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Active Silence
May. 19th, 2023 07:40 pmThere’s an important thing I began to notice when I started having arguments on the internet in contexts where most of the participants disagreed with me. It’s simple, but it’s under-appreciated: silence really is a virtue. Remaining silent when you desperately want to argue is hard, and valuable, and it’s worth trying to get better at it over time.
This observation is somewhat at odds with the ethos of our time. Indeed, within “ally culture,” this attitude is actively discouraged. If you want to be an ally to marginalised people, you have to speak up when you see someone who is bad or wrong! “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.”
Spurring people to rectify injustice even when they are not affected by it is important. But sometimes you can’t speak up about everything, because there is too much of it. Sometimes there is a decent chance that intervention might do more harm than good. Sometimes you’ve spoken up already and it just didn’t work. And sometimes you can have conflicting priorities, in which rectifying injustice is important, but so is a different underlying mission. When people actively try to remove their ability to be silent in these kinds of situations, this creates counterproductive knock-on effects.
A commonly-discussed issue centres on what to do when you have a relative with repugnant political views whom you cannot avoid seeing at family events. Suppose you have already argued with this person, to no avail, and now your family would like you to just ignore them and change the subject if they express such views in future, so as not to provoke a row. Should you?
Rather than risk moral compromise, a commonly-floated solution is to simply avoid family gatherings altogether. By not walking past the situation (because you stayed away, instead), you avoid accepting it. This, alas, leads to Copenhagen Ethics, which is the idea that by interacting with a problem — even just by seeing it — you become responsible for it. As long as you don’t see your racist uncle, your racist uncle is not your fault! But if you do see him, at that point you can be held responsible for not fixing him.
Does avoiding a racist relative actually advance the cause of racial justice? Not obviously. It may even make the problem worse, by removing a potential source of anti-racist prompting and/or confirming for this person that people who disagree with them are “snowflakes” who can’t tolerate opposing views. I am not saying you cannot choose avoidance, if you feel this is what is best for you, but avoidance is not necessarily morally superior, as a rule.
Consider, as an alternative, the practice of sitting with something you perceive to be wrong while accepting that sometimes you can change it, and sometimes you can’t. This requires ongoing discernment: can you help solve the problem, or can’t you? You won’t always be perfect in making that judgment call. But, if you have the resources to make the attempt, then this is better than a universal practice of avoiding difficult problems lest you be held responsible for them.
I call this active silence. Rather than ignoring the problem, an actively silent person waits for the possibility of useful action. Sometimes that moment may never come. Sometimes it can be hard to see. But over time, you can get better at this.
Active silence tends to be uncomfortable. In some ways, it is important not to find it easy to remain silent before a problem; your moral reaction to it is an important factor in preserving your capacity to discern solutions! The practice of feeling moral urgency without immediately acting on it is subtle and potentially dangerous. It is also vital, because the alternative is a world composed of the complacent and the hotheaded. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
I’m not ready for the end of the world; I’m not waiting for a revolution. Good comes from what we build, stone by stone. And when I don’t have a place for the stone I am carrying, sometimes the right choice is to keep carrying it for a time.
This observation is somewhat at odds with the ethos of our time. Indeed, within “ally culture,” this attitude is actively discouraged. If you want to be an ally to marginalised people, you have to speak up when you see someone who is bad or wrong! “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.”
Spurring people to rectify injustice even when they are not affected by it is important. But sometimes you can’t speak up about everything, because there is too much of it. Sometimes there is a decent chance that intervention might do more harm than good. Sometimes you’ve spoken up already and it just didn’t work. And sometimes you can have conflicting priorities, in which rectifying injustice is important, but so is a different underlying mission. When people actively try to remove their ability to be silent in these kinds of situations, this creates counterproductive knock-on effects.
A commonly-discussed issue centres on what to do when you have a relative with repugnant political views whom you cannot avoid seeing at family events. Suppose you have already argued with this person, to no avail, and now your family would like you to just ignore them and change the subject if they express such views in future, so as not to provoke a row. Should you?
Rather than risk moral compromise, a commonly-floated solution is to simply avoid family gatherings altogether. By not walking past the situation (because you stayed away, instead), you avoid accepting it. This, alas, leads to Copenhagen Ethics, which is the idea that by interacting with a problem — even just by seeing it — you become responsible for it. As long as you don’t see your racist uncle, your racist uncle is not your fault! But if you do see him, at that point you can be held responsible for not fixing him.
Does avoiding a racist relative actually advance the cause of racial justice? Not obviously. It may even make the problem worse, by removing a potential source of anti-racist prompting and/or confirming for this person that people who disagree with them are “snowflakes” who can’t tolerate opposing views. I am not saying you cannot choose avoidance, if you feel this is what is best for you, but avoidance is not necessarily morally superior, as a rule.
Consider, as an alternative, the practice of sitting with something you perceive to be wrong while accepting that sometimes you can change it, and sometimes you can’t. This requires ongoing discernment: can you help solve the problem, or can’t you? You won’t always be perfect in making that judgment call. But, if you have the resources to make the attempt, then this is better than a universal practice of avoiding difficult problems lest you be held responsible for them.
I call this active silence. Rather than ignoring the problem, an actively silent person waits for the possibility of useful action. Sometimes that moment may never come. Sometimes it can be hard to see. But over time, you can get better at this.
Active silence tends to be uncomfortable. In some ways, it is important not to find it easy to remain silent before a problem; your moral reaction to it is an important factor in preserving your capacity to discern solutions! The practice of feeling moral urgency without immediately acting on it is subtle and potentially dangerous. It is also vital, because the alternative is a world composed of the complacent and the hotheaded. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”
I’m not ready for the end of the world; I’m not waiting for a revolution. Good comes from what we build, stone by stone. And when I don’t have a place for the stone I am carrying, sometimes the right choice is to keep carrying it for a time.
