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Beau, Teaching on Multiple Levels, as Always [1]

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Date: 2022-07-27

Hmm. For this one, I really should be using my laptop...

My YouTube feed had this in it today. It’s Beau, on childrearing, from two years back.

I used to start my mornings with the weather, of course, and two or three news and politics websites, this being one of them.

Lately I’m starting with the weather and Beau. He is generally sane, and generally decent, and when he is angry he allows it to show, and you understand why, and it usually makes sense that he would be.

He’s human, he messes up. Nice thing though is that when he realizes it he tends to admit it.

So after watching Beau’s latest I realized I’d never seen this one. It was worth a look, enough so that I’m posting it here.

As usual, he’s operating on at least two levels. The surface level is a simple talk about how to nurture character in your kids without using heat and pressure and basically forcing them to be little adamantine clones of you (his term is ideological foot solders, but his meaning is clear). But as usual there’s more there.

I’m just going to pull out what I saw as the main point:

There is a hierarchy of social values — he does NOT use that term, but he sure does illustrate it. In order of, uh, prosocial functionality, his ranking, with his working definitions as I understood them:

Emotional responses (heroes, cults of personality — and he uses both Trump and FDR as examples of this)

Legality (what current law allows; the fact that something is legal does NOT mean that it is right)

Ethicality (what the larger society values)

Morality (personal values, which you apply FIRST to yourself such that you hold yourself, hopefully, to a high PERSONAL standard — again, applied FIRST to yourself, because boundaries, autonomy, respect).

Note: every one of these can change. And they all do, to some extent.

I like what he has to say about which of these standards can reasonably be applied to historical events, and to keep in mind that everything we are and do in this moment will (assuming we get our act together to mitigate climate change) someday be viewed by those who come after us through similar lenses.

This also helped me to clarify a source of recent frustration, which I can best summarize thus: that apples and oranges thing, it applies here as well. If you’re arguing ethics with people who are arguing legality or emotionality, as long as those levels stay mismatched you’re just going to come away more frustrated afterwards than you were before.

Because underlying the argument from ethics is the question “what is best (for society or for Group X within a functional society)?”, but underlying the argument from strict legality (note that modifier) is, quite often (note that one too), the far simpler question, “what’s the least I (or Group Y) can do here / what is the most I (or Group Y) can get away with here?”*. IOW, the two sides *begin* by talking past each other because their objectives do not match. To break that, and get the discussion on a shared level, one side has to go meta. Which isn’t always comfortable or well received, especially if the mismatch involves argument from emotion.

*or, sometimes, “What reason can I find for not taking action about Z / discouraging others from taking action about it?” And underlying the argument from emotionality is usually “I don’t wanna do that! I wanna do THIS!” or, more insidiously, “I don’t want YOU to do that, I want you to do THIS!”.

So it’s worth watching, I think. And especially pertinent at the moment with everything that’s going on with J6, SCOTUS, inflation, life in general.

Don’t argue ethics with folks arguing legality, unless you make it plain that’s what you think you’re doing (be prepared for them to deny what they are doing and insist that you’re doing something else entirely). And don’t argue gut reactions at all, if you can avoid it. (Note to self, in large flashing letters.)

And handle morality with care, because when you start imputing and comparing moral codes, you’re not only at risk of lapsing into emotional argument, you’re doing Olympic gymnastics on the Third Rail. Most of what passes for morality in Beau’s sense of the term isn’t morality, it’s emotionality, not subjected to any analysis (and highly resistant to it). Get sucked into that and you can waste DAYS, and that may not be the worst thing that happens.

Here endeth the discourse. Watch the vid, you’ll see what I mean.

I won’t be around much — normally I get back sooner than I think I will, but that won’t happen today. I’ll show up sometime in the afternoon, probably. Apologies, I take my diaries seriously and think of them as discussion gatherings, so not being here to host this is frustrating, but it can’t be helped.

To everyone who has read this far, my thanks, and I hope you find the video absorbing on as many levels as I did.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/27/2112872/-Beau-Teaching-on-Multiple-Levels-as-Always

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