On Social and Legal Requirements and Expectations

I've been thinking a lot about social expectations and requirements over the last few days. Sometimes, it is unclear what we should be able to expect of other people, versus what we should, as individuals or society, require of people. While we can talk about these things, we each have to make those decisions ourselves, based on our own values and worldviews. There is, though, a distinction between expectations and requirements.

I thought it would be useful to lay out a heuristic that I have been using to keep that distinction clear. I argue that there are five levels of requirements and expectations, with every person getting to set their own standards for what conduct falls into each level.*** For this, I will use a fairly prosaic example, with Jane as my protagonist:

Level 1: Whether Jane does or doesn't do something is entirely up to Jane.

Much of life exists in Level 1. This morning, for example, at 11 AM, I chose to practice playing guitar. This was me acting of my own volition and was a perfectly reasonable thing to do with my time at that time in the day. So, let's say that Jane did the same: she practiced guitar at 11 AM.

Level 2: Jane should (or shouldn't) do something because it is good to do (or not), but people shouldn't hold it against her if she does not do it.

Let's say that instead of practicing guitar at 11 AM, she starts practicing at 9 AM. That's a bit early, but it's not unconscionable if her neighbors happen to overhear her. It would have been more considerate of her not to play that early, but it is defensible.

Level 3: We should be able to expect that Jane will do something because it is the right thing to do.

This time, she is playing guitar at 8 AM. Now we're getting to the point where she's being genuinely inconsiderate. Her neighbors may have a grievance at this stage. But Jane has rights, being that she is at home, so we are loath to criticize openly.

Level 4: We should be able to apply social and economic pressure on Jane to cajole her to act a certain way, or to punish her for failing to act a certain way.

Unless she were playing very, very quietly, playing guitar at 3 AM one time would qualify as something that would warrant social sanction from her neighbors. They should be able to criticize her conduct vociferously and openly in an effort to get her to stop.

Level 5: The state should exert legal pressure on Jane to act a certain way.

This time, she is playing guitar at 3 AM, but she has also cranked the amp all the way up to 11 and has the windows open. Now her conduct has reached the point of public nuisance/disturbance, and it would be acceptable for local police (officers of "the state") to exercise punitive measures to get her to stop playing.

Some examples that I was thinking of:

• Paying attention to politics (or not paying attention to politics) is Level 1.
• Listening to and engaging with people you disagree with is Level 2.
• Argumentum ad hominem is Level 3.
• Discriminatory remarks are Level 4.
• Hate crimes, especially violent ones, are Level 5.

My contention here is that ideally, people would have a reasonable distribution of conduct between Levels 2, 3 and 4. We are better off with a rich spectrum of dissent here, rather than having just levels 1, 4, and 5, or, worse, 1 and 5. (Note that a society of only levels 1 and 5 would be essentially totalitarian.) With that said, level 4 is essential if we're trying to uphold certain social values.

Thus it is always and forever a balancing act, between an overly puritanical**, critical society and an overly permissive and lenient one.

**I use "puritanical" in both the religious sense and in a secular sense, where much personal conduct and speech can be deemed inappropriate by social elites. Likewise, in an overly permissive society, certain offensive conduct, like discriminatory remarks, would receive social acceptance rather than social opprobrium.

***Catholic aside here: when I started thinking about this, my mind drifted to Luke 6:37. I am basically providing a cheat-sheet of how to judge people (which is problematic!). Here is how I reconcile the two:

1. I try to keep as much conduct in Level 2 as I possibly can.
2. We can accept that social stigma is sometimes necessary, but we must always be compassionate about the individuals who are acting a certain way. We never know the full story about another human's motivation. Basically, "hate the sin and love the sinner" here. Don't use the levels to criticize other people or to self-aggrandize; merely use them to see how we should evaluate the conduct at hand...
3. ... which is the only way to handle this, because as Pascal Emmanuel-Gobry puts it, we are all sinners.