Product and Practice

Reposted from my new blog site

Recently, I’ve written a couple of times about missing targets, and I’m returning to that same theme from a slightly different angle after talking with a writer who is trying to get on track with his dissertation work.  We had been talking about setting up a regular practice of writing and he reported that he had missed a day during the prior week. That’s no big deal, but it had me thinking.

This man is in a professional program; he’s not going to be an academic, so he won’t be in a publish-or-perish career that will require public demonstration of his writing. In his situation, it makes good sense to focus his attention on the product he is trying to complete—his dissertation. But I was also thinking about the value of the practice—a subject I think and write about often.

Developing actual products of your work and your efforts is important—without actual products of your work, it’s hard to share anything with anyone.  All the same, each individual product is a one-shot thing (one shot, in the sense that’s only one step in a career, not in the sense that you only have one chance to get it right), while a career or a life is more of an on-going matter.

In the course of a life, which is more important, the products or the practice?  Asking about which is more important necessarily invokes questions of value that have uncertain answers (because different people have different values), but it’s an interesting question, I think.
There is no question that it’s good to have some sort of “product” to show for efforts—a graduate student quite naturally wants to produce the necessary dissertation.  Products are important.  Having something to show for your efforts is important.

Having something to show for your efforts is not the only important thing, however.  Living well and having rewarding experiences is also valuable, even if there is no product.  As a writer, I find that writing with the emphasis on the practice is not only more enjoyable than writing with an eye on the product, it is also more productive. When I am writing for the practice, my emphasis is on using my time well.  This emphasis does not preclude working on some product, but it does make the product secondary to engaging my practice effectively. 

When I focus on a product, I can see the many difficulties that surround me, and I see clearly the many limits of my work and my abilities.  The pieces that I want to be insightful and interesting, often seem trite.  The pieces that I have tried to edit carefully, still have errors. It is, in short, very easy to become frustrated with the product of my efforts.  And frustration is a good way to get stuck working.

When I focus on the practice, my attention is much more directed towards my own efforts: am I engaging in the practice?  Am I giving myself a chance to benefit from the practice? Have I put in enough effort that the practice will pay off?

For me, at least, the practice is more valuable than the product (admittedly, I might say differently if I had ever had a very successful book), because with the practice, I feel more likely to produce multiple products, and thus I’m less dependent on the outcome for any single product.   And realistically, pretty much every person in an intellectual field will have to produce multiple written products. For someone aiming at a professional career—the dissertation writer I mentioned above, for example—the dissertation may seem like the one big writing product, and once it’s done, there’s no need for a writing practice. But that is, I think, a false vision: people in professional careers have lots of things to write, even if never as big as a dissertation.  Professionals write to colleagues, to supervisors, to subordinates. They write to describe their decisions and to coordinate with the people with whom they work.  They write to communicate with other organizations. 

Writing is a skill that is generally used, so developing a practice that helps you improve your skill and feel more comfortable about the difficulty of writing may be one that helps you in many ways and in many contexts.  Although developing a practice is difficult, and it may seem more efficient to focus on finishing a single product, developing a writing practice is the best way to finish a large research/writing project.

Courtesy, Truth, and Political Correctness

Reposted from my new blog

My previous post, “Who Gets to Say What Is Offensive?”, basically argued that it’s always appropriate to respect the opinions of those who say they are offended.  If you say something and someone is offended by it, you are generally violating a basic and important principle of human interaction—to respect other people. The argument that someone should not be offended because other people reveals a basic disrespect for the person who has expressed offense.  In most cases.

There are times when it is important to say things that offend people.  The search for knowledge and understanding can reveal things that offend people, but that search should not be limited by the attempt to avoid offending people. (Ironically, my attempt to write about this is hampered by my desire to avoid offending anyone.)

Many opponents of the theory of evolution were offended by the suggestion that humans were related to other primates. Nonetheless, we don’t want to stop researchers from discussing evolution, do we? The Copernican revolution—the notion that humans and the earth were not at the center of the universe—was offensive to many. All the same, we want to continue to pursue research based on the idea that the earth revolves around the sun, not vice versa. On a more personal level, many people with addictions will be offended if their illness is pointed out.

Some truths need to be stated, even if people get offended.  

Stating the “truth” can get treacherous because there are more than a few disagreements on what constitutes truth.

One principle to keep in mind as a writer is the intention: if your intention is to offend, truth is little excuse.  If you are trying to offend someone, that’s behavior outside the bounds of academic ethics. Writers in other fields may have more ethical leeway on whether they try to offend people, but trying to offend people certainly violates the moral precept captured in Christianity’s Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12).

A scholar or researcher ought not try to offend, but at the same time, the scholar cannot allow him or herself to be stopped by the possibility of offending others. Given the diversity of voices in any debate, and the fact that people often get offended when others disagree, any one message is likely to offend someone. If you say that TheoryX is bad, then some of the people who think that TheoryX is good will be offended. Research will not move forward productively if researchers are unable to challenge accepted ideas for fear of offending people.  This, in fact, is what tenure status in universities is about: providing scholars freedom from political pressures related to unpopular theories.

Speaking abstractly, a scholar/researcher (or other writer) is caught between two conflicting forces: on the one hand there is the abstract search for understanding, or “Truth,” and on the other there is the principle of courtesy.  There is, I think, a balance that can be found between these two forces.

There is an additional motivation relevant for writers/speakers, but it is a motivation that is typically backgrounded in academia, and that is the motivation of wanting speech/writing to change how people act. 

The question of motivation is, I think, part of what makes the idea of “political correctness” unpalatable to many.  The care for being “politically correct” can be interpreted not as courtesy or an attempt to care for others (or, from another perspective, an attempt to be treated with respect), but rather as a hypocritical attempt to gain some political advantage. If we think about the attempt to avoid offending from that perspective, it’s far less palatable. If my interest in avoiding offensive terms is that I am motivated to treat all people with respect, that is a very different thing than if I am merely trying to avoid offense to gain a political advantage.  And it is certainly the case that some people are concerned with gaining political advantage.

But are we all so jaded to assume that gaining political advantage is the only motivation that people have?  If someone shows concern to avoid offending others, it could be that they’re just trying to get the support of people they secretly hate (e.g., an anti-semite who courts Jews to get their votes), but couldn’t it also be true that the person actually respects others and tries to avoid offending out of respect? Or, from the other side, it is certainly true that someone might pretend to be offended in order to gain political advantage, but isn’t possible that the person is actually offended?

I have no simple summary here.  We all have to do the best we can, and life is complex. Despite our best intentions, we can err. Different principles may compete in the paths of action they suggest: the desire to respect others and avoid offending may be at odds with the desire to be truthful. The desire to persuade may be at odds with the desire to respect and the desire to be truthful.  And a variety of motivations that might lie hidden behind any action make it hard to interpret right and wrong. Maybe that concern for careful language is a reflection of a honest caring desire, or maybe it’s a reflection of insincere rhetorical manipulation.

It would be nice to have universal principles, but in the end, I suppose that even though principles like respect, caring, and honesty may be universal in the abstract, in reality they sometimes conflict leading to difficult choices.  It’s not good to offend, and it should be avoided, but sometimes it’s unavoidable, especially with emotionally charged issues, where people have strong opinions. Courtesy is sometimes at odds with truth, and sometimes its necessary to choose truth over courtesy (with the caveat that identifying “truth” is problematic, and it’s important not to jump to conclusions, and to be open to learning that what one has previously accepted as truth might be wrong).

Who gets to say what is offensive?

Reposted from my new blog.

This particular post was sparked by the recent Megyn Kelly blackface controversy in which Kelly said (among other things) “I can’t keep up with the number of people we’re offending just by being normal people,” while defending blackface costumes as “OK” because, basically, they used to be (among the people she knew or remembers as important). The controversy brought into the foreground a debate that every writer or scholar needs to consider: whether or not their words offend others.

Kelly’s defense of blackface was offensive to many people. Whether she revealed total ignorance that some people are offended by blackface or dismissal of those people’s concerns, I leave to the reader to decide.

Kelly’s position highlights something that should be in the foreground of discussions: “offensive” behavior is something that different people judge differently, and the fact that one person is not offended does not mean that another is not offended.  When we are concerned with offensive social behavior, the question is who, if anyone, is offended? No behavior is offensive if no one is offended. And if someone is offended, then the behavior is offensive. My general answer to the question asked in this post’s title–who gets to say what is offensive–is “anyone and everyone.”

When someone is offended, one way to respond is to argue that person should not be offended because people at some other specific time and/or place don’t find it offensive (e.g., “no one thought it was offensive when I was young, so it can’t be offensive now!”). And/or to question the right of the people to be offended (e.g., “they shouldn’t be so sensitive!”).  Those are essentially the elements of Kelly’s defense of blackface. 

Instead of questioning whether a person is right to be offended, or has a right to be offended, another way to address the question of what is offensive is to take a standard like that suggested by the American Psychological Association Publication Manual, which is basically that if someone is offended by what you have written, then it is offensive.  (There is, of course, the understanding that factual statements are not bound by this rule. Research has to be able to challenge accepted truths: plenty of people were offended by the idea of evolution.) 

Personally, I believe that the APA standard is much the better one.  If someone is offended by something I write, the fault lies heavily on me. I am willing to offend people in some circumstances (which circumstances are a matter for another discussion), but it certainly is to be avoided. This is a matter of courtesy, a matter of respect, and, certainly with respect to the expectations of the academic community, and in wider contexts, too, a matter of ethics. 

If you respect other people, you do not willingly offend them. The idea that you should respect other people is a very old one (I would say it was a “conservative” principle, except for the willingness, and even glee, with which people who currently call themselves conservative flout it).  The idea that we should respect other people is a principle we can find in religions through history. According to the Bible, 2,000+ years ago, Jesus stated the Golden Rule: “whatsoever ye would that men should do to you: do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12). Basically, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Or, in this specific context: “if you don’t like people saying things that offend you, then don’t say things that offend others.“

When thinking about this version of the rule (“If you don’t like other people saying things that you find offensive; don’t say things they find offensive”), it must be framed in terms of the emotions of the person who is affected: it’s not honest to say “well, I don’t mind being called a ‘girl’, so it’s totally cool if I call other people ‘girls’.” (I chose ‘girl’ as term that is offensive to some people—e.g., many boys and men; many adult women—but not offensive to others—e.g., many little girls, some adult women.) Saying that things are only offensive if they offend you is true from a grossly egocentric point of view: if you’re only concerned with whether or not you’re offended, then you miss the fact that someone else might be offended.  You may not care if someone calls you a ‘girl’, but that doesn’t mean that the term isn’t offensive to others. Context and perspective matter.  

Applying the Golden Rule propounded by Jesus requires understanding what others want, not just applying your own standards to everyone.  You may love to eat pork, but the Golden Rule doesn’t therefore suggest that you force everybody else to eat pork. If you love to eat pork then the Golden Rule should lead you to try to provide others with things that they love to eat.  

The principle known as the Golden Rule is echoed across many religions. In Hinduism: “One should not behave towards others in a way that is disagreeable to oneself. This is the essence of morality. All other activities are due to selfish nature” Mahabharata, Anusasana Parva 113.8). And in Judaism: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19.18). Buddhism, Islam, and others also have scripture that extols these same values (https://www.feedkindness.com/resources/mindful-religion-coexistence/; https://inspiremetoday.com/blog/kindness-the-core-of-12-religions/).

The place to start, according to this basic principle, is not with arguing whether someone has a right to be offended, but with whether they are offended. By this standard, Kelly’s argument that at a certain place in time people were not offended, therefore no one should be offended is clearly flawed because it is essentially egocentric: “The people from whom I take my standard are not offended, and therefore other people shouldn’t be offended.”  The idea that you treat others with respect means that you take them and their concerns as seriously as you take yourself and your interests; it doesn’t mean you dismiss their concerns because they don’t seem important to you.

Society depends on people treating each other with respect and care. Large social groups depend on the willingness of their members to make decisions for the good of the whole group, and to show a willingness to make sacrifices for the good of the whole group.  This need for a social awareness and willingness to sacrifice for the greater good does not preclude competition; it does not preclude seizing personal opportunities or having success beyond the common person; it does not preclude capitalism or personal liberty. It does, however, call on people to be willing to give up some things to help other members of their society, and thus their society as a whole. Sometimes these sacrifices are large: many have given their lives for their nation or their community. Sometimes the sacrifices are rather smaller: giving up that blackface costume is a pretty small sacrifice; giving up callous insults also seems like a pretty small sacrifice.

To Kelly and others who would argue, “I can’t keep up with the number of people we’re offending just by being normal people,” let me suggest that if by being “normal” you offend people, you might try to be better than normal.  The principles espoused by religions—the Golden Rule and its relatives—are rules to which people should aspire, they are not descriptions of normal behavior. If being normal means callously offending people, I, personally, don’t want to be normal. I want to be better. That’s what it means to live up to ethical standards. The people who follow ethical standards consistently are rightly help up as exemplars; the fact that “normal” people don’t live up to that standard is a poor excuse for not trying to do better.

There are times when other concerns override the interest in being considerate to others, and there are times when people are offended without good reason, but those are outside the scope of this post, which is already overly long.