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Will Someone With a Backbone Please Stand Up? Printable Version

by Jason Roth

"Don't judge me."

"What's right for you might not be right for me."

"Don't be so judgmental."

"Walk a mile in my shoes before you judge me."

"Judge not, that ye be not judged."

 

We're in the midst of a severe shortage. It's not fuel, food, land, or CEOs whose wealth we can expropriate like a bunch of fucking Nazis.

What we're lacking are backbones. Specifically, moral backbones.

It's been said that television and movies are a mirror of our culture. I agree. Just don't look for me in the mirror. I'm standing behind the sensitive guy in the retro polyester shirt.

So, recall the last time you saw a television series with a bunch of whining, pretentious teenagers or adults throwing around condemnations of people who judge them. Just turn on any episode of Friends, Party of Five, ER, Real World, or any other show with a bunch of brother's keepers who think they can manage everyone else's lives but their own:

Character 1: "I'm worried about you. I don't think it's the best idea for you to continue to mix ecstasy, heroine, and crack while having unprotected sex with those unconscious sluts in the Limelight bathroom as some fat guy named Moth shoves live rats from an AIDS research lab up your ass through a rusty metal pipe."

Character 2: "How dare you judge me, you evil Puritanical moralistic bastard!"

Admit it, how many times have you heard these exact words on TV? (Though the guy named Moth sometimes goes by the name of Brandon or Steve.)

As annoying as the characters are who "get involved" and try to help their friends in the first place (because they usually have equally fucked-up problems), the second character type is even worse. They have no qualms about uttering a logician's nightmare: that morally judging a person who makes a moral judgment is the one moral judgment which is morally permitted.

Why are television actors - not to mention human beings - so damn touchy about judgment? It doesn't take Freud to come up with the answer, assuming Freud ever uttered a sentence fit for anything other than a pornographic comic book.

The answer is fear. If we all lived in Oz, or the Garden of Eden, or some goddamned field of lilies where people sat under trees and read Marx all day, then there would be no need to judge. No one would be capable of doing anything wrong, and there would be no one to point it out if we did.

Thank God in Hell we don't live in that kind of world. Why? Because we wouldn't be human beings for Christ's sake! If we were capable of doing no wrong, we wouldn't have control over our behavior. We'd have no free will. If you weren't capable of being judged, it would be because you're not capable of choosing one action as opposed to another. You couldn't do anything wrong, but you couldn't do anything "right" either. You'd be a robot or an animal that just did what you had to do.

I'm sorry to say, but you do have free will, whether you like it or not. Disagree? How can you be sure? You're only programmed to disbelieve free will, remember?

You can fuck up. You can do stupid things. That's part of your nature. You can also make some good choices once in a while. (Regardless of whether some welfare-loving liberal would have you believe otherwise.)

People are afraid of taking the responsibility for their free will. But the fear isn't the fundamental problem. The problem is having the balls to take action despite the fear.

I've felt the fear. When I was a practicing Catholic, I felt the fear of personal responsibility when I was questioning the existence of God. Without a God in Heaven pulling the strings of the universe, the responsibility for my life is on my shoulders. But you know what? Fear doesn't tell me what's the best choice to make. Fear doesn't tell me right from wrong. Only my mind can tell me that.

You have to feel the fear, and move on.

When I'm feeling fear, that's the time when I most want to make judgments. Otherwise, the fear becomes blindness. Great, then I'll have fear and perpetual anxiety and self-doubt. What a bonus. Can I get a side of onion rings with that?

If you don't think, who do you expect to do it?

Moral judgment is just as important as any other type of thinking. It involves looking at the data, processing it, and taking action accordingly. It involves being a judge: looking at all available evidence.

Watch Judge Judy if you need a lesson. There's somebody with a backbone.

The tough part about moral judgment is that it requires you don't act like a fucking hypocrite. In some contexts, I agree with what my second TV character says. There's nothing worse than the moralizing bastard who indiscriminately tells people what they're doing wrong, but holds himself to no standards. He's to moral judgment what a slut is to sex. But at least with a slut, you get laid, instead of being shot in the head while on line at some abortion clinic.

The alternative is not to shut your mouth and mind. The alternative is consistency. That's right: practicing what you preach. Think it's better to keep quiet? Fortunately, the people who fought against slavery didn't think so.

As usual, no one says it better than Ayn Rand:

The precept: "Judge not, that ye be not judged"...is an abdication of moral responsibility: it is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for oneself...The moral principle to adopt in this issue, is: "Judge, and be prepared to be judged."
(The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 91, PB p. 72)

Contrast this with another old Bible favorite:

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

This is just a bullshit way of getting people to stick a proverbial knife through their heads and cut off the power to their brains. God damn it, who made the rule that if you fuck up once, you're no longer entitled to think?

I say: think. Think about what other people do, what you do, and everything else that's relevant to your life. And speak up when necessary.

I'll tell you one thing. When the US Government offers me a free room at the grand opening of its first concentration camp, and you don't feel like complaining about it, just don't expect an invitation to my funeral.

Oh, and if you still consider what you're reading right now to be the first stone? Then it's time to get yourself ready for an avalanche.

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