Any of you who’ve been around here for more than a minute knows that I am a huge fan of the tv show The Good Place. I mean, heartwarming, side-splittingly funny comedy about moral philosophy? It’s like they wrote it for me.
I’m also a huge fan of the showrunner, Mike Schur, who wrote a hilarious, compassionate book about the basics of moral philosophy called How to be Perfect: The Correct Answer To Every Moral Question. I came across an interview this week with Schur on the podcast Metaphysical Milkshake, hosted by Rainn Wilson and Reza Aslan, that is so delightful I had to share it with you.
For those who don’t know (or don’t remember), Wilson stared as Dwight Schrute in the U.S. version of The Office and Aslan is an Iranian-American, Muslim political commentator, religious scholar, and author of a host of books, among them Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.
You might wonder how Dwight Schrute and the Muslim author of Zealot might end up hosting a podcast together, but that’s when you have to remember that Wilson is an actor. An actor who, in his real life, follows the Ba’hai faith and is a deeply thoughtful person. Who knew? Not me.
In their rambling, laugh-filled, thoughtful conversation they queried Schur about which, if any, of the major schools of moral philosophy he aligns himself with. It turns out, if Schur has a guy, it’s definitely Aristotle. According to Aristotle, there are any number of basic virtues— honesty, kindness, courage, etc.— that we can all agree on. We can also all have them if we simply practice. Through this practice, on balance, we become better and better people over time.
You will not be surprised to find out that Aristotle is my guy, too. The whole argument I’m making here is that integrity is a practice. It’s not an identity, a one-and-done, or an immutable aspect of anyone’s character. It’s not a rule that if you break you are doomed to lack integrity forever. It’s just something we work on repetitively over the course of our whole lives. Sometimes we knock it out of the park. For awhile we might strike out every time we come up to bat. But we keep getting in line to try again anyway because over time we get better. We sink into our stance more easily. We recognize the pitch that’s coming at us. We hit the ball more squarely, more often.
(How did I end up in the middle of a baseball metaphor? Blame the sunshine and warm weather. Or maybe I’m just craving a hotdog?)
In the second half of the conversation, the three talked at length about the usefulness of Aristotle’s approach in modern times. The complexity of the world has spiraled way beyond what any of us can fully understand these days. Every choice we make functions within such a vast web of interconnected impacts that we can’t rightly know what happens as the result of every choice. From a moral standpoint, given this incomprehensible complexity, we’re doomed to fail. This could be an argument for throwing up our hands and saying nothing matters, but Schur (and I) would argue, along with Aristotle, that succeeding was never the point. Practicing was the point. Practicing means you keep trying and get marginally better over time, but you’re never perfect and who cares? Nobody’s perfect.
The whole exercise may be somewhat futile, but what are the alternatives? Nihilism or perfectionism? No, and no thank you very much.
The thing that was missing for me, though, in their conversation about the importance of simply continuing to try was some explicit discussion of intent versus impact. Schur’s admonishment that what we intend to do is the most important thing (and so we just keep trying) is a treacherous place to end the conversation. Why? Because there’s nothing that folks who don’t want to relinquish their power love more than falling back on “I didn’t mean to” as an excuse for their shitty behavior.
Focusing solely on intentions cements the status quo. White people don’t have to actually confront their racism because they didn’t intend to be racist. Men don’t have to confront their sexism and misogyny because they’re just trying to be a nice guy. No one is transphobic, of course. They’re just trying to keep all of those cis-kids safe from one defenseless, but clearly deeply dangerous, trans kid in a locker room. You get what I’m saying.
Your intentions matter. They are the only thing you have complete control over. But your impact matters, too, and you’re responsible for it even though you don’t have complete control over it.
This is one of the central conundrums of our human existence. (See also: the number of good things there are to watch on television existing in inverse proportion to how many channels you have access to.) In order to exist successfully as social creatures in a web of relationships we have to be responsible for our impact on the people around us even though we can’t entirely control for what that impact is. This is nutty, sometimes maddening, and occasionally even cause for despair, but it’s still true.
If what you intended and what actually happened don’t line up you don’t just get to throw up your hands and say, Your response is on you. That’s not my problem.
If you’re practicing integrity, it is your problem. Not because practicing integrity means you can control other people, or somehow find the magic trick that allows you to avoid conflict, or even that you never fuck up. But if your intention and your impact aren’t lining up and you’re practicing integrity then you have some introspection to do.
Is your conscious intention being undermined by some unconscious beliefs or emotional material you need to wrestle with? Are you promising something that you can’t or shouldn’t given the reality of your capacity or resources? Does the weight of responsibility for your impact feel overwhelming, so it’s easier to proclaim it the other person’s burden? Is there work to be done in the relationship on trust and vulnerability so everyone can bear to admit when intention and impact diverge?
It’s worth noting at this point that you exist in relationship to all sorts of people, some of whom you don’t even like. The father of your children who thinks he no longer owes you anything. The sibling who drinks too much and acts out at holidays. The neighbor who starts mowing their lawn at 6 AM on a Saturday. The person who cut you off pulling into the parking spot you wanted. The woman who rolls her eyes every time you speak up at a meeting. Your impact exists in the space between you and other people. The farther apart you are from them, the more space you’re responsible for that you can’t entirely control. In these cases, sometimes the best you can do is keep your side of the divide super clean— clarify your intentions, manage your emotions as best you can, stay honest and respectful and kind. Try again next time. On balance, you’re doing great.
Getting your intentions and impact into alignment can be hard. It requires deep self-inquiry and a willingness to admit mistakes, lack of knowledge, or the existence of bias. Acknowledging we aren’t always the person we mean to be is never, ever a fun experience. But, like everything we practice, we do get better with repetition. We stop choking on fear every time we screw up because we’ve seen the sky not fall enough times. We hold other people’s imperfections with humor and kindness long enough that it starts to occur to us that maybe we deserve the same grace. We gather the people around us that help us remember why it’s worth doing the work.
Thanks for gathering in together with me, friends. You make it worth it.
Sunday is Mother’s Day! I’m sending love to all of you who nurture— however, whoever or whatever you care for. I will be spending my Mother’s Day traveling to Buffalo, NY to sing with my choir, the Dorothy Cotton Jubilee Singers, at a community gathering honoring the ten people killed in a mass shooting in a grocery store there a year ago. Unless you live in or near Buffalo I can’t invite you to that gathering. I can, however, share the livestream for our kick-off concert tonight, 7 PM EST, at Ithaca College.
And if you can, on Sunday afternoon think of Buffalo and all the other communities grieving lives ended too soon by gun violence. All those babies and once-were-babies lost to all of us. Remember that Mother’s Day started as an anti-war holiday and do what you can to honor that history, please.
Love, love, love to you,
Asha
Thanks for another thoughtful piece. It immediately reminded me of something from Keisha Bush, in a "Lion's Roar" article. In my mind I just replace Buddhism with whatever -ism has captured me at the moment. ---
"Within Buddhism, we’re taught not to identify as Buddhists, but to see ourselves as practitioners of Buddhism... This shift in language from “being” to “practicing” is slight yet powerful. Because I do not call myself Buddhist, I do not identify as Buddhist; therefore, I cannot use my Buddhist identity as a shield to hide behind, nor a weapon to harm or judge others.
"The only way a practitioner of Buddhism can “be” Buddhist is to practice Buddhism, and to practice something infers a few ideas:
1. Practice is a form of action.
2. Practice infers that I can always improve.
3. To practice is to say there is no endpoint to the activity that I am practicing.
4. To practice is to include rest as no one can be active nonstop without pause."
“We hold other people’s imperfections with humor and kindness long enough that it starts to occur to us that maybe we deserve the same grace.”
❤️❤️❤️