putting on a humble/accusatory face, they would say quite jauntily, “Hey! Give me the mic for a minute!”

His response was interesting: He said he had not intended a moral judgment at all. Rather he was simply employing a method “designed” to catch my attention so that he could say something. For example, by lowering his voice it required that I pay closer attention to him rather than to what I was saying.

            I acknowledged that the moralism at play on this particular occasion might therefore have been mine rather than his. My dislike of moralism may emanate at least in part from my own moralist take on everything, seeing moralism everywhere when in fact it might be relatively rare. In other words, I could have this chip on my shoulder ... a kind of paranoia perhaps. (Another reason for my disliking moralism! But the moralist could reply: “There’s moralism and there’s moralism. It’s perfectly fine for people to believe in right and wrong…as long as they don’t go overboard … as you do. Only a moralist in the exaggerated sense feels the need for a thoroughgoing amoralism, rather than simply a moderation of moralism.”)

            A variation on this situation is when the chip is on the other person’s shoulder, which it surely is in some percentage of cases (to me it seems almost always, but maybe only because, as just admitted, it’s always on mine). To me the most infuriating of encounters is when the other person is not only moralizing, but mistakenly so (even by their own, moralist lights if they only understood better what was going on; for example, they think I was lying when I was not) … and, the crowning touch, they themself are committing the particular sin they are attributing to me (for example, they are shouting at me for shouting when I was not shouting).

            The consummate amoralist would be able to weather such provocations. I often am not. I react with my own moralist fury, if only in my heart (“How dare you accuse me of such-and-such, you hypocrite to boot.”). It would be so much better for me and them and the world if I could just laugh it off as due to the absurdity of their moralism in the strict sense of believing in right and wrong, and the arrogance of their moralism in the broad sense, which is to say, of believing everything, moral (e.g., “What you did was wrong”) or nonmoral (e.g., “You lied”), with certitude.

            And there is yet a further frustration, knowing that if I dare to point out their error, they will get angry. This is such a convenient and obvious defense mechanism (not that I think they are employing it consciously for that purpose). And it works with me, for I don’t want to confront anger, so I let their imputation go without rebuttal; and I suppose I can even be grateful for that, insofar as it helps prevent us from falling into a spiral of recriminations. But, boy, does it rankle. Again, I wish I had the personality that could just laugh it off or ignore it. (But then: What kind of writer, or psychologist, could I be? I should be thankful for all this grist for the mill!)

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