Earlier today, I made a reference to “respectability disease” in response to an essay by Zvi. Later, as others responded, I realized I might be using an idea handle that largely exists in my head, or in only a slightly larger area. Searching for the term turned up nothing so… maybe I coined it and forgot? Anyway, I think it is worth explaining it in a bit more detail. Let’s start with a story.
Steve was once a young thinker, with many ideas others thought strange and unappealing, and many others found wise and sensible. Unusually, different groups found different ideas strange and sensible than others. Steve’s theories, although as a whole unappealing to most people, had a strong internal coherence that made them smack of truth in a way that most people’s models of the world did not.
Steve worked very hard to promote his ideas, pointing out the errors and inconsistencies in the theories of both sides of the national cultural and scientific debates of his time. This didn’t win him a lot of friends in high places, but Steve gained a grass roots following of readers and like minded folks who had similar thoughts that the two primary factions of their society had things wrong; sometimes different things, but sometimes the same things.
Over time, Steve’s readership and prestige grew, such that he was hard to ignore. Although rejected from many of the more factionalized institutions, Steve eventually found a home where he could write and teach what he thought was right. Although still very much an outsider among the primary factions, many within those factions found themselves in enough agreement on certain points that Steve could no longer be ignored, even by his detractors. Just as great wealth can confer a degree of aristocratic social status to the common born, Steve’s popularity moved him from the intellectual wilderness towards the inner circle of prestige and social status.
This change was good, both for Steve and his ideas. Few want to fund crazy cranks screaming on the fringe, but a popular, respectable fellow is someone you can give money to, and bring to cocktail parties. Sure, some of his ideas are pretty out there, but there’s a lot of interesting ones too, don’t you think? Requests for interviews or discussion panels start popping up, as people think “Well, he isn’t like those crazies over there, he believes in many of the same things we do, just with a few interesting quirks. We can get some new audience members and show how fair we are.” Invitations to write editorials or special columns follow suit, and Steve finds himself talking about his ideas to a larger audience than he ever thought possible. Not only that, but people are listening who actually have the ability to put his ideas into action, to affect real change. Things are great!
Steve is also aware, however, that he must be a little careful of what he says. Although always more of a persuader than a firebrand, Steve now finds that he has a lot to lose by being too openly antagonistic towards ideas he disagrees with. He remembers one cocktail party where he got into a discussion with a guest that became just a touch heated (although he still doesn’t understand why) and how he never got invited to parties by that host again. Although he has supporters in both factions, possibly a majority of his audience, he knows the support is tenuous among the leadership. He has a great platform to speak his mind and share his ideas, the prestige to be taken seriously, and even the connections to influence implementation of those ideas. Losing that platform, that prestige, those connections over some tactless debate would be dreadful.
Yet Steve is still an idealist, and believes in the truth. No party man he, he learns to adjust his speech and choose his battles so that he can retain the ears of the many and guide as he can. He avoids being aligned with those fringe cranks, pointing out their flaws while quietly suggesting they may have a point. He deftly avoids insulting the influential and powerful for their errors, but highlights those errors in the lower status to subtly make the point. There may be some that you just do not challenge, but when in Rome…
Indeed, as time goes on Steve finds that he actually feels much closer ideologically to the dominant faction than he had previously thought. Sure, they have their excesses, and often make mistakes, but fewer than the other faction. Those points upon which he agreed with the other are really more nuanced, and if considered as part of the total project, much less relevant. He finds that, increasingly, he has less and less to disagree with, presumably as his prestige changes the Overton Window the debates take place in. He still finds things disagree about, and some still consider him an outsider, but no more than before, and his status allows him much greater range to speak his mind and spread his ideas. He might not get to say all he thinks, but much of what he thought no longer seems worth saying. Such is the price of fame, and after all he can do so much good with the resources at his disposal. His old audience may be disenchanted with his output these days, but they were always romantics who didn’t understand the reality of how the world works. Reading his old work, or having it cited in opposition to him, he shakes his head at how naïve he was, and how misunderstood the subtle applications of his work were. People just can’t work through the implications to see why it is consistent to his work now. Hardly anyone respectable today would argue with his thoughts and ideas, so clearly they are much more refined, closer to the truth that others can recognize. He might still have some far out ideas here and there, but he knows that in polite society one doesn’t just toss off any old idea; you never know who you might offend, and why risk that just for some silly notion?
Steve1 has contacted respectability disease. He starts as a serious thinker, trying out ideas regardless of whether others approve, instead focusing on whether or not they made sense, individually and together. He was actually seeking truth and understanding, not approval or status; arguably his search for truth lowered his approval and status. Yet, as so many do, he gained respect from people who were not interested in being parts of coalitional factions but also in finding the truth.
This growing popularity and acceptance led him into greater acceptance, and as he grew in status he developed respectability disease. As he gained much of those things he eschewed in the past in favor of truth, the cost of losing those things began to overwhelm his desire for truth, to speak his mind freely. The more respectable he becomes, the more costly losing that position, and so the more his behavior changes.
Not even consciously; Steve believes he is the same person, just more sensible. Yet his brain is responding to incentives and reinforced learning just like always. He curbs his tongue, obfuscates his critiques, and uses reason motivated by a desire to fit in as much as to find the truth. How much is self deception, how much is esotericism, and how much of each at any individual moment, none can say. Especially Steve.
The short version is: The king’s court has less ability to speak truth to the king than the man on the gallows, and with enough practice the king’s court does not even want to have ideas that displease the king. More practice still, and they don’t even realize they ever disagreed.
Now, I might well be the person who came up with the term “respectability disease,” I can’t pin that blame on anyone else. I am definitely not the first to describe the problem of status, wealth and power, i.e. respectability, in its ability to corrupt our sentiments and behavior.
Adam Smith2 in chapter 1 of The Theory of Moral Sentiments writes a parable of “the poor man’s son, whom heaven in its anger has visited with ambition…” who spends his life in toil and courting the approval of those he despises to achieve wealth and greatness, both of which turn to ash in his aged mouth. In chapter 2 especially he notes that those who fall victim to the “love of praise,” those that court the public’s approval, are prone to intrigue and personal corruption, as the desire to be praised overwhelms the desire to be praiseworthy. The difference there is that praise can be gotten by cheating, but being praiseworthy requires being at least praiseworthy in your own mind. To the extent our mind deceives us, and it often does, it tells us that whatever gets us praise makes us praiseworthy. We are remarkable rationalizers in this manner; we fear being told we are bad so much that we will stop being good to avoid it.
C.S. Lewis addresses the issue more directly in his essay “The Inner Ring3” published in The Weight of Glory. Really, you should just grab the pdf at the link in the footnote and just read it; it’s the transcript of a commencement speech of some sort, so short and witty. The main summary is that the desire to be in that inner ring is dangerous and corrupting, even if the existence of inner rings is not itself inherently bad. Once in the ring, the fear of being cast out is even worse4. An excerpt:
Often the desire conceals itself so well that we hardly recognize the pleasures of fruition. Men tell not only their wives but themselves that it is a hardship to stay late at the office or the school on some bit of important extra work which they have been let in for because they and So-and-so and the two others are the only people left in the place who really know how things are run. But it is not quite true. It is a terrible bore, of course, when old Fatty Smithson draws you aside and whispers, “Look here, we’ve got to get you in on this examination somehow” or “Charles and I saw at once that you’ve got to be on this committee.” A terrible bore… ah, but how much more terrible if you were left out! It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons: but to have them free because you don’t matter, that is much worse.
…
A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be dangerous. As Byron has said: Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet The unexpected death of some old lady. The painless death of a pious relative at an advanced age is not an evil. But an earnest desire for her death on the part of her heirs is not reckoned a proper feeling, and the law frowns on even the gentlest attempts to expedite her departure. Let Inner Rings be unavoidable and even an innocent feature of life, though certainly not a beautiful one: but what of our longing to enter them, our anguish when we are excluded, and the kind of pleasure we feel when we get in?
Our desire is dangerous not just because we might work ourselves too hard and ignore our other responsibilities, but because we can be persuaded to do many horrible things out of our urge to fit in, to be one of those who matter. Most critically, much of that persuasion is being done by our own brain.
But wait, isn’t this respectability disease just a new name for social desirability bias? Not quite. Social desirability bias affects your responses, but not your mind. People will tell surveyors, neighbors, bosses, whomever, what they want to hear, but importantly they still know the true answer. That is what makes it a bias in the data gathering. When a pollster calls someone and asks who they plan to vote for in 2016 and the answer is “Hillary” and the person then votes for Clinton, that isn’t bias; the bias comes in when they answer Hillary but vote for Trump. Respectability disease implies that you plan to vote for Trump but when asked say Hillary, and then actually vote for Hillary (don’t vote at all) because your brain convinced you that you really aren’t the type of person to vote for Trump. In other words, social desirability bias is lying to others about what you really think, respectability disease is when your brain solves the cognitive dissonance for you by making it so you no longer need to lie. Your brain solves the fear of exclusion from the group by rationalizing you into actually agreeing with the group.
Observationally, it is probably impossible to distinguish between respectability disease and someone being very esoteric in their speech and thereby trying to convert and guide people without their knowing. It might be impossible to tell the difference, even from inside the person’s own head. “I only am pretending to think all these false things; I am really a secret agent, guiding these fools into doing what I want,” is a really good rationalization; betraying your principles is much more appealing when you are secretly the hero. It must be hard to tell whether you are actually a secret agent working against evil, or just a collaborator who sold their soul without realizing it.
I want to point out, however, that although respectability disease is a moral trap, those who fall into it are not “bad people.” That’s why the disease part is important. All humans are very susceptible to this problem, just ask Smith or Lewis (in the afterlife, presumably.) Just as alcoholism is what happens when you spend lots of time with heavy drinkers drinking heavily, so is respectability disease what happens when you find yourself with lots to lose socially. The way to avoid alcoholism is to avoid spending time with heavy drinkers drinking heavily, particularly if you are prone to such addictions. The way to avoid respectability disease is to avoid courting praise from people who deal in politics and intrigue, and focus instead on praise from people who find truth and honesty praiseworthy. That the upheaval of faction and a loss of interest in what is true is rampant in our modern society is regrettable, but that only makes the dangers of corruption more pressing, not less, both for the individual and society.
We don’t need more people fighting to be in the inner ring, we need more people willing to stand on their own and say what they believe is right, no matter what mob threatens to descend on them. We need more people who will stand up to the mob’s injustice instead of keeping their heads down and hoping the mob will pass them by.
Don’t bother trying to say “AHA! You really mean ______!” as this really could be anyone. I have at least 3 different people in mind as I write this, and I think it is a very generalizable trap to fall into.
Also, a strangely high proportion of everyone I know is named “Steve,” yet I don’t really have a Steve in mind. So when you read this, whichever Steve you are, no offense.
I can’t get the citation more exact than chapters; I haven’t been able to find my physical copy since I moved, so I am working off a Kindle version that doesn’t seem to have all the section numbers I expected. Sorry, all three of you who maybe cared.
This notion is the basis for book three of Lewis’ space trilogy, speaking of which. I intend to write on that a little more in the future, because I can’t quite decide if we are living in 1984 or Lewis’ Institute, and I am not sure there is a great difference. I am sure it makes me quite uncomfortable.
Probably very true. But, I wonder how you'd go about proving to someone that they have respectability disease.
Speaking for myself, my views on some topics has changed quite markedly over time. There's no clear pattern here - some of my recently developed views especially on expertise, the reliability of science etc might be considered extreme, whereas in other areas my views have become more closer to mainstream respectability with time. The cause of the latter wasn't some newfound influence or need for respect but rather, seeing what happens when those views were put into practice by others and/or hearing the 'other side of the story', so to speak.
The man on the gallows can indeed speak "truth" to the King, but he can also say things that aren't all that helpful like "down with the King!" without worrying about details like who or what would replace that king. And as such when the man on the gallows has in the past avoided the gallows and successfully done a Cromwell or a Lenin, they sometimes discovered that their ideas weren't quite as refined or internally consistent as they thought. Now they replaced the 'respectable' people life didn't really get better.
This is definitely something I struggle with - where to find the right balance between criticism of the current system and sweep it all away type radicalism, vs more moderate respectability. One of the problems is that when the Overton Window is in the wrong place, respectable radicalism is required to move it. Some people have to say the unsayable. But then if the window moves and the question becomes not "what is true" but rather "what should we do about it?" then the world suddenly needs pragmatists who are willing to compromise in some way. The latter people are often the same as the former, and are perhaps not suffering from respectability disease but merely changing their approach in response to changing needs.