On the responsible deployment of knowledge

One of my closest friends and I were talking about what the people around us are saying, and the information that they deem worthy of sharing. In this scenario, I think that whether our involvement is active or passive, we have a responsibility to be moral actors. By passive involvement, I mean the consumption of information, and our subsequent choice to disseminate that same information.

How then do we become moral actors in our passive involvement? Surely, it would be difficult to say we ought not to read and process information we come into contact with since we would not know prior to consuming that information what that information would be. That would require not consuming information that remotely seems disagreeable to how we personally perceive the world — a form of personal prior restraint, if you will. Off hand, that seems undesirable. Hence, I put my focus towards interrogating what it means to be a moral actor when I make a choice to disseminate information.

There are also various ways by which we can categorize information, but for purposes of this navel-gazing experiment, I focus on the distinction between fact and not-fact. I won’t presume to make the value-judgment as to what is fact and not-fact this time, and I won’t contemplate the ethics behind publishing what is not-fact. Those require mental exercises that I am not equipped to engage in right now. Truthfully, I’m barely equipped to engage in this current mental exercise now.

So, this is really about disseminating information that is ‘factually true’.

Most people would say that if something is a fact, there can be no way in which you are not a moral actor by publishing that information. For instance, there are reports that some of the violence perpetrated during the current spate of Black Lives Matter protests are actually committed clandestinely by instigators or law enforcement themselves. People around me publish that information and think that doing so is ‘the right thing to do’ because it purifies the cause and shows that the people protesting are actually peaceful.

Yes, perhaps, the information disseminated is ‘fact’. But there are instances when it is not a question of what is ‘factually true’, but how we deploy our knowledge responsibly. And in doing so, we must ask whether the information we are choosing to publish at all undermines the movements espousing the very valid (but historically unheard) concerns we are criticizing, and if that harm is outweighed by the need to publish the information immediately.

Very often, that harm ought to be given more weight, and yet people do not accord it the careful consideration it deserves.

I will take the Black Lives Matter example above to illustrate the point. By publishing that information, you take the rhetoric of the Trump administration that the protests are a sign of the ‘collapse’ of law and order rather than a legitimate grievance. You may or may not believe in that claim, but when you point towards people that are believed to be taking advantage of the situation and highlight these individuals, it is as if you are pointing towards proof that there is a ‘collapse’ and that we should ‘send in the troops’. Thus, in choosing to publish that ‘fact’, you grant legitimacy to the claim that harsher measures are needed to restore that ‘collapsing’ law and order (perhaps, without meaning to). And because you have (inadvertently?) supported the claim that harsher measures are needed, you have thereby increased support for an action that puts the protesters at an even greater risk.

Moreover, you create a category — the ‘violent’ protester — and you grant carte blanche to the use of violence against these individuals. I have my own views on the necessity of violence in popular uprisings, but regardless of what those views may be, the creation of this category has two immediately apparent harms. First, you legitimize the use of violence against these individuals. And, second, you support the rhetoric that locates blame for the continued existence of systemic racism on the individuals protesting it for failing to do so in a ‘socially acceptable’ fashion. (These, among other views on the reported violence of the protests, will not be further engaged with — for now.)

The question then becomes, why was there a need to publish that information? We are not media outlets; we are individual persons who can choose to highlight particular aspects of a situation. Even the most benign reason — “I want to show that the protesters are good and non-violent and they are just victims here” — is problematic because it is premised on a demand for moral purity from the disadvantaged group before their grievances are heard. Why must we buy into this logic, engage it, and try to meet that impossible standard instead of requiring that we, as a society, deem these grievances legitimate without requiring proof that the persons bringing the grievance have met that standard? What is our standard for granting political agency to individuals? Does justice only belong to the morally pure? I don’t think it does, so it is unfathomable to me why (probably) well-meaning criticisms seem to demand it.

All this is really just my long-winded way of saying that I will try to be a moral actor in this case. Should any one chance upon these discussions, I would like to be able to say that the information (‘fact’) I chose to post has cleared that test, and that the thoughts (‘opinion’) I declared are the product of thorough self-examination and study. Otherwise, there would be no point to putting musings down, which I only do to help me process information.