Transgression

... we’ve come a long way since the days when Marilyn Manson and Andres Serrano (the artist behind Piss Christ) could make careers out of transgression for transgression’s sake. Breaking taboos for shock value is relativism; breaking taboos as a means rather than an end is not, which gives Lady Gaga and Seth MacFarlane an alibi. 

That's from an essay published 4 years ago. The larger point of the essay was that the era of relativism was over. Leaving that issue aside for a moment, I'd like to focus on the more immediate issue of transgression. I think there's a false dichotomy in the argument  Helen Rittelmeyer gives us here. I don't think that anyone, anywhere ever transgressed for transgression's sake.

A few years ago, a friend of mine something that looked very much like transgression for transgression's sake. One day, when his inlaws were visiting, his mother-in-law, asked what music was playing. Upon being told by her daughter it was Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, she remarked that she thought it was beautiful. At just that moment, my friend got up, abruptly stopped the music and replaced it with Jimi Hendrix and, with that move, ruined everyone's day, including his own.

Did he have a reason for doing this? I don't think he could have given you one if you'd asked him. Both CDs—the Respighi and the Hendrix—were his and I know that he liked the Respighi more than the Hendrix. He didn't dislike his mother-in-law. Not yet. A few years more of such shenanigans and his wife left him and he now feels bitter feelings towards everyone.

The person he didn't like was himself.  He hated himself for what he'd become. He hadn't meant to be. He'd just wanted to live with this woman. He agreed to marriage because that was what she wanted. And then he agreed to lots of other things—a car, a house, children. He'd accustomed himself to the car and the house and he loved his children and, if it had been up to him alone, he'd still be married today. But he hated what he'd become.

He'd wanted to be something else. Somewhere along the line, he'd lost control of that. He still isn't the guy he wanted to be. The divorce didn't give him the freedom to become what he'd wanted to be. It was probably too late. For all he knew, it may never have been possible—the whole thing may have been a crazy dream.

When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him. He has a million reasons for being anywhere. Just ask him. If you listen, he'll tell you how he got there. How he forgot where he was going. And then he woke up. If you listen he'll tell you about the time he thought he was an angel and dreamt of being perfect. and then he'll smile with wisdom, content that he realized the world isn't perfect. We're flawed because we want so much more.

That's Don Draper in an episode of Mad Men called "The Summer Man". But it could be any man or woman because my friend's story is really everyone's story and thus the brilliance of Don Draper. My friend, however, was not content; he did not smile with wisdom. Instead, he transgressed. He did something stupid that he knew was stupid. And it produced results he did not like.

I suspect that, in the unlikely case we were willing to be honest with ourselves, we'd all admit that we sometimes do what my friend did. Most of us have the good sense not to do it in front of people who will be offended. We go along with being the person we didn't want to become with the people who rely on us to keep being that person. But we make jokes or express opinions when they're not around that we know would hurt their feelings if they only knew. We "act out" our transgression in ways that are safe. We may even do it by proxy, watching Mad Men and joining others in criticizing Don Draper while secretly wishing we had the nerve to do what he does sometimes.

Relativism has nothing to do with it. When you're angry, your anger is as real as the clothes you wear, as real as the car you drive and as real as the ground you walk on. Alright you say, but the standards governing what you do about that anger are objective. Are they really? What objective standard says that Greg is justified in leaving his girlfriend for cheating on him? Tyler forgave his girlfriend for the same thing and they're still happy together ten years later!

You emotions are real. You really have them and you really have to deal with them. A big part of what you do about them will depend on whether you feel they are justified. Greg may decide that the one thing that his girlfriend has done is so big that it alone justifies dumping her.  Tyler didn't look so much at the particular instance that spurred his anger as they will look at the bigger picture and he saw a single, out-of-character failure. Which is more justified?

But, either way, it's not about relativism. It's really about emotivism. That's the view that moral views express emotional attitudes. You may think that amounts to relativism and you'd be in good company. Most philosophy professors would agree with you. And that would matter except that very little moral thinking takes place in philosophy classes. Most moral argument takes place in the real world and the person who bases their moral decisions on what they are feeling is basing it on something very real. They would even say, they base them on something authentic. They're almost certainly wrong about this but the Marianne Dashwoods of the world don't know this. They go on day after day resenting that they cannot say or do what they feel is right. Sometimes this resentment spills out in acts of transgression that can appear pointless to an outsider but they always have a point.

Helen Rittelmeyer's mistake was to think that because some (most?) transgression is more about what it's against than what it is for, that the transgression was an end in itself. It isn't. Even stupid transgression that couldn't cause anything but pointless destruction is undertaken for a reason.