Moral Generosity

Or: After Sin

One of the biggest pillars of any personal growth program is figuring out why you do the things that you do. For example if you want to quit drinking your ass off then you need to do some digging to figure out *why* you’re drinking your ass off and then figure out some new way of dealing with those conditions. Fill in the blank with pretty much any behavior that you want to change. 

A big part of progressive politics has become deeply concerned with peeling back the curtain on what’s really motivating people to do the things that they do, and this inquiry comes from a place of moral suspicion. Innocent-appearing activities and feelings are interrogated for not-so-innocent undercurrents and impulses. For example, are you passionate about your paid work? Do you find yourself going above and beyond what you committed to do? You might be what you claim to be, merely excited and engaged, or you may have internalized the exploitative logic of late-stage capitalism. In this line of inquiry there are all sorts of -isms and -phobias that we have all internalized and reproduce in our innocent-seeming daily thoughts and (inter)actions, all sorts of evil that has taken on renewed life by denying its existence. 

The existence of each -ism and -phobia and their presence behind benign human actions isn’t something to answer here - what interests me is the general move of looking into innocent things for guilty causes. 

This phenomenon interests me because my personal insight and moral growth has happened in the opposite direction, namely by looking into guilty things for innocent causes. 

It didn’t really help me to believe that I lied a lot because I was a corrupt and horrible person who got off on doing evil deeds. It did help me to look at lying and ask what I got out of it, what needs beyond the lying were being met (feeling safe, feeling strong, feeling in control), and asking what else I could do to meet those needs beyond the bad behavior that I was trying to quit. 

Applying moral generosity to myself gave me a momentum and force for change that I just couldn’t conjure otherwise. I became eager to explore myself and my behaviors, excited by the factual discoveries that awaited me. If I was just a broken sinner, then what was the point? If I just had to lie and had to hurt people to meet some basic need to do those things then I really didn’t have any hope of changing anything about my life. I could maybe stop myself from doing bad things through sheer force of will, but I’d be exhausted and frustrated for the rest of my life. But! If I could figure out the morally-neutral needs animating the bad behavior then I could work to create a life where those needs were satisfied in a way that left me feeling healthy and connected with other people. Knowledge disclosed new possibilities rather than a future of humiliation and frustration. 

What helped me the most was to assert that there are no bad impulses, only bad strategies. 

There was nothing *wrong* with me, deep down. I just had a set of strategies that had didn’t work, that I’d acquired out of some sort of desperation and could now set aside having recognized this and seeking the proper support.

Is this factually True? I don’t know, and I won’t argue for it right now. All I do know is that things became a hell of a lot easier and happier once I started believing it.