[5982] in Central_America
New quotes for Fri Aug 11
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Central America)
Fri Aug 11 03:57:19 1995
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 1995 03:57:05 -0400
From: Central America <root@charon.MIT.EDU>
To: ca-mtg@charon.MIT.EDU
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kayes (David J Kayes):
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marthag (Martha H Greenberg):
home address: work address:
516 Green Street #1C Bolt Beranek and Newman
Cambridge, MA 02139 150 Cambridgepark Drive 2D
617-441-3733 Cambridge, MA 02140
617-873-6186
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From: C-feature@clarinet.com (Judith Martin)
Subject: Innocent after proven guilty
Date: Sat, 5 Aug 95 17:08:04 EDT
As if etiquette isn't unpopular enough, Miss Manners
occasionally has to argue against compassion and forgiveness.
It's so unfair. She feels like the high-school debating
champion who has been assigned "Resolved: The school year should
be extended, homework should be increased, and instead of a
senior prom, there should be a review session the night before
graduation to check that seniors haven't forgotten what they
crammed for examinations."
Miss Manners against compassion? Isn't she always nagging
people to do nice things for others and refrain from hurting
their feelings? Isn't that what etiquette is all about?
What hurts Miss Manners' own feelings is the slanderous claim
that given a conflict between the letter and the spirit of the
etiquette rule, she would merrily throw over the principle to
stick by the rule -- especially if this offered an opportunity to
stick it to someone else.
"I'd like to thank you now," a dignitary of Miss Manners'
acquaintance told her guest of honor publicly during an official
meal, "but I suppose Miss Manners would disapprove." Oh, right.
As if it were Miss Manners' purpose in life to stamp out
gratitude on technical grounds.
As for forgiveness, etiquette is the inventor of the apology,
a device expressly designed to cancel misdeeds. Unlike its
successor, the punitive damages settlement, the apology is
available free (although flowers are always welcome). Etiquette
also supplies the polite response to an apology, a gracefully
murmured, "I'm sure it wasn't your fault," and "Of course, I knew
there must be some explanation."
Yet -- wait while Miss Manners takes a deep breath -- there
is such a thing as fostering bad behavior by misplaced compassion
and forgiveness. There. She said it.
When all transgressions are automatically explained away and
immediately wiped from the record, there soon is no standard of
good behavior. The more tolerant and understanding the society
becomes, the worse the situation seems to get.
People of widely varying political views have noticed that
the criminal-justice system suffers from the same horrifying and
unintended consequence. Miss Manners is not the only person to be
puzzled that modern juries are increasingly sympathetic to
criminals -- and the society in general reluctant to hold
criminals' records against them -- while the citizenry from which
those juries are drawn is increasingly terrorized by crime.
Her own habit of suspecting the best of people has her
worrying that this comes from a kind but mistaken sense of
manners. Decent people now feel obliged to consider everyone
innocent after being proved guilty.
Faced with the individual instance, they generously make
allowances -- just the sort of allowances for which Miss Manners
is always pleading. That the person who did wrong perhaps didn't
realize it. Or probably had a good reason.
The catch is that when this is used as a general rule, rather
than as an exception, it defines crime out of existence. Either
there was a sociological or psychological reason for committing
any crime, or it was an irrational act. It seems as wrong to
condemn someone who was merely the instrument in an inevitable
chain of cause and effect as it does to convict a crazy person.
There isn't anyone else in the docket.
Miss Manners does not want to pursue this point in respect to
crime. She tends to be an old softy herself. Only when the
argument is used to disarm etiquette of its one protection -- the
option of showing disapproval of people who behave rudely, mostly
by avoiding them -- does she start foaming at the mouth.
When people maintain that you can't expect this person to be
polite because he's had a difficult life, or that one not to be
rude because she is too busy to be bothered with etiquette, they
give notice that everyone has license to be rude.
When they treat transgressors as members of society in good
standing, they destroy the usefulness of reputation as a guide to
character. It sounds polite to whitewash blemished records, on
the grounds that someone who did wrong "has suffered enough"
(been caught) and "paid his debt to society" (been convicted).
But if personal history never counts, society only ends up
assessing people less fairly, by using that easily manipulated,
ersatz substitute -- image.
Miss Manners objects, and not only because society needs
protection. She objects philosophically, too. So there.
The manners system, no less than that of morals, is based on
the presumption that human beings have souls and free will and
all that good stuff. Sure, they are influenced and handicapped by
the circumstances of their lives. However, it is ultimately their
ability to control their behavior, rather than merely to be acted
upon by events, that gives human beings their dignity.
Puppets with no autonomous power, and therefore no
responsibility, would not merit respect -- that one offering of
etiquette that everyone on the street admits craving. Their lives
would be merely records of the way they were buffeted about by
the past. No credit would be due to the virtuous. If there are no
bad reputations, there can be no good ones either; if there are
no villains, there are no heroes, either. There are merely the
lucky and the unlucky.
Miss Manners isn't really arguing against compassion, which
is one of the foundations of her calling. She is only warning
against overusing it at the expense of another such value,
respect.
[...]
Copyright 1995 by Judith Martin
Distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
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s2001s (Edward H Kim):
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--- End of Central America ---
