To be righteous is to stand behind a cause that you think is right. It's to do what you think should be done, regardless of what other people might think of you. It's to say what ought to be said, for no other reason than because someone needs to say it.
To be self-righteous is to believe that everything you say and do supports that cause. If you're on the right side, then anything you say is virtuous and just. Any action you take, any treatment of others, is warranted, because you are the arbiter for—and the champion of—your cause.
What's more, should anyone oppose you, they aren't merely wrong: they are wicked, evil, hurtful. They deserve to be struck down, cast out, humiliated, punished. At the very least, they must be silenced; in truth, they must correct their ways, or else be smitten from the earth.
Self-righteousness, in other words, is a kind of self-obsession. It gives you permission to treat other people carelessly, cruelly, even violently, by placing your regard for yourself and your cause over your regard for others. And it conflates you with your cause, until you believe that any opposition to you is opposition to your cause, and any pushback against you is an attack against your cause, and any disagreement or whatsoever is as vile and intolerable as your cause is benevolent and right.
You can stand firm in righteousness without losing compassion, or at least courtesy, towards other people. You can speak out against injustice without concluding that cruelty or sadism is warranted. You can disagree with others, loudly and emphatically, without turning it into a violent attempt to keep them from speaking ever again.
On one level, there are pragmatic reasons to do this. It's hard to be open-minded and defensive at the same time; if you want to champion your cause, it's better not to directly attack the minds you want to change. There is a time and place for action and direct opposition and force, and that time is when the people you're standing up to hold real material power—that's when you want to wield power too, in whatever form makes sense. But even then, you want to wield power against them appropriately and effectively, unless you care more about feeling virtuous than acting virtuously.
On another level, there are moral reasons to avoid self-righteousness. At the end of the day, your actions create the world you live in. Treat people poorly, and you are creating a world in which, here and now, people are getting hurt. This isn't just a matter of empathy, or of recognizing people's humanity, or acknowledging their complex and contradictory ways. Simply imagine a world in which other people act the way that you act, but aimed in every direction rather than just yours.
To behave righteously is to create the world you want to belong to, if you want to live in a world where people have backbones, and care about doing right, and are unafraid to show what they believe in. To behave self-righteously is to create a world in which, among other things, nobody will have time to care about your purported cause, because they'll be too busy lashing out in the name of theirs. It ultimately creates a world of domination, a world in which all that matters is who manages to overpower who. And if your cause is in any way related to inequality or injustice, you should be fighting against that world most of all, because the already-powerful tend to win struggles of domination, and because battles of dominance are what create the unequal structures of our world to begin with.
But on a third, far simpler level, the reason to avoid self-righteousness is that you are fallible. You are human, which is to say: you are ignorant and moody and impulsive and misguided. You are blind to other people's depths, and you are blind to your own distorted perspective. It doesn't matter how impressive you consider yourself, or how convinced you are of your own ideals. You will still trip up; you will make mistakes; you will have bad days; you will misfire. All you can control are the consequences of your actions. And you do that by holding yourself accountable before you act, and by doing your very best to act appropriately and correctly, so that your fuck-ups won't have a body count.
If I speak out against what I believe to be bigotry, clearly and firmly and unapologetically, it does no harm if it turns out my impressions were wrong. At most, I've been a brief nuisance; if I need to apologize, I'm sorry only for misreading the situation, and not for how I treated anyone involved. If I jump up to break up a fight, only to realize there wasn't a fight to begin with, I can laugh at myself and we can all move on. If I let myself be cruel, on the other hand, if I let myself behave abusively towards others, then the stakes for my perspective being wrong have changed. Apology or not, I will have harmed an innocent person. Anyone who sees me do this and walks away thinking that I'm unsafe, that I'm dangerous to them or to others, won't be convinced otherwise by my rationalizations. And they'll be right not to be, because at the end of the day, I will have hurt someone for no reason other than that I decided they deserved it.
I'm not a particularly nice person. I like to be a little rough, a little antagonistic, with people I know well. I relish a fight more than I probably should. I let myself be mean when I think it's witty. There are times when I delight, a little more than is savory, at the thought that I might be the reason why somebody else has a bad day.
So I'm not saying any of this to be sanctimonious, or to police other people's actions. If anything, I try my best to give other people leeway to be less than perfect, to be angry and hurt and defensive, to snap and lash out in unguarded moments. Different people have different coping methods, and we are living through ghastly times. It's important not to rush to judgment, I think—and it's important to separate our judgments about individual actions from our judgments of individuals themselves. Good people have bad moments; most people are trying their best, and their best is often limited. (And ignorant, and moody, and impulsive, and misguided, and...)
But there is a stark difference between flawed behavior and adopting a worldview that justifies it. The worldview says: there is no need to reflect upon your actions. The worldview says: anything and everything you do is acceptable and just. The worldview says: anyone who would be bothered or upset by what you're doing is, implicitly, sinful and evil and less-than-human.
Self-righteousness is the belief that there is no need to grow or change or reconsider. It's the belief that there's no need to place faith in others, or to attempt connection with them, or to see them as anything other than obstacles. The true value of righteousness, though it may sound strange, is humility: you place your cause before yourself, and you trust it even when you struggle to trust yourself, and you let yourself act as you ought to act, letting it guide and move and shape you. Self-righteousness, by contrast, is the arrogant belief that you should put yourself first, and trust yourself implicitly, and act however you like.
Righteousness is faith. Self-righteousness is hubris. Righteousness is driven by ideals. Self-righteousness is driven by dogma. Righteousness is rooted in the altruistic belief that we should commit ourselves to the possibility of a better world. Self-righteousness is rooted in the egocentric belief that we alone know what the world ought to be.
The line between the two is stark, when you know what to look for. It's the difference between clear spring water and a night of binge-drinking cheap vodka. The latter can be fun, for a while, but it fucks you up inside and out. And you won't love the hangover that ensues.
To be self-righteous is to believe that everything you say and do supports that cause. If you're on the right side, then anything you say is virtuous and just. Any action you take, any treatment of others, is warranted, because you are the arbiter for—and the champion of—your cause.
What's more, should anyone oppose you, they aren't merely wrong: they are wicked, evil, hurtful. They deserve to be struck down, cast out, humiliated, punished. At the very least, they must be silenced; in truth, they must correct their ways, or else be smitten from the earth.
Self-righteousness, in other words, is a kind of self-obsession. It gives you permission to treat other people carelessly, cruelly, even violently, by placing your regard for yourself and your cause over your regard for others. And it conflates you with your cause, until you believe that any opposition to you is opposition to your cause, and any pushback against you is an attack against your cause, and any disagreement or whatsoever is as vile and intolerable as your cause is benevolent and right.
You can stand firm in righteousness without losing compassion, or at least courtesy, towards other people. You can speak out against injustice without concluding that cruelty or sadism is warranted. You can disagree with others, loudly and emphatically, without turning it into a violent attempt to keep them from speaking ever again.
On one level, there are pragmatic reasons to do this. It's hard to be open-minded and defensive at the same time; if you want to champion your cause, it's better not to directly attack the minds you want to change. There is a time and place for action and direct opposition and force, and that time is when the people you're standing up to hold real material power—that's when you want to wield power too, in whatever form makes sense. But even then, you want to wield power against them appropriately and effectively, unless you care more about feeling virtuous than acting virtuously.
On another level, there are moral reasons to avoid self-righteousness. At the end of the day, your actions create the world you live in. Treat people poorly, and you are creating a world in which, here and now, people are getting hurt. This isn't just a matter of empathy, or of recognizing people's humanity, or acknowledging their complex and contradictory ways. Simply imagine a world in which other people act the way that you act, but aimed in every direction rather than just yours.
To behave righteously is to create the world you want to belong to, if you want to live in a world where people have backbones, and care about doing right, and are unafraid to show what they believe in. To behave self-righteously is to create a world in which, among other things, nobody will have time to care about your purported cause, because they'll be too busy lashing out in the name of theirs. It ultimately creates a world of domination, a world in which all that matters is who manages to overpower who. And if your cause is in any way related to inequality or injustice, you should be fighting against that world most of all, because the already-powerful tend to win struggles of domination, and because battles of dominance are what create the unequal structures of our world to begin with.
But on a third, far simpler level, the reason to avoid self-righteousness is that you are fallible. You are human, which is to say: you are ignorant and moody and impulsive and misguided. You are blind to other people's depths, and you are blind to your own distorted perspective. It doesn't matter how impressive you consider yourself, or how convinced you are of your own ideals. You will still trip up; you will make mistakes; you will have bad days; you will misfire. All you can control are the consequences of your actions. And you do that by holding yourself accountable before you act, and by doing your very best to act appropriately and correctly, so that your fuck-ups won't have a body count.
If I speak out against what I believe to be bigotry, clearly and firmly and unapologetically, it does no harm if it turns out my impressions were wrong. At most, I've been a brief nuisance; if I need to apologize, I'm sorry only for misreading the situation, and not for how I treated anyone involved. If I jump up to break up a fight, only to realize there wasn't a fight to begin with, I can laugh at myself and we can all move on. If I let myself be cruel, on the other hand, if I let myself behave abusively towards others, then the stakes for my perspective being wrong have changed. Apology or not, I will have harmed an innocent person. Anyone who sees me do this and walks away thinking that I'm unsafe, that I'm dangerous to them or to others, won't be convinced otherwise by my rationalizations. And they'll be right not to be, because at the end of the day, I will have hurt someone for no reason other than that I decided they deserved it.
I'm not a particularly nice person. I like to be a little rough, a little antagonistic, with people I know well. I relish a fight more than I probably should. I let myself be mean when I think it's witty. There are times when I delight, a little more than is savory, at the thought that I might be the reason why somebody else has a bad day.
So I'm not saying any of this to be sanctimonious, or to police other people's actions. If anything, I try my best to give other people leeway to be less than perfect, to be angry and hurt and defensive, to snap and lash out in unguarded moments. Different people have different coping methods, and we are living through ghastly times. It's important not to rush to judgment, I think—and it's important to separate our judgments about individual actions from our judgments of individuals themselves. Good people have bad moments; most people are trying their best, and their best is often limited. (And ignorant, and moody, and impulsive, and misguided, and...)
But there is a stark difference between flawed behavior and adopting a worldview that justifies it. The worldview says: there is no need to reflect upon your actions. The worldview says: anything and everything you do is acceptable and just. The worldview says: anyone who would be bothered or upset by what you're doing is, implicitly, sinful and evil and less-than-human.
Self-righteousness is the belief that there is no need to grow or change or reconsider. It's the belief that there's no need to place faith in others, or to attempt connection with them, or to see them as anything other than obstacles. The true value of righteousness, though it may sound strange, is humility: you place your cause before yourself, and you trust it even when you struggle to trust yourself, and you let yourself act as you ought to act, letting it guide and move and shape you. Self-righteousness, by contrast, is the arrogant belief that you should put yourself first, and trust yourself implicitly, and act however you like.
Righteousness is faith. Self-righteousness is hubris. Righteousness is driven by ideals. Self-righteousness is driven by dogma. Righteousness is rooted in the altruistic belief that we should commit ourselves to the possibility of a better world. Self-righteousness is rooted in the egocentric belief that we alone know what the world ought to be.
The line between the two is stark, when you know what to look for. It's the difference between clear spring water and a night of binge-drinking cheap vodka. The latter can be fun, for a while, but it fucks you up inside and out. And you won't love the hangover that ensues.