Patience, craft, experience, affirmation

August 7, 2023 1:31 PM

In a self-help-y/inspirational vein: "just as yeasts free-floating in the kitchen alight anew on resting dough long after the bread that brought those species there was baked and eaten", "Honestly, it's all single steps, right to the finish. And if you don't make it a thousand miles, you at least get a change of scenery." Sometimes, "not doing their art was costing them time, was draining it away, little by little, like a slow but steady leak". But also, "people want doing the right thing to be like pulling the correct lever at the correct time but actually usually doing the right thing is more like holding a moderate weight at arm’s length continuously for seventeen years".
posted by brainwane (4 comments total)

Man, I've been reflecting on that last one lately. It really is so much like holding a moderate weight in some places--and sometimes you have to hand the weight to a friend and shake your arm out. Human brains are really binaristic, though, and it can be hard to give ourselves permission to pass the weight sometimes and hold it at other times.

Have you seen any of the discussion on scrupulosity, brainwane?
posted by sciatrix at 7:02 PM on August 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

sciatrix: No, I'm curious now but had not yet run into this! I did a quick search. Are you referring to the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) subtype or maybe another meaning?
posted by brainwane at 7:45 PM on August 7, 2023

The OCD subtype! There have been some really interesting discussions lately on my feed about the way that OCD can manifest as compulsions to behave in morally-rigorous ways outside the scope of religiosity as we would normally recognize it. For example, if your internal moral compass is mediated by your values about how to treat other people rather than religion, you might wind up grappling with intrusive thoughts about whether you're being culturally appropriative by going to eat sushi, or whether you're being a bad friend by not being available 24/7 for contact and responsiveness. The pathological aspect is, as with many things in mental health, the point at which the compulsion to avoid the smallest possibility of personal moral transgression interferes with your ability to accomplish your greater goals ... which can include goals related to activism or your broader moral values.

It's a useful lens to consider more broadly I think for anyone who is deeply concerned with social justice: not that all concerns like that are motivated by scrupulosity, but rather that online social justice culture can mask pathological scrupulosity for some people, create traps for people who are trying to do the right thing, and take on shapes that are more influenced by personal scrupulosity-driven concerns than by effective outcomes.

Obviously you can also consider this concept through a cultural lens, especially with respect to the more toxic aspects of variants of Christianity. But recognizing the ways in which intrusive thoughts and compulsions can appear is a useful conceptual tool in our toolkit when it comes to figuring out how to be moral people in a complicated world.

I have however just had a chance to personally test the "doing the right thing means pulling a lever" subtype: took a week vacation to NYC with beloved friends I haven't seen in a year, and two days in my (very careful) spouse tests positive for COVID. We're cutting the vacation short, renting a car and driving back to Minneapolis rather than risk exposing friends further, and oh man but it sucks.

If anyone chooses to be a dick to me about any part of that decision I will explode in their face. :) so my emotional bandwidth is a little bit narrower than it might otherwise be just at the moment.
posted by sciatrix at 9:22 AM on August 8, 2023 [8 favorites]

sciatrix, my condolences on the positive test, and I hope you were able to avoid catching COVID from your spouse, and I hope you are able to come to NYC at some point soon and I can buy you an outdoor beverage!

Thank you for the rundown. Ever since you posted it, I've been on the lookout for places in my life where scrupulosity would be one good way to understand a particular choice or dynamic.

I read the comic book version of the Mahabharata as a kid (thank you, Amar Chitra Katha!) and many of its stories stayed with me. Here's one:

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Yudhisthira is an incredibly virtuous man, and is in fact the son of the god of dharma (righteousness and duty).

Yudhisthira has never spoken a lie. His integrity is completely pure. The gods so smile upon him that his chariot floats an inch above the ground, never touching the dust.

But, as the days of war drag on, his side is taking heavy casulaties, and they agree that there's only one way they'll get a psychological edge on a particular opponent. So they buy an elephant and name it Ashwattama, the name of the opponent's beloved son. They have the elephant killed.

And then Yudhisthira rides over to the opponent on the battlefield and can honestly say, with his opponent listening and of course believing in his incorruptible honesty, "Ashwattama is dead." and then nearly inaudibly add "Ashwattama the elephant."

As planned, this breaks the other warrior's heart, and he recedes from the battle.

But because he lied, Yudhisthira's chariot falls upon the ground, never to float again. He's down in the muck with all the rest of us, now.

--------

I was reflecting on this recently. It's a virginity narrative, a purity story, about a one-way door.
posted by brainwane at 11:36 AM on August 25, 2023