The Dangers of Moral Judgment
As much as I adore Eddie Monsoon's legendary courtroom rant against stupidity, it only serves to remind that certain aspects of "stupidity" are subjective.
I will note of considerations of responsibility and capacity that seemingly normal people are sometimes incapacitated for reasons beyond their control. To wit, when it comes to our political discussions, Americans have their knives out; we're so sick of each other that we are steadily less forgiving of our partisan opponents. Of late, I've been "givin' da bizness" to one of my conservative neighbors about some disagreements betweenm our outlooks. And part of what I'm razzing him about is whether certain points in his argument are accidental or calculated.
Accidental? Well, ninety-nine percent of the drunk driving arrests and convictions are of people who
accidentally drove under the influence. At some point, there is a question of whether the ignorance or other lack required for an outlook and subsequent behavior to seem rational and appropriate is acceptable.
To wit, take the idea of compromise. Now prescribe a formula for compromise.
• A and B have a dispute. A decides that the best resolution is to abandon his own preferred outcome and attend the resolution B prefers. B then complains that A is refusing to compromise.
Now, at what point does
ignorance become
stupidity?
Meanwhile, I have a child currently in the throes of a dangerous chemical bath called puberty. If you ever want to see willful behavior that is actually out of an individual's control, look around at the parents you know, find one whose kid is about a year into pubescent development, and try to have an important discussion with the kid. And if we should be tempted to think such a context is unimportant or beside the point, remember that some people hinge thereupon the question of whether or not it is appropriate to beat the hell out of a child for disciplinary sake.
And I have worked in the public school system with children on alternate learning spectra. Anyone who ever in their life complained about special education students being smart enough to take advantage of the rules can sit down and think on this point for a moment; it may be willful, but you cannot prove culpability.
The point of these comparisons are to remind that we will punish annoying children, but that behavior is sometimes lauded in adults.
There are times my kid just can't help herself. It might be the most obviously useless fight in the world, but she literally can't stop. This is expected; it is an occasional behavioral result that is out of her control.
And the little boy who flashed that evil grin before chomping down on M's arm in the middle of a physically dangerous temper tantrum that presented potential accidental threats to other children? Trust me, as deliberate and willful as that bite was, nobody present held him accountable as if he had genuine discretion.
My daughter? She is, technically, temporarily handicapped by the natural processes of her body and brain; I must account for this in assessing her behavior.
That little boy? He is, technically, permanently handicapped by the natural processes of his brain; I must account for this in assessing his behavior.
An allegedly normal adult who is incapable of recognizing right and wrong, black and white, yes and no, wet and dry? If he should wish to acknowledge a specific impairment that results in declarations that the truth is found in the opposite of what is observable—effectively, that what you observe is false, but indicative of real truth—we can certainly account for this in assessing his behavior.
But in the end, here we find the question of whether stupidity is immoral. I would go so far as to say yes, but only by limiting stupidity to include acts of will. Even then, though, there remains a massive gray area, in no small part because of the difficulty we encounter in determining acts of generated will from willful acts resulting from factors entirely beyond human control. That is, we cannot affirmatively account for every potential consideration in defining culpability, which is the key to assigning a moral value to stupidity.