Succeeding Without Teeth
The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, recently proposed “free” (i.e. taxpayer-funded) dental care for the city’s crystal meth addicts because “you can’t succeed without teeth!”
This proposal is compassionate, and showing compassion is good.
Those who support the proposal are compassionate, support a good thing, and are therefore good people.
Opponents of the proposal must lack compassion and must therefore be bad people.
That is how most of us learn to think. As children we were taught simple binaries (opposites). Big opposes small. Loud opposes quiet. Good opposes bad. Simple binaries form the foundations of a child’s thought.
The foundations.
Functioning adequately in the adult world necessitates a more complex moral superstructure to be built on those foundations. I had to unlearn the assumption that every important question is a matter of two opposites, one good and one evil.
Though some questions are that simple, those are usually the easy ones. The more difficult questions of life involve two choices, each of which is good. These kinds of choices stand in tension against each other. They are not equal but opposite binaries. I describe them as polar—like a magnet, with each pole attractive to different goods. I must weigh the goods. It’s not that one pole is completely right and the other wholly wrong. Rather, I must figure out the relationship between the poles and determine how each good must come into play in my decision to act. I must figure out how to navigate the poles.
Let’s use the example from Mayor Bass. Compassion—the capacity to be moved by another person’s pain and to act to reduce or eliminate that pain—is a real and genuine good, one of the most Christlike things we can experience.
But compassion standing alone without qualification can lead in a bad direction. Mayor Bass was correct that you can’t succeed without teeth. But she has ignored the fact that you can’t succeed while addicted to crystal meth either!
The flaw in Mayor Bass’s vision is not her compassion, but the failure to recognize the important good at the opposite pole: calling the meth addict to personal responsibility for his own life! The Mayor’s binary sense of compassion places that burden on the taxpayer and sends the message that sloth (an evil) is actually a good. Compassion is a good thing, but an equally important good is requiring each soul to take personal responsibility for his own life.
Another pole that may lie opposite compassion is restraint. Imagine a child permitted to forego studying because he wants to play with friends. The parent, wanting to show compassion (“Childhood is so short; let the child be a child!”), allows the child to play. The child fails the test the next day and cries to his parent that the test was too hard or was unfair. The parent demands a meeting with the teacher and insists that the child be permitted to retake the test or that the grading be curved.
In this parent’s simple binary mindset, the good of freedom to play (and it is a good!) was placed against the evils of the pain of self-discipline, of learning self-restraint for a greater good. The pain of failing—the natural consequence of freely playing—the parent treats as an evil by demanding that the teacher (rather than the student) alter the way they have behaved. Compassion was shown by the parent and felt by the child, but because of the failure to balance the poles with the good of self-discipline, the child was actually taught entitlement and a fragility that makes him unable to absorb failure and make changes that lead to success.
But in polar thinking, parental instruction in restraint and correction are good things—as are compassion and understanding. It’s not that one pole is freely indulged as good and the other totally avoided as evil, but that the poles must be weighed and used in appropriate measure in the relevant circumstances.
I began my own journey practicing simple binary thinking. The opposite of the good was always evil. I was, in the terminology of Proverbs, simple.
Mature thinking isn’t about unlearning right versus wrong; there are times where questions are that simple and binary. But mature thinking has to distinguish those simple binary questions from the more difficult polar questions—weighing good against good—and navigating issues by balancing the poles in our thoughts and deeds.
This proposal is compassionate, and showing compassion is good.
Those who support the proposal are compassionate, support a good thing, and are therefore good people.
Opponents of the proposal must lack compassion and must therefore be bad people.
That is how most of us learn to think. As children we were taught simple binaries (opposites). Big opposes small. Loud opposes quiet. Good opposes bad. Simple binaries form the foundations of a child’s thought.
The foundations.
Functioning adequately in the adult world necessitates a more complex moral superstructure to be built on those foundations. I had to unlearn the assumption that every important question is a matter of two opposites, one good and one evil.
Though some questions are that simple, those are usually the easy ones. The more difficult questions of life involve two choices, each of which is good. These kinds of choices stand in tension against each other. They are not equal but opposite binaries. I describe them as polar—like a magnet, with each pole attractive to different goods. I must weigh the goods. It’s not that one pole is completely right and the other wholly wrong. Rather, I must figure out the relationship between the poles and determine how each good must come into play in my decision to act. I must figure out how to navigate the poles.
Let’s use the example from Mayor Bass. Compassion—the capacity to be moved by another person’s pain and to act to reduce or eliminate that pain—is a real and genuine good, one of the most Christlike things we can experience.
But compassion standing alone without qualification can lead in a bad direction. Mayor Bass was correct that you can’t succeed without teeth. But she has ignored the fact that you can’t succeed while addicted to crystal meth either!
The flaw in Mayor Bass’s vision is not her compassion, but the failure to recognize the important good at the opposite pole: calling the meth addict to personal responsibility for his own life! The Mayor’s binary sense of compassion places that burden on the taxpayer and sends the message that sloth (an evil) is actually a good. Compassion is a good thing, but an equally important good is requiring each soul to take personal responsibility for his own life.
Another pole that may lie opposite compassion is restraint. Imagine a child permitted to forego studying because he wants to play with friends. The parent, wanting to show compassion (“Childhood is so short; let the child be a child!”), allows the child to play. The child fails the test the next day and cries to his parent that the test was too hard or was unfair. The parent demands a meeting with the teacher and insists that the child be permitted to retake the test or that the grading be curved.
In this parent’s simple binary mindset, the good of freedom to play (and it is a good!) was placed against the evils of the pain of self-discipline, of learning self-restraint for a greater good. The pain of failing—the natural consequence of freely playing—the parent treats as an evil by demanding that the teacher (rather than the student) alter the way they have behaved. Compassion was shown by the parent and felt by the child, but because of the failure to balance the poles with the good of self-discipline, the child was actually taught entitlement and a fragility that makes him unable to absorb failure and make changes that lead to success.
But in polar thinking, parental instruction in restraint and correction are good things—as are compassion and understanding. It’s not that one pole is freely indulged as good and the other totally avoided as evil, but that the poles must be weighed and used in appropriate measure in the relevant circumstances.
I began my own journey practicing simple binary thinking. The opposite of the good was always evil. I was, in the terminology of Proverbs, simple.
Mature thinking isn’t about unlearning right versus wrong; there are times where questions are that simple and binary. But mature thinking has to distinguish those simple binary questions from the more difficult polar questions—weighing good against good—and navigating issues by balancing the poles in our thoughts and deeds.