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Diverse, liberal democracies are founded on the idea that different groups of people, with very different value systems, can coexist within a single society. This is a good thing, because it gives people freedom to choose the frameworks that work best to help them live their lives. But it does raise an important question. Namely, if I go out of my way to be good to other people, but those people have different value systems to me, then how can I trust that they won't just take advantage of my good nature?
Suppose Amal believes in a strong variant of Free Speech. No exceptions. Copyright should be abolished. That whole “‘fire’ in a crowded theatre” thing has a terrible history. “Hate speech” is too hard to define. And so on. Amal goes out of his way to defend the rights not just of people he finds abhorrent, but even of people who say terrible things to him directly. Sometimes that requires a lot of self-control on his part. It goes beyond belief in a particular principle to become an entire practice, a developing virtue into which he sinks a great deal of effort.
Now let's consider somebody with a very different set of beliefs. Let's call them Bill. Bill is a lot softer on the idea of free speech. He thinks perhaps there should be a "hate speech" exception. He definitely thinks that semi-private spaces should take advantage of their autonomy to restrict certain types of speech, even when that speech is still legally allowed. Amal would be horrified, but Bill is actually practicing some virtues of his own. He believes in not hurting people's feelings. To support that practice, he's started to get really into understanding people's feelings. This, in itself, requires a different sort of acceptance of diversity, as Bill develops his ability to understand and respect feelings that at first seem incomprehensible to him. Bill believes in protecting spaces where people can be vulnerable, because those are the spaces where he is able to develop these virtues of understanding and respect.
In one version of this story, Bill and Amal are good people who learn a lot from each other. Amal thinks Bill's ideas about who should be allowed to say what, and where, are terrible, but Amal also believes in Bill's right to say these things. Bill thinks that Amal has some dangerously open ideas about speech, but Bill also respects the strength of Amal's feeling on the matter, and would like to listen to what Amal has to say about why he believes what he believes. So, they each engage with each other according to the virtues they believe in, and in the process they become good examples for each other. Bill takes more interest in the extent to which free speech ideas can be important for allowing minority sentiments to be expressed. Amal starts to think about whether there could be a place for freedom of association to allow people to create very limited safe spaces. Bill notices the ways in which respect for one person's feelings might make you shut down another person's heartfelt sentiment, and tries to avoid this pitfall of the compassionate virtue he is developing. Amal tries to incorporate genuine respect for the feelings of offended people into his free speech defenses, in the hopes of winning more people over. They never do stop being in two separate camps, but their views gain nuance and their virtues gain depth. They become better people from encountering one another.
In another version of this story, the opposite happens. Amal notices that Bill isn't respecting freedom of speech at all. Bill notices that Amal is dismissive of the feelings of people who are hurt by other people's speech. Both of them decide that they can "tolerate anything except intolerance" and suspend practice of their respective virtues when dealing with one another. After all, if Bill doesn't respect Amal's free speech, why should Amal respect Bill's free speech? And if Amal isn't respectful of Bill's feelings, then why should Bill be respectful of Amal's feelings?
After some time, Bill, having seen that Amal doesn't defend Bill's speech, concludes that Amal's free speech ideas are basically worthless. Meanwhile, Amal determines that Bill's compassion is worth exactly zero where Amal is concerned. Both of them become worse people, who aren't consistent in the virtues they advocate and who don't see any kind of worth in the other's sense of virtue at all.
In an ideologically and culturally diverse society, that initial calculation of "You don't recognise this virtue, so why should I practice it towards you?" is deeply, deeply dangerous. There will always be people who don't recognise a particular virtue, in the form that you understand it. But sometimes they have some other version of it -- deeply flawed, no doubt, from your perspective -- that they're still beholden to. And if you drop your version, and they drop their version, then the only thing that happens is that society as a whole becomes less and less virtuous overall.
One might, of course, try to advocate for societies that don't need virtue, except as measurable outputs that you can hold people to. Build a capitalist meritocracy, reward the people who play by the rules, and forget trying to cultivate the squishy subjective things that you can't even fully define, and that vary so widely between subcultures.
One might also look at liberal, multi-cultural democracies and diagnose them with an incurable degeneracy, a lack of social trust that inevitably leads to the decay of all personal virtue.
I will take neither of these. Virtue is at least partially its own reward, and we should cultivate it even in its unmeasurable subjectivity. A society that is so beholden to objective measurement that it fails to leave room for subjective judgement will fall to pieces on the blade of Goodhart's law. A society that attempts to enforce a single subjective vision will blind itself to the truth and terrorize its citizens. Diverse subjectivity is the only humane and sensible option.
What this means, inevitably, is that I am going to have to extend virtues to people who aren't extending those exact virtues back to me. I'm going to have to correct, continuously, for the perception that I am extending more trust than those who are different to me (whether I actually am or not). I'm going to have to cultivate virtue for its own sake.
Fortunately for me, "virtue for its own sake" is the best way to cultivate virtue, anyway.
Suppose Amal believes in a strong variant of Free Speech. No exceptions. Copyright should be abolished. That whole “‘fire’ in a crowded theatre” thing has a terrible history. “Hate speech” is too hard to define. And so on. Amal goes out of his way to defend the rights not just of people he finds abhorrent, but even of people who say terrible things to him directly. Sometimes that requires a lot of self-control on his part. It goes beyond belief in a particular principle to become an entire practice, a developing virtue into which he sinks a great deal of effort.
Now let's consider somebody with a very different set of beliefs. Let's call them Bill. Bill is a lot softer on the idea of free speech. He thinks perhaps there should be a "hate speech" exception. He definitely thinks that semi-private spaces should take advantage of their autonomy to restrict certain types of speech, even when that speech is still legally allowed. Amal would be horrified, but Bill is actually practicing some virtues of his own. He believes in not hurting people's feelings. To support that practice, he's started to get really into understanding people's feelings. This, in itself, requires a different sort of acceptance of diversity, as Bill develops his ability to understand and respect feelings that at first seem incomprehensible to him. Bill believes in protecting spaces where people can be vulnerable, because those are the spaces where he is able to develop these virtues of understanding and respect.
In one version of this story, Bill and Amal are good people who learn a lot from each other. Amal thinks Bill's ideas about who should be allowed to say what, and where, are terrible, but Amal also believes in Bill's right to say these things. Bill thinks that Amal has some dangerously open ideas about speech, but Bill also respects the strength of Amal's feeling on the matter, and would like to listen to what Amal has to say about why he believes what he believes. So, they each engage with each other according to the virtues they believe in, and in the process they become good examples for each other. Bill takes more interest in the extent to which free speech ideas can be important for allowing minority sentiments to be expressed. Amal starts to think about whether there could be a place for freedom of association to allow people to create very limited safe spaces. Bill notices the ways in which respect for one person's feelings might make you shut down another person's heartfelt sentiment, and tries to avoid this pitfall of the compassionate virtue he is developing. Amal tries to incorporate genuine respect for the feelings of offended people into his free speech defenses, in the hopes of winning more people over. They never do stop being in two separate camps, but their views gain nuance and their virtues gain depth. They become better people from encountering one another.
In another version of this story, the opposite happens. Amal notices that Bill isn't respecting freedom of speech at all. Bill notices that Amal is dismissive of the feelings of people who are hurt by other people's speech. Both of them decide that they can "tolerate anything except intolerance" and suspend practice of their respective virtues when dealing with one another. After all, if Bill doesn't respect Amal's free speech, why should Amal respect Bill's free speech? And if Amal isn't respectful of Bill's feelings, then why should Bill be respectful of Amal's feelings?
After some time, Bill, having seen that Amal doesn't defend Bill's speech, concludes that Amal's free speech ideas are basically worthless. Meanwhile, Amal determines that Bill's compassion is worth exactly zero where Amal is concerned. Both of them become worse people, who aren't consistent in the virtues they advocate and who don't see any kind of worth in the other's sense of virtue at all.
In an ideologically and culturally diverse society, that initial calculation of "You don't recognise this virtue, so why should I practice it towards you?" is deeply, deeply dangerous. There will always be people who don't recognise a particular virtue, in the form that you understand it. But sometimes they have some other version of it -- deeply flawed, no doubt, from your perspective -- that they're still beholden to. And if you drop your version, and they drop their version, then the only thing that happens is that society as a whole becomes less and less virtuous overall.
One might, of course, try to advocate for societies that don't need virtue, except as measurable outputs that you can hold people to. Build a capitalist meritocracy, reward the people who play by the rules, and forget trying to cultivate the squishy subjective things that you can't even fully define, and that vary so widely between subcultures.
One might also look at liberal, multi-cultural democracies and diagnose them with an incurable degeneracy, a lack of social trust that inevitably leads to the decay of all personal virtue.
I will take neither of these. Virtue is at least partially its own reward, and we should cultivate it even in its unmeasurable subjectivity. A society that is so beholden to objective measurement that it fails to leave room for subjective judgement will fall to pieces on the blade of Goodhart's law. A society that attempts to enforce a single subjective vision will blind itself to the truth and terrorize its citizens. Diverse subjectivity is the only humane and sensible option.
What this means, inevitably, is that I am going to have to extend virtues to people who aren't extending those exact virtues back to me. I'm going to have to correct, continuously, for the perception that I am extending more trust than those who are different to me (whether I actually am or not). I'm going to have to cultivate virtue for its own sake.
Fortunately for me, "virtue for its own sake" is the best way to cultivate virtue, anyway.