Our regular readers will recall a piece we posted last November titled: “Undetected (and Detectable) Shadows of Positions.” That piece probed a potential paradox hovering over, and lurking within, the advocates for, and against, the death penalty. Yes, over, and within, the advocates, as well as the subject of, the advocacy.

Let’s acknowledge that reduction of the death penalty to a binary debate between supporters and opponents blurs and, indeed, conceals, distinctions that, if made manifest, would create a veritable mix of strange bed-fellows, with contenders for similar positions oblivious, and, if not oblivious then indifferent, to the contradictions at the root of apparent consensus.

Having read Michael Sandel’s recent book on the moral limits of the market, I am hard pressed to escape the ubiquity of activities that, when they become the subject of market transactions (admittedly a concept that cries out for explanation) are thereby transformed in their very essence. Converted, for example, from a civic to a market activity.

Sandel’s observations pull together nicely, through a prism infused with perspectives from moral philosophy, and ranging theologies, a long and lively area researched by economists, psychologists, sociogists and other social scientists. Recall, for example, the findings that blood donations declined when blood banks began to pay for “donations.” Or the decline in the willingness of communities to accept hazardous wastes in their backyards when the state sought to pay the communities for their “hospitality.” Or the increase in (initially) objectionable activities when fines are conceptualized and experienced as (mere) fees. A $1.00 charge to litter; an extra charge for parents who pick-up children late from daycare; a payment to a child to write a thank you letter; a payment to a service company to present a “purchased” apology or a “purchased” wedding toast. The introduction of some “things” into the market transforms the very things that money can buy.

We segued to Sandel’s discussion of the moral limits of markets to frame our supplement to the November posting on the death penalty: when we sanction the death penalty, whatever the circumstances for its imposition and whatever the rationale(s) ushered in support of its imposition, we transform not only our views of justice, fairness, and the role of the criminal sanction in a society, we transform everyone, from the executioner, to the judge and jury, to the governors, officers and “agents” of the state, to each of us who must bear witness because, after all, there is no escape. And why should there be? What would escape look like? Self-renunciation? Or a conscience detached from sensations of ethical dilemma and struggle?

Each of us has a box (metaphorically speaking) filled with metaphors.  In our role as orator, we carry this box (our linguistic toolbox), filled with figures of speech, which we select to craft, and to deliver, the message we carry.

Continuing with a theme that ripples through our posts, often as an undercurrent, and now and then as a wave, words press our views upon our audience and reinforce our views in and to ourselves; and often the complacency of our audience, and within ourselves, entrenches these views, and thereby drains the words of complexity and strips them of luster. The words lose their meanings, or the meanings are veiled.   We take the words at face (non-figurative, non-metaphorical) value and unwittingly overlook the assumptions lurking within them. And therein lies danger.

Our interest today is in the mixture of metaphor that share a common root and typically appear as flat, a flatness that fosters coercion, a coercion amplified by the pedestrian cloak of, and around, the word.

Let’s have a brief look together, a joint tapping at the edges, and then let’s each have our own visit.

Version. A version to define (di)versions and (per)versions and animate quests for (con)versions through coercion. The variations of the versions threaten the chosen, consensus version. Beware the (re)version and (in)version that, unrestrained or unconstrained, would subvert the convention of separate versions into a durable, defining, controlling version.

Or should we fear the banality of the (accepted) version: the host dependant on its parasitic (di)versions that empower and sustain the version, through a symbiosis that leaves residual (a)version to those who challenge with (apparent or concealed) (sub)versions. But how can we tell the host from the parasite; who do we know who holds the version?

Whose version defines perversion; whose version propels conversions and stimulates subversions that threaten to create a new version? Until our immersion in the consensus version has drained the impulse to diversion?

From James Baldwin: “And we know that, for the perpetuation of this system, we have all been mercilessly brutalized, and have been told nothing but lies, lies about ourselves and our kinsmen and our past, and about love, life, and death, so that both soul and body have been bound in hell.”

Let’s each embark on our own visits.

Beware the banality of the modest metaphor.

Our title may seem anomalous given our unequivocal conviction in the value of inquiry, and our endorsement of challenging questions of settled views. Thus, an explanation is in order.

We use “unasked” and “unstated” to frame our subject, which we intend unequivocally as a question to ourselves and (hesitantly) to others. The question might be stated as follows: what is the impact (if any) of a discussion of (questioning of) a subject on the attitudes of participants towards the subject discussed (questioned)? The question needs to be more specific: are there subjects the questioning of which subverts the very objectives which the questioning sought to promote?

Clearly, we can anticipate cause and effect challenges of sorts: directional causation (whether x causes y or y causes x); correlation (whether x and y go together but only because z causes each of them); and absence of causation (whether x and y are independent of each other and of a common variable and just so happen, as it were, to be present together).

Clearly too we can anticipate normative questions: even if the questioning of a subject impacts the subject then is the impact helpful, useful, or counterproductive? The answer presupposes an objective, a desired outcome, as measured against a ratings matrix. Put differently, if we discuss a subject with the specific intention to promote the subject then we defeat our purpose if the fact of the discussion subverts the subject (as measure in accordance with our ratings matrix). Put this way, the causal and normative questions loom large even if we assume the sufficiency of our ratings matrix.

Moreover, we face methodological choices, which in turn raise questions: perhaps the counterproductive outcome on our subject of the questioning of the subject reflects a poorly phrased question, or a question situated in a context that corrodes the question and therefore corrodes the subject questioned. For example, perhaps a question posed to another in private is asked, and answered, differently than the same question posed, in the same cadence, etc., but in public. Perhaps the asking of a question to one person corrodes the subject questioned, whereas the question asked of another leaves the subject unaffected. Surely, some of these challenges are easily identified and resolved. And others will escape identification and resolution.

Our observations below will not seek to identify and disentangle, let alone answer, the above sorts of questions or to sketch out criteria to guide evaluation of methodological choices. Rather, we will pose a question, through an example, and encourage consideration of the question by our readers.

With that all said: how do we value, and measure the value of, our acts of charity? Does a person who works at a shelter on Saturday for 8 hours provide a greater sum of valued charity than a person who works and is taxed, with the tax in an amount available for government expenditure to purchase 8 hours of service to the charity? How do we ensure that we take the measure in full and identify not only what is a cost of what but what is a benefit of what, directly and indirectly?

Or to quote Jane Austen, who gets to the point indirectly:

“How horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!”

Ah, but how is care measured? If we measure care by the provision of personal service at the charity – through direct and voluntary personal engagememt, then might we stifle the impulse to donate cold hard – but ever so critical – cash by the executive who stays at his desk and leaves to others to engage at shelters, in whatever form and venue they take? Perhaps, at the end, all we may conclude is that the questioning of a subject that we seek to promote sometimes subverts the subject and sometimes promotes the subject and sometimes has no impact on the subject. Whether we can identify the outcome in advance and whether we have the conviction that we have identified it correctly, raise questions that may best be stated expressly and answers that may best be tendered aloud.

Except when describing diamonds and freshly painted metals, except, that is, when used as a synonym for shining, brilliance is a metaphor used to indicate extreme intelligence. A quality that distinguishes the brilliant from the dull, the flat, the undifferentiated.

Whether used as noun, verb or adverb, humility and its derivatives and variants are, in their essence, animated solely through reference to the relationship of a person or the person’s activities to those of another. One is not humble before a rock. One is not humble (although one may be insecure or tentative) in private. One cannot humble herself before a mirror, although humility before another presupposes one’s prior gaze at, and into, the mirror and one’s reflection on the reflection. As water and oxygen promote germination of seeds, love promotes germination of humility, which takes root in one’s cognition and recognition of the views of others and the uncertainties that are fundamental, inescapable, impervious to shouts, no matter the volume.

Commentators who have endured through the ages, with universal appeal to our common qualities, have observed the inseparability of brilliance (as in extremely intelligent, differentiated from the crowd) and humility. Montaigne, translated loosely, captures the fusion through playful irony: “Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we know least.” Or, in the wit of Mark Twain: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” Or through the rhythm of Pope: “Much was Believ’d, but little understood, And to be dull was constru’d to be good…”

Now, hesitancy, tentativeness, may indeed reflect a dullard but it does not follow, in logic or experience, that unequivocal conviction reflects brilliance. Indeed, the history of thought has been an endless stream of visions and revisions, paradigm shifts, and adaptation to unforeseen (and often unforeseeable) consequences.

With the foregoing, paradoxically, being my firm conviction about the inherent flaws in and of firm convictions, one must marvel at the prominence we provide to, and the deference we display towards, those who are frequently wrong but never in doubt. My recommendation: beware of the man who holds the crystal ball, who loudly proclaims questions as if they were settled conclusions, who glibly dismisses counterpoints as beside the (i.e., his) point, who preaches his objectivity and neutrality, who uses his voice to stifle and his pen to censor, who confounds consensus and coercion.

We conclude with a quote from Alexander Pope in his Essay on Criticism:

“But where’s the Man, who Counsel can bestow,
Still pleas’d to teach, and not proud to know?
Unbiassed or by Favour or by Spite;
Not dully prepossest, nor blindly right;
Tho’ Learn’d well-bred; and tho’ well-bred, sincere;
Modestly bold, and Humanly severe?
Who to a Friend his Faults can freely show,
And gladly praise the Merit of a Foe?
Blest with a Taste exact, yet unconfin’d;
A Knowledge both of Books and Humankind;
Gen’rous Converse; a Sound exempt from Pride;
And Love to Praise, with Reason on his Side?”

Around us, surrounding us, decisions and revisions to decisions abound. Invariably we decide “at the margin” based on where we are.  But how is it that we are where we are at decision-time, with our choices seemingly constrained by circumstances?

Now the above may strike us as  ponderous – at best – but a recognition of  its implications for public policy and comity, within and across borders, within and between groups,  is essential to an understanding that the choices presented to us, given to us, or selected by us from the data at hand, themselves reflect and emerge out of prior choices; and this emergence (ancestry) complicates and presses the moral imperative that we challenge ourselves to challenge choices at the moment.

The choices within the range, at the moment of choice, ought not to obfuscate the links that tie choices to choices.  We may need to take the past as we find it today, but we would be wise to appreciate that tomorrow’s past is today’s responsibility.