Is Deference Gone for Good?

Part I: Akrasia

I think we can agree that we are a divided people. It may be one of the last issues on which we agree, but that does not make it any less true. As divided people, we tend to view those who hold different values and beliefs as the enemy; we offer them no respect, no friendship, and certainly no deference, which prompts my question: Is deference gone for good? Does its absence divide us or are we divided because of its absence? I should probably offer my understanding since the term is one that can now mean many things. 

Deference, for me, is a posture of respect for others and their judgements or opinions, especially those with whom we differ. It is a humility of self and a courteous regard for others. Deference extends beyond a concern for a person; it is also a concern for that person’s reputation and character. It is careful consideration of one’s own thoughts and opinions to avoid gossip, slander, and false accusations. I also see it as embracing difference in such a way as to respect it in both people and ideas. Today, difference divides, which may explain why deference is disappearing. This situation is unhealthy because we have now been given the means to isolate ourselves into our own homogenous groups of sameness. Now, we not only avoid difference—we attack it. I recently read an article on Aristotle’s views on reason that presented an interesting perspective on all this. This series of posts will explore this line of thinking. 

The author began the article with a statement … that Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics was generally about practical thinking. While I hold a slightly different view, this idea of practical thinking does speak to my concerns regarding deference. The author suggested that practical thinking, according to Aristotle, was something that “we, as human beings, use to impact others by way of our reason.” It was this statement that garnered my attention because it was a statement rife with implications regarding reason. If Aristotle was right, and I believe that he was, then he has something to say regarding both reason and deference. Let’s begin with Aristotle’s semantics associated with practical thinking. He thought that any kind of thinking that required the “conceptualization of one of more actions” was considered practical thinking due, in part, to the movement of a thought to a physical action. This, for him, was the natural progression of practical thinking, which makes a cleaner distinction between it and cognition. 

According to the author, to understand Aristotle’s views on practical thinking, it is best to begin with the term, “akrasia,” which, for him, was acting against one’s better judgment. Aristotle saw akrasia as “lacking self-mastery; it is often translated as “weakness of will” or “incontinence,” which is an action against one’s better judgment or in accord with one’s own desires at the expense of a right decision, which tends to represent the general good. Could we also say, in a secondary sense, that akrasia is a lack of deference as well? Maybe. According to Aristotle, the failure to act against one’s better judgment for the sake of good was a conflict between reason and desire and a lack of self-control. It is the action that is key. Aristotle saw thinking that produced a physical act as the manifestation of thoughts to actions governed by beliefs and values, making practical thinking moral in nature. It was one’s beliefs and values that often determined when a thought became an action. To act for the good of others or for the general good at the expense of self was, for Aristotle, an element of practical thinking, and, for me, foundational to deference, because the implication is that both practical thinking and deference are moral in some way. However, there are those who would say that the same could be said of evil acts. They, too, are thoughts manifesting as acts, but their moral make up is, instead, immoral in nature. The point being that practical thinking is practical when its thoughts manifest as actions, but it is the nature of those actions that determine its moral makeup, which is where I see it impacting deference.   

I see deference disappearing from our culture and there are many reasons why. After reading this article, I have become convinced that the loss of practical thinking that is moral in nature could be one of those reasons. I believe one major contributor to this loss is technology and its many forms. It now provides the means to promote self while also attacking difference, which is not deference, but it is practical thinking. I believe Aristotle would agree that technology does contribute to this idea of akrasia. Today, most accusations are based upon one’s own perceptions and feelings. While I acknowledge that perceptions and feelings matter more today than they did yesterday, they are still personal and limited, especially when applied beyond oneself and in communal ways. In the past, it would be at great personal risk to apply one’s personal insecurities broadly, and yet today, those expressions seem to be more the norm. Modrak, the author, referenced that a consistent failure to act according to one’s better judgment or for the general good would seem irrational and maybe even criminal. These acts, regardless of their composite, are still moral in nature even if their foundation is more immoral than moral.  Too many of us determine truth according to our own perceptions and feelings with no concern for others or their perceptions and feelings. We often act on these thoughts, and it is this action that makes our thinking practical, but action alone does not determine good or bad in regard to the morality of our actions.  

Determining morality today has less to do with right and wrong and more to do with personal perceptions and feelings. When we use our own perceptions and feelings to determine moral goodness, we are using them as presuppositions—those beliefs that are foundational and guide all our other beliefs—but they remain personal preferences in support only of ourselves. This is problematic. In most cases, they are in direct contrast to our better judgment and to the general good because they are rooted in who we are. The idea that practical thinking is merely the conceptualization of a thought into an action is skewed, and only partially the issue. This, too, is due, in part, to technology. When we use a preference as a presupposition, which we do in social media, when it is actually a preference, we will eventually perceive our preferences as presuppositional thoughts and ideas due to our constant use of them in presuppositional ways. Yet, their sole purpose will still be self-proliferation, which, is, at best, a lack of deference and, at worst, a form of madness.

Let me stop here and explain why I made this logical leap. Acting against one’s better judgement for good is considered moral, but acting for self against what is good used to be considered immoral or amoral, but today, those distinctions have become cloudy. If practical thinking rooted in an individual’s selfish preference now functions as a presupposition, it would be thinking akin to asserting one’s selfish desires as one’s moral foundation, with those selfish desires governing all other beliefs. In the past, we saw selfish actions as evil. It was the villain who was the one who wanted to take over the city for personal gain, but it was the hero who saved the day. Why? Well, it was the hero who acted for the greater good on behalf of the general population at great personal expense. Today, perceptions of actions like these are no longer cut and dry. There is no longer consensus as to their nature.  

According to our nature, our personal perceptions and feelings, as good as they may be, are self-centered and meant to be vetted in community to determine their communal validity before they ever manifest as practical thinking. However, with the onset of technology, more and more perceptions and feelings are finding their way online into like-minded platforms and in like-minded communities. They are no longer vetted in communities by difference, but instead, they are confirmed in online communities of like-minded perceptions and feelings. The dialectic process (thesis – antithesis – synthesis) has all but disappeared in culture, and it is quickly disappearing in academia as well. The vetting process, used in the past to confirm the true from the false, has been replaced with homogenous confirmation celebrations that promote a group’s specific thoughts and ideas as true and right because, in such groups, they are. This is from where the divide comes. Both sides celebrating their thoughts and ideas as true and right.

I see deference, common sense, empathy, and the like developed and refined, in the past, by way of community. Community was necessary because, as social beings, we are meant to live in community with other human beings who will almost certainly be different. We will respect some, dislike others, and befriend others, but we will socialize with everyone and learn and develop inside these percolators of differences found in communities. It is statistically impossible for all our thoughts to be right and true all the time. However, today, we have become isolated, but the isolation I reference is not just a physical one. It has extended into a moral and psychological one, manifesting in forms of moral absolutism or cognitive bias. Living in such moral isolation is living inside one’s own moral rightness in a community of others who share our moral rightness. It is a moral isolation that is reinforced daily through a homogenous community. In this community, individual goals of self-preservation and self-proliferation and those preferences are shared and masquerade as morality. 

In any situation of conflict, the morality of the community will be right because its communal moral focus will always be itself, which makes every decision rooted in the protection and promotion of self. Morality, in this sense, is a priori, innate, and always emanating from within. Living in such a state is living in a created moral reality that is circular, producing more and more of its own morality, which is a vortex of sorts that pulls its members deeper into itself. This is the nature of a cult, but on a more macro-level. It is a belief system in alignment with Kant’s view of morality. That it was rooted in purely rational thought but separate from sensory experience. This view, as we will come to understand, contradicts Aristotle’s views on practical thinking and my views on deference.

This is the context for our next discussion which will focus on the differences between thoughts and perceptions and reason and desire and their relationship with practical thinking and deference. Until then …