My daughter's apartment was recently burglarized. The thief took items she had scrimped and saved to buy with her own hard-earned money. And things I bought her. I would like to take this opportunity to muse on the language of morality.
A kind of political correctness offends me on a moral basis. Some notions of political correctness are just silly, some kinds are well-intentioned but mildly grating, and some even represent views and attitudes I have and endorse. But I have noticed how frequently bad behavior is described as "inappropriate" or "unacceptable." These usages reveal the gradual displacement of moral language in our public statements of disapproval.
In an article in the British journal The Prospect, Edward Skidelsky says, "This linguistic shift is revealing. Improper and indecent express moral judgments, whereas inappropriate and unacceptable suggest breaches of some purely social or professional convention. Such 'non-judgmental' forms of speech are tailored to a society wary of explicit moral language. As liberal pluralists, we seek only adherence to rules of the game, not agreement on fundamentals. What was once an offence against decency must be recast as something akin to a faux pas."
As a teacher, I hear student behavior described as "inappropriate" or as "bad choices." Gone are the days when administrators use words like "rude," "churlish," "wanton," "wicked" or even "wrong." It's not just that I prefer a plethora of synonyms to the drab uniformity of official, institutional language — I really do understand why teachers and administrators stick to the script. What concerns me, though, is that in an effort to avoid being judgmental, we as a culture are abdicating judgment.
There are lots of ways of being judgmental, but moral judgmentalism is when we make assertions about the overall goodness or badness of people. Not their acts, though by their acts they reveal themselves, but about people. (We also can be judgmental based on positive stereotypes.)
When we call a person "bad," we attack his moral core. We assert that he is a failure as a person. Working with children, we focus on their behavior, something we believe can change, rather than the troubled souls into which we have no windows. In disciplining students, teachers often use the words "inappropriate" or "unacceptable." In fact, I attribute much of my success as a teacher to being able to separate the person from the behavior. I've mastered the rules of the game.
Morality is not a game, however. Most bad behavior is caused by bad habits, and bad habits lead to the formation of bad character, and a bad character is full of vices and acts badly. It's, quite literally, the vicious cycle, the cycle of the vices. (There is also a virtuous cycle, something I'll write about some other time.) Sometimes we need to be able to judge people, and not just their actions. Try to avoid judgmentalism too strenuously, and you start avoiding moral judgments.
We err when we confine our moral judgments only to classes of actions or when we conceive of morality as entirely a rule-governed enterprise such as law or banking or processing insurance claims. We need to be able to judge friend from foe, saint from scoundrel. We must learn whom to trust, or not. These moral judgments are best expressed in traditional terms of moral opprobrium like "liar," "thief" and "reprobate," as well as somewhat milder words like "ne'er-do-well" and "untrustworthy."
I hope the sorry, selfish, thieving, moral-midget-moron of a burglar encounters harsh justice. And that is my considered moral judgment on the matter.
Frank Thomas Pool is a poet and English teacher working in Austin. He grew up on Maple Street in South Longview and graduated from Longview High School. E-mail: FrankT.Pool@gmail.com.
