Earning Social Respect and Moral Rectitude

 Society gets to choose what is right, what is wrong, and is often the source of our moral compass. Society has the power to shame a person who does wrong, and a normal person would feel bad. I was watching a video of the judge, who explained that part of the contribution of punishment of criminals was for "societal retribution".

One such example I remember of social was through the "telling an offensive joke" situation. This occurred to me when I was in the 7th grade, and I had told a joke to 3-4 people, perhaps expecting a laugh. What I received, somewhat unexpectedly, however, was an unimpressed reply “That’s not funny, Ravit.” The point I’m trying to make is how I’ve realized that in such an incident which make us as vulnerable as joke-telling does, we rely upon the social approval of others. Because a large amount of control resides in society, we all have a mutual interdependence upon each other.

However, I feel that this network of human beings are not all connected with each other, and that humanity is predisposed to disagreement and formation of groups, factions, parties, teams, whatever name works best. The idea seems universal to me, a common example of which is war. Whether it be boys vs girls in tag, or international military conflict, these groups tend to evoke antagonistic feelings.

A downside of this antagonism that I believe I’ve encountered is making the mistake of generalizing someone in a particular group to the entire group, and projecting my insecurity and hatred towards that individual. Such a situation occurred to me in April of 2020, where I had written a rather aggressive comment on a colleagues blog post. I had done so anonymously, or so I thought. A few days later, the comment was taken down by my school dean. Now, I think the idea of whether or not I should have written the comment, and what I would have changed is also an interesting discussion, I feel describing my reaction and my embarrassment is more pertinent for this discussion.

Receiving the message from my dean gave me a sense of immediate embarrassment mixed with panic, partially because my dean was someone I had respected, and whose respect I feel I had earned. Feeling that I had lost that social reputation was likely a factor that contributed to this displeasure, and it probably didn’t help that my parents were CC’d on that email, as a means of additional disciplinary consequence. All in all, if I had to guess the effect it had on me, it made me more wary to uphold my reputation for those around me, as well as compelled me to take a stance regarding who I was.

The reason I felt I had to take a step towards answering this question is my realization that in order to earn the respect, trust, and company of those around me, I would have to create some sense of predictability about myself. Such a situation of large magnitude is that of a courthouse. In a courthouse, you and your actions are, quite literally, being judged before a judge and jury. In order to , therefore, earning the respect and sympathy of society is crucial in such a situation. I guess that is so because people will not protect what they do not sympathize with. (I don’t see very many bacteria lives activists out there)

I have a friend who, often at unpredictable times and intervals, became angry. He’d unleash his anger in a way that hurt me emotionally. And, while I suppose one’s feelings are mostly unimportant to in relation to the widespread impact of their actions, they are not a fun person to be around.

One caveat that I’d like to express before concluding this section is when society is better ignored, rather than trusted. I feel that such man vs society conflicts are quite common in literature in movies, a few of which that come to mind include Shrek and Anne of Green Gables. In Anne of Green Gables (the TV series), one situation with which I’ve experienced parallels in my life is the scene in which Anne writes her piece about the role of women. What resonated with me most about that scene is the nature of the dichotomy between Anne’s fervent passion and society’s disapproval. While I found myself disagreeing with Anne’s ideas (it was often not a very pleasant watch for me, possibly because of my skepticism behind the motives of the creation of such a series and the selection of dialogue), the difficulty of encountering embarassment appealed to me. The society portrayed in the TV Series in that time was so radically different that Anne, whose ideas and attitudes were met with criticism, would, as far as I can tell, receive plethora of encouragement for similar ideas, at least to the society that I am exposed to (one that I know to be different in different regions of the world, such as India).