In contemporary society, there appears to be considerable tolerance for traditional moral failings. Cowardice, vanity, avarice, lust, irreverence, complacency, pessimism, self-absorption, cynicism, for example, are routinely overlooked, accepted, or even venerated as laudable: there is a perceived virtue in holding certain types of grievance, because the grievance appears to demonstrate that one is moral.
The opprobrium appears to have shifted from moral failings to ideological failings: the -isms and the -phobias; it is not vanity and lust that are inexcusable or unforgiveable but racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, wokeism, liberalism, progressivism, anti-liberalism, fascism, or whatever slur represents the inverse of one’s own values.
If one finds oneself full of self-righteous grievance over social, political, or ideological matters, what does one do?
Well, I first of all had to make the decision that I wanted to apply the programme in all areas of my life and not carve out areas in which righteous indignation was to be preserved or even fostered.
Secondly, I had to drop the notion that I was right on all matters automatically because I was me. I’ve shifted views sufficiently over the years to now exercise caution before condemning another person for thinking or believing or acting in accordance with principles that are different than mine. Of course, whatever one believes presently one does believe to be the case—this is the tautology of belief—but what has to go is the cast-iron confidence that one has necessarily captured all truths and arrived at a final destination of epistemic certainty.
Thirdly, I learned to break down the ‘crime’ of the person or group of people against whom I had the resentment into its components. Let’s say someone really is partly wrong or even entirely wrong, what does that wrongness break down into? It breaks down into ignorance, cognitive failings, and moral failings.
No one knows nothing but no one knows everything. Am I ignorant? Relatively, yes, because everyone is.
Do I suffer from cognitive failings? Absolutely. I regularly misappraise situations.
Do I suffer from moral failings? Yes: the pure selfishness of ‘me first’ and the extended selfishness of tribalism or partisanship where I extend my sense of self to a group I fall within: I’m hardly resolving my selfishness by extending the hula-hoop of self to include some others. The selfishness is resolved only when there are no ‘others’: when common welfare comes first, with ‘common’ extending in scope to cover everyone.
I discover from the above assessment that the atoms forming the molecules of someone else’s beliefs are the same atoms forming the molecules of my beliefs. The elements are the same; the configuration is different.
We thus come back to ‘they, like ourselves, were sick too’. I cannot safely throw others overboard, because I’m attached to them with a rope, and soon enough I’ll be pulled overboard, too.
So, with such matters, everyone must be excused or, failing that, forgiven, as in the purely personal domain.