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Spitting On Schoolgirls: How Religion Makes Us Submoral
Friday, April 20th, 2012 09:39 amA while ago I was intrigued, and more than a little disgusted, by an article about Ultra-Orthodox Jews hurling abuse and spitting at a schoolgirl who they thought was immodestly dressed, even though the girl was herself from an Orthodox family, this was a religious school, and her dress would make Amish girls look like sluts. I am used to the idea that certain people of a religious persuasion are overly concerned with how much skin their neighbours reveal (motes in eyes and all that) but this was so extreme as to be not just comic but creepy. We are talking here about an eight-year-old girl being castigated as a whore. Does that mean Ultra-Orthodox Jews are a bunch of paedophiles? I think not, but in that case, why do they demand that little children cover themselves up as though they could wreck marriages just by hanging around the school gates?
I tried to explain in my previous post, by analogy with Harry Potter, how religion can make us more moral. A brief look at history can also show us how religion makes us capable of monstrosities in the name of morality. But this is something different. The people spitting on schoolgirls are not, I think, in the mold of Torquemada, who tortured and killed from a fervent moral conviction. This seems to be more submoral, a word which has been used in various ways, but which I take to mean the following: a submoral person is one who, while having moral intuitions and being capable of moral reasoning, elects to let them atrophy in favour of a set of quasi-moral principles for behaviour. Of course we all do this a lot of the time because thought is hard; we might even argue that it is the normal state of tradition-bound societies. What is interesting here is that the people concerned have thought very carefully about their religion; they are just refusing to reason about the moral basis of their actions. What we have is religious kitsch, by which I mean not plastic Virgin Mary table lamps or glow-in-the-dark crucifixes but a certain attitude to religion which is in a way a failed version of what I described in the Harry Potter post. To explain this, we need three tools: moral reasoning and intuition, the idea of kitsch, and the view of religion I put forward in the last post.
Philosophers and neurologists may debate endlessly about the nature and validity of moral intuitions, but it is plain that nearly all of us have them; not to have feelings that certain things are right or wrong is pathological. We react at a gut level against murder, incest, and torturing cute puppies. We also have moral reasoning, by which we argue from general principles to specific cases and strive (usually unsuccessfully) for consistency in our moral judgments. This is what enables us to decide that gay people have rights even if we may personally find the idea of gay sex totally icky, or that it is as bad to torture your enemies as it is to torture cute puppies. Again, everyone has this capacity, albeit in varying degrees. Both moral intuition and moral reasoning can be wrong, but we are generally better off with them. To be submoral, then, is to refuse to use both of these moral faculties. The submoral person may even do the right thing, but by chance, because the particular moral code they have, for non-moral reasons, adopted, happens to prescribe it.
How kitsch applies to morality and religion is less straightforward. I'm using it in a broader sense than just tacky art, of course. I actually started thinking about it in a broader context while proof-reading a book written by my friend Ulrich Steinvorth. Steinvorth examines the idea of kitsch put forward by Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a long passage which I'd skimmed over at the time because I find polemics in novels irritating, and besides, I was more interested in seeing how far things would go with Tereza and Sabina. The key idea is where Sabina describes the reaction to a sentimental painting:
Steinvorth expands this idea:
Kitsch is a lot more than tacky art. Steinvorth argues that when we descend into kitsch, we stop doing things for their own sake (which is the theme of his book) and start doing them for our sake. When we go "awww" at a fluffy kitten, our focus is on the kitten; when we hang a picture of fluffy kittens on the wall, our focus is on ourselves. We are not saying "Look, a fluffy kitten!" but "Look, a person who thinks fluffy kittens are adorable!"
To apply this to religion, let's recap the pragmatic view I described earlier: a religion combines a vision of what people should be, a set of practices designed to bring us closer to this, and a supportive fantasy; i.e., a system of beliefs which motivate and provide meaning to the first two elements. When it works like this, whether in its liberal or literalist forms, the practice of religion may often be wrong, but it is not kitsch. The focus is on the belief, but with the aim of becoming a better person, however the religion defines "better". Torquemada may have been totally evil and depraved, but he was not in the least kitschy; his problem was in his view that torturing and burning people fell within the parameters of being a good person. Religious kitsch leads to more mundane, but much more widespread badness; it is what we could call "religiosity".
Artistic kitsch focuses on the feeling of satisfaction that we get from having certain feelings, which is what leads to its disregard of aesthetic standards. Similarly, religious kitsch moves the focus from moral or spiritual behaviour to the feeling of satisfaction we get at feeling like a moral or spiritual person. The Voodoo syncretist who puts a plastic Virgin Mary lamp on their altar because they think it works magic is not being kitschy; the good Catholic who puts it on their bedside table may well be. The lamp says "See, I am a good Catholic who loves the virgin Mary!" but this is not mere show because we say it to ourselves as much as to others. We all do this to some extent, but when it becomes the main focus, then we become submoral, because we have abandoned moral reasoning, and even perhaps moral intuition, in favour of feeling moral about being moral.
This is why people can spit at schoolgirls. They probably are not demented Torquemada types who, after consulting with their conscience, really, truly think an eight-year-old is the Whore of Babylon. They are simply being spiritually kitschy.
I tried to explain in my previous post, by analogy with Harry Potter, how religion can make us more moral. A brief look at history can also show us how religion makes us capable of monstrosities in the name of morality. But this is something different. The people spitting on schoolgirls are not, I think, in the mold of Torquemada, who tortured and killed from a fervent moral conviction. This seems to be more submoral, a word which has been used in various ways, but which I take to mean the following: a submoral person is one who, while having moral intuitions and being capable of moral reasoning, elects to let them atrophy in favour of a set of quasi-moral principles for behaviour. Of course we all do this a lot of the time because thought is hard; we might even argue that it is the normal state of tradition-bound societies. What is interesting here is that the people concerned have thought very carefully about their religion; they are just refusing to reason about the moral basis of their actions. What we have is religious kitsch, by which I mean not plastic Virgin Mary table lamps or glow-in-the-dark crucifixes but a certain attitude to religion which is in a way a failed version of what I described in the Harry Potter post. To explain this, we need three tools: moral reasoning and intuition, the idea of kitsch, and the view of religion I put forward in the last post.
Philosophers and neurologists may debate endlessly about the nature and validity of moral intuitions, but it is plain that nearly all of us have them; not to have feelings that certain things are right or wrong is pathological. We react at a gut level against murder, incest, and torturing cute puppies. We also have moral reasoning, by which we argue from general principles to specific cases and strive (usually unsuccessfully) for consistency in our moral judgments. This is what enables us to decide that gay people have rights even if we may personally find the idea of gay sex totally icky, or that it is as bad to torture your enemies as it is to torture cute puppies. Again, everyone has this capacity, albeit in varying degrees. Both moral intuition and moral reasoning can be wrong, but we are generally better off with them. To be submoral, then, is to refuse to use both of these moral faculties. The submoral person may even do the right thing, but by chance, because the particular moral code they have, for non-moral reasons, adopted, happens to prescribe it.
How kitsch applies to morality and religion is less straightforward. I'm using it in a broader sense than just tacky art, of course. I actually started thinking about it in a broader context while proof-reading a book written by my friend Ulrich Steinvorth. Steinvorth examines the idea of kitsch put forward by Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a long passage which I'd skimmed over at the time because I find polemics in novels irritating, and besides, I was more interested in seeing how far things would go with Tereza and Sabina. The key idea is where Sabina describes the reaction to a sentimental painting:
Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.
Steinvorth expands this idea:
First, we may wonder why the picture of fluffy kittens or a sunset is kitsch while real fluffy kittens or a sunset that look exactly like the pictures are not. Similarly, a Gothic cathedral is often great art, but the same cathedral rebuilt in our time is felt as kitschy. The reason is the picture or copy is made to trigger not so much a first emotion as a second one that indulges in our agreement with what we consider all mankind’s love of kittens or the love of Gothic cathedrals by all people of our ilk.
Kitsch is a lot more than tacky art. Steinvorth argues that when we descend into kitsch, we stop doing things for their own sake (which is the theme of his book) and start doing them for our sake. When we go "awww" at a fluffy kitten, our focus is on the kitten; when we hang a picture of fluffy kittens on the wall, our focus is on ourselves. We are not saying "Look, a fluffy kitten!" but "Look, a person who thinks fluffy kittens are adorable!"
To apply this to religion, let's recap the pragmatic view I described earlier: a religion combines a vision of what people should be, a set of practices designed to bring us closer to this, and a supportive fantasy; i.e., a system of beliefs which motivate and provide meaning to the first two elements. When it works like this, whether in its liberal or literalist forms, the practice of religion may often be wrong, but it is not kitsch. The focus is on the belief, but with the aim of becoming a better person, however the religion defines "better". Torquemada may have been totally evil and depraved, but he was not in the least kitschy; his problem was in his view that torturing and burning people fell within the parameters of being a good person. Religious kitsch leads to more mundane, but much more widespread badness; it is what we could call "religiosity".
Artistic kitsch focuses on the feeling of satisfaction that we get from having certain feelings, which is what leads to its disregard of aesthetic standards. Similarly, religious kitsch moves the focus from moral or spiritual behaviour to the feeling of satisfaction we get at feeling like a moral or spiritual person. The Voodoo syncretist who puts a plastic Virgin Mary lamp on their altar because they think it works magic is not being kitschy; the good Catholic who puts it on their bedside table may well be. The lamp says "See, I am a good Catholic who loves the virgin Mary!" but this is not mere show because we say it to ourselves as much as to others. We all do this to some extent, but when it becomes the main focus, then we become submoral, because we have abandoned moral reasoning, and even perhaps moral intuition, in favour of feeling moral about being moral.
This is why people can spit at schoolgirls. They probably are not demented Torquemada types who, after consulting with their conscience, really, truly think an eight-year-old is the Whore of Babylon. They are simply being spiritually kitschy.
