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The Left Is Now an Honor/Shame Culture
Anecdotal evidence, especially from Twitter, suggests that the American Right and Left reacted to the Ford/Kavanaugh Senate hearings in the following three ways:
- Both tribes generally thought that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was believable and sympathetic. Most seemed to feel bad for her, even wishing that she didn’t have to expose herself in this way.
- The right essentially had the same response to Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony. It made sense that he would be angry, but even more so, if he was innocent he should have been angry.
- The left universally seems to have found Kavanaugh’s testimony to not only be unsympathetic but on some level an indictment of him personally.
Basically Dr. Ford was met with near-universal empathy but Kavanaugh was a like a thermometer for partisanship. This outcome wasn’t terribly surprising to most conservatives. But does it have an explanation beyond tribal loyalties?
Yes and the beginnings of the answer can be found in The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. This excellent work identifies three great untruths that the current generation of college students have bought into.
- The Untruth of Fragility: whatever doesn’t kill you makes you weaker
- The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: always trust your feelings
- The Untruth of Us vs. Them: my enemies are always evil
They provide a thorough analysis of why these untruths have been embraced specifically by the so-called “Generation Z” (children born after 1995). But for present purposes, the most relevant part of their explanation is a change of culture. They argue that sometime in the last several decades America transformed from a culture of dignity to a culture of victimhood.
Dignity culture is essentially the idea that every human has intrinsic value and worth. This kind of culture approaches individuals as persons and assumes that every person is deserving of respect. It presumes objective morality and expects that most persons will strive to be moral. Criminals are supposed to be the exception but should generally be treated as responsible agents and held accountable for their crimes in some way. A culture of dignity views civility as fundamental and incivility as a horrible deviation. Obviously America at her best has never really lived up to these ideals, no country has. But in general western liberal civilization has seen itself within this framework of fundamental dignity.
But according to The Coddling, this has been transplanted by a culture of victimhood. This new culture grants special moral status to victims. A culture of dignity should, of course, be sympathetic towards victims and try to help them. But it does not give them special status and privileges. In a culture based around victimhood the victims are venerated as heroes deserving of special attention. They are treated as having special mystical knowledge. Victims are granted more social capital than nonvictims. I would say they actually occupy an entirely different caste. This culture is clearly a logical outgrowth from the theory of intersectionality which essentially turns minorities into a kind of Olympics of oppression.
It is true that a large and influential segment of the west has become a victim culture. The American hard left and the so-called alt-right are clear-cut examples of this. Intersectionality has become ubiquitous within the American Academy and mainstream media. And of course Richard Spencer-style white identity politics certainly portray white folks as victims. The election of Donald Trump was in many ways an outcome of this unfortunate dialectic. And along these lines so is the Ford/Kavanaugh debacle.
The empathy granted to Dr. Ford was universal. But it wasn’t universally due to her victimhood. On the right, the empathy was granted because of her inherent dignity. Sexual assault is wrong from this perspective because it is a violation of moral order. And this same argument was extended to Kavanaugh. To be accused of these things without evidence was seen as deeply unjust. The right treated both Ford and Kavanaugh as persons first and foremost. Both potentially had been wronged because each of them possesses rights that may have been violated.
But for the American left, Kavanaugh was guilty by definition due to his white male privilege. It was never possible that Kavanaugh would be viewed in terms resembling fairness and objectivity by the left. He was guilty with no avenue for proving himself innocent. He was the villain because of his maleness and Ford was the hero because of her femaleness, and because she had been victimized. The truth simply did not matter.
This is remarkably similar to the way that many traditional honor cultures treat parallel situations. For instance many years ago while visiting Nepal, it was explained to me that if a married woman is raped her husband throws her out and then she is supposed to go live with her rapist. Tragically rape has been a trending topic in Nepali news. One publication recently reported:
Two years ago in Mahottari, a young woman was forced into a sugarcane field and sexually abused by Farmud Ansari and Murduj Ansari. They were arrested, but instead of punishing them, the locals padlocked the girl’s house and expelled her from the village for having “corrupted” the local youths.
A system like this isn’t based on truth, facts, or argumentation. It’s based in honor. The end of the story is predetermined based on social status.
Our dignity culture wasn’t displaced by a new culture of victimization. Instead, western culture has experienced a divergence. One tribe has maintained the dignity culture. But the other tribe hasn’t acquired a new kind of culture either. Rather they have regressed to an honor culture. And in this honor culture, white men are unequal. Dr. Ford occupies a higher caste than Judge Kavanaugh and honor says that she is in the right, whether she’s telling the truth or not simply does not matter.
ThinkProgress recently demonstrated this perfectly when they commented on the obvious parallels between Tom Robinson’s rape trial in To Kill a Mockingbird.
The character of Atticus Finch, as readers might remember, was defending a Black man from a white woman who had accused him of a rape he didn’t commit, in the Jim Crow South. The GOP are trying to ensure a privileged white judge gets an even more privileged position on the Supreme Court.
The presumption of innocence or evidence simply isn’t relevant to this new (old) honor culture. The only thing that is relevant is a person’s intersectionality rating. Of course, the stakes are different for Kavanaugh and Robinson. Robinson went to prison for the false accusations leveled against him. Kavanaugh can’t be prosecuted for his alleged crimes. But the connection is still clear. Evidence and presumption of innocence should have saved Robinson from his tragic fate. Entertaining such accusations without evidence is unjust. That is true regardless of the consequences.
But this is no longer common sense to the Honor culture of American leftism. The consequences for this failure of reason are far from obvious, but unlikely to be good.
Published in Culture
Hardly. Her story doesn’t just have holes. It has precisely one alleged non-hole. And I won’t be bullied into expressing empathy for a story that weak.
Except for one thing. The left has no shame. They have campaigned to remove the stigma from every behavior that used to be called shameful. Prostitution? Unwed pregnancy? Sexually-transmitted disease? Teachers having sex with students? No shame any more. Do whatever feels good and suffer no consequences.
Ok, I’ll bite: where on the left do they argue in favor of teachers having sex with students?
Very nice and succinct summation of the whole debacle.
You’re operating on a dignity moral framework. Your concept of shame isn’t relevant because it’s more like guilt than shame. Honor and shame function like forms of currency instead of right and wrong. In their eyes you are shamed and a bad person for not seeing that your list is silly. Their worldview has changed radically and using our concepts will cause us to misunderstand them and their decisions.
that’s a bad apple. Don’t bite! I think she meant that their liberal culture has produced such things. That example is actually relevant because they aren’t disturbed by sexual transgressions towards men. In a more primitive worldview sex is a form of currency. A teacher having sex with a student may be foolish for wasting her “currency” but she’s not a monster from their perspective.
Thank you. I think this is pretty obvious to most of us but it’s helpful to put it down in writing.
A) The reaction was very widespread and I didn’t mean it to be an abstract statement of “universal” absolute application. I saw some truly awful things on twitter from “conservatives” about Dr. Ford. But to deny it was essentially a universal reaction seems absurd. B) Her story has broken down considerably in the last week and when @johnpodhoretz was forced to admit she’s probably lying…well then she’s either extremely confused, mentally troubled (which is what I think), or she’s a liar. But none of that was evident last week. And I’m not sure how you could be bullied into believing her. It was easy for most on the right to sympathize with her and maintain objectivity about the total lack of evidence. That’s part of a dignity culture, juggling complicated beliefs.
So, what are we to think of the 48 Democrat senators who chose to believe her?
I don’t see the honor culture while the victim culture is ubiquitous. Is it that we raise victims to positions of honor? Do people actually believe these things or is it that their leaders find it useful to divide and conquer and the followers aren’t equipped to form independent opinions. For instance, progressives remain racists but use black victimhood as leverage for power.
While Republicans gave credence to Ford was it because they extended her dignity or were they politically afraid to address her directly for what was probably total group fabrication? Of course they were right not to go after her. They played the whole thing masterfully so that it became about the partisan Democrats not a potentially victimized woman.
Highly educated and privileged upper middle class white women are leading the attack on a highly educated and privileged upper middle class white guy.
Talk about your false consciousness.
For Christians, and I think Jews ( but I do not know Judaism as well as I should ), human dignity comes because each man and woman was created in the image of God. This should , doesn’t always , cause Christians to treat their opponents in conflicts, even secular conflicts , with respect and decency, One shouldn’t try to destroy someone created in the image of God.
There are of course atheists and people from other religions that treat other people with great respect, and I applaud this and respect this also. Christians are not perfect at this, I know have sinned by treating people with less respect than I should someone created in the image of God, but the dignity of those created in the image of God is part of the Christian worldview.
Why do we have to think they believed her in order to vote against confirmation? Many of them declared against confirmation before the nominee was known . They voted against Trump not Kavanaugh . They still haven’t accepted losing in 2016, probably never will .
I don’t think that it’s a regression to honor culture. I cannot see any principle of honor that motivates the Left.
I think that it is a degeneration into pure tribalism and power politics.
I maintained objectivity. Nothing she said that could be checked out has checked out. There is a difference between “empathize” and “sympathize.” I do neither, but there still is a difference. And as far as the difference between confused, crazy, or lying — where did I leave Occam’s razor? It was around here somewhere.
This gets at my unease with the increasing use of “victim impact statements” at criminal trails. The state is supposed to be prosecuting perpetrators as a representative of all the people, not merely the victims. By giving so much weight to such statements and allowing crime victims to testify at sentencing — not because they were witnesses or experts, but just to display their (valid) emotions — makes the state more of a revenge-seeker rather than a seeker of impartial justice.
Hope I don’t get too much flak for this.
I agree that I don’t see honor culture on either side. On the left I see identitarianism and instersectionalism.
How can they be an honor/shame culture when they exhibit neither?
I think this is a different meaning of “honor”, and the honor is not individual honor, but Family or Tribe honor. Honor killings are widespread in Moslem cultures, because the honor of the family has been sullied by the actions of a member. Women who are raped (actually becoming victims) are murdered by their own families in this kind of primitive culture.
The Western concept of honor derives from the individual being created in the image of God. Women who are raped are considered victims, and are treated as if they are-taken care of, helped, and defended. Since real rape is a crime, the victim is not shamed and ostracized but treated well. It is the religion of Progressivism that elevates rape “victims” to the level of “moral authority” and believes even those who are lying about having been raped.
They have plenty. To spew on other people. The dichotomy is not Honor/Shame: That’s for folks who hold honor sacred…It’s Shame More/Shame Less, actually.
Sure she is. Where do you get this? Who on the left calls sex “currency”?
I think this is correct. Honor cultures are just a kind of culture. American culture has rarely been dominated by such a culture. the main place we’ve seen it is actually with the Scotch Irish “cracker” culture. Thomas Sowell showed that this was transplanted into the black ghetto culture of major urban areas. This is probably how it was translated to Leftist elites. It’s notable that Trump’s most unpleasant base happens to have a lot in common with cracker culture, and that Trump himself has a lot in common with the left’s honor culture. The lengthy NYT piece debunking his fortune was a Salvo in their honor shame war.
I don’t see them demonize those women so I don’t think they see them as monsters. The Macrons are celebrated on the left and Brigitte is essentially a kind of “authority rapist.” I think she started screwing Emmanuel when he was 13.
I’m just interpreting their culture. I didn’t get it from anyone. It’s an original thought as far as I can tell. And as far as I can tell Hollywood has always used sex as currency. But I’ve never seen this discussed anywhere. I’m just looking at Hollywood and I see what they do. Sex is a form of social capital to them. Victimhood is as well, combining the two is powerful magic.
ACG: that’s a bad apple. Don’t bite! I think she meant that their liberal culture has produced such things. That example is actually relevant because they aren’t disturbed by sexual transgressions towards men. In a more primitive worldview sex is a form of currency. A teacher having sex with a student may be foolish for wasting her “currency” but she’s not a monster from their perspective.
Wha? Macron? When did we make the jump to foreign leaders? You said that to the left, teacher-student sex is OK. Did I misinterpret that? I’m objecting that the statement is flatly untrue.
I think that rather than Honor-Shame, the polarity here is Trust and Low Trust. This was the subject of thread here on Ricochet in 2016.
It’s similar in some ways, but not identical.
Pew polled on this in 2008
Pew may revisit the issue. So far, they’ve focused on “fake news” and things like this
Ah, but can we trust Pew to be honest?
Embrace the power of “and”.
I’m currently reading The Personality Brokers, an attack on the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory. But I can’t shake the feeling (heh) that the Inventory would do a pretty good job of predicting where one stands on the Kavanaugh confirmation.
Nope. Every fight that has broken out with regard to “fighting” words, or the concept of ending the spreading of falsehoods by challenging someone to a duel means that there is an honor culture.
We had one, until the latter part of the 20th century. We grew out of it.
Sticks and stones and all that.
Take a look at the Sandbar fight. Not to mention ubiquitous lynch mobs.
I’m looking forward to that one; during my chaplaincy training it and its sibling, the Enneagram were viewed as akin to the Holy Grail. (Thanks for the reminder re: the title!)
Only if the teacher is female and the victim male. Look at the disparity in prison sentences for that crime.