DMB said: (In my experience, accusations boil the blood only to the extent that they're true - so much so that wild, implausible accusations will only amuse the accused.)
Matt: That might be the nub assumption we differ on. In my experience, accusations will boil the blood of a much larger range of psychological profiles, even when they are not true. It is the existence of an audience, a third-party, that often creates the difference in reaction for these kinds of people. Further, I do not think these kinds of people are morally deficient (i.e., I don't think they _shouldn't_ be that way). For, if one assumes that people will only have their blood boil if they've been caught out in a lie (i.e., that boiling blood is in fact an _admission of guilt_), and people of these varying types don't think they _have_ admitted anything, and still honestly and sincerely think the accusation misguided, invalid, wrong, unmeritorious, etc., then one response is to think that the persons blood boiling is a weakness in character, a mistake on their part. You've described a very recognizable profile, one associated with the American archetype of the "rugged individual," a type that also often looks askance at those (as being too genteel) who do behave differently in front of audiences (or worse, different audiences). The image of the rugged individual is typically associated with an apotheosis of authenticity, a sense that your true self doesn't change, no matter where you are, and that signs of mutability, of acting, of showing different sides of yourself (or even, of _having_ different sides of yourself) are all kinds of hypocrisy. Pirsig, in fact, fits well into this picture of what moral types we should commend. (A very good book on the history of this type in modern culture is Lionel Trilling's Sincerity and Authenticity.) I'm not trying to thrust too much responsibility on the head of accusers, or more generally, asserters of claims. There is a danger of that in trying to get that equilibrium right, but I do, absolutely and unequivocally, think there is a responsibility on the part of the asserter. You, also, do not want to deny this. However, I think I may be angling for a more complex picture of responsibility than the one you might be presenting. And the complexity might lie in the sense that I want to account for more neutrally judged psychological-response possibilities. So, I might be willing to say that _everything_ does not, in the end, come down to whether the claim has merit. That everything does just come down to the merit of the claim might be a kind of Machiavellianism that I don't think is good. It's not that the ends justify the means, in this picture, but that the means don't matter, just so long as the ends are just. I think progress in justice has shown us that the means do matter in thinking about the long approach to just ends (i.e., if we have greater assiduity in our choice of means, then that will in fact create greater likelihood in being right in our ends). There are ways to accuse, and ways not to, and the justification for there being good and bad ways (whatever the truth/merit of the claim) is that people are more likely to be justly accused if one follows the good ways. That's abstract, but it might cut a joint of difference between us. (Depends on how broadly you construe "merit.") Matt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
