Mere Ubuntu

[Huh. Funny how quickly a week can go by between posts. A lot's gone in the last week, some of which I may share. Or not...]

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[In the recent uproar over Joint Chiefs Chairman General Peter Pace's declaration that homosexuality is immoral (and that he opposes repeal of the idiotic Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy on that basis), there have been demands from the usual suspects for an apology. In turn, others have said that an apology would be insufficient since it would be so obviously insincere. (No calls for him to go into rehab, as yet...) So far, he's admitted that the comments were inappropriate in that they conveyed his personal views, rather than those of the government whose policy it's his job to execute.]

[Me, I think he should resign, but I'm not holding my breath. This government's idea of what constitutes bigotry is so far from mine that I try not to spend too much time getting upset at the yawning divide. What did strike me is at least one opinion stating that an apology would be "mere etiquette," a nicety without meaning.]

[You may have ascertained by now that I think there's a lot more to etiquette than which fork to use. I'm a pretty fanatical devotee of Miss Manners, who has posited a comprehensive philosophy of behavior that basically says that if we truly followed the rules of etiquette, there would be no need for laws. In some ways, it's a more sophisticated version of that now-trite "Everything I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten" thingy that used to be on every guidance counselor's wall ten years ago.]

[I took only one philospophy class as an undergrad, and I remember little of it, so none of the blazingly obvious theory I'm about to essay comes from a book. (Never mind that it's arguable that all my law courses were also heavy in philosophy.) It occurs to me that the lines between etiquette, morality, and law are an illusion. There's just a spectrum of duty whose only variation over time is enforcement. In some places and times, what may be a moral law up to individual or subcultural interpretation may become a civic requirement, or vice versa. Similarly, what one culture sees as a moral imperative may become a matter of "mere etiquette."]

[In any case, it's all arbitrary, and any distinctions between the various categories are subject to change. One ignores them at one's peril (which will vary), but it's a mistake to see any rule as qualitatively immutable. You can look at it from the point of view of what can be gotten away with (the Eleventh Commandment being "Don't get caught"); or, you can look at it as participation in life that always involves other people. If "hell is other people," then we're in hell, and there is No Exit. But maybe we're not in hell.]

[Speaking of law school, I first heard of the concept of ubuntu in my 2001 Contracts class, taught by a man who hated the very concept of contracts. (There was a lot of anti-law rhetoric at my law school, for which I'm eternally grateful.) I looked it up on the above-linked Wikipedia article this morning, and was interested to note that Bill Clinton used it at the 2006 U.K. Labour Party conference.]

[Since in the mid-90s Bill and Hill flirted briefly with, then seemingly abandoned, another of my Contracts professor's favorite philosophies (i.e., the Politics of Meaning, as hatched by him with his co-conspirator Michael Lerner over at this worthy magazine), I was happy to see another connection. Little happens in the Clintons' lives by accident, so I feel pretty sure he brought up ubuntu in an attempt to reconnect with the Politics of Meaning.]

[What's it all mean? Until we realize that we exist, are defined by, and thrive always and only in relation to other people, malarkey like "the Pace Doctrine" will continue to be put out there and be thought acceptable by a large segment of the population. I'm not waiting for this utopian day to arrive, but meanwhile, I take some comfort in knowing that today's etiquette breach may be tomorrow's unthinkable moral failure.]

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