As a co-signatory to the No Opinion open letter, I have a significant, measurable amount of freelance income over the past 2.5 years as the result of my stated beliefs. To me, the cost has always been worth it, because I'd rather lose sleep over my bank account than my moral bankruptcy.
Still, it's galling to watch such a prominent signatory on this letter continue to engage with the NYT when they have far more flexibility not to, even if superficial activism has more or less always been their brand (see also: Tolentino's recent collaboration with Airbnb). You'd think a staff writer at The New Yorker would understand the difference between collective action and personal branding.
It is deeply unfortunate. Especially since I don’t think the two things are mutually exclusive. But if people keep conflating them then we’re truly cooked.
Beyond the current discourse, this nails what made Jia interesting for a moment and why she fell off. She became a sort of one woman lament of 2010s beauty/consumerism, every essay ending with some version of “and then I went to Sephora and got my nails done.” Eventually the readership demands an actual point of view.
Why is it bad to order food in when it rains? The delivery guys are counting on that bad weather to drive up sales. Provided you pay them properly (most people don’t), then that is what they probably *want* customers to do. If you don’t order because it’s raining, you’re denying them income.
Yeah that’s a weird one to me, you’re making huge assumptions about how working class people feel because YOU wouldn’t want to work in the rain. If you talk to a lot of people doing that kind of work (which I wouldn’t be shocked to learn Jia hasn’t done in at least a decade) you’re gonna find that they actually want to do it, because they want the money. The scandalous part is not that work of this type is sometimes annoying, it’s that if you’re not represented by a union you’re almost certainly getting paid less than you’re worth.
“The delivery guys are counting on that bad weather to drive up sales.” Where or how did you acquire the idea that delivery guys have equity in the restaurants or apps they’re working for? Or something like gross points on the back end, the way film actor or director might be contractually entitled to? That’s not how that works. The big delivery apps have fought even basic tipping mechanisms for years now (for example, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/nyregion/uber-doordash-nyc-tipping.html) but you’re speaking as if it’s a really worker-friendly industry.
Again, you make it sound as if the apps simply give tips to the workers. More work equals more money. That isn’t how it works. It’s not a quaint little Horatio Alger story. There’s loads and loads of information available about this stuff, e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/01/16/tipping-food-delivery-etiquette/ but people prefer guesses and presumptions.
If a delivery person accepts a trip, they get paid. Not well, but they get paid. If they don’t accept a trip, or if no trip is available to them, they stand around idly not getting paid. More trips during the rain means more opportunities to get paid. If fewer people order food during bad weather, the delivery person does not sit around in a dry and warm place getting paid. They don’t get paid if they don’t get a trip.
No, it’s the workers at these firms who should be centered. They should be the ones saying which working conditions they are willing to work under, not fucking upper-middle class columnists. You’re gonna find very little support amongst workers to have their jobs eliminated, most labor demands since the beginning of capitalism have been to be a) properly remunerated and b) treated respectfully by management and c) have some say about unsafe working conditions.
This is just the basic labor-left perspective, it’s not that we want work to be eliminated, because that means people starve, what we want is capital owners to make less, and workers to make more. The way to achieve that on a system wide level is through labor organization and the threat of strikes. You personally deciding not to order Uber Eats when it’s raining does nothing to achieve that goal. If you do want to help, support any organizing efforts in your area or just significantly over tip.
If they're relying on orders for income it means the system is already broken. They should be paid for the hours they are available for work, not contracted out to on a per order basis.
This current viral item in the online discourse makes me think a few different things and your writing here makes me think even more things and has crystalized my feelings a bit more. So thank you for that, Anastasia!
To me, this boils down to the individual needing to do the very real mental work of defining their values and drawing lines in the sand on specific *and* nebulous principles they want to live by habitually. Values work is a common part of some therapy practices but the principles part is a bit harder because it will dictate one's actions and how those actions impact others.
The interesting thing in this discussion to me is that we bemoan the actions of corporations that downstream make a scarcity of "ethical" options available to us in our quotidian existences. However, we tend to almost always choose the more convenient or desirable options anyway, semantics around the word desire aside. However, it's the guilt we then feel that is almost always performative in my opinion. Tolentino doesn't want to use a plastic cup and defines that choice with some pretty explosive words. I wonder though, how often is she asking for paper? Spiegelman struggles with someone bringing her food in the rain yet orders anyway. At least she is on the right track with her thinking there.
On the whole, we have agency as individuals much more than we think for these daily decisions in question. We just rationalize away our decisions to avoid the the less convenient choices by appealing to the immorality of higher powers or the inherent unfairness of society through a variety of lenses, gender being one mentioned in above. Ideally, we would not have to rationalize as much as we do. That said, we should be more intentional about how we act as individuals (especially for these small decisions!) that will then dictate the world we think we should live in. We want to live in that world and if we act against it, we perpetuate the current ills we face.
To boil this down somewhat. Stealing a few lemons from Whole Foods could be seen as innocuous when I do it. It may make me even feel like I'm "sticking it to the man." But if we normalize that behavior or belittle its inherent wrongness, we encourage it happening at scale. Jia stealing from Whole Foods does not impact Whole Foods at all. However, it does impact the manager of that Whole Foods when their store has an increasing amount of inventory shrinkage due to theft. That is a real consequence for a real person in their work. I doubt Jia has ever considered that person in her decisions like these.
I liked your thoughts on what Tolentino's really doing when she teaches her kid about acting immorally. Things get even weirder when you consider how Tolentino's own parents made their money
If overpriced slop bowl salads and spin classe are oppression, then those of packing lunches and riding bicycles call to mind the words of Joan Robinson when she said that the only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not being exploited by capitalism.
Would you do a follow-up on Piker's comment that intellectual property theft should be legal? When does an act one believes is against a corporation hurt the creator, or the wage worker? What is the moral argument either way?
“Happy to call it a genocide” and even your “happy to pay lip service to the idea that it is a genocide” is an absurd, flippant choice of words for the subject matter and reveals heavy biases.
“Critically rethink your original stance on pledges, or boycotts, or the editorial standards of the Times, or the war.” Which “war” is being referenced here? The war in Ukraine? Because it’s not what’s happening in Gaza. That is not a war that is genocide. More biases revealed.
We’re living through the systemic extermination of the Palestinian people. It’s happening in real time. Anything other than complete shame, disgust and heartbreak for that is unacceptable in my option. Especially in a piece about morals 🙄
I don’t think she’s challenging that. I think she’s saying that Tolentino is happy to pay lip service to the idea that it is a genocide, but she is unwilling to boycott the NYT opinion section (which is partly responsible for said genocide). She says, “the New York Times is responsible for genocide but here she [Tolentino] is contributing to it anyway.”
Yeah, I also leave this essay feeling a bit wrong-footed, like this whole piece flows from a phrase about the sickening self-victimizing gymnastics employed by the “most moral army” to justify/cope with their committing a genocide, and then also can’t seem to resist dismissing/poking fun at said genocide and those calling it that.
“yorim ve bochim” what a solid gold expression! I hear people shooting and crying daily around here. If you’re going to break your own moral code, the least you can do is stop whining about it!
I'm struggling with this piece a bit as a outsider to your writing and to Jia Tolentino's work. I think the title of the article would make for a really interesting discussion of the phrase and what it means to act according to your values in today's world, but the writing targets one specific person. I'm not taking a moral stance either way, but why does she get all this hate for a what you reference as an article or two and a a few out-of-context quotes? These are questions every day people cope with and there is a lot of complexity to them, and everyone has to think about how to live with their version of integrity. You can find any high-profile person and pick out a million moral inconsistencies and contradictions in their words and actions. Why her? It seems like you are finding reasons to disagree with and argue against her due to personal beliefs.
I think it’s likely that Jia’s writing is just the particular example of the concept of “shooting and crying” which allowed the broader and more generalized moral dilemma to crystallize in the author’s mind. She’s using it as an anchoring framework to build her larger idea.
George Orwell and Christopher Hitchens often followed the same template in their essays: present a particular moral or ethical violation of a bad actor or actors and then use it as scaffolding for a general philosophical response.
You’re right, though. The method comes across as highly personal. Critics often referred to the subjects of Christopher’s writing as being “Hitch Slapped”.
I don’t know much more about Jia’s work outside of Trick Mirror but I definitely agree that these are ideas people grapple with in modern day. I mean, the whole premise of Trick Mirror is in the title — that you see all this shit that’s wrong with the world but then realize you are part of the problem too.
Nonetheless, I think I understand the point of the article and find in confronting in a good way. But at the same time it also feels very purist. No one can do everything “right” 100% of the time in a world like this, but it shouldn’t stop us from trying our best.
Because scapegoating feels good. Responsibly apprehending gutwrenching nuanced realities against the grain of your social milieu does not. But I suppose you'd call that "gaslighting."
I don’t quite get this: "in being confronted by a beggar we are confronted with the choice between refusing a plea for help and offending against human dignity by granting that plea.” Why is giving to a beggar an offense against dignity? Because not universalizable? To me, that sounds like a flaw in the moral system rather than in human conduct, an inability to acknowledge (mercifully) the crooked timbers making up society. E. M. Forster called it “paying rent to the Ideal.”
As I said, I’m not sure I find this persuasive but Lucy’s argument, itself a reading of Kant’s political philosophy, is that having your basic needs met through private charity rather than the state necessarily wrongs you. In a legitimate state no person’s external freedom is subject to the arbitrary choices of those who have means. When the poor person relies on you for their external freedom this undermines the legitimacy of the state since that legitimacy is based on ensuring that no one’s basic freedom is subject to the arbitrary choices of others. (So legitimate states must have unconditional poverty relief). In other words, when you encounter someone in a public space who asks you for money to meet their basic survival needs, you are being asked to solve a a public problem—a problem that has only a public solution—in a private interaction and there is no right way to do this.
It’s okay if you don’t find this persuasive. This was just my attempt to say that you could admit that some situations, namely unjust political ones, force you to morally wrong another person, no matter what choice you make, but this doesn’t liberate us to rest content with doing whatever we feel like doing while lamenting the fact it’s so hard to live rightly in a wrong world. If you deny that there are genuine moral conflicts, i.e., insist that there always is a morally good course of action, as is for example implied by a more straightforward understanding of Kant, then my case is only stronger. If there is always a right course of action then you should try to figure it out what it is and do that.
Thanks for this clarification. It sounds like she's arguing that the State is the True Home of the rational soul and that the needs of the body can only be legitimately met by state action, not by "private charity." Acknowledging bodies "necessarily wrongs you." Which is an argument, I suppose.
But the encounter I'm imagining doesn't depend on "someone in a public space asking you for money to meet their basic survival needs." In my (quite common, I'm afraid to say) experience, beggars don't ask for money to meet their needs: they just ask for money (or "help."). If they tell more of a story, it's often quite transparently a fiction. (Although one local character holds up a sign that says "Need money for weed."). If I give them money, it's a response to their request, not to their need: I don't means-test them, but stipulate that we live--whatever our differences--in the same world. That, as I understand it, is what Forster meant by "paying rent to the Ideal:" it's costly to believe that people are acting (or speaking) in good faith, and I should--wryly, but clear-sightedly--be prepared to bear them, not off-load agency to an impersonal State. (Forster's line is from Howards End, where some people--Liberals, as it happens--are bound to be renters.)
I am not sure I understand your distinction when you say, "If I give them money, it's a response to their request, not to their need". It's both and, right? I suppose it is a question of how deep you are assisting their need or what the need is you think you are addressing when you give them money.
I think your point on people acting in good faith is a good call out! With the long comment I made above, I was trying to touch on how we as individuals are acting in terms of good faith. I think all of the crying about our unethical choices, we act in bad faith by enabling those choices to persist by choosing the most convenient and bad choice anyway.
I appreciate your response and, on re-reading your remarks above, I think we parse things out a bit differently. What I called acting (or speaking) "in good faith" could equally be analyzed in terms of "social trust," the background assumption that we're all in this together and tend to "mean what we say." My distinction between the request and the need can then be elucidated by quoting Shakespeare: "O reason not the need! (King Lear): once you start questioning needs, you'll wind up on the blasted heath.
Looking back at the prompt for our reflections (call it the "stealing from Whole Foods" question), I notice that "giving to those who ask" (calling them "beggars" puts us in a different moral universe) is really the flip-side of that question. Both sides together point to a weakness in how we tend to think about the "abundance" agenda.
Amazon/WF embodies "abundance" for those who can pay. As corporations, they make a profit from making abundance more and more convenient, arousing and satisfying our cravings by "rationalizing" their operations. (That's a different sense of "rationalization" than you meant, above). Realizing that arouses resentment in many who succumb, uneasily, to the appeal of convenience–we have to confront the weakness of our own wills–and resentment produces a desire to retaliate, to “liberate” the lemons from the commodity circuit, to defy “the system.” The analogy isn’t so much “shooting and crying” as it is what someone else (can’t find the reference) termed “complicity porn,” i.e. being aroused by what your better angels know is degrading.
Flipping the scenario: walking down the street, I embody abundance (“well off white guy”) to someone in need. The question imposes itself: why should they have to do without “While there are others living about us,/Never molested though in the wrong” (to quote the old song “Farther Along”)? Being too aggressive isn’t going to get anywhere: wealthy white guys know they’re entitled to the protection of the law. But there’s no harm in asking… So (speaking for myself), when someone asks me for help, I’m going to start by presuming that we’re in this together and the need is real. I’m not immune to resentment when pressed too hard–I prefer to imagine myself as generous rather than as an easy mark– but being entitled comes with some obligations (noblesse oblige).
Here’s where I believe Ideal theorizing about a perfectly legitimate State leads us astray: it makes the Perfect an enemy of the “somewhat better” and leaves us feeling that meeting another’s needs is somehow “an offense against [my] dignity.” A Perfectly Legitimate State is not, by definition, a democratic state: there’s no room for different views, for arguing about priorities. The rationalist simply stipulates what True Freedom demands. Rather than being cowed by the demand for Absolutes, I’d say we’re better off wrestling with particular persons and specific needs.
Jia tolentino is the queen of liberals who chastise themselves for their privilege and then just do whatever they wanted to do anyway
As a co-signatory to the No Opinion open letter, I have a significant, measurable amount of freelance income over the past 2.5 years as the result of my stated beliefs. To me, the cost has always been worth it, because I'd rather lose sleep over my bank account than my moral bankruptcy.
Still, it's galling to watch such a prominent signatory on this letter continue to engage with the NYT when they have far more flexibility not to, even if superficial activism has more or less always been their brand (see also: Tolentino's recent collaboration with Airbnb). You'd think a staff writer at The New Yorker would understand the difference between collective action and personal branding.
"the difference between collective action and personal branding"
Damn. That is such a good distinction to make. Unfortunately, we live in the time of brands.
It is deeply unfortunate. Especially since I don’t think the two things are mutually exclusive. But if people keep conflating them then we’re truly cooked.
Beyond the current discourse, this nails what made Jia interesting for a moment and why she fell off. She became a sort of one woman lament of 2010s beauty/consumerism, every essay ending with some version of “and then I went to Sephora and got my nails done.” Eventually the readership demands an actual point of view.
Why is it bad to order food in when it rains? The delivery guys are counting on that bad weather to drive up sales. Provided you pay them properly (most people don’t), then that is what they probably *want* customers to do. If you don’t order because it’s raining, you’re denying them income.
Yeah that’s a weird one to me, you’re making huge assumptions about how working class people feel because YOU wouldn’t want to work in the rain. If you talk to a lot of people doing that kind of work (which I wouldn’t be shocked to learn Jia hasn’t done in at least a decade) you’re gonna find that they actually want to do it, because they want the money. The scandalous part is not that work of this type is sometimes annoying, it’s that if you’re not represented by a union you’re almost certainly getting paid less than you’re worth.
“The delivery guys are counting on that bad weather to drive up sales.” Where or how did you acquire the idea that delivery guys have equity in the restaurants or apps they’re working for? Or something like gross points on the back end, the way film actor or director might be contractually entitled to? That’s not how that works. The big delivery apps have fought even basic tipping mechanisms for years now (for example, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/nyregion/uber-doordash-nyc-tipping.html) but you’re speaking as if it’s a really worker-friendly industry.
Because when delivery sales are up, the drivers get business. This is not complicated.
Again, you make it sound as if the apps simply give tips to the workers. More work equals more money. That isn’t how it works. It’s not a quaint little Horatio Alger story. There’s loads and loads of information available about this stuff, e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/01/16/tipping-food-delivery-etiquette/ but people prefer guesses and presumptions.
If a delivery person accepts a trip, they get paid. Not well, but they get paid. If they don’t accept a trip, or if no trip is available to them, they stand around idly not getting paid. More trips during the rain means more opportunities to get paid. If fewer people order food during bad weather, the delivery person does not sit around in a dry and warm place getting paid. They don’t get paid if they don’t get a trip.
“Not well, but they get paid.” Ok, so on some level you understand that the thinnest veneer of bullshit is good enough for you.
No, it’s the workers at these firms who should be centered. They should be the ones saying which working conditions they are willing to work under, not fucking upper-middle class columnists. You’re gonna find very little support amongst workers to have their jobs eliminated, most labor demands since the beginning of capitalism have been to be a) properly remunerated and b) treated respectfully by management and c) have some say about unsafe working conditions.
This is just the basic labor-left perspective, it’s not that we want work to be eliminated, because that means people starve, what we want is capital owners to make less, and workers to make more. The way to achieve that on a system wide level is through labor organization and the threat of strikes. You personally deciding not to order Uber Eats when it’s raining does nothing to achieve that goal. If you do want to help, support any organizing efforts in your area or just significantly over tip.
If they're relying on orders for income it means the system is already broken. They should be paid for the hours they are available for work, not contracted out to on a per order basis.
This current viral item in the online discourse makes me think a few different things and your writing here makes me think even more things and has crystalized my feelings a bit more. So thank you for that, Anastasia!
To me, this boils down to the individual needing to do the very real mental work of defining their values and drawing lines in the sand on specific *and* nebulous principles they want to live by habitually. Values work is a common part of some therapy practices but the principles part is a bit harder because it will dictate one's actions and how those actions impact others.
The interesting thing in this discussion to me is that we bemoan the actions of corporations that downstream make a scarcity of "ethical" options available to us in our quotidian existences. However, we tend to almost always choose the more convenient or desirable options anyway, semantics around the word desire aside. However, it's the guilt we then feel that is almost always performative in my opinion. Tolentino doesn't want to use a plastic cup and defines that choice with some pretty explosive words. I wonder though, how often is she asking for paper? Spiegelman struggles with someone bringing her food in the rain yet orders anyway. At least she is on the right track with her thinking there.
On the whole, we have agency as individuals much more than we think for these daily decisions in question. We just rationalize away our decisions to avoid the the less convenient choices by appealing to the immorality of higher powers or the inherent unfairness of society through a variety of lenses, gender being one mentioned in above. Ideally, we would not have to rationalize as much as we do. That said, we should be more intentional about how we act as individuals (especially for these small decisions!) that will then dictate the world we think we should live in. We want to live in that world and if we act against it, we perpetuate the current ills we face.
To boil this down somewhat. Stealing a few lemons from Whole Foods could be seen as innocuous when I do it. It may make me even feel like I'm "sticking it to the man." But if we normalize that behavior or belittle its inherent wrongness, we encourage it happening at scale. Jia stealing from Whole Foods does not impact Whole Foods at all. However, it does impact the manager of that Whole Foods when their store has an increasing amount of inventory shrinkage due to theft. That is a real consequence for a real person in their work. I doubt Jia has ever considered that person in her decisions like these.
I liked your thoughts on what Tolentino's really doing when she teaches her kid about acting immorally. Things get even weirder when you consider how Tolentino's own parents made their money
If overpriced slop bowl salads and spin classe are oppression, then those of packing lunches and riding bicycles call to mind the words of Joan Robinson when she said that the only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not being exploited by capitalism.
That podcast with two smug self-satisfied anti-Semitic Jew-hating dirtbags is insufferable.
Wait what
Would you do a follow-up on Piker's comment that intellectual property theft should be legal? When does an act one believes is against a corporation hurt the creator, or the wage worker? What is the moral argument either way?
You “take no stand” but also say Tolentino would be “happy to call it a genocide”? That’s what it is, why are you challenging that?
“Happy to call it a genocide” and even your “happy to pay lip service to the idea that it is a genocide” is an absurd, flippant choice of words for the subject matter and reveals heavy biases.
“Critically rethink your original stance on pledges, or boycotts, or the editorial standards of the Times, or the war.” Which “war” is being referenced here? The war in Ukraine? Because it’s not what’s happening in Gaza. That is not a war that is genocide. More biases revealed.
We’re living through the systemic extermination of the Palestinian people. It’s happening in real time. Anything other than complete shame, disgust and heartbreak for that is unacceptable in my option. Especially in a piece about morals 🙄
yeah that part of the essay reads weird, so many mental gymnastics to avoid calling it a genocide
I don’t think she’s challenging that. I think she’s saying that Tolentino is happy to pay lip service to the idea that it is a genocide, but she is unwilling to boycott the NYT opinion section (which is partly responsible for said genocide). She says, “the New York Times is responsible for genocide but here she [Tolentino] is contributing to it anyway.”
Yeah, I also leave this essay feeling a bit wrong-footed, like this whole piece flows from a phrase about the sickening self-victimizing gymnastics employed by the “most moral army” to justify/cope with their committing a genocide, and then also can’t seem to resist dismissing/poking fun at said genocide and those calling it that.
What harm do Barre classes cause lol
This is what I want to know. I think Jia is so smart but unfortunately she is also insufferable.
“yorim ve bochim” what a solid gold expression! I hear people shooting and crying daily around here. If you’re going to break your own moral code, the least you can do is stop whining about it!
I'm struggling with this piece a bit as a outsider to your writing and to Jia Tolentino's work. I think the title of the article would make for a really interesting discussion of the phrase and what it means to act according to your values in today's world, but the writing targets one specific person. I'm not taking a moral stance either way, but why does she get all this hate for a what you reference as an article or two and a a few out-of-context quotes? These are questions every day people cope with and there is a lot of complexity to them, and everyone has to think about how to live with their version of integrity. You can find any high-profile person and pick out a million moral inconsistencies and contradictions in their words and actions. Why her? It seems like you are finding reasons to disagree with and argue against her due to personal beliefs.
I think it’s likely that Jia’s writing is just the particular example of the concept of “shooting and crying” which allowed the broader and more generalized moral dilemma to crystallize in the author’s mind. She’s using it as an anchoring framework to build her larger idea.
George Orwell and Christopher Hitchens often followed the same template in their essays: present a particular moral or ethical violation of a bad actor or actors and then use it as scaffolding for a general philosophical response.
You’re right, though. The method comes across as highly personal. Critics often referred to the subjects of Christopher’s writing as being “Hitch Slapped”.
I don’t know much more about Jia’s work outside of Trick Mirror but I definitely agree that these are ideas people grapple with in modern day. I mean, the whole premise of Trick Mirror is in the title — that you see all this shit that’s wrong with the world but then realize you are part of the problem too.
Nonetheless, I think I understand the point of the article and find in confronting in a good way. But at the same time it also feels very purist. No one can do everything “right” 100% of the time in a world like this, but it shouldn’t stop us from trying our best.
Why would Tolentino be “happy” to call it a genocide.”? What a strange assertion.
Because scapegoating feels good. Responsibly apprehending gutwrenching nuanced realities against the grain of your social milieu does not. But I suppose you'd call that "gaslighting."
I don’t quite get this: "in being confronted by a beggar we are confronted with the choice between refusing a plea for help and offending against human dignity by granting that plea.” Why is giving to a beggar an offense against dignity? Because not universalizable? To me, that sounds like a flaw in the moral system rather than in human conduct, an inability to acknowledge (mercifully) the crooked timbers making up society. E. M. Forster called it “paying rent to the Ideal.”
As I said, I’m not sure I find this persuasive but Lucy’s argument, itself a reading of Kant’s political philosophy, is that having your basic needs met through private charity rather than the state necessarily wrongs you. In a legitimate state no person’s external freedom is subject to the arbitrary choices of those who have means. When the poor person relies on you for their external freedom this undermines the legitimacy of the state since that legitimacy is based on ensuring that no one’s basic freedom is subject to the arbitrary choices of others. (So legitimate states must have unconditional poverty relief). In other words, when you encounter someone in a public space who asks you for money to meet their basic survival needs, you are being asked to solve a a public problem—a problem that has only a public solution—in a private interaction and there is no right way to do this.
It’s okay if you don’t find this persuasive. This was just my attempt to say that you could admit that some situations, namely unjust political ones, force you to morally wrong another person, no matter what choice you make, but this doesn’t liberate us to rest content with doing whatever we feel like doing while lamenting the fact it’s so hard to live rightly in a wrong world. If you deny that there are genuine moral conflicts, i.e., insist that there always is a morally good course of action, as is for example implied by a more straightforward understanding of Kant, then my case is only stronger. If there is always a right course of action then you should try to figure it out what it is and do that.
Thanks for this clarification. It sounds like she's arguing that the State is the True Home of the rational soul and that the needs of the body can only be legitimately met by state action, not by "private charity." Acknowledging bodies "necessarily wrongs you." Which is an argument, I suppose.
But the encounter I'm imagining doesn't depend on "someone in a public space asking you for money to meet their basic survival needs." In my (quite common, I'm afraid to say) experience, beggars don't ask for money to meet their needs: they just ask for money (or "help."). If they tell more of a story, it's often quite transparently a fiction. (Although one local character holds up a sign that says "Need money for weed."). If I give them money, it's a response to their request, not to their need: I don't means-test them, but stipulate that we live--whatever our differences--in the same world. That, as I understand it, is what Forster meant by "paying rent to the Ideal:" it's costly to believe that people are acting (or speaking) in good faith, and I should--wryly, but clear-sightedly--be prepared to bear them, not off-load agency to an impersonal State. (Forster's line is from Howards End, where some people--Liberals, as it happens--are bound to be renters.)
I am not sure I understand your distinction when you say, "If I give them money, it's a response to their request, not to their need". It's both and, right? I suppose it is a question of how deep you are assisting their need or what the need is you think you are addressing when you give them money.
I think your point on people acting in good faith is a good call out! With the long comment I made above, I was trying to touch on how we as individuals are acting in terms of good faith. I think all of the crying about our unethical choices, we act in bad faith by enabling those choices to persist by choosing the most convenient and bad choice anyway.
I appreciate your response and, on re-reading your remarks above, I think we parse things out a bit differently. What I called acting (or speaking) "in good faith" could equally be analyzed in terms of "social trust," the background assumption that we're all in this together and tend to "mean what we say." My distinction between the request and the need can then be elucidated by quoting Shakespeare: "O reason not the need! (King Lear): once you start questioning needs, you'll wind up on the blasted heath.
Looking back at the prompt for our reflections (call it the "stealing from Whole Foods" question), I notice that "giving to those who ask" (calling them "beggars" puts us in a different moral universe) is really the flip-side of that question. Both sides together point to a weakness in how we tend to think about the "abundance" agenda.
Amazon/WF embodies "abundance" for those who can pay. As corporations, they make a profit from making abundance more and more convenient, arousing and satisfying our cravings by "rationalizing" their operations. (That's a different sense of "rationalization" than you meant, above). Realizing that arouses resentment in many who succumb, uneasily, to the appeal of convenience–we have to confront the weakness of our own wills–and resentment produces a desire to retaliate, to “liberate” the lemons from the commodity circuit, to defy “the system.” The analogy isn’t so much “shooting and crying” as it is what someone else (can’t find the reference) termed “complicity porn,” i.e. being aroused by what your better angels know is degrading.
Flipping the scenario: walking down the street, I embody abundance (“well off white guy”) to someone in need. The question imposes itself: why should they have to do without “While there are others living about us,/Never molested though in the wrong” (to quote the old song “Farther Along”)? Being too aggressive isn’t going to get anywhere: wealthy white guys know they’re entitled to the protection of the law. But there’s no harm in asking… So (speaking for myself), when someone asks me for help, I’m going to start by presuming that we’re in this together and the need is real. I’m not immune to resentment when pressed too hard–I prefer to imagine myself as generous rather than as an easy mark– but being entitled comes with some obligations (noblesse oblige).
Here’s where I believe Ideal theorizing about a perfectly legitimate State leads us astray: it makes the Perfect an enemy of the “somewhat better” and leaves us feeling that meeting another’s needs is somehow “an offense against [my] dignity.” A Perfectly Legitimate State is not, by definition, a democratic state: there’s no room for different views, for arguing about priorities. The rationalist simply stipulates what True Freedom demands. Rather than being cowed by the demand for Absolutes, I’d say we’re better off wrestling with particular persons and specific needs.
Such a great essay. Also, what thoughtless, frivolous people these are. Lightweights.