Is There Any Guiding Principle About Who to Associate With?
Can I articulate one? Can you? Can anybody?
So: I’ve been invited to appear on The Kid-Touching Hour with The Clone of Joseph Goebbels. It’s a popular podcast featuring the lab-grown genetic doppelganger of the infamous Nazi propagandist. Clone Goebbels (“CloJo” to fans), in addition to being a Nazi, has quite Foucauldian opinions on certain issues. Obviously, I find his views abhorrent. His opinions reflect the sickening lack of humanity that made Goebbels 1.0 one of the most reviled figures in human history. Plus, he’s not funny. It’s fair to say that my entire participation in the political sphere is to stand against everything he represents.
COUNTERPOINT: His pod does solid numbers. Five million downloads a month, 1.2 million YouTube subscribers — that’s legit, those are Red Scare numbers. I’m trying to build an audience for this Substack. Maybe — hear me out — maybe I change his mind about a few things — the Earned Income Tax Credit, perhaps, or zoning (Goebbels is a total NIMBY). Sure, things might be a little awkward around the Seder table with my in-laws next Passover, but if I use the podcast to plug the Substack and get off some solid zingers, then I’m sure they’ll understand. I mean: Five million downloads a month.
Who do we choose to associate with? Where do we draw the line? When do we say “I can’t be involved with this person” — is there any articulable principle, or are we all just going by feel? It’s become common on the left to break ties with people seen as morally suspect; Neil Young and India Arie couldn’t share a platform with Joe Rogan, Patton Oswalt apologized for doing a show with Dave Chappelle, and the death of biologist E.O. Wilson sparked a “how dare you”-athon that will probably burn for months. These are just the most recent examples of a larger trend. What are the rules here? Are there any? I seriously want to know; I have to live on this planet, and I’ve also been invited on Cannibalism Today with Ghislaine Maxwell.
I used the Joseph Goebbels hypothetical to establish that we all have a limit. For any ethical person, there’s something you won’t do, some line you won’t cross. Even if you’re a super-believer in the power of debate, and you can imagine yourself eye-to-eye with the beta model of Joseph Goebbels arguing the proper placement of Finno-Ugrics on the racial pyramid, you probably still have a limit somewhere. After all: Would you pay for Clone Joseph Goebbels’ podcast? Would you work for it? And if you find yourself thinking “what kind of benefits does he offer?”, I would argue that if you’d only work for CloJo if he offered medical, dental, two weeks paid vacation, and an on-site gym with a rock climbing wall, then you’re admitting that the show has repugnant content and are adjusting your demands accordingly.
Disassociating oneself from a Nazi podcast is an extreme example of a mundane action. After all: We act on moral beliefs all the time. We recycle, we return lost items, we refrain from watching porn on airplanes (with one guy I sat behind on a flight to Dallas being the notable exception). Much of the time, we do things because we believe that we should. We all make choices based on moral judgements, with the possible exception being That Guy On That Flight To Dallas, who may think that humans are just meaningless collections of atoms, which is a form of nihilism so extreme that it demands this obvious rejoinder:
We’re all in the moral judgement game, for better or for worse. And it often is for better; musicians refusing to play in South Africa hastened the end of apartheid, and there’s an endless list of once-acceptable practices — from witch burning to dog fighting to taking Dr. Phil seriously — that have withered under societal pressure. Some would argue (I would argue) that the evolution of societal norms is the main way progress is made.
But moral judgements can also be bad. People burned witches because they thought it was the right thing to do. Very recently, large numbers of people sent their children to camps to try to pray the gay away (with lackluster results). The impulse that causes someone to “call out” unacceptable behavior could — in an extreme context — cause them to report a neighbor who was going through the motions during the Dear Leader’s birthday celebration. Taking action based on a belief does not, by itself, have any moral valence.
If you knew with total certainty what was right and what was wrong, then there would be a moral imperative to act on your beliefs to the maximum extent possible. That’s probably why, historically, people who possess absolute moral certitude have been some of the most vicious fucks to ever inhabit the planet. From Ramesses II to Robespierre, nothing sends the body count through the stratosphere quite like a powerful guy who’s convinced of the righteousness of his cause. Acting on your beliefs to an extreme extent is also incompatible with pluralism; a society full of people acting with absolute moral conviction would be one of endless conflict, in which ideas are advanced not due to merit, but due to the power of the people who hold them. Which, we should recognize, is basically how all human societies worked until about ten minutes ago.
All of which is to say: There are two ways to get these choices very wrong. The first is to say “moral behavior doesn’t exist”, and the second is to say “moral behavior does exist and I will tell you what it is and come up with a creative way to kill you if you disagree.”
Of course, identifying two extremes to be avoided doesn’t bring us very close to a usable principle for who to associate with and who to cut off. And now I have to confess: I don’t have that magic principle. In the headline, I sort of teased the possibility that maybe I did, but: Nope, I got nothin’. If this makes you kind of like how you did during the last episode of Game of Thrones, when they hinted at some grand revelation and then delivered trite patter about how people like stories, then I completely understand.
I don’t have a simple, iron-clad principle to cut through the haze on this question, but there are a few things that I think about that I’ll call “guidelines”. They’re “guidelines”, not “principles”, because they suck; if principles are whiskey, these are Miller 64, i.e. ridiculously weak but arguably better than nothing if there are no other options. So, here’s goes nothin’…
Guideline 1: My willingness to disassociate should rise and fall with the seriousness of the perceived violation.
I used the Joseph Goebbels podcast as an extreme hypothetical because, in that scenario, the person is: 1) A Nazi, 2) A pedophile, and 3) A podcaster. That’s the worst person imaginable. But, as you dial down the odiousness, eventually you’ll reach a point at which you have strong disagreements but don’t believe the person should suffer Hester Prynne-style banishment. Or, at least, you should; demanding absolute agreement on all points is a trademark feature of cults, totalitarian dictatorships, and mommy message boards on Facebook.
Guideline 2: The extent to which I’m “endorsing” or “condoning” something by continuing a relationship depends on the nature of the relationship.
We can’t live in a society in which I yell “You’re MURDERING the planet!” at everyone who drives an SUV. The vast majority of daily interactions need to start with the assumption that we’re all competent, respectable adults, which is obviously a polite lie that wouldn’t survive a substantive interaction with basically anyone, but it’s necessary. This veil of ignorance is especially important at work, when you have to pull together with several people who you wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire to achieve the shared goal of doing some bullshit your boss asked you to do so that you don’t get fired.
Of course, there’s a big difference between working with someone and working for someone. Statistically, you probably work with several depraved sickos who deserve to be thrown down a mine shaft. But your work doesn’t enable their depravity. In contrast, getting up every day and pouring your heart and soul into something that you find morally repugnant is entirely different.
Personal relationships are also a special category. Cutting off a friend as part of a moral stand is a big thing; it shouldn’t be done lightly. Cutting off a family member is so huge that it should maybe never be required. Probably the only exceptions are “my brother is the Unabomber”-level stuff, though that’s easy for me to say, because my sister hates the woods and who uses physical mail these days anyway?
Guideline 3: If I’m condemning someone in order to inflict a social penalty, I should have reason to believe that it actually will inflict a social penalty.
Returning to the example where I yell at people driving SUVs: That wouldn’t work. And, sadly, that’s not a hypothetical: I briefly volunteered for an environmental group that would accost people in parking lots and ask if they knew how much gas their SUV burned. It might not surprise you to learn that nobody ever said “Thank you, young freak! Screeching mileage stats at me while I was trying to safely buckle my daughter into her car seat really changed my perspective!” There’s zero chance that we ever convinced anyone of anything, and probably more than a few people drove straight to the dealership and upgraded to a larger SUV as a “fuck you”.
There are several ways that an attempted condemnation can backfire. The Streisand effect could bite you, you could turn the person into a martyr, or the person’s in-group could close ranks around them. People have built careers by capitalizing on the free publicity supplied by moral outrage; Marilyn Manson did it in the ‘90s, Milo Yiannopoulos did it in the 2010s. North Korea’s attempted banning of the 2014 Seth Rogen/James Franco vehicle The Interview is the only reason why I’ve seen it, and it’s probably the only reason why anyone has ever seen it, heard of it, or thought about it, ever.
Much of my frustration with the left in recent years stems from the feeling that many efforts to render people untouchable have run badly afoul of these guidelines.1 The proportionality required by Guideline One is disappearing as the bounds of what’s “acceptable” grow ever more narrow. Minor infractions are treated as unforgivable sins; there have even been several attempts to treat widely held opinions as shocking violations of norms. Guideline Two is violated when people demand the severing of all ties from an offending person, even when those ties are as shallow as signing the same open letter or as deep as a friendship that’s lasted decades. And Guideline Three is ignored when people engage in public denunciations that are quite obviously exercises in virtue signaling that are unlikely to achieve anything positive. I admit that my guidelines are fuzzy and weak; they contain almost nothing but grey area. But to the extent that they provide any clarity, they help me understand why I find the way that some people approach these decisions to be incredibly counterproductive and odd.
Do you know of any principle that would apply here? If you do, please tell me. Seriously, I’m honestly desperate for a solution — I feel like I could get sucked in by one of these ads:
There might not be any clear principles here. It might actually be ridiculous of me to think that there might be. Maybe all moral decisions are an irreducibly complex muddle and we’re destined to flail helplessly against little-understood forces like a fly caught in a spider web. Maybe! But then again maybe not. And I’d really like to have some guidance before I need to make a call about appearing on Dog Euthanasia Tonight with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
This has been a frustration I’ve had with the left in recent years. But when I was younger, it was usually the right that would launch overzealous shaming campaigns. And they still do it, sometimes.
Maybe if you say “this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you” to your twin sister before launching a Twitter mob on her, that would cover all the moral bases?
I think a key here is the public nature of all these moral stands. It’s not enough to quietly disengage from someone, or have a private discussion, or simply just let a friendship fade. It’s gotta be a soul-baring, online confessional with a side of righteousness. Pretty gross.
I will always have *far* more respect and admiration for people who protect, nurture, and value their important relationships than I ever will for someone who trashes their associates for some principle. Obviously, as you say, there's nuance to this and Nazis and cannibals or whatever might be a line too far, but the Unabomber's brother went to the FBI and would only agree to cooperate if they promised Ted would get treatment -- he didn't just cut him off and say, "fuck that guy" -- because this was a human being he loved and wanted to protect. Real integrity and moral struggle isn't about scoring points or virtue signaling, it's about making hard (usually private) decisions about how to conduct your life given the complicated human messes we all get into at some point. Taking a moral stand should be difficult, unpleasant, and require a lot of thought. If it's as easy as denouncing someone on social media between lunch and a meeting with your lawyer... you're doing something entirely different.