A well-meaning desire to be honest—and “tell it like it is”—can easily become little more than a convenient rationalization, used to condone cruelty, and justify a despicable desire to hurt and humiliate others.
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“It’s always a mistake to try for universal approbation, universal approval, because if you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.”—Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States
There’s much truth in Carter’s adage. Indeed, he ably identifies a vice—spinelessness—that lurks on one shoulder of the virtuous middle way. But there’s another vice, equally dangerous, lurking on the other side of the straight and narrow path: namely, willful meanness. Just as a well-meaning desire to please can easily become little more than a fig leaf, used to conceal cowardice, a well-meaning desire to be honest—and “tell it like it is”—can easily become little more than a convenient rationalization, used to condone cruelty, and justify a despicable desire to hurt and humiliate others.
This is, incidentally, yet another reason why Aristotle’s tripartite model (vice—virtue—vice) is so much more useful than the dualistic Judeo-Christian model (vice—virtue), which, often simply by virtue of its conceptual structure, promotes the idea that the further one gets away from a vice, the closer one gets to a virtue. In fact, the opposite of a vice is usually just another vice. Vices cling to the extremes, more often than not. By contrast, virtue is almost always a function of balance.
—John Faithful Hamer, From Here (2015)
Originally published at Committing Sociology. Reprinted with permission.
Photo courtesy of author.
Words “used to condone cruelty”….
When I was a teenager and so self-conscious, one of my BFFs pointed out my acne lesions to me…as if I did not notice! Looking back, it would have been nicer if she had suggested some constructive treatment for it, like referring me to a good dermatologist or giving me some helpful hints….at the time, it sounded mean and cruel, like I was defective somehow…
I would hew more towards Carter’s thinking on this than Aristotle’s, but then, I don’t think it’s a dichotomy, a binary, or a singular scale with an static, objective, ideal middle ground, as you might be painting it to be: Discourse is seldom like porridge, where hot is always too hot, cold is always too cold, and in the middle there’s a temperature that’s always ‘just right’ and the same for everyone. And while you are correct to point out that ‘telling it like it is’ can be (and often is) used overzealously and disingenuously as a “convenient rationalization, used… Read more »
OMG! That’s SO true, G! I actually should have included that annoying little phrase in the article too!
Nice article. Another phrase that people used to hurt and humiliate others is the phrase “Don’t take this the wrong way.”