Interlude On Conflict and Morality (I got publicly shamed, again!)

The differential value of objects, outcomes, and other oppositions

Before finishing the account of my burn, I must come to more resolution in myself about a recent conflict that directly relates to that trip and to my recounting of it.

There’s a part of me that wants to defend myself when I’m attacked. There’s also a part who wants to confess my shortcomings. I know that I always have room to improve. And I know we all do. To intentionally and collaboratively embrace that growth is what all parts of me want.

I was publicly “called out” for stealing by a former housemate, and told that the “moral wrongness” of my action was the true cause of his upset, rather than the specific item taken or anything else. In my upset, I sent a sarcastic text in response. I consider borrowing as distinct from stealing, and I try to approach morality as relative, rather than binary. I was angry that he likely harmed some of my relationships, and something akin to my public image. I thought it was very shortsighted, and unskillful. So, too, perhaps, was my response. So, too, might that be said of my theft/borrowing. Of course, there are worse things in this world. In that sense, what I did wasn’t so bad, compared to what others have done. Still, I could do better. I believe the heart of the conflict was and is a difference in our conceptual frameworks about morality, and our emotional relationship to those concepts. So, I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on these things explicitly, for all to see. If public shaming is what is wanted, public dialogue is what will be offered.

I know that categorical wrongness/badness does not exist. I also know that attacks (intentions to harm) come from fear - they are attempts to minimize threat. I was scolded in a very personally-meaningful format against my explicit wishes: accused of wrong-doing, shamed, punished in front of over 50 of the closest people to me.

A similar public shaming has happened before, by a former partner. I was accused publicly on facebook of being untrustworthy with women, but with different words. She has since apologized and expressed internal conflict about that attack, including acknowledging the lack of a deeper self-understanding and discernment. I never asked for a public followup, but that would cement the sincerity of the acknowledgment for me. I say acknowledgement, not apology, because apology seems to me to imply regret, or some negative emotion attached to a memory. I would not ask for regret or apology, or even any negative emotion. I would only ask for deeper understanding: the recognition of the confusion, insecurity, and misplaced blame, and the misjudgment of the effectiveness of the attack. Regardless if I’m the object of the attack, if it was an effective action for them, I can understand, appreciate, and honor that decision. And her acknowledgement of her own shortcomings was an important part of the process of repair between us. It was relieving, and easy to forgive. For a while, it seemed like a burned bridge that would not be rebuilt. But, more rapidly than expected, a connection was resurrected. That has been my experience of rebuilding trust with most people after conflict. Perhaps I am too easy to forgive, or too confident about others’ capacity for growth. I certainly have had unrealistic levels of optimism about many things before. Still, I remain fundamentally optimistic.

Upon receiving the more recent attack — the communication designed to make me feel bad — I was surprised and angry: I wanted to attack back. Although I am not really upset about being disliked by one person, it is embarrassing to be denigrated to one’s entire community. To feel embarrassed — to feel bad about oneself — is shame. I’m not categorically/always against shaming/humiliation, but I think our culture would do better to minimize it more. Like any attack or punishment, it can backfire if not done carefully, or if disproportionate to the initial harm. In both cases of my public shame, the attempted punishment seemed disproportionate to the offense, leading me to want to push back, rather than give in and accept embarrassment. After the first, my push-back was only internal: I imagined the attack was coming from a different place of hurt, and was misplaced onto me. I defended myself by suggesting that she was misjudging. After the more recent attack, I sent back a direct text of sarcasm and condescension. I was “defensive”, as commonly understood. Defensiveness, defined as simply preventing harm, is inherently positive / supportive. The question then becomes: have I truly prevented harm, being successfully defensive, or have I mistakenly caused more harm than growth.

And, was I successful in my “theft” — another self-protective action which knowingly caused harm — or did I cause more harm than benefit? Can we consider it a “bad” action overall? Should I feel remorse, sorrow, or shame? Should I still return the item I planned to borrow, or should I fully steal it, considering that he said that non-consensual borrowing was not meaningfully different to him than stealing. How do I assess these things on moral grounds? How do I decide what is best to do?

Morality is Relative, not Binary:

This is an important fact for me. Why is morality relative? Because everything is relative to experience. We exist within experience, and everything we know about the world is in relation to our experience. And, experience is always relational to other experiences — always moving, evolving, and referential. We don’t experience simply “good” and “bad” things. If this were the case, we could not evaluate the desirability of two good things against each other, because they would be equally, simply “good”. A ripe apple is good, and a million dollars is better. Some things are closer to neutral. Some things are repulsive. And some are just annoying. Experiences exist on a spectrum of less-desirable to more-desirable, or “better” to “worse”. Stealing a paperclip, he acknowledged, was not as bad as stealing a $150 bike-bag, which is worse than stealing a $10 bag, but nonetheless all are still categorically bad for him. I took the more expensive bag because it was the only one that fit my bike rack. And, I planned to return it…

“Good vs bad” relates to our experience of affect — our felt sense of well-being, level of general satisfaction, or the desirability of our condition. Insofar as every experience can be related to others through choice — desirability — nothing is categorically bad, but rather only worse than others, less satisfying, or less desirable. To conclude that my theft was worse than other things is easy: I can imagine many things which are better. However, I was unable to choose any better option: if I was able to, I would have. I chose the best option I had before me, anticipating not too much harm to come from it. He didn’t need the bag particularly strongly while it was gone — in fact, he hadn’t even realized it was gone until I told him, after I had finished using it. I knew he would be upset, simply because I took the thing after my initial request to borrow it was declined (and after a second request was left to a “I’ll think about it”). The harm was that I knew he didn’t want me to, and I did it anyway, elevating my judgement of what was a reasonable sharing of items above his: I imagine that I damaged his sense of power over his belongings, as well as his moral sensibility, and that this is the real harm caused.

Unfortunately, it also took me longer than anticipated to begin the return process. I had just moved across the country, and had been caught up in what seemed like more essential self-care (including recovering from illnesses, identity theft, and vehicle challenges), establishing a new life in a new place, and necessary community duties. It is also true that I could have mailed it earlier if I had decided to prioritize it more. It is an amazing coincidence that the day I had made concrete plans to mail it back was the day the public scolding happened.

Morality is Universal, not Individuated:

Nothing is “absolutely bad” or “entirely good” — we can always imagine extending the quality further along the spectrum. This universal moral relativity is embodied in our experience of choice: every experience we can imagine is more or less preferable than other experiences. This is related to the fact that we always have choice in our actions: experience itself — everything that happens to us — always includes our own chosen actions. Though some things are not chosen by us (like our social context), we still choose how to engage with all those things. Choice implicates the possibility of other actions. If we can always imagine multiple options, we always have choice in our present experience. And, we always choose what seems like the better option based on our expectation of the outcome: we choose what will likely have the most desirable feedback.

And this seems as true as anything else I believe. In this sense, the experience of relativity/relationality and possibility is really true — it’s the absolute, universal truth. The only constant is change, so to speak. And, in a seeming paradoxical, self-reference even this universal-relativity is in motion - relating, evolving, changing. And this highlights the limit of our own current understanding. Similarly, we know the universe is expanding, but not exactly by how much, or why. The further evolution of this thought can be glimpsed through the more precise quantification of these relationships, values, and movements: a more complex, comprehensive degree of understanding.

Since experience always has choice, everyone who experiences also chooses what they think is best from their perspective. I.e. Everyone is doing their best. This is not to say that our best cannot get better: we do the best with what we have, in the present. And we continue to learn, to grow, to gain more experience, and thereby do better. I believe this is fundamental to experience: the experience of growth is also really true. And, I’m pretty sure that experience is fundamental to the universe: a real, unwavering truth extends to all things in the universe. A similar conclusion has been reached far and wide for thousands of years through various methods of inquiry. My own particular logic can be found here.

Every action is a choice aimed towards better. Everyone does their best. Everything is relative. And, everything happens for a reason. Since we cannot change the past (but we can change our memories), we cannot imagine “having done” something differently. That colloquialism really refers to our consideration of choosing differently in a similar situation in the future. This is why I try to avoid saying “could have”, or “should have”. But I could, and I should, evolve.

Learning for Next Time: Doing Better

In the same way action is always directed towards the better, our understanding is always improving as we learn from the feedback of our actions. What we experience as the outcome of an action is its feedback. The degree of improvement in experience from the outcome of an action is its degree of success. I cannot actually imagine having made a better decision than I did. Not because it was so highly successful, but simply because nothing could have happened otherwise. When I imagine the possibility of change, I imagine a possibility that can only potentially become real (making it a real possibility) in the future. If it cannot become true, it is not a possibility. I cannot imagine having done differently than I did, but I can imagine doing differently in the future. This is also why I do not like to apologize — it gives the impression that I wish I had not done what I did. I see no reason to wish that, or to say that anything was or is categorically bad. However, I am fully welcoming of the idea that empathy, sorrow, or shame can support relationships, by shaping the desire to do differently in the future.

I returned the shaming with more shaming, reinforcing the erosion of the connection. Burned bridges are not always bad, and neither is stealing; whether a bridge burns or disintegrates over time does not change the fact that all bridges expire eventually. And stealing 100 dollars from a billionaire to feed a starving child would seem to only create a net benefit.

There’s a big part of me that does not even want to return the bag after all. Not because I’m using it, or because it’s expensive, but because I do not want to reinforce what I see as a self-limiting response and approach that led to the out-sized retribution. I would suggest there is misplaced anger, relating to an incomplete understanding, which I hope can be redirected more effectively. I’m pretty sure that anger is always about the feeling of personal safety, rather than “objective moral wrongness”. Anger creates the desire to harm. It can be more defensive or offensive, but again, this is not a mutually exclusive binary. Neither is harm/benefit. Beauty always includes some difficulty, even if it’s as simple as stepping on an ant in the midst of dance.

My understanding is limited too. There is nothing that I understand fully - not myself, not my experience, not “direct experience”. So I strive to understand more, and writing helps me do that: making my thoughts and feelings more explicit, and putting them on a public stage, takes extra attention, thought, and diligence. I scrutinize my words, concepts, and feelings, self-reflecting through the process of expression. I understand the anger that can arise when one feels unheard, ignored, or not cared-for enough. I hope I can make it clear that I do care about honest feedback, minimizing harm, and acknowledging shortcomings. I am more interested in truth and growth than anything else. And I am not one to shy away from conflict.

I don’t deny that harm came from my actions. I would not have been upset by that acknowledgment if it wasn’t presented to a large network of my most important relationships. I’m even happy to accept that I would borrow something after my request to borrow it was fully, explicitly denied. I’m even happy to accept that I would steal an item with no intent to return it. What matters to me is the relative benefit of an action: the difference in value between the two options. Borrowing that pannier, as I later explained to a friend, was mission critical, for a critical mission. What I do not accept is catering to binary thinking, misplaced anger, and the disproportionate public shaming which followed.

There’s also a part of me that wants to return the bag, knowing it would get more use — producing more benefit — there than here. The main benefit I would get from that is the pleasure of supporting a culture of clearer discernment: to agree to put things where they seem most useful, and to benefit from that collective behavior. The shared practice of deep reflection in these discernments also asks us for more transparency, so we can learn more from each other. We only do things in the interest of potential benefit. Benefit — improvement — is the basis of “better” and “worse. It’s possible that the return would support the future of my relationship with the place I came from, as well. It’s possible that all this philosophical pontification will help Zane to loosen his grip on his binary moral ideology. At the very least, perhaps it will prevent more emails to my personal community. With all of these positive, evolutionary prospects, I have decided to put the borrowed bag in a box to be brought back to the lender. It seems like the better thing to do.

But, maybe I am wrong. Not morally wrong, but rather lacking insight into some of these dynamics. I’m sure I am. We can always learn more and improve ourselves, and that is what I strive to do.

And now, I feel more complete.

I’ve been enjoying these relevant songs recently:

Peace Somehow, by Avi Kaplan

Grow, by FACESOUL

Let me know what you think of all this… in the comments.

Faze X Point / Phi Theta Ought

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Up Next, California Dreaming Pt.2: The Big Burn and Beyond