A Neo-Decalogue

I've been thinking a lot over the pandemic about how I come to such different conclusions about the world than others. Why do I wear a mask or get vaccinated when others react so strongly--even violently--against such practices? One explanation I entertain is that I have a different set of base assumptions about the world than those folks. I sat down and did the exercise of writing out those starting principles. This is what I came up with:

1. Be compassionate. 
2. People are essentially good. 
3. People have inherent dignity that can be neither earned nor forfeited.
1. Honor is a vice. 
4. We must love ourselves, our neighbors, the stranger, and even our enemies.
1. In doing so, we love what many have come to call God.
5. Love is an action, not a sentiment.
6. If I fail to help someone in need, it is a statement against my character; if one takes advantage of my willingness to help, it is a statement against their character. 
7. Any advantaged ascribed status or identity that causes fear or division is a vice. 
1. These include nationality, race, political party, and family.
8. All else being equal, the interests of the collective supersede those of the individual.
1. Indeed, the interests of the individual are best served through the collective. 
9. Social institutions exist for people, not the inverse. 
10. All choice and responsibility exist within the constraints of a context. 

I'm not sure these are inclusive, but they seem like they encompass the gist of what I was thinking. 

Voting for Trump Makes You a Bad Person

Voting for Trump is immoral. It is unamerican. It is unchristian. If you haven't already arrived at this conclusion over the last 1343 days, there is nothing I can say to convince you.

Trump is a bad person and a poor president.

If you vote for him, you are complicit.
It is not enough to just not vote for Trump. Not voting for his opponent (because we have a terrible two-party system) is the same as casting half a vote for him. 

Voting for Biden does not make one a good person, but voting for Trump most definitely makes one a bad person.

By all means, though, give me a signal that you plan to vote for Trump so I can unfriend you, both in real life and on social media. I will not pretend, in the name of some imagined civility, that reasonable people can disagree on this. There is nothing to disagree over. This is not partisan. There is nothing partisan about racism, misogyny, and authoritarianism.

Explanation vs. Justification

I wanted to get some thoughts down on this, mostly for future reference. People often confuse explanation for justification. I remember wrestling with this myself as an undergraduate sociology major. In particular, I struggled in my Crime and Deviance course to reconcile the sociological explanation for the family annihilator phenomenon, in which typically men murder their wives and children and then (usually) kill themselves. Scientific understanding felt like a defense or apology from my moralistic worldview. A more recent example can be seen in the academic and journalistic attempts to explain Trump-voters, especially white, rural, working-class folks. See works by Vance, Hochschild, and Wuthnow. I've had an oddly similar reaction as in my undergrad days, that these explanations seem dangerously close to moral justifications. Importantly, this need not be the case. It is entirely consistent simultaneously to have objective scientific explanation and to retain the ability to find the outcomes subjectively morally repugnant. I can understand why some men do violence while still condemning it. I can understand why rural, working-class whites feel aggrieved while still labeling them wrong. Too often, I think sociology, the social sciences more broadly, and the academe overall are derided by those who cannot make this distinction between explanation and justification, understanding and apology. Being able to articulate this to the public--and to ourselves--can only help our cause.

Two Ethical Precepts

I stole this from an NPR interview with the NYTimes house ethicist (but can't track down a link for it). These are two ethical precepts by which I'm trying to live these days:

1. Do to others as you would have them do to you.


2. If the consequences of everyone in the world behaving in a given manner would be deleterious, do not behave in that manner.

The first of the two is of course the Golden Rule. It's tough to argue against that one, but the second is unique. I'm sure there is a title for it, and if anyone know what that is please share it with me because I can't find it. Regardless, it adds a social aspect to the all-too-often individual nature of our ethical considerations. The best example I can come up with is buying an automobile. Does it directly affect me when another person buys an SUV? No, so it passes precept one, but what if everyone in the world bought an SUV? That clearly would not be sustainable given the cost and geopolitical entanglements of petroleum (not to mention the environmental impact); ergo, I should not buy an SUV. Too often we look at the world as a collection of rational actors with perfect agency. The reality is that our lives are all interconnected in nonobvious ways that lead to irrationality and structural constraint. By adding precept two to our moral maps, we might better be able to hedge some of our destructive tendencies.