Since quite recently, ethnicity,
geographical provenance, religious traditions, moral values social norms and
customs came altogether in a sort of continuous system of rules of behavior
that people embodied since early childhood through formal and informal
education thanks to the simple exposure to their own culture.
When I was a
child in Italy, my grandmother used to tell me that it was good to care for the
poor and ill people and that it was bad to show off one’s own wealth. We were a
secular family, but my grandma’s recommendations sound now as deeply Catholic:
maybe the Italian social norms had integrated a certain Catholic stance towards
pietas that other cultures had not. I
don’t know. It is sure that, when I moved abroad, I realized how these
“universally moral principles” for me were instead deeply related to my Italian
upbringing.
I am sure that many emigrants had the same experience: that of
discovering that a universal value for them was just a local social norm, or,
worse, just a habit or a principle of etiquette in their world and didn’t mean
anything abroad. Or that something that was just a matter of taste in your
community, like a dress code, could become a moral or even political issue
abroad.
The shift from the reassuring “local universality”
of your own moral/social/cultural world to the relativistic open world in which
each community has its own norms - and all are at the same level in terms of
legitimacy - is a big choc for those who emigrate abroad or who have to deal at
home with new communities of people that become co-citizens because of
immigration. I remember when, once settled in Paris, I hanged my clothes at the
window of my apartment to dry them, as I used to do in Italy. My neighbors
called the police, because there is a law (written by André Malraux) in France that
protects the aesthetics of Parisean buildings and forbids the hanging of
clothes!
And indeed, this kind of experience is the
more and more common. Thus, when facing new cultural situations, we all try to
disentangle the moral aspects of our lives from the cultural values, traditional
superstitions etc. I still have to restrain
myself to avoid the bundle of prejudices, instant judgments and biases that
belong to my Italian education and that I can’t help applying even in complete
different cultural settings.
Philosophers and social scientists spend a
lot of energy in trying to disentangle what belongs to morality from what is a
simple matter of tradition or of local social norms. In dealing with the
immense problem of developing a globalized conception of what should be
permitted and what should not, they have to face many surprising cases, that
challenge their intuitions about what people may or may not tolerate from other
cultures. The many cases of intolerant responses to artistic representations of
religion (comics, theatre pieces, movies) show how difficult it is to
understand where these frontiers should be placed.
In order to ground their categorization of what
is moral compared to what is social, emotional or cultural in some sort of
universal certitude, philosophers and psychologists study these days the
neurological bases of moral intuitions and emotional/visceral responses (such
as disgust) to social situations. The problem is that an emotional reaction of
disgust to a certain social situation can be so difficult to control that, even
if it doesn’t have anything to do with what is properly “moral”, it may end up
in justifying, for the beholder, some moral attitudes towards behaviors that
are different from those that one considers “appropriate”, or “legitimate” or,
simply, “decent”.
I am a skeptical about the boundaries of
morality. I am convinced that they vary with age, experience,
self-consciousness and social awareness of what may be tolerated by others. I
think that what we consider as our “core moral principles” is just a bunch of
principles that are more central to our commonsense (viewed as a cultural
system) and that we would give up at a “higher price” than other more marginal
principles. To make a parallel, this is what W.V.O. Quine used to think about
“core logical truths”: they are just more central to our system of beliefs,
thus more difficult to challenge, but no more necessary than all other beliefs.
Hence, I do not think we will end up
finding some moral principles upon which everybody is willing to agree. Yet,
this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t make a normative effort to find some common
ground to our living together, even when we come from very different traditions.
Here is my minimalistic proposal. I think
that a simple rule of bon ton could
be more useful than many universal moral principles. Bon ton is a French expression that refers to good manners or etiquette.
It means having a “good tone”, that is, a particular taste for attuning your
manners in the appropriate way to the social world around you.
My basic rule of bon ton, is this: Restrain
yourself – or – Don’t show too much
about your moral/cultural/traditional preferences. This should be a social diktat for everyone: be aware of the
fact that what you are (an Italian, an atheist, a independent woman) can harm
someone else’s feelings somewhere in the world (or just down the street…).
We have been used these days to be proud of
our identities and, in an effort of being proudly recognized by the other communities as Xs or Ys, we have learned of
the importance of courageously displaying our identities, preferences,
traditions without fearing of being judged as inappropriate, morally indecent
or inferior. Yet, we do not realize that, in many cases, we upset others just
because we display too much about ourselves. Here is an example. I am an
Italian woman, and, as many Italian women, I like to wear sexy dresses. But I
know very well that, when I am in United States or in Saudi Arabia, I have to
restrain my preferences. I don’t think that my freedom is harmed by the fact
that I have to restrain myself, and I even have developed a system of
hyper-sophisticated signals that can be caught by the connoisseur only, to display in a very discrete way, my preferences
for a feminine way of dressing. I don’t give up my preferences, even if I
recognize that is a matter of bon ton
not to display them too much in many social contexts.
What I like and I find socially
sophisticated of big cities is not the fact that the expression of extreme
attitudes is tolerated (which is indeed the case for many big cities), but the
fact that the average inhabitant of a big city has “urban manners”, that is, is
able to dose the expression of him/herself in a way that is not too difficult
to swallow for others.
Restraining from a too “loud” display of
one’s own preferences is not being ashamed of them: it shouldn’t be confused
with the Italian motto: “Non facciamoci riconoscere” (“Let’s not make ourselves recognized”), that shows an
ashamed attitude of Italians of being tagged as Italians. I am not ashamed of being Italian, or of being a woman,
or of being an atheist, au contraire:
I’m very proud of it. But I can have the bon
ton of being aware that what I am can be a matter of disgust or moral
reprobation for someone else.
My rule of restraint works
only if it is reciprocate. In a civilized world, if I have the considerateness
of not showing too much of myself to you in order not to harm you, you should
do the same to me. If you don’t, and you aggressively display your own identity
claiming that it is better or superior or more morally correct (as we all think
about our own preferences) then I am justified in inflicting you my own
preferences without concern for your sensitivity to them.
There are many possible
objections to this line of thought: for example, what about the “unwitting
moves” and all the attitudes we display without being conscious of them? How
can I hide my Italian accent when speaking a foreign language? I have
discovered many traits of my cultural identity along the years just because I
was exposed to the gaze of other cultures, traits that I wouldn’t be aware of
if I hadn’t moved from Italy. In general, I think that unintentional expressions
of one’s own preferences, ethnicity or cultural traditions, or expressions of
them that cannot be erased (like accent of physical traits) should be tolerated
without exception and this should be a matter of law, as it is in most advanced
democracies (anti-discrimination laws). But the intentional and self-aware
expression of one’s own preferences, even if it is of course allowed, should be
mitigated by my bon ton rule.
Well, enough for today. Global
bon ton is not a subject for a
serious philosophical paper! But it would be a fascinating collective project
to gather some basic bon ton rules
for a global society, a sort of contemporary equivalent of the Baldassare
Castiglione’s famous Book of the Courtier.
My rule of restraint is just a first attempt. Does anyone have suggestions for
further rules?
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