judgy

Some months after the Dishtowel Incident described below, I ran across a laminated sheet (!) with pictures of the various towel patterns in use at church and their assigned kitchens / uses. I dug this up just now and it is even crazier than I remembered. 

While I am on the subject of rants, I think it's time to get this one over with. 

The Last Paper was/is supposed to be about climate change. It is for one of my ethics classes. The instructor looks at ethical issues using “See – Judge – Act” method. 

See-Judge-Act was developed by Joseph Cardijn (1882–1967), a Belgian cardinal and Catholic social activist. Best I’ve been able to figure out, Cardijn’s radical idea was that we should back away from the more traditional Catholic method of Judge-Condemn-Repeat and see ethical problems in their societal contexts. In particular, the criteria we use to judge don't primarily come from some catalog of vices but from Catholic social teaching [1]. Whose pillars are are, for those of you who haven’t been trying to write this darn paper for six months: human dignity, the common good, solidarity, subsidiarity, and integral ecology. We aim to act in ways that make the societies we live in fairer, more just, more like the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed. 

This sounds utterly unproblematic, I know. And yet, I seem to be allergic to See-Judge-Act. 

It's the "judge" that triggers me. The Swiss are so, so into judging. The stereotypes. The passive-aggressive notes. The dishtowel drama...

Exhibit A: This one time I was hosting the church playgroup in its usual meeting/party room and for some reason there were no dishtowels in the drawer. So I went down to the café to ask if I could borrow a dishtowel. The person at the café (who surely had dishtowels) sent me down to the laundry room. The person who did the laundry wasn't there, but I spotted a pile of clean dishtowels, picked one up and proceeded with my day. The next week it turned out that *all hell had broken loose* because I had grabbed and used THE WRONG DISHTOWEL. Turns out that each of the kitchen areas in the parish center has its own assigned dishtowel patterns. And even though all the dishtowels are washed (and ironed, of course) in the same laundry room, we can't just use dishtowels willy-nilly. Nor could someone simply explain to the dumb foreigner that she is only allowed to use, say, blue-plaid dishtowels because, well, see above. And if you're thinking okay, maybe the Swiss are just very very conscious of cross-contamination or something? I'd like to submit

Exhibit B: At the church café (different church) where I volunteer now, they serve lunch on weekdays. For the lunch service, the staff - the standard crew is a cook, someone preparing drinks, and two people on table service - uses four (4) green microfiber cloths to clean up spills and four (4) dishtowels to dry off the counters/tables we wiped with the microfiber cloths. By the end of the service, the dishtowels aren't gross or anything, but I wouldn't say they are in any way hygienic. But when the glasses and silverware come out of the dishwasher? We carefully wipe each one down with one of the dishtowels before putting it away. So there are no water spots. Water spots would be unsightly. One day I got out a clean dishtowel for this purpose and at the end of the shift the manager complained that we had used too many dishtowels.  

By now you surely think I'm nuts. But my point is, if the Swiss are this nitpicky about freaking dishtowel use, you can imagine what the ethics discussions are like. For any given problem there is a right answer, and the only thing to talk about is all the reasons we are right. 

Our ethics instructor tried, he really did. His version of "judge" is to work backwards from The Right Answer to an analysis of the values underlying that answer, and then suggest that if someone had different underlying values, they might come to a different conclusion. If you value appearance over hygiene, you should continue to wipe the clean dishes with the dirty dishtowels. If you value hygiene over appearance, you might need to put up with a few water spots. Sure. Except: it would be all too easy to value appearance *and* hygiene by using a clean dishtowel. But that option does not come into question because values aren't the only thing at play here. There's also a need for control, dread of change, pressure to conform, conflict avoidance, and a culture that treats question-asking like the plague. And of course the omnipresent hierarchy: if the boss thought we needed to change the procedure, it would change immediately.

Am I being unfair? Sort of. The Swiss are known for their pragmatic compromises so somewhere around here there must be people with more ambiguity tolerance. And my own issues come into play here too, for sure. But also, I could not make this stuff up.

I don't think we can get around my "judge" problem simply by changing the word to something that sounds less black and white (assess, evaluate, analyze, etc.). The problem I think is that See-Judge-Act encourages looking outward when we also (I would say mostly) need to look inward, both personally and collectively. Without self-reflection, See-Judge-Act becomes an exercise in rationalization, in composing a story about how we intended to act in the first place. I think this is particularly true when it comes to climate crisis response, and I think this because in draft after draft I catch myself doing it. So I'm on the search for something different...fully aware that I may well come back around when I get to the bottom of my own resistance. 

Rant over, for today.

[1] Catholic social teaching (CST) is part of the teaching tradition of the Catholic Church, specifically the collection of papal encyclicals since 1891 that comment on modern society.  The five "pillars" of CST have emerged and been developed by successive popes who wove their particular (and sometimes conflicting) personal and historical perspectives into an ever-evolving consensus. The pillars are not legalistic norms, but rather lenses through which we can view our lives and societies in the light of divine revelation, as interpreted through Church tradition. Might some voices have been excluded from this consensus? Oh yes. But it is a fascinating exercise that, among other things, reflects the Church's own struggle to find its place in a society in which it is not the sole and undisputed ethical authority.