1. The Deke went knitting this afternoon. First she went to the Wallace Coffee House and then returned to Kellogg to join friends who were knitting at Radio Brewing. I stayed home and cleaned the kitchen, swept our floors, mopped them, and vacuumed the living room rug. It was satisfying to make these areas of the house sparkle a bit.
2. Tonight's family dinner was at Carol and Paul's house, but Christy and Everett couldn't join us. Christy was under the weather. Carol and Paul are eating according to the principles of the Keto Diet. We had a delicious Keto meal. Carol fixed a Caesar salad with homemade dressing and, for the main meal, we ate ground turkey meatballs with a delicious tomato sauce served over zoodles, or zucchini noodles, made by spiralizing the zucchini. After dinner, the Deke tutored Carol for a while in the subtle art of knitting, adding a personal touch to the instruction Carol has sought out online. We missed Christy and Everett and hope this day of rest helps Christy feel better and be back on her feet soon.
3. After dinner, I found an episode of Revisionist History that the Deke and I hadn't listened to. It was the very first episode of the first season, entitled, "The Lady Vanishes". On the face of it, this episode is about the 19th century British painter, Elizabeth Thompson (later known as Lady Butler) who was the first woman to have a painting displayed in the Royal Academy. Malcolm Gladwell expands his discussion of Elizabeth Thompson by exploring a social psychology term, "moral licensing". This concept explores the bewildering way in which acts of virtue can be followed by unvirtuous deeds, as if by being virtuous, a person then feels he or she has license to act badly. In other words, having done something good, the person worries less about future immoral behavior. It's as if the person banks on the virtuous behavior as what others will remember, and, rather than building on the good, uses the good as a license to do the opposite.
If you listen to this podcast, here, you can hear the examples of moral licensing that Malcolm Gladwell cites.
Gladwell didn't mention former president, Bill Clinton, but he is who I thought of. Politically, Clinton worked for women's rights, but it is as if by establishing his bona fides as a political supporter of women, he felt he had license to prey upon women. Consequently, Clinton confronted his supporters with a perplexing dilemma. On the one hand, he was an ally of women politically, but, on the other, behaved in ways in his private life that violated his supporters' convictions.
I was reading an article recently about white evangelical women's support of President Donald Trump. Politically, Trump has established conservative bona fides with this bloc of voters, especially in his appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and in his opposition to abortion. The women interviewed realized that Trump's private life and many of his public statements and elements of his public behavior have not been in keeping with evangelical values, but it is as if he has moral license to behave badly because he champions the political virtues that matter most to his supporters.
I suppose if you've read this far, you are probably thinking that moral licensing isn't limited to any political position nor is it limited to politicians. It's widespread. It perplexes me, not only as I think about clergy, attorneys, movie producers, teachers, physicians, and others, but as I wonder if many of us, upon reflection, have done things we wish we wouldn't have, and did these things behind the cloak of our correct positions, good deeds, or a good reputation.
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