Monday, September 14, 2020

Sunday, September 13, 2020

Withdrawing for "moral health"

Robert Gressis at the Electric Agora discusses in The New Abnormal his decision to "withdraw" from some political discussion. After analyzing why someone might support Mr. Trump enthusiastically and after explaining why he disagrees with them, he says,

I have withdrawn. I’m trying to keep myself as ignorant of politics as possible, partly for my mental health. Hearing about our current political scene is deeply disturbing. It reminds me people are not handling each other well, which scares me; “when is someone coming for me?” is a question that abides after spelunking into the caverns of politics.

But I’m also doing it for my moral health: a lot of times, learning about people’s reactions to politics makes it almost impossible for me to see them in the same way. I lose respect for them. I fall into the fundamental attribution error: I judge them as evil, demented, or dangerous because of the things they say in the one sphere of our lives where we can feel like we’re part of a conquering horde, where we can crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and hear the lamentations of their women.

My withdrawal, then, comes from my own personal failings. It’s too hard for me to be a mensch to you when I see you being so unmenschlich. If I were a better person, I’d talk more about politics. But I avoid it when I can, because I don’t want to be a worse person.

I am more and more adopting Gressis's approach. I've found that I do better when I abstain, at least partially, from politics. By saying I "do better" I mean the choices I make when I abstain are more morally justifiable than the choices I make when I don't. Or more accurately, the choices are less morally unjustifiable.

For example, when I engage, I find that I choose to criticize "anti-anti-Trumpism" much, much more than I criticize the more morally compromised Trumpism itself. I choose to indulge whataboutism. I get snippy. I sometimes do the discourtesy of offering to clear the speck from others' eyes.

For further example: Dr. X, who I link to on my blogroll, posts repeatedly on Trump's outrage of the day--sometimes the outrage of the hour--and my reaction is not to acknowledge that what he says is true or to thank him for doing the otherwise mostly thankless and needful work of chronicling such things. Instead, I choose the path of anger and feeling defensive. And while I believe I'm civil enough and sometimes express agreement--and while I have a lot of respect for him, from what little one can know of anyone "virtually"--I choose more frequently than not to raise counterpoints to what he says. And no matter how needful or accurate I believe the counterpoints to be, I cannot deny I offer them more from an impulse of defensiveness and hyper-criticism.

Worse still is the way I choose to treat those persons (at Ordinary Times) who I dislike personally, if "personally" can be used in reference to people I've never actually met in person. I find I get angry just to read a comment from them, even if it's on a subject as innocuous as what they plan to do this weekend. While I can't blame that wholly on my engagement with politics, politics and political discussion are quite fruitful avenues for choosing enmity over friendship.

Sometimes deciding NOT to read what others write makes me feel better, or prevents me from feeling bad and, worse, from choosing to do bad. I find that I feel better when I don't comment. I rarely regret not saying something. I more often regret saying something. Or to put it slightly differently, the sins I regret more are sins of commission than sins of omission.

Sins of omission are real, though. That's how I interpret Gressis's penultimate sentence above. If I were a better person, I would both engage politics more fully AND make choices that really, truly serve to advance what is right. But I sense my own moral weakness. I despair of being up to the task. I'm at a point where I find it morally more "healthful" to be less bad than to be more good.

No, I'm not withdrawing completely. I don't keep up with the news as much as I used to, but I still keep up. I've curtailed some of my commenting activity on other blogs and at Ordinary Times, but I still choose to comment, and sometimes in exactly the way that makes me a "worse" instead of "less worse." I may continue to blog about the issues of the day, either here or at Ordinary Times. In fact, I have a post pending at Ordinary Times that, if approved, engages politics. (I'll let you know when/if it's available.) And of course, I plan to vote this November (for Mr. Biden).