Benefit of the Doubt

One thing about the blogosphere is that it makes it easy for a person to second-guess herself or make hasty judgements of others. The words written hastily linger, inviting repeated interpretations, along with those posted with deliberation. All too often, it is easy to confuse the two; to see something that's the result of long thought and soul-searching as the momentary bleat, to assume that the impulsive spew of the day is evidence of long-standing beliefs. That's one of the things that I've been thinking about this week, about how to tell the difference, and, perhaps just as importantly, how to convey the difference in the first place, how to make it clear that something that seems written on impulse is in fact grounded in a frame of mind built up over time, through exposure to repeated evidence.

It occurred to me that this inability to distinguish between the two on first glance may be related to larger patterns, to larger misapprehensions and misunderstandings. I began to wonder if there might be something underlying the inability of people to talk across lines of prejudice, of the failure of the now-empty rhetoric of tolerance.

What I realized is that, contrary to popular belief, what we want in a multi-cultural, diverse society is not tolerance, but the benefit of the doubt. Tolerance, oddly enough, makes it harder for such a society to thrive. This is because there are really two forms of tolerance, and neither leads to a good place. The first form is one that belongs in the family of cultural relativism. This is the attitude that all things are equal, that all things warrant equal consideration, that judgement of any sort is wrong. And so we get things like "Fair and Balanced" news, and "bipartisan" politics, and -- to my mind not always unwarranted -- accusations that the Left (one of the bigger proponents of tolerance) has no standards, no morals, because it is reluctant to condemn behaviors and beliefs that are destructive on the grounds that to do so would to be intolerant. The second form of tolerance has, oddly enough, its roots in intolerance; it operates under the attitude that, even though you think something is wrong, or inferior to your own beliefs and practices, you put up with it. A sense of superiority is at the heart of this form of tolerance -- so it should not be surprising that those who practice it are vulnerable to charges of eliltism, nor that if carried far enough, it tips over into intolerance.

Neither form, I dare say, leads to a good place.

Yet "tolerance" has become the banner of mainstream liberals. You see it operating in the confirmation hearings for Rice and Gonzales, where Democratic politicians clearly believe that upholding liberal values means putting up with things with which they obviously disapprove. You see it used to attack liberal causes and groups, when conservative religious groups decry the "immorality" of the left. You see it in conversations between liberals and conservatives, when the strongest weapon in the arsenal of the latter is to accuse the former of intolerance, a weapon that is strong because it cuts at the heart (many believe) of liberal identity.

What we need, however, is not the principle of tolerance. What we need is that of the benefit of the doubt.

We already are familiar with this principle, enshrined in our national belief that a person is innocent until proven guilty. The essence of the benefit of the doubt is that neither party is considered to hold an initial lock on truth; both doubter and doubted are in a state of question. Under this principle, it is the ethical obligation of the doubter to not only judge the object of doubt, but his or her doubts themselves. So if something seems dubious to me, for example, I need to ask not only, "Is this dubious?" but also "Why am I dubious? Are my feelings correct?" Moreover, this principle should also operate in regard to things that are initially viewed positively; one should ask whether one is accepting something just on the basis of one's assumptions, or whether there is, indeed, something that makes acceptance reasonable.

What this means is that an initial period of uncertainty is followed by a period of scrutiny and concludes with an assessment. Unlike tolerance, the benefit of the doubt operates on the idea that one should start from a position of openness and self-inquiry, and conclude with a decision about oneself and the other. This takes time, and deliberation, and focus. It is not, and cannot be, knee-jerk or impulsive, although the results of that decision process may later be expressed in such a fashion.

In the months and weeks to either side of the recent election, I have been accused of being intolerant, or of revealing myself as something other than I purport to be (liberal), for daring to doubt and question and challenge and condemn. The irony of this is that by doing so, such challengers reveal themselves to be operating within the framework of tolerance and intolerance. Unfortunately, it is a framework that has an inherent bias. Operating under the rubric of tolerance, liberals are deemed to fail if they express disapproval (because the liberal ideal is assumed to be tolerance). Simultaneously, critics of liberals shield themselves against liberal challenge by wearing the cloak of tolerance even as they make it clear that their views are superior.

Tolerance is a two-edged sword, and all too easily turned against those who wield it.

Let me be clear. I do NOT operate under the aegis of tolerance. I think and act according to the principle of the benefit of the doubt. It is an often painful practice, especially those times when during the period of judging I discover that I am smaller and pettier than I had believed. It is equally painful when I come to doubt something -- or someone -- I had initially viewed in a positive light, and, through further inquiry and experience, come to realize that my initial positive assumptions were wrong.

And this has happened. And I have been accused of being intolerant (and thus not a "real" liberal, and thus false). And I have been accused of making knee-jerk assumptions, since the internal deliberation and weighing of merits and demerits over weeks and months is invisible to outside eyes. And I have lost the friendship of people I'd given the benefit of the doubt to. Was I wrong to have given them the initial benefit of the doubt? No. But there are limits. The practice of the benefit of the doubt is not an excuse for never coming to a decision, for hovering in a paralysis of inaction. When the decision has been made, I must live with the consequences; this is why this practice requires far more thought and soul-searching than that of tolerance.

In yoga, they say that life itself is practice, an on-going effort to learn about oneself and to understand the consequences of one's actions. The goal is not a perfect performance, but to test and question and learn. A student who attempts a pose, however imperfectly, in a mindful way achieves more than the student who half-heartedly and lackadaisically assumes a pose that on the surface is beautiful but which on the inside is empty. Relying on tolerance to guide one through life is doing just that.

Practicing the benefit of the doubt is painful, and difficult, and yet... there is far more value in it than mere tolerance.

Comments

[Beatrice Perale]

Sometimes people who think they're very tolerant are actually very intolerant. They get self-righteous about how tolerant they are and jump on peopl who don't conform to their high standards before they've even listened to them. Is that part of what you mean?

[Rana]

Yes, it is.

To be honest, I've been accused of this. (Which is ironic, if you think about it.) All I can say is that the majority of my positions are the result of careful thought -- not all, I'm not perfect -- but it's not always easy to see this. This is something I should perhaps work on.

[Katherine]

A very thoughtful and thought provoking post. I particularly like the idea of always operating from a benefit of the doubt position.

In many ways, what you're describing here is what we rhetoricians try to teach: that disagreement among human beings is inevitable, and that disagreement, in fact, is a good thing because it allows people to make important and informed choices. The problem we face-and the one you identify here--is that people have come to see disagreement as somehow rude and undesirable and so often refuse to talk about things like religion or politics or other issues about which we disagree. And the problem is compunded by the fact that people tend to link a person's opinions to her identity and so any disagreement becomes a personal attack. (Hence the "you're intolerant" argument.) This habit of tying beliefs to identity has the effect of allowing people who hold a particular set of beliefs to ignore or mistreat people who don't share those beliefs, and to see such "nonbelievers" as inferior people who are unworthy of fair treatment; and their beliefs as unworthy of examination.

But for our democracy to survive, we must call the beliefs of others into question; we must bring them into the light for examination and negotiation; and we must do so with the awareness that during that process, our beliefs may change--all parties to a disagreement must be willing to be persuaded by thoughtful arguments.

Unfortunately, we live in a culture that refuses to use rhetoric to solve disagreements and instead resorts to violence and coercion.

[heading out]

I think what is becoming more of concern is that one can go into a debate now where there is a degree of what might, to a disinterested observer, seem to be a strong body of existing fact/evidence. But, given the emotional beliefs of the participants, this body of information is treated as having no greater validity than any other argument, and thus truth becomes of less relevance.

[Amanda]

It would be nice if there were tags we could use to signal, e.g., <off-the-cuff> or <premeditated>, wouldn't it? And some <irony> and <sarcasm> tags would be handy, too. :)

I like the "benefit of the doubt" principle because it implies that it's productive rather than destructive to encounter ideas you don't approve of. What's been driving me batshit crazy about some of the political discourse I've heard lately is the notion that people are too fragile to be exposed to any idea that doesn't fit their worldview, and that the presence of such ideas is somehow inherently harmful.

I do find that for me the risk is getting stuck in the doubting stage of things and going back and forth endlessly -- the paralysis of inaction you describe. Still, I'd rather bog down from time to time than go through life without weighing assumptions.

Like Katherine, I was reminded of teaching writing; I used to give my students much the same advice about constructing an argument. I wonder if the Benefit of the Doubt Principle can be connected with the perceived liberal bias of academia, seeing as careful self-questioning and examination of existing beliefs is the kind of thing teachers try to get students to do all the time, whether you call it the Socratic method, or critical thinking, or whatever.

[Jill Smith]

Wow. Yes. Absolutely. And as you might have guessed, I love the analogy to Yoga.

John Friend says that anything you do with 100% commitment is perfect. I like that and I repeat it to my class when they're getting frustrated about not being able to do things elegantly (yet). (Speaking of which, have you read "Yoga from the Inside Out" by Christina Sell?).

I have been driven to almost blinding rage by people who attempt to preach to me what my values "should" be because of where they perceive me to be on the "Liberal-Conservative" spectrum. Grrrr.

[Pronoia]

This makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks for explaining your thought process. It's helped me think through a problem a friend and I had noticed, where she kept ending up on the short end of the argumentative stick because she was committed to keeping an open mind and her boyfriend, a conservative, was willing to both make judgments and condemn her for making similar judgments.

Thanks. I do appreciate your commitment to carefully thinking through such things.

[MisterBS]

Rana's post and Pronoia's comment underline something for me that I should keep in mind myself: having an open mind doesn't mean you must eternally think that Everybody's Just Fine and Nobody Deserves to be Criticized.

I think I let people guilt me about coming down on something and calling a spade a spade.

[dale]

Oh, I loved this. I loathe "tolerance."

But to me "benefit of the doubt" is only the beginning. I want to think and feel my way so far into people's hearts that they make visceral, immediate sense to me, so that I can feel the dread and horror and contempt that my social and political and religious views inspire in people. I want to completely lose my own opinions for a space of time, and go traveling with theirs.

I am in no danger, I've found, of losing my opinions for good. If only. They stick like burrs :-)

[SB]

I like this very much. Thank you. It has given me a new way of thinking about things; shed some light on on confusion.

[LiL]

I've been meaning to respond to this, mainly to say that you have it absolutely right. Because your scheme includes the whole range of human emotion, anger and distress too, not just the hopped-up-on-happy-pills brave-new-world kind that according to TV and whatnot is supposed to be a person's widest emotional range.

[Rana]

Yes. As I was just posting over at Tish's (and was thinking about in relation to dale's recent post), the benefit of the doubt extends in all directions; if there is a "privileged" position, it is the one that develops out of careful thought and humility and awareness of context and personal limits. It is also one that needs to be cultivated and refined throughout one's life.

Moreover (and I'm not entirely sure this came through strongly enough) I have a real impatience with people (including myself) who, having developed this position so carefully, fail to defend it -- particular in the name of "getting along." There is, for example, no excuse for using "tolerance" as a way to turn a blind eye to the abuse of children, or to torture, or to the destruction of an ecosystem. You can quibble about the details, but the evidence in support of the position that these things are not desirable is (for me) so compelling as to make "tolerating" them not only laughable but offensive.