In Defense of "Moral Scolds"
Who will accuse the accusers?
“Audrey, Audrey" I hear you all saying. Of course you would come out in favor of the moral scold a week after coming out against the hot girl. They’re classic foils! Everyone knows moral scolds are just bitter, pinched-nose shriveled up cat ladies who are envious of hotties. Look in your heart, Audrey, you know it to be true! Let the hot girls be hot! Stop scolding the hot girls, Audrey!
To that I say, okay. Fair enough. I just have a few semantic points to make before I go.
What is a “moral scold"?
One of the major walls I kept ramming my head into in my years brawling online was the baffling accusations of “schoolmarm” “finger wagging” “pearl-clutching” “performative” “longhousing1” “moralism” that beset me every time I protested anything on ethical or moral grounds. I found this line of attack intensely frustrating at first, because it made it so that any moral critique could be discarded in an instant. I knew I wasn’t being disingenuous. I knew I wasn’t wagging my finger just to enforce petty rules, nor was I wagging my finger from a position of mainstream liberal ethics. So why was I so easily dismissed on these terms? It erased an entire dimension of the world under the guise of looking past the surface and seeing cold reality.
This dismissal is especially attractive in the wake of decades of liberal posturing2. There is an air of righteous justice to anti-woke scolding, and it feeds on deflating supposed self-righteousness in the same way woke-scolding fed on failed purity tests. Reverse-scolding, like vice-signaling, flatters the cynic, protects in-group comfort and feels egalitarian, all at the same time. In reality, it is just the pendulum of punition swinging in the other direction. Though there are signs that this reactionary mode is getting old too, I see a long arc of destruction ahead of us before we swing back again. Moral language - which attempts to express the real substance of right and wrong - will suffer the most.
What moral critique actually is
When we allow others to treat moral language as ornamental rather than foundational, we lose the glue that binds us together as a society. I don’t just mean pedestrian rule-enforcement - I’ve seen plenty of people defend “Karens” on the basis of purely transactional/material norm-maintenance (stay in line so that the line moves in an orderly fashion, etc.). This accepts the terms of the moral skeptic, who - consciously or not - replaces the authority of moral criticism with pure force, tribal loyalty and/or the invisible hand of the market. I’m not here to argue for that at all. Moral language serves a deeper function. It appeals to conscience; it describes the invisible structure of right and wrong we all bump into; it allows us to evaluate actions outside of the language of transaction and force. We cannot allow moral language to be diluted, or we lose our ability to act as a thorn in the side of power and describe the world accurately in all its complexity.
The cost of dismissing moral language
Ironically, the act of dismissing moral language is in itself a moral move. It declares a norm (“don’t moralize”), signals a virtue (anti-dogmatism), expresses a distinct worldview of nihilism (“good and evil are impossible to define”) and enacts it with pure force (block all critique by declaring it suspect). Cynicism - not moral criticism - is the true tool of norm maintenance. Moral criticism indicates care and the possibility of change (someone bothered to say something!), but moral skepticism contributes to stasis by reducing all moral language to performance and removing the ability to make any moral claims. Rather than policing the message, the moral skeptic polices the messenger. The message doesn’t even get oxygen. This response is much more severe than the strictures of secular liberalism, which asks believers to check their religion at the door before making any moral claims. While the secular liberal may ask you to translate or dilute your conviction so that it’s publicly accessible, he still allows and enables moral debate (sort of a Catch-22 move if he doesn’t believe in an ultimate moral authority, but that’s an essay for another time). The moral nihilist by contrast demands silence from any who would try to make moral claims in the first place.
What we should do about it
It’s hard to own being a moralist. I used to be very easily cowed (I still kind of am, or else I wouldn’t be writing this) whenever people called me a prude, which is not exactly the same thing as a moral scold, but it’s close enough. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of being a prude. I felt quite comfortable in my prude identity. I just knew how quickly people would stop listening and stop seeing me for me, the second anyone found reason to label me a naif (at best; shrill pearl-clutching nag at worst). I knew I could either command respect as a peer or I could let the full force of my inner life be known. No in-between.
I never handled this tension very well. I was impatient, easily frustrated, and figured my appearance and circumstances (homeschooled) sort of gave my inner life away from the jump. I knew I was a goner the second anyone saw the Bible app on my phone or my mom picking me up from community college. I remember feeling then, “What am I hiding for? This is who I really am. Let’s blow it up.”
“Blowing it up” is not necessarily the healthiest response (see: years of internet brawling), but it’s certainly an improvement from hiding forever. Chaotically but surely, I’ve fumbled my way into the mind that the only response to moral skepticism is to double down. Do not appeal to emotion. Do not engage with false accusation. Say what you mean. Let them misinterpret you as you speak plainly. Never cede moral language to any enemy of the truth. Karens and wokescolds and hall monitors are all bad actors who enforce polite-society rules for their own sake or wield crocodile tears in an effort to consolidate and retain power. None of these archetypes are allowed genuine conviction, and so none deserve the benefit of the doubt. They are just as much enemies of truth as the accusers, and there is no reward in owning their sins or speaking for their identity.
At the same time, the existence of hypocrisy does not negate true conviction, nor does it automatically cede moral high ground to those who would call every moral appeal hypocrisy. In all their fuss about performance and power, moral skeptics have forgotten the possibility that “cold reality” includes the moral dimension. It is more important than ever to speak for it clearly, directly, and without shame - even if you grow old and shriveled-up and pinch-nosed.
Two rules for using moral language in a principled way:
Don’t use morality as a cudgel, either to enforce superficial, petty rules or to elevate yourself
Don’t let false accusers scare you from speaking up at all
Thank you 2 beautiful angel and warrior of righteousness
for inspiring this post.Housekeeping: I have turned on paid posts now and plan on posting once weekly, with two free and two paywalled posts a month. Expect to see the first subscriber exclusive next week! Thank you so much for supporting my writing.
To be fair, this flavor of my brawling lies mainly with the Right
Don’t get me started on the misogynistic component
I'm reading City of God now and Augustine is just constantly going off on the moral degradation in Roman society and honestly it's such a breath of fresh air. It's so stifling to spend so much time in spaces where the moral dimension is systematically excluded in favor of every kind of petty outrage. It seems like the only kinds of judgement that are acceptable now are the ones that have been consolidated along party lines. We hide within our tribes and spout platitudes and safely avoid any criticism that could possibly reach the heart. To speak with true moral conviction puts one in a vulnerable position both by staking one's own integrity against the accusation of hypocrisy and at the same time inviting crossfire from all sides. Thank you for writing about this.
Die a hot girl, or live long enough to see yourself become the moral scold