Jeremy Sherman, PhD :
I’m very supportive of the movement and it’s a great name for it. I do wish it was a bit more sex-positive. Often when society tips toward authoritarianism, even the resistance veers toward prudishness. Still, it’s high time men were called to task.
#Metoo is a victim’s movement. “#Metoo. I too am a victim.” Victim movements have advantages over another kind of #metoo movement, the one that interests me a lot these days.
When I taught history the question would come up: Do ideas ever change things? My answer is yes, but usually ideas that enable a faction to proudly declare “We deserve more!” That rallying cry is the galvanizer for all the best and worse causes in history. It’s behind the labor, civil rights, and women’s movement. It’s behind Nazis, the alt-right and the billionaire libertarian movement. Outrage over one’s victimhood is as often justified as unjustified. Think of how many non-victims play victim.
The kind of #metoo that interest me is a harder but truer sell: Me too – I’m human with all of the tendencies humans have. For example, me too: I find it advantageous to play victim. I lie, I cheat, I engage in hypocrisy. Me too.
It’s a hard sell is that when you get a proud movement like the alt-right, Stalinism, Maoism, Nazism, the Proud Boys, Incels – some crusade filled to brimming with sanctimonious outrage and victimhood, they’ll pounce on you the second you admit to any human failings. They’re gunning for you. If you admit to any human flaw they claim it vindicates them as absolutely pure.
Since you’ve got flaws, they don’t. That explains how everyone becomes a prude. These days, it’s hard for anyone to admit their humanness, why even the resistance is veering toward prudishness. Political and social discourse has degenerated into a stupifying infallibility battle: “One false move, and you’re proven the sinner and them the saint. Either you’re infallible or I am and admitting to even one mistake will decide it.”
This is what we get when theatrical outrage goes unchecked. Outrage is a purgative. It frees you from any self-doubt. People play exempt by contempt: Since I hate a trait, I must be exempt from having it. “Lie? Moi???! I hate when people lie to me so it should be obvious that I would never lie. If I catch you in a single lie, that proves that you’re a liar and I’m 100% absolutely honest.”
Unconstrained righteous indignation makes us feel like saints. We are none of us saints.
I have a #metoo dream.
I have a dream that someday we’ll all be able to admit that we’ve all got human flaws that need to be kept in check, that differences of degree matter, that there’s a difference between lying which we all do and being a liar, between being a jerk which we all are sometimes and being an absolute jerk.
I have a dream that someday we’ll all recognize that if you’re certain you’re the solution, you’re the problem, that none of us get to stay mounted on our high horse forever sanctified declaring the last word on anything.
I have a dream that someday people will be inoculated such that they won’t mistake a total jerk who never apologizes and always accuses for a saint, that we’ll all someday recognize that incorrigibility – a refusal to be corrected – is not a virtue but a vice.
Because we’re all bozos on this bus, bozo’s who must keep their excesses in check. #Metoo.
This alt-MeToo movement has leaders in the oddest places. Look for them. Don Rickles was one as are many comedians these days. They laugh at you with you. They laugh at themselves with you. They are equal-opportunity deflators. There are all sorts of artists who get it. Poets like Piet Hein, who kept humanism alive during the Nazi domination in Denmark by writing short poems that were too subtle for the Nazis. My favorite is this:
Philosophers find their true perfection knowing the follies of humankind by introspection.
I’m very supportive of the movement and it’s a great name for it. I do wish it was a bit more sex-positive. Often when society tips toward authoritarianism, even the resistance veers toward prudishness. Still, it’s high time men were called to task.
#Metoo is a victim’s movement. “#Metoo. I too am a victim.” Victim movements have advantages over another kind of #metoo movement, the one that interests me a lot these days.
When I taught history the question would come up: Do ideas ever change things? My answer is yes, but usually ideas that enable a faction to proudly declare “We deserve more!” That rallying cry is the galvanizer for all the best and worse causes in history. It’s behind the labor, civil rights, and women’s movement. It’s behind Nazis, the alt-right and the billionaire libertarian movement. Outrage over one’s victimhood is as often justified as unjustified. Think of how many non-victims play victim.
The kind of #metoo that interest me is a harder but truer sell: Me too – I’m human with all of the tendencies humans have. For example, me too: I find it advantageous to play victim. I lie, I cheat, I engage in hypocrisy. Me too.
It’s a hard sell is that when you get a proud movement like the alt-right, Stalinism, Maoism, Nazism, the Proud Boys, Incels – some crusade filled to brimming with sanctimonious outrage and victimhood, they’ll pounce on you the second you admit to any human failings. They’re gunning for you. If you admit to any human flaw they claim it vindicates them as absolutely pure.
Since you’ve got flaws, they don’t. That explains how everyone becomes a prude. These days, it’s hard for anyone to admit their humanness, why even the resistance is veering toward prudishness. Political and social discourse has degenerated into a stupifying infallibility battle: “One false move, and you’re proven the sinner and them the saint. Either you’re infallible or I am and admitting to even one mistake will decide it.”
This is what we get when theatrical outrage goes unchecked. Outrage is a purgative. It frees you from any self-doubt. People play exempt by contempt: Since I hate a trait, I must be exempt from having it. “Lie? Moi???! I hate when people lie to me so it should be obvious that I would never lie. If I catch you in a single lie, that proves that you’re a liar and I’m 100% absolutely honest.”
Unconstrained righteous indignation makes us feel like saints. We are none of us saints.
I have a #metoo dream.
I have a dream that someday we’ll all be able to admit that we’ve all got human flaws that need to be kept in check, that differences of degree matter, that there’s a difference between lying which we all do and being a liar, between being a jerk which we all are sometimes and being an absolute jerk.
I have a dream that someday we’ll all recognize that if you’re certain you’re the solution, you’re the problem, that none of us get to stay mounted on our high horse forever sanctified declaring the last word on anything.
I have a dream that someday people will be inoculated such that they won’t mistake a total jerk who never apologizes and always accuses for a saint, that we’ll all someday recognize that incorrigibility – a refusal to be corrected – is not a virtue but a vice.
Because we’re all bozos on this bus, bozo’s who must keep their excesses in check. #Metoo.
This alt-MeToo movement has leaders in the oddest places. Look for them. Don Rickles was one as are many comedians these days. They laugh at you with you. They laugh at themselves with you. They are equal-opportunity deflators. There are all sorts of artists who get it. Poets like Piet Hein, who kept humanism alive during the Nazi domination in Denmark by writing short poems that were too subtle for the Nazis. My favorite is this:
Philosophers find their true perfection knowing the follies of humankind by introspection.
(Jeremy Sherman, Ph.D., is a biophilosopher and social science researcher studying the natural history and everyday practicalities of decision making).
