Self-righteousness is a poor substitute for morality...
After reading Ruth Marcus' self-righteous editorial about how "soft" Hollywood has been on Mel Gibson (what I love about moralists and absolutists of every stripe is that no fear, pain, or the power to inflict it is ever enough to satiate their vindictiveness)....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR2006080800940.html
I have to say that if moralists make me choose between the the humble and moderate morality of a Mark Twain...or the never-satiated vengeance and self-righteousness of a Ruth Marcus or a Joe Lieberman or a Cynthia McKinney...
I will choose Mark Twain's decency, compassion, humor, and love for humanity any fuckin' day of the week over the self-righteous rants of any moralist or absolutist offerred up...
Moralism and absolutism are forms of power...moralists know this...that's why they hold on so tight to it...
Having humble and forgiving criticism of movies or music or politics or whatever is one thing...
Exploiting a moment of weakness from Mel Gibson and not being able to move on just makes you an asshole...
And I don't care what church or temple you go to...
Do people like Ruth Marcus really believe that they're pettiness could ever make humanity bigger?
I'll take my grandma's and my family's humanity, anyday, over the self-righteous bullshit of people like Ruth Marcus...I'll take their racism and their homophobia and their humble efforts to take responsibility and learn about people around them any day over the self-righteous bullshit that parades as morality these days...
And if moralists and absolutists don't like that...they can fuck off...
Apparently, if Cynthia McKinney and Joe Lieberman are any evidence, they also lose elections, these days...not something I'm crying over...
I like both Cynthia and Joe...but I don't like either of their self-righteousness, which is largely what got both of them in trouble, I think...
What American politics needs more of, these days, is the humble non-partisan leadership of people like Kathleen Sebelius, Democratic Governor of Kansas, and Bill Graves, Republican immediately-former-Governor of Kansas, who reflect everything that's right in my little state of Kansas...humble leadership dedicated more to service than to listening to yourself speak, which was the obsession of both Cynthia McKinney and Joe Lieberman...
And definitely more of the politics and wisdom from our neighbor from Hannibal, Missouri...Mark Twain...
How ironic that so many people were so offended by Mel Gibson's self-righteous, sectarian Catholicism only to kick him in the gut when he shows the least bit of humanity, even when it's not so pretty...
How in the fuck could anyone look at that bullshit and call it morality, I will never know...
All I know is that if that is what morality is, I want nothing to do with it...
Luckily, it is only a very shiny counterfeit...
To think otherwise demeans morality...
Because there is no way in hell that the moralism of Ruth Marcus and anyone like her is leading us to higher ground...
That kind of higher ground only comes with forgiveness...which, when we're not bullshitting ourselves, is the essence of morality...if we could ever get over ourselves, that is...
If morality were what Ruth Marcus and Joe Lieberman and Bill Bennett and a whole host of others portend it to be, it wouldn't be worth a bucket of spit...or, at least, a bucket of spit is the most that I would give for it...
Luckily, a more sincere morality is committed to loving people for their humanity, not kicking them in the guts when they demonstrate some of its less attractive side...
If humanity was always on the up and up, we wouldn't need to dig deeper...our superficial commitment to morality would be just fine...but morality isn't about looking good for the pews...its about doing the right thing, even when its difficult...and forgiveness is not only the heart of everything right in the world...it is only necessary in a world full of sinners aspiring to be better...and if anyone sells you any other snake oil, make sure to keep your receipt...
And if moralists want to control that question by kicking the shit out of those of us who take a more humble tack to moral questions, then so be it...they can have control...I just don't want anything to do with it or them, in that case...
But real morality isn't about control...it's about love and decency and kindness and loyalty and respecting people, even when you disagree with their words or their actions...
And the kind of morality and absolutism that has asserted itself around control and power has been the bane of human existence since the dawn of humanity...Naziism, Communism, theocracy, Fascism, marxism and socialism, liberal and conservative self-righteousness and power-hunger...
It is this obsession with power that has fucked up humanity for so long...
And yet someone has got to exercise authority responsibly...
I just never tire of my revulsion against the kind of bullshit belief that any one idea or person or group or ideology somehow has all the right answers or is somehow better than everyone else...
Genuine morality isn't about being better than everyone else...genuine morality wants everyone to be able to live in its glow...
Jesus wasn't a great man because he hated fags, as Reverend Phelps reassures us...nor because he kicked the money-changers out of the temple...
Jesus was a great man because he was the guy who stood up for the prostitute when she was about to be stoned...
If Jesus' primary legacy would have been kicking the money-changers out of the temple, I wouldn't have been very impressed...
But saving the prostitute takes some courage...
And that's the guy I admire...
And his example was to stand up for people like Mel Gibson when the whole world seems to want to kick him in the stomach and say, "Enough"...
And I'm goddamned proud of that Jesus...I couldn't give two shits if moralists like that or not, to be frank...
Because if the contrary were true...morality would be such a petty, small-minded thing that it wouldn't really be worth much any more...
World's gone crazy, lately, thinking that we can somehow improve the world by polarizing it and trying to prove who is better and who is just unredeemable...
There's nothing righteous about picking on people when they're down or polarizing the world to cleanse it...that's not morality...it's self-righteousness...
And self-righteousness is a poor substitute for a more genuine, humble morality...
So much so that I'm surprised that so many people can go so long bullshitting themselves, otherwise...
All I know is that, in a hundred years, I'd rather hang with Mel Gibson and even listen to his bullshit homophobia and anti-semitism and Catholic sectarianism than I listen to someone go on and on about how they still gotta get Mel Gibson...
Because the latter is not any decent impulse...it's just hate and snottiness and vindictiveness parading as something more noble than they actually are...
And surely humanity has got to be better than that...
Love,
Ben
5 comments:
"All I know is that, in a hundred years, I'd rather hang with Mel Gibson and even listen to his bullshit homophobia and anti-semitism and Catholic sectarianism than I listen to someone go on and on about how they still gotta get Mel Gibson...
Because the latter is not any decent impulse...it's just hate and snottiness and vindictiveness parading as something more noble than they actually are..."
If humanity is all about weakness and ugliness, and your idea of a "decent impulse" is "homophobia and anti-semitism and Catholic sectarianism" -- all of which of course parade as something more noble, in Gibson's case parading as a bulwark of old time morality against modern relativism -- then I don't think I'd want any part of your humanity or morality either.
Humanity isn't about weakness or ugliness, PG...it's about forgiveness and love and compassion...
And it's about forgiving everyone...Mel Gibson for his anti-semitism...and Ruth Marcus for her self-righteousness...
But we're not getting anywhere until we take that notion, seriously...and if morality and humanity are to mean anything, that is where it has got to be headed...
Love,
Ben
I couldn't agree much more than I do, Ben. I've given similar versions of this rant myself... Often during death penalty situations, strangely enough.
There's always a certain irony about it, though. The criticism is of that absolute certainty of superiority and guys like you and me attack it with a complete belief in the righteousness of our perspective. We argue for reasonability, understanding and forgiveness with all of the moral certitude of some guy who thinks Fred Phelps is too wishy-washy.
Hey, I understand the distinction between us and them, don't get me wrong. But there is a creepy similarity (at least I feel it internally) that my rabid attacks of those who have a certain unbending nature are amazingly unbending, too. And I like to shout them from atop my intellectual, if not moral, high horse.
You know where I am coming from... It's a contradiction from which one can wiggle, but deep down inside I think we Very Open Minded and Forgiving people have a little bit of Ruth Marcus in us.
Now that I opened that can of nonsense, I can slink back into the background as I will be unavailable for comment until Tuesday.
Hopefully I will have time to brush up on Iran before we start shooting the joint up...
CDB
I do think there's truth to that, Carson...I spent yesterday thinking about that very thing...
I guess my issue is that Ruth is arguing for laying it on thick...I'm not looking to lay it on thick for Ruth, even though I think what she's doing and arguing for is wrong and counterproductive...I'm just looking for her to give it up...
If you can't forgive, I guess my is my perspective, then keep it to yourself...or rant all you want to, but stop taking out on people and acting like you have the moral highground...
I guess my point is that forgiveness is the moral highground...so if someone like Ruth is not acting from that moral highground, then she has no business acting like she does...
People can definitely choose not to forgive...but I guess what I'm saying is that if you choose not to forgive, you shouldn't expect to be treated like your behaving better than you really are...which doesn't mean you should be villified, obviously...it just means that we -- meaning, as individuals, but also as a society -- an awful lot of time bullshitting ourselves about this one...like not forgiving or letting someone hang out to dry is more noble than it really is...
And the truth is that its no different than any the worst ways that we've treated people in the past...debtors prisons and stoning prostitutes...we just move a couple steps forward and persistently pat ourselves on the back while warning against moving too far forward, largely because we don't have the courage to move forward...
And I guess what I'm saying is that if we don't have the courage to move forward, we shouldn't be given the moral highground from which to do that...
Amahnejad would like the moral highground from which to argue that he and his backwards government is looking after the values and interests and rights of Iranians...but he doesn't deserve it, because his government does ugly, terrible things to people like kill that 16-year-old girl for "crimes against chastity"...
And, similarly, in our own country, people who cannot take the highest values more seriously don't deserve the higher ground...the need to face up to the everpresent reality, which is that they are taking the lower ground...and if they want to do that, then so be it...but I'm tired of listening to it like it is better than it really is...
I don't want to villify Ruth Marcus or Joe Lieberman or Cynthia McKinney, at all...they are human and they are reacting to situations in life with good intentions, like everyone else...Ruth to Mel Gibson...Joe to Hollywood...Cynthia to racism in America and policies in the Bush Administration...
But I'm tired of us acting like those reactions are really more high-minded than they really are...
It's the easiest bullshit in the world...and it carries so much currency for all kinds of stupid reasons...namely that it appeals to our vanity that we are better persons for our failures, rather than facing up to our failures so that others can too...
And Mel is not going to face up to this one unless he has some space to do so...so laying on thick not only makes it less likely that he will, but it's mean-spirited and ungenerous and unforgiving...
Which means that it is a rant that doesn't deserve to be taken seriously, rather than a moral imperative...
I just want that view to be taken in perspective rather than treated more seriously than it deserves...
Because every time our vanity gets flattered that we are acting better than we are when we are really being shitheads to one another, then it just reinforces this shit...do we not think that Hutus felt noble when they slaughtered all those Tutsis?...of course they did...because they bullshitted and lied to themselves enough that they started believing that they're uglier natures were really they're better natures, so they wouldn't have to face up...
And that is the problem of moralism and absolutism...is that not just individuals...but groups, whole societies, even can bullshit themselves into acting like they are behaving better than they really are and do some really terrible shit...
And treating Mel like shit shouldn't be confused with being genuinely concerned with the difficult moral issues, here, I guess is my point...
OK...I better take a shower and get our of here, Carson...
I'll talk with you soon, Carson:)...
Ben
P.S. The irony, always, when Christians argue this point, is that was Jesus' point, too, by the way, when he stopped the prostitute from being stoned...it's just always conveniently overlooked when we find someone we think is worth villifying...
Ruth deserves that kind of compassion, as well...I'm just tired of that particular bullshit being treated like it is moral high ground when it does not deserve to be treated as so...
Ben
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