With the Crowd or Outside? (part-ii)

lately i have been wonderingly lately

i wonder if it makes of me a despicable hypocrite that i hang out with all sorts of people, among them serious intellectuals and foul-mouthed bohemians,

and that i laugh at the latter’s sexist jokes.

if not a hypocrite, then perhaps at least a coward?

*

coming to think of it, ours is not an easy dilemma to resolve:

i can easily pontificate for minutes about the importance of conscientiously objecting to, and doing one’s best to censor out and correct such negative attitudes, be they sexist, racist, or assorted other prejudices.

and in most serious forums -debates, classroom exchanges, blog posts- i have always been quick to point a finger at a faint suggestion of such attitudes, and to subject them to the elenchus of my liberal progressive ideas.

*

but when it is with one’s friends -and i have a number of such friends- then it is a different story. it is not so clear cut.

on the one hand, i for one cannot bring myself to say that i have somehow ‘intellectually outgrown’ my old friends and ought to look for new ones befitting of my liberal progressive standards. that is simply rotten, i think. as long as i can help it, i will honor old friendships and hang on to them. (and here ‘as long as i can help it’ does not mean at all costs, and not at the cost of my principles – but that is the question, isn’t it?)

and i want to hold on to those friendships not only for the selfish reason that i need these friends to give life and color to the colorful lives of my characters years down the road. characters that by dent of belonging in the same society as many of these friends, would also have to belong to similar companies. no, not even primarily for this selfish reason.

secondly, i abhor moralism, and see little difference between the religious moralism of a fundamentalist who asks me to not shave my beard because it is sunnah, and that of a feminist who objects to keeping a door open for a woman because it is patronizing.

thirdly, i have been on the receiving end of more than my fair share of unsolicited advice, and would hate to embark on my own mission of trying to proselytize to those i know the importance of being politically correct, and why blond jokes are neither funny nor nice. in most cases, these people know those facts and have made the choice to tell the jokes anyhow, and do not need me to point them out.

fourthly, when in a company, i do not feel like keeping a straight face when some jokes are told -even when sometimes they cross the line- or spoiling everyone else’s time by letting forth a volley of moral objections. perhaps i can get the heck up and leave, as many would undoubtedly suggest.

fifthly, breaking with such companies does not solve anything. my presence in such groups is not of such critical significance that just to keep me in, they will go out of their way and adopt my lofty standards. my leaving the group, the friends, will not change anything for the better. in fact, for the time that i am in such a company, i stand a slight chance of trying to gradually and incrementally point things out without antagonizing others. not because they will ostracize me. worse, because preaching often backfires.

*
is this all my way of justifying and rationalizing my cowardice, hypocrisy, and failure to be more upstanding and just get up and leave?

maybe.

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With the Crowd or Outside? (part-i)

~ by safrang on May 25, 2007.