My writing coach had an important tip for me – “Write like you want to convince someone.” Art and judgments go hand in hand, I learnt. You have to pick a side and speak with your biases. If you’re not willing to take a stand and describe what you believe, then you’re just being a hypocrite.
Shawn Coyne has a great post up on Steven Pressfield’s blog today called “Art and Polarity.” Below are the excerpts .
The other day I overhead this conversation:
Man #1: “I ran into Frank Smith (not his real name) at the beach yesterday…”
Man #2: “Isn’t that the guy who cheated on his wife, got a DWI, and said all of those nasty things about Jill’s daughter in law?”
Man #1: “…Well…yes…but I try not to judge.”
I run into this “I don’t judge” stuff a lot and it infuriates me on many levels. But as this is a blog about what it takes to create art, I’ll just address why this “moral position” is at best hypocritical and at worst a force as undermining and dark as Resistance.
Not saying something is uncaring. Not saying something means that you do not want to put your ass on the line and take the risk that you’ll be shunned for your opinion. It has everything to do with you. Nothing to do with the other person.
I’m aware that the world is not black and white. There are shades of gray between the two poles of every value. On the spectrum of “Truth and Deceit,” telling a white lie when your cousin asks if she looks good in her bathing suit is not the same as running a billion dollar Ponzi scheme. I get it.
And yes, most of the time, keeping our big mouths shut is the right thing to do. We’re all guilty of misdemeanors and don’t need Earnest Ernies pointing out our shortcomings. And when we do confront someone about their actions, we need to do it with tact and care. That’s empathy.
But this “non-judgment, I toe the middle line” attitude is dangerous. There is no middle line. Not judging is a judgment. And it pushes people away from each other—I best not make a mistake and judge anyone or no one will like me…best to keep quiet and be agreeable—instead of bringing them together—I thought I was the only one who thought Animal House was genius…
The man I overheard who doesn’t “judge” the adulterous, alcoholic driving, rumormonger sends a message to the world that destructive actions are excusable. It is what it is… There is no right and wrong. Nonsense.
But it is his passive aggressive dressing down of the other guy for “judging” someone guilty of antisocial behavior that is even worse. It masks his cowardice as virtue. And to not judge whether something is right or wrong is the furthest thing from a virtue.
You must choose a position in this world on innumerable moral questions and stand by your judgments. Woody Allen made this point in six lines of dialogue. Ken Kesey riffed on it for an entire novel. It’s important.
If you are an aspiring artist and you wish to avoid “judgments,” you’ll find that you have nothing to say.
As Seth Godin pointed out in his recent book, Steve Jobs was known to take strong views on one side one day and then flip to the other the next. The magic of Steve Jobs wasn’t that he was right.. it was that he was sure. He built products that resonated with his principles and refused to compromise – you can say what you want about Apple’s products but you have to admit that they aren’t a mish-mash of design principles.
There is a lot of gray in this world but there’s a fair bit of black and white too. If we’re running away from seeing the black and white using the gray as an excuse, then we’re only kidding ourselves.
A Learning a Day 