December Days 2022 #14: Righteous
Dec. 14th, 2022 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradept[What's December Days this year? Taking a crowdsourced list of adjectives and seeing if I can turn them into saying good things about myself. Or at least good things to talk about.]
There's some significant shade being thrown in the definitions here, at least until you get to the slang definition at the bottom. That's not surprising, given that righteousness and "the righteous" is most often encountered in the context of religious practice. In the United States, you encounter both the Christian idea of the righteous and the civil religion's idea of the righteous.
Christians usually limit the definition of the righteous to those people who are part of the specific denomination making the invocation. Given the fractured nature of many Protestant Christian definitions, the specific denomination involved as the righteous may be as small as a single church's congregation, or a limited subset of the same. The civic religion of the United States follows a similar pattern, often under the idea of "American exceptionalism," that limits the righteous and the moral to residents of the United States and India a belief that the U.S. is not only a leader of the world, but the only population with the moral force to act for good on the world stage. Inside the States, in addition to the Christians who consider themselves the only righteous people, the very conservative elements of the political spectrum often assert the mantle of the righteous belongs to only them, as "real Americans," and that anyone who isn't them in physiology or politics is Other, completely incapable of being righteous and requiring subjugation to those who are righteous. This strain of subjugation is also present in many of the Christians, which is why you will find a lot of white supremacy, male supremacy, rigid gender binaries and roles, and belief in the legitimacy of violence against the Other in both conservatism and those denominations of Christianity.
There additionally tends to be a strong focus on orthodoxy (right belief) compared to orthopraxy (right actions) in those who believe they are the righteous. So long as you believe the right things, there's no additional need to make the world a better place through what you do. Even if both the civic religion and Christian Foundational Writings have explicit instructions about acting according to one's beliefs. (Of course, plenty of those denominations' actions they claim are because of their beliefs are harmful, so sometimes inaction is preferable to active malice.) Orthodoxy also tends to minimize the harms and offer forgiveness faster to the righteous than to the Other, or to demand the Other forgive the righteous when they offend, because it's incompatible with the orthodoxy for the righteous to have done unforgivable evil things.
All of this provides background as to why I feel the common context of the word, at least to me, a person raised in the States with the civic religion and these forms of Christianity as common as the churches on each street corner, is very close to a pejorative. It's really only the last definition, the slang that evokes the Bill and Ted franchise, where the word begins to take on any dimensions that might be positive away from the invocation of religious iconography and context. As much fun as it would be to boom out "Behold the Metatron" in my best Alan Rickman impression and carry a sword wreathed in flame, and then possibly proceed to do my best Conan the Librarian from there, visiting vengeance upon those who commit grievous sins against library workers, I feel like it would be a bit cliché, and that role would be best accomplished by someone who has a lot more righteous grievance against the way the world has treated them.
Even with all of that possible pejorative meaning, though, there's clearly some good uses for righteousness. Things that are sufficiently egregious deserve fire and brimstone denunciation, even if it seems like most of the power to make change is concentrated in the hands of people who want to make inequalities greater and do greater injuries to the Other. For those who aren't going to get a pulpit, a soapbox, or millions of followers on social media, there's a place in life for people who profess their principles through their actions and decisions. Being part of late-stage capitalism, and part of the United States, fairly well guarantees at least some complicity in evil acts. And because I've been raised in the civic religion from the beginning (and am part of a profession whose traditional values often reflect and reify the values of that civic religion), it's pretty well a given that I'm going to make mistakes about how to most effectively be righteous. More and more these days, I have to confront that orthopraxy is not about managing to avoid making mistakes or successfully avoiding doing or being complicit in evil acts. It is, instead, in how you handle making the mistakes or having that complicity pointed out. I have been trying to incorporate the idea of "intent isn't magic" into my thinking and examination, to put focus on the consequences of the actions involved rather than stopping at the belief that went into an action. By focusing on consequences, I'm trying to avoid allowing the orthodoxy of the civic religion to dominate how I see or react to something.
What comes with that, though, is a new pathway for brainweasels to exploit. As someone who is prone to self-flagellation, and who has bought into a different part of the civic religion about shame as the appropriate motivator for everyone, "Intent Isn't Magic" has become "Intent Doesn't Matter" when it comes to me. No credit for intending to do good if good actually isn't done, and unless something is done for maximally altruistic reasons, then it's not actually good. The people trying to help me move from shame and constant anxiety as a baseline of my experience suggest not making my self-worth conditional, which is a thing that logical brain agrees is a good idea, and the rest has a minor "how does that even work?" question about it. For the most part, because the examples we get to see on the television cameras are either people being praised for their complete adoption of the idea of self-worth being conditional on performing capitalism. Whether as the worker who toils selflessly, thinking only of The Company and getting exalted with a tiny bonus or a PR perk for being humble until they were noticed and recognized, or as the boss whose ego is unconstrained and who can solve all problems with money (at least until he gets bought out or suffers a scandal sufficiently large to tank the company if he's not immediately fired.) The egomaniac is the person we are down as someone who has made their self-worth unconditional, with the implication that it is because they have uncoupled their morality from their self-worth. For everyone else, we are supposed to be constantly ashamed of ourselves and striving for a perfection that only God Himself could achieve, with the sincere and pure hope in our hearts that God Himself will allow us to overcome our base and sinful nature and be virtuous, worthy, and righteous to everyone else.
I'm fairly certain that the intention of the adjective is supposed to be that the things I chose to talk about are good things, and that I take good positions on them, or perhaps that when I get wound up sufficiently to start opining everywhere, I do it with the mindset of someone who thinks many of these things are abominations unto Nuggan and intended to drown you in citations and arguments until you agree that I have a point. That, perhaps, I may have found the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape and there is something added to the pointers that I provide to other people's opinions and words. That my praxis, at least as far as I tell you, moves in the direction of helping bend the arc toward justice. Not smoothly or perfectly or without error, but in that direction all the same. I hope you're right.
- righteous (comparative more righteous, superlative most righteous)
- Free from sin or guilt.
- Moral and virtuous, to the point of sanctimonious.
- Justified morally.
- (slang, US) Awesome; great.
There's some significant shade being thrown in the definitions here, at least until you get to the slang definition at the bottom. That's not surprising, given that righteousness and "the righteous" is most often encountered in the context of religious practice. In the United States, you encounter both the Christian idea of the righteous and the civil religion's idea of the righteous.
Christians usually limit the definition of the righteous to those people who are part of the specific denomination making the invocation. Given the fractured nature of many Protestant Christian definitions, the specific denomination involved as the righteous may be as small as a single church's congregation, or a limited subset of the same. The civic religion of the United States follows a similar pattern, often under the idea of "American exceptionalism," that limits the righteous and the moral to residents of the United States and India a belief that the U.S. is not only a leader of the world, but the only population with the moral force to act for good on the world stage. Inside the States, in addition to the Christians who consider themselves the only righteous people, the very conservative elements of the political spectrum often assert the mantle of the righteous belongs to only them, as "real Americans," and that anyone who isn't them in physiology or politics is Other, completely incapable of being righteous and requiring subjugation to those who are righteous. This strain of subjugation is also present in many of the Christians, which is why you will find a lot of white supremacy, male supremacy, rigid gender binaries and roles, and belief in the legitimacy of violence against the Other in both conservatism and those denominations of Christianity.
There additionally tends to be a strong focus on orthodoxy (right belief) compared to orthopraxy (right actions) in those who believe they are the righteous. So long as you believe the right things, there's no additional need to make the world a better place through what you do. Even if both the civic religion and Christian Foundational Writings have explicit instructions about acting according to one's beliefs. (Of course, plenty of those denominations' actions they claim are because of their beliefs are harmful, so sometimes inaction is preferable to active malice.) Orthodoxy also tends to minimize the harms and offer forgiveness faster to the righteous than to the Other, or to demand the Other forgive the righteous when they offend, because it's incompatible with the orthodoxy for the righteous to have done unforgivable evil things.
All of this provides background as to why I feel the common context of the word, at least to me, a person raised in the States with the civic religion and these forms of Christianity as common as the churches on each street corner, is very close to a pejorative. It's really only the last definition, the slang that evokes the Bill and Ted franchise, where the word begins to take on any dimensions that might be positive away from the invocation of religious iconography and context. As much fun as it would be to boom out "Behold the Metatron" in my best Alan Rickman impression and carry a sword wreathed in flame, and then possibly proceed to do my best Conan the Librarian from there, visiting vengeance upon those who commit grievous sins against library workers, I feel like it would be a bit cliché, and that role would be best accomplished by someone who has a lot more righteous grievance against the way the world has treated them.
Even with all of that possible pejorative meaning, though, there's clearly some good uses for righteousness. Things that are sufficiently egregious deserve fire and brimstone denunciation, even if it seems like most of the power to make change is concentrated in the hands of people who want to make inequalities greater and do greater injuries to the Other. For those who aren't going to get a pulpit, a soapbox, or millions of followers on social media, there's a place in life for people who profess their principles through their actions and decisions. Being part of late-stage capitalism, and part of the United States, fairly well guarantees at least some complicity in evil acts. And because I've been raised in the civic religion from the beginning (and am part of a profession whose traditional values often reflect and reify the values of that civic religion), it's pretty well a given that I'm going to make mistakes about how to most effectively be righteous. More and more these days, I have to confront that orthopraxy is not about managing to avoid making mistakes or successfully avoiding doing or being complicit in evil acts. It is, instead, in how you handle making the mistakes or having that complicity pointed out. I have been trying to incorporate the idea of "intent isn't magic" into my thinking and examination, to put focus on the consequences of the actions involved rather than stopping at the belief that went into an action. By focusing on consequences, I'm trying to avoid allowing the orthodoxy of the civic religion to dominate how I see or react to something.
What comes with that, though, is a new pathway for brainweasels to exploit. As someone who is prone to self-flagellation, and who has bought into a different part of the civic religion about shame as the appropriate motivator for everyone, "Intent Isn't Magic" has become "Intent Doesn't Matter" when it comes to me. No credit for intending to do good if good actually isn't done, and unless something is done for maximally altruistic reasons, then it's not actually good. The people trying to help me move from shame and constant anxiety as a baseline of my experience suggest not making my self-worth conditional, which is a thing that logical brain agrees is a good idea, and the rest has a minor "how does that even work?" question about it. For the most part, because the examples we get to see on the television cameras are either people being praised for their complete adoption of the idea of self-worth being conditional on performing capitalism. Whether as the worker who toils selflessly, thinking only of The Company and getting exalted with a tiny bonus or a PR perk for being humble until they were noticed and recognized, or as the boss whose ego is unconstrained and who can solve all problems with money (at least until he gets bought out or suffers a scandal sufficiently large to tank the company if he's not immediately fired.) The egomaniac is the person we are down as someone who has made their self-worth unconditional, with the implication that it is because they have uncoupled their morality from their self-worth. For everyone else, we are supposed to be constantly ashamed of ourselves and striving for a perfection that only God Himself could achieve, with the sincere and pure hope in our hearts that God Himself will allow us to overcome our base and sinful nature and be virtuous, worthy, and righteous to everyone else.
I'm fairly certain that the intention of the adjective is supposed to be that the things I chose to talk about are good things, and that I take good positions on them, or perhaps that when I get wound up sufficiently to start opining everywhere, I do it with the mindset of someone who thinks many of these things are abominations unto Nuggan and intended to drown you in citations and arguments until you agree that I have a point. That, perhaps, I may have found the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape and there is something added to the pointers that I provide to other people's opinions and words. That my praxis, at least as far as I tell you, moves in the direction of helping bend the arc toward justice. Not smoothly or perfectly or without error, but in that direction all the same. I hope you're right.
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Date: 2022-12-15 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-15 08:41 pm (UTC)