Non-judgmentalism revisited

Right here at the University of Kansas, where I teach a course, newly-publicized records show how many parking tickets and altercations with student employees of the university’s parking-enforcement department the head football coach has had — a lot! It beautifully illustrates three things that I’ve written about repeatedly: 1) malignantly narcissistic behavior, 2) the overemphasis on sports in our culture, which emboldens a guy like this guy to behave in malignantly narcissistic ways, and 3) the reluctance to point out and hold people responsible for their bad behavior in this culture, which enables a guy like this to behave in malignantly narcissistic ways over and over. As I’ve said many times, that third one threatens to be the undoing of the most successful culture in the history of the world because group norms are generally more powerful checks on human behavior than societal coercion (i.e. the threat of punishment) or even opportunities to garner societal rewards (e.g. high incomes and prestige). In other words, when people’s own values aren’t strong enough to keep them from behaving badly, the disdain of their fellow citizens is generally the next most powerful deterrent, and we’ve largely given it up in this culture. Convincing Americans that there’s something wrong with calling out the bad behavior of others and shunning those who behave badly has been the single greatest victory of “hedonists” (people who believe in the philosophy “if it feels good, it must be right”) in the history of humanity. Just look at the divorce rate since every state but one implemented “no-fault” divorce, essentially enabling anyone to break his/her marriage vows at any time with neither social nor financial consequence. It used to be that if you cheated on your wife, not only might she divorce you and leave you relatively penniless, but most people in your community would’ve thought you were a complete jerk and loser. Not so anymore. Now you can openly cheat on your wife and not only walk away from your marriage with half of the marital assets but your national community will still consider you ethically-fit to be President of the United States, because, after all, it’s just a “personal issue,” right? Wrong. The secular institution of marriage has traditionally been societies’ way of supporting, sanctioning, and encouraging the kind of long-term, committed, monogamous relationship in which manageable numbers of children would be produced, provided for, and co-parented by mother-father teams.

Today, that institution has been rendered so meaningless and ineffective by no-fault divorce legislation that I don’t really understand why anyone wants to fight very hard to keep it exclusive to heterosexual couples (nor do I understand why gay and lesbian couples would want it that badly) in it’s current state. Because of non-judgmentalism, we’ve given the marriage “contract” less force than a gym membership contract. In fact, we really no longer give it any force whatsoever, which calls into question whether it’s even still a “contract” at all. When there’s a contract, and one party breaches the contract, neither the breacher nor the society (via the court) gets to waive compensation of any damages done to the “breachee” (i.e. arbitrarily decide to ignore the breach and resume the contractual relationship as if no breach had happened or to let the other party out of the contract and off the hook for any damage done) — generally, only the “breachee” gets to decide that. That’s how it would work if you broke your contract with a gym, but not with a spouse. With a spouse, you can breach the contract (i.e. cheat), one of the most heinous betrayals that one human being can inflict upon another, and get out of the “contract” with half of whatever the two of you collectively produced during the marriage. Not only has no-fault divorce legislation led to huge divorce rates in recent decades, but the Americans who voted for that legislation are the same Americans who are now failing (because of their “Who are we to judge?” attitudes and/or because they’re single and too busy making ends meet or making new families with new partners) to teach their kids about right and wrong. They’re the same parents who sue schools instead of thanking teachers for teaching such “controversial” lessons as “It’s wrong to betray other people’s trust.” They’re the same Americans who’ve voted for criminal sentencing laws so lax that defendants get dozens of chances to finally commit a rape or murder before any serious consequences befall them. Is it any wonder that a recent survey of nearly 30,000 high schoolers across America found that 36% had stolen something from a store in the past year? This is serious business folks. We can’t have an economy that’s the most successful in the world (or successful at all) if more than a third of the participants in it are dishonest, and if you think about today’s high schoolers as tomorrow’s work force, that’s where we’re headed. Who’s comfortable betting on (i.e. investing in) institutions populated with 1/3+ dishonest people? Not I, and not the Founding Fathers. They knew 200+ years ago what psychology took a couple of centuries thereafter to confirm: that the disdain of people’s fellow citizens generally does more than the government could ever do to keep people’s behavior in line. So, we need to get rid of this bogus “non-judgmentalism” “value” that we’ve adopted in this culture and get back to making some judgments about personal behavior. When behavior’s bad, there’s nothing wrong with saying so. In fact, it’s essential, for a university, an economy, and a society to remain strong. When people won’t take personal responsibility for their bad behavior, it’s up to the rest of us to hold them accountable for it anyway. Financial and criminal consequences may be neither possible or desirable in many situations, but there should at least be social consequences for bad behavior virtually every time it occurs.