This post was written before the protests and killing in Charlottesville (and subsequent fallout). I thought it important for the reader to know that this is not a reaction.
If I'm going to write a blog called “On
Morality”, I think it's only fair for the readers that I lay out
what I mean by “morality”. So here it is: morality is the
understanding of what is right and what is wrong, and the behaviours
mandated by that understanding.
This isn't a definition that I pulled
from a dictionary, or one employed by any authority on the subject.
This is my definition, formed out of my cognitive ruminations,
subject to change, open to interpretation. (One of my firmly-held
beliefs, reflected in the URL of this blog, is there is a lot of
knowledge and understanding to be gained by sitting and pondering.)
Allow me to shift gears abruptly. What
I really sat down to write about was the use of the word “hate”.
Or rather, the overuse, as I
see it, of that word.
I'm seeing “hate”
and “hateful” appended to just about every news story on or
mention of racism, bigotry, xenophobia, or poor treatment of
minorities. This appears not just as I scroll down my Facebook feed,
but also with regularity among the mainstream media. Certainly,
“hate” can be the motivation behind disgusting acts of violence
and discrimination. But I am wondering about the impetus behind its
increased usage (sometimes when it doesn't seem to be the most
accurate descriptor of a person's actions or emotional state). And
it's being used in interesting new ways and marked syntactic
structures, ones that seem to suggest that the use of the word itself
is alone sufficient explanation of the situation and justification of
its usage: “we will not tolerate hate”, “this act of hate”,
“saying things that are so clearly hateful”, “broadcasting hate
across the country”.
(The perfectly
suitable noun “hatred” is apparently no longer up to the task of
such frequent repetition.)
You
say someone's comment is “hateful”, and you no longer have to
explain yourself - it simply is hateful and the commenter is not to
be listened to. You condemn a politician's “hate”, and it is
pointless to discuss her actions and taboo to critically evaluate her
proposed policies. These “magic words” allow you to simply end
all conversation. It is the new and fashionable way of implementing
Orwell's thoughtcrime:
we may not normally be comfortable calling ourselves mind readers,
but when it comes to hate, we know exactly how another person feels
and thinks and have no trouble condemning them as people, forever
corrupt and irredeemable.
I
suspect that people who speak about full-stop-hate do so as a means
of verbally linking the matter at hand to “hate crime” and “hate
speech”. (These legal terms refer to actions that incite
others to violence against a definable group of people.)
By linking an event to these terms that they only
halfway-understand, they seek (I believe) to declare (incorrectly)
that saying horrible things about a certain ethnic group or
discriminating between one's “own” and one's “others” is
illegal, and
it's ridiculous that, in 2017, we even tolerate such clearly
wrong-headed actions.
And therein lies
the justification for entirely shutting out the condemned.
(I generally agree
with most of the judgments I see of bigotry and discrimination as
being 'behind the times' and 'disgusting', but at the same time, if
someone's preaching intolerance, that's a huge red flag.)
What do I want to
see? Better communication between aggrieved parties. Attempts to
understand rather than condemn. An end to assumptions that we know
another's heart and mind. It's not just the right thing to do, but
also, as I see it, the way to send bigotry and unlawful
discrimination crawling into their dark corners to finally die.
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