Dear Prudence: Moral DIsagreements

[minoanmiss]

How do I respond to a person doing something I morally disagree with that they are very excited about? I’ve found myself in many conversations over the past year where acquaintances, coworkers, distant family, or other not-close friends give me an update that makes me uncomfortable.

Examples include: “I’m visiting Hawaii during a drought,” “I’m trying to adopt a baby and fighting the birth mother for custody,” and “I’m going on a mission trip to Uganda to convert people to Christianity.” These are all things I don’t super agree with, but the person speaking often sees as positive or totally innocent. Do I just say good luck? Do I share my concerns? I feel like a self-righteous buzzkill if I react honestly, and like I’m silently endorsing their actions if I don’t.

—Paralyzed By Politeness

Dear Paralyzed,

This is hard to answer because it’s not about the words you say in conversation. It’s about the relationship you want to have with people who do things that you find morally objectionable. And only you can make the calculation about where certain actions fall on the “I would have made a different choice” to “Wow, you’re actually a force for evil and I don’t want to be close to you” spectrum in your mind. I’m guessing that a friend making a poor choice for the environment in a world where we could all stand to interrogate our actions might not rise to the same level as someone committing to a legal fight that you see as seriously hurting a specific child. But I don’t know! Either way, here is your guide.

If you think what the person is doing is so messed up that it makes you question whether you even really want to be friends with them: “Wow, that actually sounds kind of wrong to me!”

If you disagree with the action but not enough that it changes your opinion of the person or your desire to have a relationship with them: “Wow, how long will the flight be?”

Comments

[jadelennox]

Yeah, I agree that the advice is useful to me. I have lots of friends whom I love dearly who make choices I wouldn't. Hell, if I scolded everyone who shops at Amazon, or who works at Google, I would have zero friends. And nor do I think those are appalling choices, to be clear, they're just ones I wouldn't make, just as I make choices every day that my friends disagree with!

But there are some things I think of as actively evil. "Travelling to Hawai'i during a drought" isn't (to me) evil, it's making choices the LW wouldn't make in a complex and fucked up world, where tourism is both harmful and vital for Hawaiians. "Fighting the birth mother for custody of a baby you want to adopt" is, in most cases, go directly to the evil box, do not pass go, do not collect $200. If I knew someone doing that and they weren't dissuadable, I wouldn't want to be friends with them or with anyone who still is friends with them.

In a co-worker case it's different, agreed. You can't tell your coworker that mission trips are evil, but you can ask them to not talk about it in the workplace, and you can possibly involve HR. But, say, if your co-worker told you they're trying to convince family to buy crypto (evil, sometimes socially acceptable, and not technically religious) you'd have a harder time getting HR involved.

[ellen_fremedon]

If you just want to shut a discussion down at work, it is usually possible to frame the request as "I find this topic difficult and would appreciate it if you stopped bringing it up, as a favor." I've done that with things that didn't have a real-world moral valance (I had to ask one coworker at old job if we could not discuss Donna Noble's Doctor Who story arc because his takes were so bad, and he clearly thought I was off my rocker but he also never brought her up again).