Curmie thinks a lot about the notion of intention. Part of that, of course, comes from being a theatre director. One of my most common notes to actors is to clarify intentions: to make clear what a character wants to accomplish, whether s/he succeeds in achieving it or not.
But there have been three specific moments in the last week that have brought the concept to the forefront. The first was the annual discussion in Advanced Play Analysis class of the intellectual underpinnings of the absurdist movement in dramatic literature, specifically existentialism’s emphasis on prioritizing existence (the individual ego) over essence (the labels applied by others).
I talked about how this concept is very similar to traditional conservative ideology (not to be confused with what passes for conservatism in contemporary politics). I also discussed how the manifestations (although not the rationale) of existentialist thought comport with those of Ancient Greece: Oedipus may have been attempting to avoid a horrible prophecy, but his actions bring about his downfall in a manner that is simultaneously inevitable and deeply ironic. Jean-Paul Sartre’s Les Mouches (The Flies) serves as an excellent means of linking the two philosophies, as he treats the matricidal Orestes as an existential hero.
Finally, I contrasted the emphasis on individual responsibility with little regard for context or demographics and more traditional Judeo-Christian thought. Whether founded on a concept of pollution, as in the case of Shinto and (largely) Ancient Greece or upon a Nietzschean or Sartrean conception of the role of the authentic self within the universe, this emphasis on actions rather than intentions runs counter to the dominant Western belief system of the past two millennia. I should note here that concern for context is not an exclusively Western idea. Confucius, for example, distinguishes between murder (which cannot be condoned), self-defense (in which killing is excusable), and protecting one’s lord (in which failing to kill, if necessary, is punishable).
Still, in terms of the way laws and ethical systems are constructed in the US and in countries like it, it’s the Judeo-Christian ethic that prevails. Thus, whereas Sartre’s Orestes strides unflinchingly into the swarm of flies, symbolic of both the chthonic Furies of Aeschylus’s Oresteia and the niggling doubts about the legitimacy of his regicide and matricide, even a lapsed Christian like W.B. Yeats can close The Countess Cathleen, the title character of which has sold her soul to the “demon merchants” in order to redeem the souls of her subjects, with the Countess’s ascension into Heaven and the Angel’s observation that “the Light of Lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, The Shadow of Shadows on the deed alone.”
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| Donald G. McNeil, Jr. |
According to a late-January article in the Daily Beast, “McNeil repeatedly made racist and sexist remarks throughout the trip including, according to two complaints, using the ‘n-word.’” But according to McNeil himself, he had used the term only in the context of quoting a student who had asked “whether I thought a classmate of hers should have been suspended for a video she had made as a 12-year-old in which she used” the slur. The “repeatedly” and “sexist” parts of the allegations seem to have disappeared from the discussion, with the furor concentrating on the utterance of a single word.
After an apparently lengthy internal investigation, the Times reprimanded McNeil for “extremely poor judgment” (really?) but determined that his intentions were neither “hateful or malicious,” citing in particular “repeating a racist slur in the context of a conversation about racist language.” (Curmie can’t help thinking about the “Jehovah” scene from Monty Python’s “Life of Brian.”) Within a few months, McNeil was the paper’s lead journalist on COVID-19, even being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
But then the situation went public, and some 150 Times staffers signed a letter demanding further review. The bosses promptly ousted McNeil, declaring “We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent,” despite having used the inexcusable term as recently as February 2 of this year in a feature story on classicist Dan-el Parilla Peralta. Its use in that story, by the way, is completely appropriate.
Busted for the inanity of the comment, Executive Editor Dean Baquet subsequently walked back the business about intent. Mediaite quotes him indirectly, citing “comments obtained” about “a staff meeting”: “In our zeal to make a powerful statement about our workplace culture, we ham-handedly said something you rightfully saw as an oversimplification of one of the most difficult issues of our lives…. It was a deadline mistake and I regret it.” If you, Gentle Reader, believe the “deadline mistake” part (there are deadlines for staff e-mails?), then Curmie has some ocean-front property in Kansas you might be interested in purchasing.
The story took on even more “legs” when the Times higher-ups spiked a column by Bret Stephens in which he criticized the paper’s handling of the situation, especially the whole “regardless of intent” part. Whether the piece was axed by publisher A.G. Sulzberger (as Stephens claims) or by opinions editor Kathleen Kingsbury after consultation with Sulzberger (as she claims) really doesn’t matter. But the column found its way around the offices, and was apparently sent by someone (not Stephens) to the Times’s crosstown rival, the New York Post. The Post, of course, is as conservative as the Times is liberal (both to rather an extreme, alas), and their decision-makers were happy to publish the piece in full.
Curmie urges you to read what Stephens has to say in its entirety, but for the purposes of brevity, Curmie will quote only two short passages. He opens with this: “Every serious moral philosophy, every decent legal system and every ethical organization cares deeply about intention.” A little later, he makes his thesis clear:
This is an argument about three words: “Regardless of intent.” Should intent be the only thing that counts in judgment? Obviously not. Can people do painful, harmful, stupid or objectionable things regardless of intent? Obviously. Do any of us want to live in a world, or work in a field, where intent is categorically ruled out as a mitigating factor? I hope not.
Curmie can’t improve on any of that, noting only that there’s a lot less mitigating context to Baquet’s inanity (which, being written, intrinsically allows time to reconsider before hitting “send”) than to McNeil’s utterance of a clarifying question. Somehow Curmie doubts that Baquet will be booted for violating a core principle of journalism.
Full disclosure: Curmie has directed two plays (that he can think of) which include the word “nigger.” One of them, “Master Harold”… and the boys, is one of the most profoundly anti-apartheid scripts ever written, and the use of the term by white character—one we in the audience have come to like, in part because of his close relationship with the two black men in the play—shocks us, precisely as it was intended to do. Curmie has also said the word in class, choosing to quote texts accurately instead of dancing around specific words. And yes, there were complaints from the Woke Folk. So be it. Curmie will never use the term in his own voice, but will do so in citing a source if (and only if) the situation demands it.
So: intentions matter. But, of course, they are sometimes insufficient justification for actions. Which brings us to event number three. Like many Republicans with political aspirations, Nikki Haley has been walking a tightrope of late. Having no core values (like many if not most politicians in both parties), she has found the purely pragmatic need to negotiate her distance from the sociopath who appointed her to the UN Ambassadorship, all the while trying not to alienate the Trumpian base.
Suddenly, after it became clear that all Trump’s huffing and puffing wasn’t going to change the election results, she has come to the conclusion that perhaps, just perhaps, Donald Trump might not be the answer to all our prayers.
After a couple of years as a Trump toady although she clearly despised the man and everything he represents, she’s now come to the shocking realization that “We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.” In other words, she’s just as crass, self-serving, and ethically compromised as a host of other pols on either side of the aisle. Imagine Curmie’s surprise.
But what really fascinates me about this otherwise mundane case of amoral political ambition is not so much Haley’s unwillingness to tell the truth to Trump, but rather that she presents as a defense for him the assertion that “to his core, he believes he was wronged. This is not him making it up.”
There is, to be blunt, no conceivable way that all of those election officials, secretaries of state from both parties, and judges at all levels—including Trump-appointed members of SCOTUS—could all be part of a gigantic conspiracy to end the Trumpian regime. There may have been a minor glitch here or there, but there is literally no evidence (not to be confused with claims of ultimately illusory evidence) that Joe Biden wasn’t ethically and legally entitled to literally every electoral vote he received, or that Donald Trump was within hailing distance of a popular vote victory. Ah, but, you see, he really thought he’d won.
There are three possibilities here. 1). Trump knew better all along, but is sufficiently narcissistic and traitorous that he just didn’t care. 2). Trump surrounded himself with a gaggle of sycophants who actively (or in Haley’s own case) passively withheld the truth from the President of the United States. Shouldn’t there be penalties for that? And, of course, Trump would have to be stupid enough to believe in the “alternate facts” spun by his yes-men (and -women). 3). Trump is so distanced from reality that he really does believe, of his own accord and without the fawning support of his minions, that he won the election. Ambassador Haley would have us believe this version. I’m willing to do so, but only if she’ll call it by its proper name: the insanity defense.
So we’re back at intentions, again. Donald Trump isn’t really lying, you see. “He believes it” might be a good enough rationale in Haley’s mind for Trump’s outrageous and seditious behavior, but such a claim requires… wait for it… context. And the only context that gets the former President off the hook for seriously damaging the integrity and, nearly as importantly, the perceived integrity of the electoral system is the assertion that he’s batshit crazy. He can think he’s a butterfly for all Curmie cares: there is, after all, as much truth to that belief as there is to the claim that he won the election. But if Trump honestly believes that he was acting to protect democracy, he needs to be kept away from sharp implements and housed in a nice room with padded walls.
It is perfectly possible to great harm with the best of intentions. It is also possible to do great harm by ignoring the context of an action. Curmie finds himself grateful to Confucius, whose disdain for generalities is vindicated yet again.
