Bubbles 12 - Everything is Permitted

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I find it helpful to end with story.

Yes, but what do I propose? What policy do I suggest?

You know, I’ve always wanted a movie about what happened to Jules Winnfield after he left that diner. Still hoping I’ll get one.

Yes, fine-fine-fine, but what’s my answer? I've been pointing fingers—what's my big solution?

But I never said I was looking for a solution. I’m looking for a way to exist in a world I'd failed to recognize. I’m trying to understand the appropriate posture to take in a world that is different than I thought it was.

The old stories aren’t working for me. I’m looking for a new story. I'm almost done now.

What a cop out!

Really? I don’t think so.

It’s one thing to make a compelling argument. It’s another to be compelling. The former might win an argument, but the latter might—maybe—change a mind.

Put it another way. We can resift order's soil if we like, and it looks like we should. But I think we’d do better to fix justice's bedrock. And fixing the bedrock is more a matter of spirit than law. It's more a matter of desire than ideas. It's the heart, not the mind; the vision, not the spreadsheet. It's a matter of orientation. It's the compass.

It may well be appropriate and useful to make policy proposals that are more just than the current ones, and useful to pass more just laws, and our lawmakers should certainly make that attempt, and certainly I hope to see laws passed that increase justice, but policy will not move us, and laws will not save us, unless we choose to discard the spirit that has captured us, and become oriented toward a justice founded in love.

Policy may improve people’s lives, but they can’t make us believe people's lives matter. Laws can enforce justice, but they can’t make us enforce them justly. Justice’s underlying bedrock can’t be smoothed without a change of ideology, of worldview, without a recapitulation of underlying assumption, without a renewal of spirit.

The only thing that will save us from the merciless consequence of believing our foundational lies is the changing of our national soul. A reorientation toward justice, toward recognizing the fact that people are art. Something close enough to a miracle as to be indistinguishable from it.

Let me try to demonstrate what I mean.

One of the great stories of the past 10 million years or so is this: humans have had to engage in labor to stay alive.

One of the stories of the past 10 thousand years or so is this: humans have innovated technologies, which have allowed them to create enough surplus to form increasingly large societies, which have allowed them to exchange their labor in exchange for wages of goods or services. Meanwhile, organizations have harnessed this labor to form industries, which coordinate this labor toward projects of increasingly larger scale.

One of the stories of the past 200 years or so of human history is this: thanks to increasingly large jumps in innovation and technology, industry, which seeks above all else to increase profit, has developed a preference for technology over humans, when it comes to labor.

As a result, increasing numbers of people have had their labor replaced by technology.

Let’s repeat the problem: There has been an advance in technology, and as a result, industry no longer thinks humans are desirable for labor. As a result, many have been replaced and have no way of proving their worth to a society that views profitability as the metric of worth, and many others have found themselves herded into meaningless occupations in order to survive. If it hasn’t yet happened to what you do: just wait another decade. I doubt you’re safe if you’re a doctor, or an attorney, or an actor, or a writer. Industry seeks to cut expense. Humans labor is very expensive. Technology solves complex problems.

Let me ask you this: Is this a problem?

It’s here where framework is crucial.

If we live in a culture where life is something that must be earned, and the way you earn life is by making yourself profitable, this is a huge problem. You can argue pros and cons of solutions within the framework, but you’re still stuck within that framework, and increasingly people will fail to provide sufficient profit, and increasingly people will not deserve life, and so, increasingly, in various ways, we will allow people to die.

And, not to go future-shock on you, but … our technology is getting exponentially more sophisticated, more intelligent, more and more able to replicate something like thought. The more our technology replaces human labor, the more it will be making decisions on our behalf. Which means we’ll need to ‘teach’ it, but soon enough, it will be learning things from us we did not intend to teach. We can try to teach it that all human life is valuable, but unless we actually believe it, that’s not what our technology will learn. It will learn our lies from us instead. It will learn that we don’t belong to each other. It will learn that life must be earned. It will learn that being profitable is how life is earned. It will learn that humans are not preferable for this goal. And it will learn that violence redeems.

We've seen that movie. We keep making it. It's almost as if we know.

That's a pretty huge problem.

If, on the other hand, if you believe life is something you deserve simply through your being, then the fact that industry no longer desires human labor is simply an extraordinary challenge.

The challenge is this: Since industry would like to replace human labor to increase efficiency and profit, and since industry is already doing this, how do we, as a primary responsibility, make the necessary adjustments to our understanding of how human labor (a good thing) is going to function within our society in order to preserve and protect basic human physical and spiritual need, and, as a secondary responsibility, identify everything good about this trend so that we can preserve the innovation, the benefit, the increases in knowledge and ability?

Do you see what's changed? We still want to preserve industry. We still want to preserve innovation. We still want to preserve free markets. They just aren't any longer the first thing we want to preserve, or the only things.

Industry and innovation and technology and labor and efficiency aren’t bad things. They’re good things. Robotics and artificial intelligence aren’t bad things; they’re tools—amazing  tools, incredibly useful ones. It’s just none of them are more important than the idea that all humans are unique and irreplaceable works of art carrying intrinsic and unsurpassable worth. If any of them is failing in that regard, we can either make adjustments to what we have, or we can come up with something else.

You’re telling me we can’t innovate some system, if we so desire, that allows people to engage in whatever labor they find meaningful, but which stands untethered to the coercive elements of a profit-oriented system? I don’t believe you. We have a rover taking pictures of Mars. We split atoms. We attack cancer with radiation. We can hit any specific spot on the planet with a missile that will devastate a city, and we can do it until we’ve exterminated ourselves. We can do whatever we want.

Which means the question is…what do we want to do?

Human beings have basic physical needs. Human beings also have an innate desire for meaning and significance, which leads them to a vast spectrum of meaningful work and achievement and expression. We can make sure we are providing for these things as a primary objective, or we can make profit and growth of industry a primary objective. If we can have both, that's wonderful—and, because we are innovative and smart and industrious, we probably can—but if the one has decided to cast off the other, then we must meet the challenge of that reality.

Oh. My. God. Am I talking about … socialism???

My answer is: I don’t know. And who cares? It’d not an important question, it's really not. It's the question somebody would ask whose first priority is preserving capitalism rather than human life. I’m suggesting merely we meet the challenge presented by a new reality. And I’m suggesting that toward that endeavor, everything is permitted … except the destruction or subjugation or abuse of human beings, who are art.

Be very skeptical of the person whose reaction to a problem is merely the preservation of the system causing the problem, rather than meeting the challenge of solving the problem.

Consider capitalism and socialism. They’re oppositional forces, right?

Wrong. They are tools. Two among many. Perhaps one has more appropriate applications than the other, and perhaps one is more useful more often than the other, and perhaps one is more dangerous than the other—and we could argue which is which, if we were the types of people who enjoy boredom.

Capitalism and socialism aren’t oppositional forces any more than your screwdriver is an oppositional force in contention with your wrench.

Unless, that is, either is improperly elevated to the most important thing.

If either is made the most important thing, then the most important thing will be to always use them for every task. And, when inappropriate use creates harmful results, the most important thing will not be the redress of the harm, but the preservation of the inappropriate use.

Capitalism has been for many years an imperfect but largely successful way of organizing human labor to the benefit of both. It is starting to decide it doesn’t need humans. Are we really going to live as if capitalism is more important than humans?

Hell, no. Let's do better.

And still there are those who will think I'm attacking capitalism, because they are in a bubble that says that capitalism, not a justice rooted in love, is the most important thing.

This is just one illustration, just one challenge to meet. The point of the illustration is, policy and law are good if they are just, but they will not save us if our frame is still unjust.

Preserve what is good. Change what isn’t. Use any tool available, provided you put it to a use appropriate to your orientation toward justice. When you find no appropriate use, put the tool back in its place.

We can change anything.

Which means we can use any thing.

Which means we can do anything.

Anything.

The frame of justice is so large, it turns out it is the entire canvas. If you can manage to frame yourself there, you'll wonder why you hemmed yourself into such a small corner of it.

Everything is permitted.

Everything.

So, again. What do we want to do?

Right now we want to go to war and war and war and war. Right now we want to profit off of suffering, and increase suffering if it will increase profit. Right now we want to imprison more and more people, and to profit from their imprisonment. Right now we want to blame the victim. Right now we want a Muslim ban and a holy war. Right now we want a police force that will destroy the bodies of those who are considered presumed theft. Right now we want to presume that people of color are presumed theft. Right now we want people whose labor has been replaced by technology to die. Right now we want to protect rapists if they had a bright white future. Right now we want people, who are too sick or too poor or too unskilled or too old or too disabled to be able to turn a profit, to die. Right now we want people who remind us of the responsibilities we've inherited because of our country's unresolved genocides to die.

Right now we want to try to stay comfortable through all that.

If that's not what we want to do, then why are we doing it?

If where we are wasn't where our compass was pointing, then why are we here?

Suppose you are like me. Suppose you are an idiot. In that case, you won't understand every policy proposal. In that case, you won't have a detailed understanding, or even a functional one, of every industry and every technological advance and every law. And, if  you're like me, perhaps you've begun to suspect that it won't be possible for you, all by yourself, to gain such godlike understanding. After all, you're like me. You're an idiot.

But I might understand one small part of it. And, together, we might understand it all. And, if we believe we all belong to each other, then we might move together in whatever direction we choose. And, if, together, our compass is pointed toward justice, we'll eventually arrive at justice. We'd make mistakes, but we'd correct them. Because the compass sets the course, and the course informs the navigation. If the navigation is unskilled at first, we need only refer to the compass and adjust. If the compass is true, we'll get there in time. It will be hard and costly and humbling and worth it.

Demanding to know exactly how we'll get there before deciding to do so is the real cop-out. This is why asking someone for their policy solution is usually my way of distracting from the fact that I don't want to do the right thing. It's usually my way of changing the frame away from justice, back to the more precise details of how we might justify doing something unjust.

Or put another way: Usually, before people embark upon some difficult task, they first see the necessity or the desirability, which leads them to want to do it. It's only after wanting to do it that they actually make the plan.

Which is kind of obvious, if you think about it.

The good news is this: You don’t have to win the debate over policy. The attempt to win the debate is usually a loss in itself. A debate within an unjust framework benefits the unjust by accepting the framework as a foundational premise.

Lose the debate. Not in the sense of defeat. In the sense of casting it off.

Lose the debate. Move the frame.

You move the frame by telling a story.

Let me tell you a story.

* * *

Once upon a time, a tyrant became aware of his own tyranny, and left his kingdom behind to walk the earth, trying, real hard, to become a shepherd.

You know: like Kane in “Kung Fu.”

He was a bad motha-shutyomouth. (But I’m just talkin’ about Jules. So can you dig it?)

Before long, the new shepherd ran into trouble. In every town, it seemed, there were people suffering, and others who held sway over them, benefiting from the imbalance. Sometimes there was a rich industrialist, who had bought up most of the land in the county. Sometimes it was a local tough and his gang, who rode through town each night to terrorize those less imposing and ruthless than he. Sometimes there was a poison in the ground, or the water. Sometimes an abusive patriarch. There was always a tyrant.

The shepherd confronted each tyrant. Reactions varied. Some, recognizing his innate authority, offered him opportunity in exchange for his allegiance. Others, trusting to their superior familiarity with the local territory, simply lied, attempting to confuse him with conflicting narratives, attempting to cast his intended victims as the true villains and himself the misunderstood hero. Others, casually confident, simply explained the legal and physical forces against which the shepherd sought to cast himself, hoping to quell him into submissive apathy. Others simply raged and threatened him with an undue and targeted measure of the abuse they already distributed generally.

The shepherd insisted on siding with justice, and refused complicity. He refused to believe lies, repeating the truth he saw. He refused apathy, setting himself in contention with tyranny even when defeat seemed unavoidable. He absorbed the abuse with which he was threatened, knowing it had been intended for others.

Occasionally the shepherd found it necessary to bring out the tool of his old trade, his weapon, the instrument of his tyranny—yet he never used it, and he was always the first to put it down. He came to realize that he would only bring it out in order to be able to be the first to put it down. In time he brought it out less. By the end he never brought it out anymore. Some suspect he lost it.

Wherever the shepherd stayed, he lived with those the tyrant intended to hurt. At first he attempted to impart his wisdom to them, but soon he discovered that most spaces needed his ears more than his words. Soon he learned that people already understood the particulars of their own territory better than he did. Soon he realized that they were far more the heroes of the story than an interloper like he could ever be. Soon he realized that even the tactics he disagreed with were the ones that had allowed these people to survive within the abuse of their situation. The shepherd would not participate in these tactics if his conscience disallowed their use, but he was slow to criticize any perceived failing, and quick to name any perceived goodness.

Always the day would come the shepherd realized there was nothing more he could do. The shepherd never stayed long after that. The shepherd always said good-bye.

Sometimes the shepherd left having found some measure of success, with people less threatened than before, or more empowered, or refortified with resolve or provision. Sometimes the people had managed to wrest some concession, large or small, from their tyrant. In rare instances their tyrant had even been turned from abusive ways by a better example, repented, and joined humanity.

Sometimes the shepherd failed entirely. Sometimes he left having made no discernable impact, because he had been forced out, either beaten and bleeding and defeated by a stronger hand, or else shunned by those who feared a disruption of their order more than life lived under threat of a tyrant.

Even in hard times, the shepherd did his best not to forget to laugh with his friends, and to spend time in their company. In time, the shepherd came to realize that this had been the point more than had been the struggle.

The shepherd died in the end, of course. Everybody does. By the end, the shepherd had stopped fearing it. Nobody’s sure how the shepherd met his end. Some say the shepherd ran afoul of some thug. Some say he met with accident on the road. Some say he just got old.

They found his wallet, but not his body. The wallet was empty, and full of tiny holes on one side, as if at some point, long ago, stitching had been removed from the leather.

Nobody knows where the shepherd’s grave is.

But in every place the shepherd had stayed, without quite knowing why, someone put up some marker beside the road he'd traveled, a sign of a spot he'd stayed for a season.

And, in ever place the shepherd had stayed, there were those who had observed the shepherd closely, and remembered him well, and decided to become shepherds themselves. Each of them, having been at some early point in their lives a tyrant, and having recognized what kind of story they had been living, would come to one of the shepherd's markers, carrying a weapon they found they no longer needed, and would leave it behind.

Some shepherds followed in the footsteps of their old friend, and walked the earth. Some stayed where they were. They had different skills and abilities and weaknesses than the shepherd. But each of them somewhat resembled the shepherd, and each refused complicity, insisted on the truth, eschewed despair and apathy, and absorbed the abuse meant for others.

And others observed these new shepherds, and remembered them well.

And they decided to become shepherds, too.

* * *

If you’re still reading, I think I can consider you a friend.

My friends, a new name for you, whoever you are:  You were tyrants. Now you are shepherds.

We all have areas, with very few exceptions, in which we hold privilege. In a society captured by a spirit of genocide and slavery, geared toward default settings, we have all been tyrants. Some of us more than others. Some of us much more than others.

Recognize your tyranny.

Become shepherds.

We move the frame by telling a better story than the one being told.

The best way for us to tell the story is to be the story.

Let’s go be good stories.

Let’s go be art.

May we pop every bubble.

We hold these truths to be self-evident

-The Declaration of Independence
___

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

-Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter From a Birmingham Jail

___

If you want to find a Granfalooon, remove the skin from a toy balloon.

-Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle 

___

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?

-David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas




FRAME
0. ART
1. SISTER
2. THE GREAT DIVIDE
3. SPIRIT
4. BELONG
5. BUCKETS
6. THE KNIFE AND THE TRAIN
7. OUR FAVORITE FLAVOR

STORY
8. CHANGE THE LOCKS
9. THE LOWEST RUNG
10. BOTH SIDES
11. I’M TRYING, RINGO
12. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED

Bubbles 11 - I'm Trying, Ringo

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WARNING: Spoilers for a 23-year-old movie follow.

This fellow with the big brain is Brett.

Flock of Seagulls haircut here is Roger.

Brett and Roger have made the exceedingly unwise decision to steal a briefcase that belongs to an LA crime lord named Marcellus Wallace. Here's Marcellus.

This is Brett and Roger’s friend. His name is Marvin.

Marvin has recognized what a bad idea it was to cross Marcellus, so, in exchange for his life, Marvin has agreed to open the door when Jules Winnfield knocks.

And this is Jules Winnfield.

Jules kills people for Marcellus, his boss, accompanied by his partner, Vincent. Vincent considers himself a man of the world, well-attuned to the little differences. Here’s Vincent.

Jules has killed many, many, many people in his life. Jules is a bad motherfucker. Don’t take my word for it. Just ask his wallet.

Jules just had a close shave. He had just finished eating the last Big Kahuna burgers of Brad and Roger's recently shortened lives, had just finished drinking the last of their refreshing Sprite, when Fourth Guy showed up. This is Fourth Guy.

Jules and Vincent weren’t expecting Fourth Guy.

Fourth Guy is a friend of the other three: Brett, Roger, and Marvin. When Jules and Vincent murdered his friends, you might say it made him afraid that his streak of days lived was about to come to an end. Which filled him with an irresistible desire to shoot them with his enormous gun.

Fourth Guy made a big mistake, though. He missed.

So now he’s dead.

But logically speaking, Fourth shouldn’t have missed, and Jules knows it. Fourth shot at a range of mere feet, and his gun was enormous. For him to have missed is not just unlikely, it’s so close to impossible that it is either a miracle, or it may as well be one. Jules can’t ignore the fact that, while he is alive, he should be dead.

It’s popped his bubble.

As a result, Jules can’t live in the same way he has previously. He’s decided this close call is his divine warning, is, in fact, God’s commentary about the life he’s living. Furthermore, he’s already experienced another close call, immediately on the heels of the first. You see, as the survivors were all driving away, Vincent accidentally shot Marvin in the face. Disposing of the body turned into a very ticklish operation. Here’s just a taste:




Luckily, Jules and Vincent got the car cleaned and disposed of. Now they're having breakfast and arguing some more. First, they disagree about whether or not it is right to eat pig (a filthy animal that roots in shit); and, next, about Jules’s perspective on the morning’s events. Jules has determined he will retire from the criminal life. What will he do next? He doesn’t know. He’ll ‘walk the earth.’ He’ll help people.

You know. Like Kane in Kung Fu.

Vincent thinks Jules is foolish. He thinks Jules is giving up power and wealth and a favorable position and even his worth as a person. From Vincent’s point of view, Jules, by opting out of the system in which he finds himself, is choosing to become a bum.

The way I would put it is this: Jules has decided to become art, and Vincent, who still believes that life is something you must earn, is incapable of appreciating this decision.

It’s not hard to understand Vincent’s bemusement. For a hitman to choose to become art would make little sense to another hitman. There is likely no more pure expression of the idea that we do not all belong to each other, or that life is something that must be earned, or that violence redeems, or that profit is moral virtue, than to become a hitman. Killing people for money is a natural end point of these lies, when aggregated.

Incidentally, because PULP FICTION is a story presented out of chronological order, we already know something about what is going to happen to Vincent after breakfast. Tonight, Vincent will experience yet another close shave, this time because Marcellus’s wife, Mia, while in Vincent’s company, will nearly die of a heroin overdose. Thereafter, Vincent will continue to work for Marcellus, and, as a result, he’ll still be around to meet Butch. Here’s Butch.

Butch, unlike Fourth Man, will not miss.

That might have been Jules. But Jules won’t be around by then to catch the bullet. Thus, the movie has already provided commentary on whether Vincent was right, or Jules was.

And now we come to the great climax of the movie. The movie’s final scene begins, as its opening scene suddenly interrupts Jules and Vincent’s breakfast. Some setup is needed, in order to explain.

Here are Pumpkin and Honey Bunny.

Ugh. Pet names. Let's call them by their real ones. She's Yolanda. We don't know his real name. Let's just call him what Jules will call him, given he's British. Let's call him Ringo.

Ringo and Yolanda are in love. They’re also small-time criminals. In the movie’s very first scene, we see them decided to rob the diner’s patrons of their purses and wallets. We haven’t seen them since, but now, as they reappear, we now realize that, unluckily for them, one of those patrons is noted bad motherfucker Jules Winnfield. Jules doesn’t make trouble, until Ringo makes the exceedingly unwise decision to try to divest Jules of Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase. Jules easily overpowers Ringo, and…

Well hell. Let’s watch:




There are stories of heroism, stories of overcoming overwhelming adversity through struggle. It's a story about whether or not the hero is going to beat the villain.

And then there are tales of repentance and redemption, stories of realization that your cause is not just. Stories of redemption are stories where the hero's struggle is the attempt to reconcile dreams of a better self with the realized reality of a worse self. It's a story about whether the villain is going to become a hero or not.

Jules has realized which story is his story. He thought it was the first, but it’s the second. As a result, he knows many things that had previously been hidden from him.

He knows he has to change. He has to give life to those who have, by the strictures of his own memorized Biblical words, earned death.

He knows it has to cost him something. So he empties his Bad Mother Fucker wallet and gives Ringo the cash.

He knows he has to manage his partner, who is so offended at the idea of those who have clearly earned death instead being given wealth (which is, for a hit man, moral virtue), that he promises to kill them simply for the breach of his value system. And so Jules insists—rather impolitely—that his partner do no harm.

Jules knows he needs to tell the truth. He can’t lie to Ringo about who either of them are anymore, even if it might make them both feel better.

He knows that, in order to preserve life, he needs to endanger himself. (Keep the gun on me, Yolanda, let’s all be Fonzies.) And he knows that the moment will come when somebody will have to put down the gun. And he knows that, because he is the one with the advantage, because he is strong and they are not, because they are frightened and he is brave, that 'somebody' will need to be him.

Finally, he lets them go. He has purchased for them the opportunity to do as he has done, and has given them a different story about themselves. They, too, have been the tyranny of evil men. They were certainly that to the rest of the diner’s patrons. It is only in the presence of Jules that they became the weak.

“I’m giving it to you so I don’t have to kill you,” says Jules. In a hitman’s world (much as in an everyday American’s) money is interchangeable with moral virtue. Jules is giving Ringo and Yolanda his moral virtue, and, in so doing, divesting himself of that particular lie, while giving them a chance to try to be the shepherd themselves. Will they take that chance? We don’t know. That’s not up to Jules, and it’s not up to us. It’s up to them.

Incidentally, this is why PULP FICTION’s anti-chronological narrative structure works as more than just a clever puzzle, and why the film remains a classic while most of the pretenders that followed, which aped its style but not its substance, are forgotten. Writer/director Quentin Tarantino situates as its climax the precise moment that one of its characters decides, through direct action, to change. It’s at this moment that the movie coalesces into something thematically coherent, and then, immediately, it ends.

PULP FICTION is about a universe in which people are trapped in our old familiar lies. Believing the lies puts them in situations, again and again, which might be taken as warnings for those with eyes to see it. Again and again, its characters fail to heed those warnings, until finally, at last, one of them does. He’s a man who, though irreligious, memorizes scripture and doesn’t respect an animal that eats its own shit. Or, as the Bible puts it in a verse Jules never memorized, “as a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.”

Jules is going to change. He's going to give up the rewards and power of his position, because sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but he’ll never eat the filthy motherfucker again.

Jules has been one thing, and it was an evil thing, an unbecoming identity for human art. He was the tyranny of evil men, telling himself a story about how he was the shepherd.

Now he’s a new thing. He’s a man who’s wants to be the shepherd, telling himself a story about how he has been the tyranny of evil men but can become something better, by divesting himself of his own advantage and by speaking the truth about himself and others.

The miracle isn’t that God stopped the bullets. The miracle is that something changed in Jules’s heart.

Jules believed in the priority of order. Now he believes in the priority of justice.

Watch:


Jules Winnfield was a hitman. Acting on the orders of a man more wealthy and ruthless and powerful than himself, he killed people in exchange for money. Professionally, he represented the most perfect embodiment of our nation’s great lies as you can imagine. Now, he has realized that the order under which he has chosen to live leads only to death—death not only for others, but for himself. Jules is going to try to be the shepherd. He doesn’t know what that might mean, or what modifications will be demanded to his life or his wealth, or what any the other consequences of that might be. He only knows he intends to try. The trying is what matters. The geographical destination is literally uninteresting to him, because he already know the destination he is seeking for his spirit.

His compass will set his course. His course will determine his destination. He'll know he's arrived, because once he's there, there he will be.

But it’s impossible to even try to be the shepherd without first recognizing you have been the tyranny of evil men.

And you can’t recognize that you are the tyranny of evil men until you stop looking into a mirror that won’t let you see yourself.

You have to realize which story is your story. You'd thought it was the first, but it's the second.

You have to pop your bubble, get out of it, and stay out.

You have to tell a new story about yourself.

You’ll have to impart your moral virtue on those who seem to have earned death according to whatever scriptures you've memorized from whatever book. It’s going to cost you something. You're going to have to manage the offense of your partners still doomed to their own bubbles. And it may even involve endangering yourself.

If you can’t do that, you’ll remain in the lie. Remaining in the lie will have dire consequences eventually. When you live in a world where life is something you have to earn, eventually, you’ll earn death. Eventually, you’ll meet Butch.

Please allow me to stretch the metaphor past OSHA-approved safety protocols.

I think the election of Donald Trump is the moment that America collectively shot Marvin in the face. Now some of us are in the backseat, listening to Vincent complain about being scolded for the mess he made, wondering how the fuck we got put on brain detail.

We aren’t being very polite to our nation's Vincents about it right now. We are some mushroom-cloud laying motherfuckers. This is putting Vincent’s in the red, and he’s warning us about it. It's dangerous to run a race car in the red, the Vincents tell us. They seems to think that the very fact that they are angry should afford them some sort of special consideration.

But the Vincents aren't right. And we aren’t wrong. And the car is still an absolute mess. We’re trying to clean it before it ends in inescapable consequence. Eventually, if we survive, we are going to take back control of our government from those would fill our national automobile with gore.

Or, perhaps I should tell it this way. Someday, if we're lucky, we'll be Jules, and they will be Yolanda and Ringo.

At some point, we're going to to have to take back control of a government that would rob America's diner. At that point, we will reach a moment where we are facing them again. Some will be friends and peers, still clinging to a comforting lie and a self-defeating power, still ready to argue in favor of an unjust order that will eventually inevitably consume them. Others will be desperate people who have only known thievery of whoever they can find weaker than themselves, who have recently threatened us with pain and death, over whom we will once again be holding power.

We will need to have a new story to tell them, as politely as it is appropriate, with as much civility as we have power and privilege to demonstrate.

It will involve giving life to those who might have seemed, under old lies, to have earned death.

It’s going to cost us something.

It may involve personal physical endangerment.

It will involve managing the offense of our partners.

It’s absolutely going to involve insisting on the truth.

And somebody is going to have to put down some kind of 'gun' in order to end it. And, it seems clear, that somebody is going to have to be whichever of us possess strength and bravery enough to not shoot.

And before we can do any of this, we will need to find the beginning of our new story, which is one of repentance. We must understand and admit that those of us who worked for injustice are the weak. And we, who made ourselves comfortable with that injustice, are the tyranny of evil men.

By ‘we’ I mean the United States generally; and specifically I mean that all the things I happen to be—white, Christian, male, straight, cis-gendered, married with children, able-bodied, employed and employable, property-owning, government-issued ID having, well-traveled, upwardly mobile—have been the tyranny of evil men.

This will sound to many as if white Christian het-cis married able-bodied etc. males are being attacked. As if we were being singled out for special condemnation. The truth is, we have already long been singled out—but for preference. Are we bad? Not a bit. We’re good. We’re art. But in the great ethical competition between various good things, we’ve been inappropriately elevated to a station far above justice, and have, as a result, become tyranny. Now we have to descend to our proper place, with all the other art.

Listen to me, my fellow people of privilege. This isn't an attack. It’s salvation.

If the answers frighten you, fellow Vincents, you might ask why the questions are scary.

Being tyranny is bad even for the tyrant, for the very simple reason that it is unhealthy to live in a tyrannical system. It is damaging for me to profit from a tyrannical system that denies that humans are art, because it traps me in a world that denies that I myself am a unique and irreplaceable expression of something that would not otherwise exist, carrying unsurpassable worth for no other reason than that I am.

If I’m a tyrant, I’ll have to find my worth some other way.

I have not been the tyranny of evil men because I inhabit the categories I inhabit, but because our society has decided that these categories are not only good, but best, that these categories should be the default things, the most important things, even the only things. Because other categories that people might inhabit have, as a result, been deemed presumed theft, or presumed moral deficiency, as having not earned life, as having earned death instead.

As a result of that, life has been made invisibly and inevitably much easier for me than for others (which is not the same as saying my life is easy), and much more difficult for others. Over the years, justice has changed that metric somewhat. Not perfectly, but somewhat. Those of us who fit these preferred categories are now subject to criticism, we are occasionally subject to protest, we are even, ever so occasionally, subject to consequence. As I've put it before, we used to have the only voice; now we merely have the only microphone. We used to have the train all to ourselves, and now we have to content ourselves with merely being able to sit in the first class car without having our ticket checked at every stop.

There are many who resent these modifications toward justice, resent these corrections that have been made in our nation’s founding imbalances.

It has to be said, in decades and centuries past, the imbalance was far greater.

There are those who want to make that imbalance great again. As great as they can make it.

You can even buy the hat.

This imbalance, this preference, this prioritization, this default setting, is tyranny. We must be honest. It is the tyranny of evil men.

We are the tyranny of evil men.

We?

Me.

I am the tyranny of evil men. I have supported a status quo captured by a spirit that intends genocide and slavery.

But I’m trying, Ringo.

I’m trying, real hard, to be the shepherd.

Previous | Next

FRAME
0. ART
1. SISTER
2. THE GREAT DIVIDE
3. SPIRIT
4. BELONG
5. BUCKETS
6. THE KNIFE AND THE TRAIN
7. OUR FAVORITE FLAVOR

STORY
8. CHANGE THE LOCKS
9. THE LOWEST RUNG
10. BOTH SIDES
11. I’M TRYING, RINGO
12. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED

Bubbles 10 - Both Sides

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Imagine you have a friend. Let’s call him Rick Reasonable.

Now imagine you have an enemy. Let’s call your enemy Bart B. Oilingwater.

Bart is a real piece of crap. Whenever he sees you, he throws boiling water at you. Usually you dodge it, but every once in a while, he catches you with a bit. You have some bad scarring on one arm, and a few places on your face and neck. And you have to constantly be on the lookout for Bart, because if you let your guard down, it’s scalding water time!

Rick is a good friend. He thinks it is really bad that Bart throws boiling water on you. He tells you this all the time. He’s written some letters to the newspaper about how bad Bart is for throwing boiling water on you. Sometimes he’ll even go out with you to watch your back. He’s got a popular TV show, and he’s gone on the record a few times that Bart is in the wrong for always trying to hit you in the face with boiling water.

Then one day you turn on the TV at the end of the day, and you see Rick has Bart on as a guest. Rick is arguing with Bart about whether or not it is good to douse you with boiling water at every available opportunity. Rick is … parsing things a little more than you’d like.

He wants to know if the water has to be boiling, if it can’t just be very hot. Bart says, no, no, it really does have to be boiling. But does it have to be water, Rick asks. Could it be something a bit easier to dodge, like molasses or tar? Bart thinks about this, and decides he isn’t sure. He’ll have to get back to Rick on that one—but really, he prefers water.

Rick wants to know if there can’t be days Bart could promise to not throw boiling water at you. Bart doesn’t really want to set that sort of precedent.

Rick would like to know why it needs to be you every time. Bart is shocked that Rick would suggest such a thing. He insists he doesn’t have a throwing-boiling-water-on-you-specifically bone in his body. He just believes in throwing boiling water, and you happen to be the one that’s there every time. He’d like to know why, if you apparently hate being struck with boiling water, you insist on being in areas where you know he will be throwing it. He suggests that Rick is really the one singling him, Bart, out, by being so intolerant of his rich cultural heritage of throwing boiling water on people. He hints that Rick’s constant scolding makes Bart want to seek you out specifically now, to throw boiling water on you, for daring to suppose such a thing of him.

Rick appears to have conceded that Bart absolutely does have a right to walk the streets carrying as much boiling water as he wants, in the long-standing tradition of our country. Bart appreciates Rick’s stance on the matter, and compliments him on his willingness to find common ground.

At the end of the segment, he and Bart agree to disagree on whether or not it is good to attempt to douse you with boiling water every day. Bart still thinks it is very good—though he insists it is not directed at you, but only at spaces that you happen to inhabit. He wonders, again, why you choose to inhabit those spaces. Rick continues to insist that throwing at the space that you inhabit is tantamount to throwing it at you, and that it is quite rude indeed. They shake hands. Then there is a commercial for Pepsi.

The next day, you confront Rick about this and he shrugs. “Man, I hate that bastard Bart,” he says, “but you have to hear both sides.”

You ask: “Can you watch my back today at least?”

Oooh, Rick says, he’d love to, but he’s busy.

How are we feeling about Rick?


Imagine it — the idea of watching your friend have a conversation—one about whether or not you should be allowed to be harmed or maimed or even killed—with the person who is actively trying to do it. Imagine it; the idea that your friend would be more concerned with appearing open-minded in public, than in defending your actual skin from scalding off your actual flesh.

Somewhere an idea took hold that one of the keys to being an open-minded person was engagement with every idea and giving each notion equal consideration. At some point we decided it was of primary importance to remember that every issue had two sides. At some point we decided that the recipe for fostering a civil society was this: to take both sides, and present them as equally valuable and equally worthy, for all to decide which should rise and which should fall. We teach the controversy, and let the conclusions fall where they will.

A marketplace of ideas, we call it. The underlying assumption to the metaphor being, I think, that a market never fails to select quality. Certainly, supposing we live in a society that believes profit is a foundational good, it would make a lot of sense we'd hold such an idea. And a marketplace for ideas might actually work, I think—provided all ideas were presented in good faith, each debater is interested in letting the best ideas rise, provided the customers are knowledgeable and unwilling to buy junk simply because it is convenient, or comfortable, or has a familiar brand, or just tastes right.

But this rarely happens.

Marketplaces are good, when prioritized correctly. Hear me: they are good. They provide significant value to people, and make up part an important foundation to most free societies. But they aren’t the most important thing—justice is. And, without proper metrics and safeguards, a market is always ready for the fleecing by those ruthless enough to fix it to their advantage, or to use it to perform atrocity.

Remember, there was a time in this country, not so very long ago, when you could buy a slave in a marketplace.

More recently, there was a time when those at the controls of our marketplace made a wager that they had grown powerful enough to rob the rest of us blind without consequence; that, once caught out, our system was too committed to profit as a first priority to allow them to have to pay for their crime.

They won that bet.

Remember, we have been captured by a spirit that has convinced us of terrible foundational lies. Our society believes that profit is the highest moral value. It believes that people must earn life. It believes we don't belong to each other. These assumptions inform all other aspects of our daily life, including our markets.

And with the marketplace of ideas.

It is going to become necessary, therefore, if we are serious about justice, to discern a person’s intentions before determining whether it is appropriate to engage with them in this marketplace of ideas—even before determining if the marketplace itself is appropriate.

Some people’s ideas are genocide and slavery. They don’t want to win a debate, they just want to be listed on the exchange. They don’t have ideas, as such. They have intentions. The idea is a seat at the table. They have an instrumental view of debate, not a philosophical one. You can tell this, because they will effortlessly change from one statement to a contradictory one, if it is useful in the moment to take a contradictory position in order to further that intention.

Lies are no longer lies. Facts are no longer facts. Lies and facts are just tools toward a desired intention.

You might even start to hear about alternate facts.

You might even start to hear that there are no facts any more.

Well, great. So if they’re all liars, we should be able to beat them easily, right? Why are we afraid to engage their ideas, if our ideas are better?

That seems like a perfectly reasonable question. The problem is, it’s entirely the wrong question. It’s a category error, because while you are debating, your opponent is merely using debate. The fact that you are engaging means he’s already succeeded.

Once you are willing to debate whether one group of people or another should be abused, then abusing and expelling people from society is something that is up for debate. It's on the table. It's listed on the exchange.

If we are debating whether there ought to be laws preventing trans people from bathrooms, then we’re already debating the wrong thing, and as a result, we have lost.

If we are debating whether there should be a Muslim ban, or whether or not health care should be kept from the poor, or whether gay people should be banned from marriage, or black people killed by cops, or if women should be paid the same or not, or if Native Americans and descendents of slaves deserve reparation for systemic and ongoing theft, or if hungry people should have food, or if thirsty people should have water, or if disabled people should have access to buildings, we have already lost.

Those things don’t go on the table. Because once they are on they are on the table, they have entered the realm of the things we consider. Then they enter the realm of the possible.

Debate them? OK, why not? They’re lying. They're wrong. You’ll win. Easy. Now debate again.

Again. Again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Again. The idea of the lie is entering the public consciousness.

Again. The idea of lying is entering the public consciousness. The idea is taking hold, that debate is a thing where people argue by lying. They’re lying, you’re lying, but it’s all lies anyway, right? Both sides.

Again. The lies are getting thicker, but more hidden by their ubiquity. Again. The lies are getting better, more convincing. Again. They’re being focus-tested in the marketplace of ideas. Again. There are bumper stickers and signs. Debate again. You have to win every time, but why are you afraid to engage an idea? You’re in the marketplace. The best ideas always rise to the top. Right?

Again. There are protests in favor of direct and shocking action, premised upon the lie. Again. There are hats, red hats, a sea of them. Again. Again. Here are refugees stranded. Again. Here are raids tearing families apart. Again. Here is a mosque defaced. Again. A man in a turban attacked. Again. An elderly woman being run down by storm troopers in the streets. Again. More raids. Again.

Unthinkable. Except it isn’t. We’ve been thinking about the unthinkable, like very open-minded and reasonable people, for years.

Read 'em all.

Lies have been given the same weight and consideration as the truth. They have been for years. The marketplace is unbiased, it doesn’t judge, it doesn’t distinguish.

And really, don’t both sides just tell their perspective?

Both sides spin. Both sides debate.

Both sides. Those who want to exterminate masses of people, and those that don’t. Both argue and bicker. They’re just the same. Right?

We’ll report. You decide.

The implicit idea is this: whatever decision you make is a good one. After all, in a marketplace, the customer is always right. If enough of you exist who want to believe something untrue and unjust, then a supply will arise to fill the demand.

The ‘marketplace of ideas,’ unregulated, does not elevate the best ideas to the top. In fact, it has the opposite effect.

And all that suffering occurs, not only because there are those who intend that suffering, but because others, not wanting to seem irrational or close-minded, allow the debate in the first place, and thereby elevate it into the realm of the possible.

Oh look, he's funny now.

Let's state the obvious: People who intend to deliberately harm others lie to do so. They do so instrumentally, because lies are a useful tool. They debate instrumentally, for the same reason. They equivocate their lies as equal to the truth for the same reason.

Saying ‘both sides are the same,’ when one side is a lie and the other the truth, always promotes the lie and degrades the truth. Thus, attempts to create contexts in which both sides are essentially just opposite views of entirely equal value should always be understood as attempts to disguise a lie.

Put it another way: A ‘both sides are the same’ argument is never a neutral position. It is a false front disguising itself as a neutral position, and is intended, either with conscious intentionality or unconscious desire for comfortable ignorance, to elevate a lie.

Putting a lie in a headline without calling it a lie elevates the lie to the level of truth. It is proper and fitting to protest such elevation. It is completely improper for those of us who will not be harmed by the lie to entertain it in the name of open-mindedness.

Putting a liar on the TV with someone who is not lying elevates lies to the level of truth. It is proper and fitting to protest such elevation. It is completely improper for those of us who are not one of those the liar intends to harm to provide him with a platform in the name of open-mindedness.

Putting a charlatan on a stage with an expert elevates the charlatan to the level of the expert. It is proper and fitting to protest such elevation. It is our duty, if we think humans deserve to be educated with truth and not lies.

Interviewing a conspiracy theorist on a forum intended for facts elevates chicanery to the level of fact. It is proper and fitting to protest such elevation. It is our duty, if we care for the dignity and worth of those harmed by the lie.

Profiling a prominent white supremacist as if he were a sexy new pundit elevates him to that position. It is proper and fitting to protest such elevation. It is our duty, if we oppose genocide and slavery.

People do not have a right to a platform for their ideas. People do not have the right to a debate. However, people do have a right to not have to hear that their worth as human beings, their very existence in society, is something that is up for debate.

Do you see the difference?  Do you see how degrading it is for the person who is the subject of the debate to watch this debate? Do you see how much time that person now must waste in their lives, how much energy they need to squander, how much of their mental space they must now furnish their own oppressor, simply to prove, day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day, that they deserve to live equal lives, that they deserve to live at all?

Do you see how, by allowing the debate, which does not affect you, you are forcing them to have the debate, which for them is literally life and death?

Let us not suppose we are safe if we are not the target of the immediate lie. Any lie is a scorpion; it will invariably bite anyone it can. If we allow a lie to live, if we entertain it in the public sphere as one of two sides, the consequence will invariably affect us all.

But how to regulate a marketplace of ideas?

At this point you must be concerned that I’m advocating curbing free speech in some way.

I am not advocating that at all.

I am advocating that we use our own free speech to protest any of these horribly mistaken uses of free speech, wherever we see it, as a matter of civic duty—as a matter of justice, as a matter of love. We must recognize atrocious ideas that are gravid with vile intent, which are violence itself, and we must pitch our voices loud enough to make such ideas toxic upon the marketplace. We must drown out those lying and ignorant voices with our own. We must protest to those who own stages and microphones and cameras and printing presses, that these lies, while protected from legal consequence, will not be tolerated, and will be met with consequence should they be given platform. We must walk out of venues where they are celebrated. This is entirely appropriate and right. Human beings, after all, have the right to not hear their right to exist debated. Rather, they have the right to hear any suggestion they should not exist drowned out by a deafening chorus of boos and jeers.

And anybody who says that those boos and jeers are in some way harming free speech, or in some way degrading the debate, can go pound sand. Those boos and jeers are free speech. They are the only response a pack of toxic lies deserves, the only debate they should ever receive. We don't debate whether people are allowed to live as themselves. That doesn't go on the table.

There was a time when we could largely trust our journalistic channels to regulate the marketplace. Perhaps they would reflect the bad assumptions of the day, but they wouldn’t knowingly allow or promote an untruth, knowing that such a breach in integrity would ruin the reputation that was their very foundation. That time is gone. Our privately-held media has discovered a market for untruth, and, afraid to upset the profits that result from servicing this market (and profits are our foundational measure of morality), has become quite timid about reporting lies as such.

There was a time when we could trust politicians to regulate the marketplace, to a certain extent. Perhaps they would spin and dodge, but they wouldn’t tell a provable lie, because they would be immediately exposed and disgraced and driven from their power. That time is gone. Our politicians have drawn very specific boundaries for very specific voters, and have selected with a connoisseur’s precision the exact voters they know will accept any lie without question, provided the candidate establishes and demonstrates all the recognizable tribal shibboleths.

So, it's up to us. Let's get it done.

We must refuse, personally, each of us, to engage with arguments made in bad faith. We must recognize them where we see them, and decline them, as firmly as possible, and as politely as we feel the situation warrants.

How do we recognize them?  By remembering that we are framed upon justice.

Look for the argument that fails to recognize that every human being is a unique and irreplaceable work of art carrying unsurpassable worth. Listen to that argument, as much as you can stomach, then reject it on those precise grounds.

Look for the argument that says we do not all belong to each other. Listen to that argument, as much as you can stomach, then reject it on those precise grounds.

Look for the argument that says that life is something you earn. Listen to that argument, as much as you can stomach, then reject it on those precise grounds.

Look for the argument that says that violence redeems. Listen to that argument, as much as you can stomach, then reject it on those precise grounds.

Look for the argument that says that humans must be profitable. Listen to that argument, as much as you can stomach, then reject it on those precise grounds.

And then remind them: Every human being is a unique and irreplaceable work of art carrying unsurpassable worth. Let them argue against that, and in so doing let them reveal the un-artfulness of their positions. They'll try to dodge, and distract, and change the subject, but you know the subject is justice. Don't forget it. Stay in it. Hedge them into it. They won't want to go there. If they join you there, so much the better. If they won't, abandon it and them. People will notice the geography they refuse to vacate, merely by the contrast you provide, and you will have saved valuable time and energy.

A debate must be in good faith. Sometimes it is inappropriate to have a debate against someone who's intentions are not in good faith. Sometimes you have to change the locks. Sometimes it becomes necessary to simply say, “What you believe is that some people have less worth than other people, and I think that is an indecent position to take. As a result, there are no details you can present within that framework that interest me in the slightest, and I don’t see any point in any debate about those details.”

Will you convince them? It’s important to be open to the possibility, even if it seems unlikely. If they are convincible, the conversation can continue along much different lines. You will be listened to, you will listen. Ultimately, however, convincing them isn’t the point. The point was to decline a debate within an inappropriate framework. And it is likely they were never there to be convinced in the first place. They were there to put something grotesque on the table, so that your consideration of it might shine it up for them. They were there to waste your time, or to use your moral authority to force someone else to waste their time defending themselves. They were there to use you as leverage to cause harm and degradation to another.

And, there's this … you might convince and encourage others, who are paying attention without your noticing, to rise, to speak, to act. You might galvanize others, fatigued from the endless struggle of fighting for themselves, who thought there were none willing any more to fight for them.

There are those who believe that life is something you earn, that people must be profitable to hold worth, that violence redeems, that we do not belong to each other. There are those who believe that humans are trash, not art. These propositions are completely non-negotiable to such people. They’ve taken extraordinary power in recent days by being willing to fight, with all the energy they have, in service of them.

The opposite must—must—be non-negotiable to you, if you are serious about justice. You must be willing to fight for your framework. You must insist on it. You must not budge. Insist on your frame. Insist on it!

There are two sides to every issue? Yes. Right and Wrong are two sides. So are True and False.

I think it’s appropriate to point that out, as politely as it is within your power to do. (But remember, politeness is not  your frame—justice is.)

Is there no room, then, to convince and persuade? Is this all there is—just a big tug-of-war over the frame of the debate? I hope not. As I said much earlier, I don’t think debate is the vehicle for persuasion. I think persuasion is a matter of spirit. I think changing a nation’s spirit will require something like a miracle.

Or, perhaps, a story.

I think there are new stories we can tell to those with whom we disagree, to hopefully kindle a new spirit.

We can tell a new story, about who 'we' are.

We can tell them a new story, about who 'they' are.

And we can tell them a new story, about those who 'they' propose to harm.

We can reject, again and again, with all our soul and all our mind and all our strength, any status quo that falls short of that new story's purpose.

Remember, we're fighting the lie 'they' have believed. We're not fighting them. We're trying to change the orientation, the compass, the framework, the spirit. It’s not likely that we can merely change our destination to a justice-framed society through rules and laws until we change our spirit.

We need a new story.

As you probably expected, it’s now time to talk about Pulp Fiction.

Previous | Next

FRAME
0. ART
1. SISTER
2. THE GREAT DIVIDE
3. SPIRIT
4. BELONG
5. BUCKETS
6. THE KNIFE AND THE TRAIN
7. OUR FAVORITE FLAVOR

STORY
8. CHANGE THE LOCKS
9. THE LOWEST RUNG
10. BOTH SIDES
11. I’M TRYING, RINGO
12. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED

Bubbles 9 - The Lowest Rung

Previous | Next

Doing so will offend those of us who have different priorities.

Good.

* * *

Wait, the Hypothetical Interlocutor asks, it’s good to offend?

Wait, isn’t it bad to be offensive?

Wait, aren’t you ‘justice’ folks supposed to be tolerant?

Wait hold on a second, you talk all about how bad it is to put people into two buckets, and here you are talking about the ‘good’ Justice people and the ‘evil’ Order people, well haven’t you been putting people into two buckets???

Wow, Hypothetical Interlocutor sure is asking a lot of questions right when I want them asked. Thanks, Hypothetical Interlocutor! So glad you showed up!

(Seriously, if you're writing a blog, hire a a good H.I. They really help out.)

Let’s consider tolerance and offensiveness.

Offensive

People who prioritize justice over order frequently talk to people who prioritize order over justice about tolerance; they frequently speak about how a lack of tolerance can be offensive.

Which is true.

From that one might get the idea that the whole point is not being offensive. Or that tolerance is the same thing as inoffensiveness.

This misses the point. Inoffensiveness is not the point. The point is justice. Our frame is justice.

Offensive

We must focus, not on inoffensiveness, but on establishing a system that consistently recognizes the basic inherent human dignity of all people without exception, and, therefore, prioritizes the full inclusion within public life for all people, and fulfillment of basic human need for all people, as non-negotiable moral imperatives.

Because, remember, we all belong to each other. And life is not something you have to earn.

That’s tolerance. It’s the base line.

Tolerance is the lowest rung on justice’s ladder.

Tolerance is the medicine suggested for those people you can’t stand, so as to continue, through your distaste, to pursue justice for them.

We tolerate the KKK.

Offensive

By this we mean we do not lock them up simply because we despise their grotesque bigotry. We do not disinherit them of their universal birthright—which is a claim to justice—simply because we find them distasteful. If they get cancer, we think they should be treated without having to worry about cost. If they struggle to make ends meet, we think they should have a roof over their heads, enough food in their belly, clean water to drink. We think they should not have to worry about how they will live once their bodies become too old to earn money through work. If their evil beliefs lead them to harm others, we believe their physical safety should be a chief priority in their apprehension, their trial should be fair, and their sentence carried out without violence or cruelty or exploitation. We think their children should be well-educated and, if they come to school hungry, they should be given food to eat, without having to earn it, simply because they are hungry.

That’s tolerance.

Tolerance is what happens when we insist there is only one bucket. Those who prefer justice go in that bucket, along with those who prefer order. And even those who prefer injustice. Tolerance says all humans deserve a justice grounded in unconditional love.

Offensive

Tolerance is being willing to allow space for people to exist, even though we despise them. It’s the very basic acknowledgement that other people, in fact, exist.

If I feel as if I’m being asked to be tolerant too much, I might want to think about that.

Suppose I am resentful, because I am constantly being urged toward tolerance for an ever-increasing number of groups of people. Rather than complaining about political correctness, it might be wise to reflect on what that might say about me, that I despise so many people, who must therefore be tolerated, and that I chafe so frequently against this, the most basic of justice’s requests.

It’s a pretty good hint that I’m an intolerant person if neutral reminders that other people exist strike me as aggressions requiring retaliation. If the existence of an all-female Ghostbusters movie is an affront, or a black Human Torch sends me into paroxysms of being Mad On The Internet. If a store greeter’s simple ‘happy holidays’ is an attack on Christmas, a salvo in a larger war. If hearing a foreign language in the grocery store strips me of my very country. If a gay marriage somehow threatens my straight one. If someone living outside of the doctrines of my religious practice is an attack on my religious practice.

Offensive

If a turban on an airplane makes me call the stewardess over. If pushing '1' for English is an unsustainable chore. If the mere suggestion that the football team’s mascot shouldn’t be a racial slur is the hill I wish to die on. If it’s an imposition to have to remember what words people want used to refer to them (quite literally being forced to remember somebody's name). If, upon being informed the phrases I use to talk about a group of people strikes those people as hurtful, I somehow believe that being given this information is not an opportunity to avoid rudeness, but an attack upon me. If I hear somebody tell their story of lived oppression and my first instinct is to tell them I disbelieve them, because I have never such an experience. If I think of the phrase 'social justice warrior' as an insult.

Tolerance is such a short curb, and so many, unwilling to lift their foot an inch, will loudly complain when they trip over it and fall, will present their skinned knee as evidence of a system arrayed against them.

Offensive

And then there is this:

Tolerance is something meant for unjust humans. Tolerance is no virtue when applied to unjust ideas.

Tolerance doesn’t mean I have earned the right to a public debate. It just means if I engage in one, the government cannot prosecute me.

Tolerance doesn’t mean I have the right to speak hatred at universities. It only means that should a university exercise bad taste and poor judgment, I might be invited to do so, and neither they nor I can or should ever be arrested or prosecuted by the government as a result.

Tolerance doesn’t save me a seat on a talk show couch.

Tolerance doesn’t mean my ideas won’t be met with protest and boycott.

Tolerance doesn’t mean my employer can’t fire me for saying something hateful or evil, nor does tolerance spare me from other ill consequence of harmful actions or beliefs.

Offensive

What I are after when I expect these things is not tolerance, it is consideration, acceptance or celebration.

However, if I am a person working to preserve and increase an order based on injustice, I can’t have consideration, acceptance and celebration; not from those who prioritize justice, anyway. I will have tolerance from them. It’s not much, but it’s significantly more than I afford others.

A lot of us who don’t want to treat fellow humans with even the thin gruel of tolerance get mixed up on this point when we want our noxious ideas to be tolerated. “So much for the tolerant left,” we sneer, having just expressed some opinion harmful to human dignity, having been met with opposition, or perhaps even called some nasty name as a result.

It can be very offensive to be called a nasty name, I know. So, in the interests of tolerance and justice, to any reading this who have been called nasty names simply because of deeply held beliefs that other people should lose access to equal treatment under the law, or access to essential human need, let me say this:


Tough titty, assholes.


See? Now, that's offense.

Offense is a bit different than intolerance. Offense is thick on the ground; everyone can get a handful. Offense is what happens when one person refuses to accept the values of another as true or valid.

Offensive

But our frame is not inoffensiveness; our frame is justice. And offensiveness is not injustice—because what if somebody’s most deeply held values are provable untrue, and indecently unjust? It isn’t hard to imagine such a proposition, in a society captured by a spirit that craves genocide and slavery.

Intolerance of people is both offensive and unjust.

Intolerance of values is offensive to those who hold the un-tolerated values, but whether or not that offensiveness is a product of injustice depends on what those values are.

The difference matters a lot. We have the right to not be treated unjustly. We do not have the right to not be offended, particularly if we ourselves resent being asked to acknowledge that other people exist. We don’t have the right to have our beliefs accepted by those framed upon justice, if what we believe is unacceptable to justice.

Offensive

Nor, it must be said, do those who prefer justice have the right to not be offended. Offense is a given. Those who prefer justice will offend those who prefer an unjust order. Those who prefer to maintain an unjust order will offend people with a preference for justice.

This is why I strongly suggest that, if what you want is justice, it is best to stop talking about offensiveness. To tell somebody they have been offensive is to assume they actually care about the dignity of other people enough to change their actions. It’s probably not appropriate to do so with those who have already proved this assumption incorrect at every opportunity. Turning a conversation to offensiveness with such people allows them to reframe the argument toward something you both do, which is to cause offense.

Make the conversation about justice. Leave offense out of it—and get ready to cause serious offense. Remember: There has never been a hero of justice, revered by history, that did not in their time cause great offense.

Offensive

When one is opposing injustice, the offense of unjust people is inevitable. Offense should be expected. Offense should almost be desired.

Desired? Wait. Surely I don’t mean that. Desiring offensiveness?

Isn’t it better to be polite than impolite, civil rather than uncivil?

In many cases, yes.

Offensive

Politeness isn’t bad. Politeness is good. Comity is good. Civility is good. It’s just they aren’t the most important thing—justice is. When elevated to a status more important than justice, they, like any other good thing improperly promoted, become corrupted and toxic.

Choosing politeness is often a luxury the powerful afford themselves. When I have total control over a situation, politeness is easy. It can be my way of signaling moral authority, even as I profit off of grotesque abuse. More than that—when I am an abusive person, civility is often the way I make my abuse polite. It’s how I bring order to injustice.

(We already know this, by the way. Think of the stories we tell ourselves. Our most chilling villains are frequently urbane, cultured, and polite. It’s an indicator of how chillingly powerful they are, how dangerous it is that they should be able to become likeable.)

Offensive

And, the powerful will frequently demand civility of the powerless as prerequisite to any consideration of their demands. They will use civility and impropriety as useful tools, to distract against the complaints brought on by their abuse, to reframe the debate as one of comity rather than one of justice, to ideologically separate those privileged enough to still be able to select civility away from those who struggle under a clear and present abuse and do not possess the luxury of that choice.

An excellent indication that you are successfully changing the frame to justice is this: People will start wanting to talk about politeness, who were strangely never worried about it before. The tone you’re using in the conversation will suddenly become the most important thing, much more important than the actual topic of conversation. Civility will suddenly begin to matter among those who in the recent past made successful use of shocking incivility.

Offensive

Always remember our frame. We are framed on justice.  Intolerance of injustice is deeply offensive to unjust people. Intolerance of injustice is also absolutely necessary, if what one seeks is justice.

So, if you can be polite, be polite—by all means, be polite. Politeness opens the door to the possibility of persuasion, civility ingratiates in ways that might change a mind.

But never forget that politeness and civility are choices that can be made from a position of power, and can therefore be used as a weapon of the powerful against those without. If you are able to choose civility when you are opposing injustice and abuse, I certainly recommend that you do so. But do not dare scold someone else for their incivility, as a way of closing them from their demands for justice. Do not dare pretend to make yourself the hero of their story, when they are of necessity being many times braver than you just by existing in an environment that is hostile to them.

Some will still think I’m saying civility is bad. I am not. Civility is good.

But our fight is one of priority between competing good things. And civility is not more important than justice.

In a just society, civility would obviously be preferable to incivility. In fact, civility would be a natural result of a society based on justice. It would not need to be called for; it would simply be.

But impoliteness is not injustice. And justice will offend the unjust. Justice, it must be said, is, frequently necessarily impolite in an unjust society. Civility is good, but justice is key. When in conflict with an unjust order, justice demands not civility first, but opposition.

Be polite if you can, certainly. Politeness can keep a door open, can extend an invitation into a space where persuasion might happen.

But impoliteness might pop a bubble, where politeness might not.

* * *

In one other key way, offensiveness is not injustice.

One cannot be unjust without the power to do so. One can think unjust thoughts, but without the power to enact them, injustice will not be the result.

The offense caused by the actions of the powerful is oppression.

The offense caused by the protests of the powerless is opposition.

The best way to tell the difference is to ask yourself, if these people succeed, or if they fail, what will be the result?

When oppression succeeds, an oppressed people loses their right to exist on their own terms. When it fails, those people secure that right, while an oppressive people merely lose their ability to force others to exist on their own oppressive terms.

Both opposition and oppression are offensive, but the difference matters, a lot, when the frame is justice.

When we unjust people find ourselves offended by demands of justice, we aren’t being oppressed, which suggests that some basic human right is being taken from us. Rather, we are being opposed. And of course we don’t like it. Nobody likes being opposed. It can be taken for oppression, this opposition, even if the opposing party still has far less power than the opposed.

Suppose I’ve spent years as the only voice allowed to speak, when suddenly everyone else is allowed to speak. I will feel the diminishment of my power, and may cry out at the seeming injustice, even if I do still hold the only microphone.

Suppose I’ve never before faced criticism for my decisions, because all who might criticize feared the consequence of doing so, but that fear is slowly lifted. If I am then criticized, I will feel the diminishment of my power, and may mistake this criticism as oppression, even though I still hold the most authority.

Perhaps, if I'm an abusive person, what I want is not merely all the authority and all the consideration and all the power. Perhaps I even want to capture for myself the one thing that those I abuse have, which I do not, which is the moral clarity that comes from opposing injustice. One mark I leave behind when I am an abusive person is that I, bereft of true heroism, not oppressed but seeking to oppress, awkwardly cloak myself in borrowed signs of heroism, imagery stolen directly from the struggle against oppression of those I intend to oppress.

Look, it's the Ruby Bridges of powerful people who want to cut back on civil rights in schools

Look, it's one of the many Rosa Parkses of
people-who-want-to-decide-who-sits-where-on-various-metaphorical-busses

Every villain in every story ever told thought they were getting a raw deal when they faced opposition. But that doesn’t make the happy ending any less happy when they were defeated.

Happy, because there was injustice in the world. People without power were being treated by people with power as if they weren’t even people. And then something happened to chance that power dynamic, and afterward more people had more room to live and be and exist than they did before.

There’s always somebody at the end of that story that lost the power they were abusing. Someone is always rightfully diminished. And everybody listening to the story is very glad.

Injustice rises to power. Injustice abuses and oppresses. Injustice meets resistance. Injustice is defeated. It’s a good story. We tell it again and again.

In our stories, the fall of an abuser is a component of every happy ending.

But then again … another component of our happy endings is the restoration of the status quo. Of order. What to do, then, when the status quo is itself abusive?

It’s time for us to consider the marketplace of ideas. It’s time to consider ‘both sides.’

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FRAME
0. ART
1. SISTER
2. THE GREAT DIVIDE
3. SPIRIT
4. BELONG
5. BUCKETS
6. THE KNIFE AND THE TRAIN
7. OUR FAVORITE FLAVOR

STORY
8. CHANGE THE LOCKS
9. THE LOWEST RUNG
10. BOTH SIDES
11. I’M TRYING, RINGO
12. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED