"What It's Like" and Content of Character: a Treatise on Judgement.

One phrase that has really come to bother me yet amuse me is: “you do not know what it’s like.” The most obvious response is: “well, what IS it ‘like’? To what exactly do you LIKEN it?” After all: if the speaker might determine “it” to be “like” something OUTSIDE of itself, specifically wherein “it” refers to that same speaker’s phenomenal Experience, then by what authority can the same speaker presume that whatever external point of reference he has compared his experience to is NOT akin to MY experience as well?

Of course, the ironic turn of phrase is clearly intended to raise another question entirely: “what is the Ontological Nature OF the experience?” Yet in addressing such a question one must remember the parable of Chuang-Tzu and the fish:

Chuang-Tzu and his student pass a fish while on a stroll. (The Master and his Student are the ones that are on the stroll; the fish is presumably taking a swim.) Chuang-Tzu contemplates aloud how nice it must be to be a fish; his student replies, with famous naiveté: “but you are not a fish, so how can you know?” Even more famously, the Master replies: “You are not me, so how can you know that I do not know?”

The parable summarizes a problem that contemporary preachers are content to overlook in its entirety: how can one judge the internal experience to be any different, based only upon differences in the external, homely details? Salinger writes: “In making sure of the essential, he forgets the homely details; intent on the inward qualities, he loses sight of the external. He sees what he wants to see, and not what he does not want to see. He looks at the things he ought to look at, and neglects those that need not be looked at.” Of course, Salinger’s obsession with Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism is charming, especially as a testament to the universal appeal of traditionally Indian disciplines, an appeal which those same disciplines attest to. Yet secular critics might always contend that the Hindu cosmology, one professing an underlying identity beneath the veil of illusory external distinctions, is nothing more than an archaic leap of faith, that even in defiance of the Indian caste system the Buddhists failed to address social problems as more than mere illusions of the mind, that the appropriation of these customs by Westerners was misguided, and that metaphysical claims to our “underlying, Spiritual” unity amount to nothing more but failures and excuses not to create an OVERLYING, PHYSICAL unity.

That may all be very well and good for the Western rationalist. Yet the Dharma is no more a “leap of faith” than this neoliberal attitude and platitude. Rather than undertaking a thorough archaeological excavation into the history of neoliberalism, however, I have only to appeal to a common sense that, cursory though it may be, reveals the intrinsic contradictions in the doctrine of postmodern “sensitivity”. Namely: while I might judge your conditions externally to be distinct from those of others, and while by that same token I may determine your external conditions to be more akin – more “like” – those of one of your neighbours than those of another, the fact remains that, insofar as I do NOT know what the Nature of your EXPERIENCE is, I can judge it to be neither better nor worse than that of EITHER of the latter parties, nor myself, so it becomes not ONLY impossible for me to pass JUDGEMENT upon your internal conditions, but ALSO to INSTRUCT OTHERS IN HOW TO TREAT YOU. All Ethics must remain External.

When the Reverend King dreams of the day that the children of the world are judged not by the classification of their melanin but rather by the “content of their character”, he is not making a metaphysical claim to their Souls; he is referring, rather, to something so self-evident that he ought not to NEED to make mention of it: external behaviours whose intent can be inferred by cultural context. “What it’s like” to have Good Character has nothing to do with the determination of Character to be Good, though it HAS been observed, especially in modern dramas like Breaking Bad and BoJack Horseman, that “what it’s like” to have BAD Character CAN be used to UNDERSTAND WHY a Character is Bad, though only AFTER the Character has been deemed to BE BAD by a purely EXTERNAL RUBRIC, untouched by psychology. Walter White breaks bad because of any number of factors, including greed, desperation, shock, pride, a sense of familial obligation, condescension, spite, envy, jealousy, financial anxiety, delusions of grandeur, and the rational detachment of a natural scientist. (Ironically, he makes Anakin Skywalker look far more straightforward than critics of the Star Wars prequel trilogy make him out to be.) Yet none of these internal factors matter ethically until the death toll gets high enough, and it’s anyone’s guess when Walter crosses the final “line” beyond which he is damned. That this line is vague does not change the fact, however, that his fellow CHARACTERS know where to draw it. It follows logically that, in our own Life Dramas, we judge bad behaviour not by “what it’s like” to do it but rather by its consequences for us, and while this does render us biased in evaluations of intent, it establishes a precedent for cultivating more righteous modes of being. “Content of character” is not a vague appeal to what lies beyond the veil of objectivity; it is objectivity incarnate, and King’s appeal is to the Intellectual Common Sense of both his fellow clergymen and his congregation: how long must we tolerate utter stupidity?

As it turns out, stupidity comes in many forms and varieties, some Red and some Blue, some in the Aisle on the Right, others the Left. When rapper Everlast sings about “What It’s Like” to have to be homeless, to abort a baby, or to lose a drug war, he does not claim to KNOW what it is like to lead these lifestyles, but he nonetheless condescends upon those who do not know it EITHER (which is not unlike Chuang-Tzu condescending upon his student, who does not know what it’s like to be Chuang-Tzu, but it is far MORE akin to the student PRESUMING that the Master misunderstands a fish). Yet knowing “what it’s like to have to choose” is NOT what determines a choice to be Good or Bad; it simply determines the choice to be difficult or easy, and all responsible adults DO confront that fact in making choices.

Consider, therefore, “what it’s like” to be diagnosed with a mental illness. Clinically, from the outside looking in, my brain is deemed to be deficient in a certain quality we might refer to colloquially as “Presence of Mind” (if you will pardon the Spiritualizing metaphor). This is only PARTIALLY determined by my behaviour, which MAY OR MAY NOT be unethical, but which is not always “correct”, either politically or interpersonally, and often both are one. By and large, for me to be deemed criminally “insane”, rather than just criminal, I must represent the World through a lens which is deemed to somehow be critically skewed. Perhaps, popular science suggests, were the organ of mental function to be altered chemically, the subjective factor would follow, and out of that a healthy, happy, and holy citizen shall emerge!! That is a tempting offer indeed, and it was just romantic and farfetched enough for my late teenage self to give it a try, yet unfortunately it is just as Absurd and Self-contradictory as the woman who broke my heart to begin with and left me ranting and raving*.

The simple fact of the matter is this: that there is no reason to presume that someone will be healthy, happy, AND holy all at once, except by the Grace of God. Some people are none of the above; others: one of the above, or two. All in, there are as many as eight different combinations of personality created just from any three psychometrics. People can be happy and holy, but not healthy; they may be healthy and happy, but unholy. Et cetera et al. Even if one succeeds in changing my internal experience and hence my outlook and mood, there is no guarantee that I will behave in the manner that THAT PERSON (or my legal guardian) may wish, and insofar as the authorities judge me NOT to be an autonomous agent but a manipulable object, then they are NOT justified in passing MORAL judgement upon me, and “holy” becomes distinct from “obedient”, “predictable”, “compliant”, and “likeable”.

From a traditional, ethical standpoint, this much is a given, yet it is NOT a given if the distinction between my INTERNAL EXPERIENCE and my EXTERNAL BEHAVIOUR is not Respected. I would be more than happy to accept the consequences of my deviant actions, but only if I am tried as an autonomous agent who is in control of his own choices. Yet this right is denied me if, according to the peculiar manner in which I describe the World, you judge me to be INCAPABLE of responsible action. While the psychologist might not admit to “knowing what it’s like” to be schizophrenic, she will nonetheless behave as though she “knows better”, simply because those who tend to inhabit this ambiguous mental territory tend to behave in unpredictable ways which make sense only to them. Yet if one cannot JUDGE the experience which one does not have then one cannot judge the other for HAVING such an experience, and if one CAN judge that experience which one does not have, then it is only because that experience is by NO MEANS INFERIOR to one’s own. In EITHER case, one is left with the impossibility of using the other’s “madness” as an excuse for oppression, and of any bad behaviour the perpetrator can be judged only by the CONTENT OF CHARACTER: an EXTERNAL factor.

It is for these reasons that it does not matter whether I know “what it’s like” to have an abortion or not; in judging the woman for her actions, I am less misogynistic than those who otherize her experience. In judging the black convict, I am less prejudiced than those who speak of the “African American Experience” (not to be confused with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, which is available to anyone of any class, creed, or colour). In judging the villainous psychopaths in the film Parasite, I do not mean to say, “they are evil because they are poor” or even “because they are driven mad with feelings of inferiority”; I simply judge them to be evil because of how they devastate the few people who treat them trustingly. The External remains the arbiter, and it is to this – how OTHERS are affected by my actions, not how *I* feel – that I pledge myself. Yet this requires me to bring INTO Public life that which was previously presumed to be private: Logic and Intuition. When I express my opinions, I am not simply venting my own angst at the expense of how others are affected by my words; I am engaging in a collective discussion towards common moral ends. Without such a discussion, there can be no true “Society”.

 

*Clearly, I am being flippant here, but there is clearly some unresolved baggage, and I WAS afflicted by her mistreatment.

 

As an addendum, I should refer back to a fleeting example: BoJack Horseman. Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s postmodern fable illustrates a man-horse who is neither healthy, happy, NOR holy, and his internal struggle is running a race with his external conflicts, and the smart money’s on the latter steed. Yet is BoJack a nightmare? No. While he is thoroughly an aesthetic character, he is also an Absurd Hero whose foremost nags are every bit as arbitrary, biased, and self-indulgent as he is. “What it’s like” to be him does not excuse him, but the Life of a Fish does not incriminate conclusively.

[({Dm.R.G.)}]