Propriety is Important

Romans vs Celts (according to the image generator)

Recently I have been seeing a trend where the the American left has been described as “weaponizing propriety.” That is, the HR Karens, or whatever petty tyrant of the nagocracy you prefer, take what is normal polite behavior and weaponize the perceived failures to meet those expectations, presumably in a vastly out of proportion manner. For example, Lorenzo Warby uses the term (and concept) in an otherwise excellent essay¹. I don’t want to pick on Lorenzo here, as he isn’t the worst offender by a long shot, but just the one that made me decide this wasn’t just a /b/-tier bit of language abuse but something becoming mainstream.

So what’s wrong with the notion of “weaponizing propriety” in general? Well, it represents what I think is a misdiagnosis of our current problems. In short, the phrase “weaponizing propriety” (which, to be fair, Lorenzo doesn’t use directly, but it is the common form I have seen) makes about as much sense as “weaponizing pepper spray”.

Let me explain.

Propriety is a great word, one that has largely fallen out of general use, unfortunately. It is a great concept handle, describing the sorts of behavior that are expected as a baseline requirement for people in a society to live up to. Essentially all the things you are expected to do without praise or reward, but blame and perhaps punishment for failing. Remembering to wear pants to work every day won’t get you a promotion, but forget just once or twice and you will never hear the end of it.

Propriety is in this sense a bit like duty, but it is worth noting that it is also highly individual and context specific. What counts as propriety for a 2 year old is different than for a 20 year old. Both might get a picture of them for “making a poopie”, but chances are only one is getting a pat on the head, while the other is likely to be asked why they are telling me about it.

Given this, we can start to see that weaponizing propriety doesn’t quite make sense, because it is meant to be weaponized. When people fail to live up to the basic requirements our culture demands we expect, indeed desire, that they feel the sting of shame in the case of minor infractions or indeed the lash of punishment for major. That doesn’t mean we want forgetting to wear pants to work resulting the same punishment as say murder, but we also don’t want people acting as though it is fine when we think it is not. Weaponizing rules is exactly what they are for: making clear what sorts of behavior will have negative consequences. Every culture has its rules of propriety, and every individual their sense of propriety, and negatively reacting to violations of propriety in the proper proportion is all part of that.

So what is going on that has people groping around for some way to describe the process of losing your job because you used pronouns to refer to someone which that someone doesn’t like?

I put forth that the problem is in that word I started using two paragraphs ago: culture. Specifically a change in culture, a forced change, that is the problem. As I pointed out, every culture (and sub-culture) has its own rules about propriety. When we all agree on the rules we hardly notice the negative reactions because we all internally agree with them. To us it is right and proper, practically a universal rule, that people behave like that. When different cultures with different rules of propriety interact, however, we feel there are great violations of justice occurring in people’s reactions, or lack there of, to perceived violations of propriety.

Like many cultural differences, this is most apparent in the realm of religion. One religion says you are making God angry if you eat pigs, another cows, and I am saying we should eat both simultaneously on a bun. This isn’t a problem most days, but if we had to live under dietary norms of the others, we would all be right pissed in a hurry. This is why the separation of church and state is so important: religions are essentially amplified cultures, and when you can’t all agree on the rules giving them the force of legislation gets ugly in a hurry.

Which brings us back to the nagocracy. Our core problem, it seems to me, is that we are seeing the rise of a new culture, and indeed a new religion, one that has been adopted by the state. What others are calling the weaponization of propriety is in fact the enforcement of a propriety from a different culture, a different religion, than we accept, but is being done as though it were already the established tradition. We object to the treatment as a fireable offense what would at worst be a minor social faux pas in our mind. We object to new rules of behavior being imposed on us, whether it is mandatory applause during pride thing events or proclaiming how much we care about the current thing.

And of course they are shocked that we do not find these requirements normal and obvious, for their culture is as different from ours as ours from theirs. One might debate where their culture comes from, or why it seems to shift so rapidly in its requirements (and boyo, do I have theories) but at root it is a cultural divide. The big trouble is that this new culture has gotten itself heavily supported by governmental rules making one liable for failing to meet the requirements.

We essentially have a state religion. Whoops.

So, all this to say, don’t blame propriety. That part is working as intended. Blame the fact that we are quite literally in a culture war, and what we are seeing are attempts to force others into accepting and conforming to a propriety that is not their own. Unfortunately history shows us this can be a rather ugly situation.

Now go read Lorenzo’s lovely essay!

1. Lorenzo and I have our differences, but I really want to emphasize that this is a great essay, and should be read to better understand the arc of our current cultural evolution. Really good stuff.