The Art of Manliness - The Case for Minding Your Own Business

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.980 Attend the graduation of a college senior and the commencement speech is likely to include a few

00:00:16.200 themes. Do something big, make a name for yourself, change the world. My guest is not a fan of this

00:00:23.100 advice and says that rather than focusing on solving large scale problems, we ought to concentrate on

00:00:28.000 making things better in our own backyards. Brandon Wormke is a professor of philosophy and the

00:00:32.700 co-author of Why It's Okay to Mind Your Own Business. Today on the show, Brandon explains

00:00:37.520 why what he calls commencement speech morality distorts our moral vision by emphasizing one

00:00:42.100 version of the good and valuable life at the expense of the value and good of a life marked

00:00:46.260 by ordinary morality. Brandon first unpacks the dangers of intervening in other people's business,

00:00:51.540 including becoming a moralizer and a busybody. He then makes a case for the benefits of minding

00:00:56.260 your own business and putting down roots, creating a good home and living in solitude and for how a

00:01:01.940 smaller, quieter life can still be generous, important, and noble. After the show's over,

00:01:07.420 check out our show notes at aom.is slash ordinary morality.

00:01:10.680 All right, Brandon Wormke, welcome back to the show.

00:01:26.940 Thanks for having me, Brett.

00:01:27.980 So we had you on a few years ago to talk about your book, Moral Grandstanding. You got a new book

00:01:32.620 out called Why It's Okay to Mind Your Own Business. And this is really interesting. It's about minding your

00:01:38.580 business morally. What's interesting is you're a moral philosopher. So you wouldn't think a moral

00:01:45.140 philosopher would say, hey, just mind your own business. But you make the counterintuitive case

00:01:49.240 that to make the world a better place, you might start just minding your own business and just focusing

00:01:55.560 on your inner circle that you have in your life. And you start off the book talking about that there's

00:02:01.740 two types of morality that you see out there. You call one type commencement speech morality

00:02:06.440 and the other ordinary morality. What are the differences between the two?

00:02:12.400 So commencement speech morality, if anyone's ever been to a commencement speech, when I talk about

00:02:17.640 this sort of outlook, they almost immediately know what I mean. So it's an outlook that has certain

00:02:24.340 values and priorities and judgments that commencement speakers usually pulled from the social elite

00:02:31.100 tell young graduates. And they'll say something like, the world is full of injustices that need

00:02:37.100 addressed. The world is full of people who need help. It's clear what needs to be done. But all of us

00:02:43.460 old people, we don't care enough to do it. But you care. You have the spark in your hearts. And so get out

00:02:50.080 there and make a name for yourself, solve the biggest problems you can, and make the world a better

00:02:55.220 place for everyone. And that's the kind of message that most college graduates get. Now, this kind of

00:03:01.320 message, you don't just get it at commencement speeches. You can hear it all kinds of places in society.

00:03:06.000 But it says moral life is simple. The world is your business. The world is a kind of buffet of problems

00:03:12.200 to solve. And in fact, what gives your life meaning is solving these problems. And the bigger problems that

00:03:18.540 you can solve, the better, the bigger that you can make a name for yourself. And what makes all the

00:03:24.360 difference is your good intentions. And that's a message that a lot of young people hear, not just

00:03:31.860 a graduation, but through high school and college. And it's the view of life from the podium when we're

00:03:40.380 high minded and when speakers have an audience. What we argue in the book, though, is that the problem

00:03:45.960 with commencement speech morality is that it distorts our moral vision. It focuses on only one kind of

00:03:53.120 valuable life, which you might think of as like political engagement or saving the world. But in

00:03:59.580 the book, we offer a different kind of outlook. And we call it, for lack of a better term, we call it

00:04:05.440 ordinary morality. It's not the view from the podium, but it's the view from your backyard garden,

00:04:12.000 your local library. And it takes a much wider view about what's important in life. It says life isn't

00:04:19.400 just about shaping the revolutions of your time or solving the world's biggest problems. Life is also

00:04:26.200 about reading to your kids and coaching t-ball and mowing your yard and volunteering at your local

00:04:32.260 library. And so that's an alternative outlook to commencement speech morality that we give in the

00:04:37.780 book. And it's when we defend. Has commencement speech morality always existed or is it a relatively

00:04:44.200 new cultural development? This is a really, this is a nice question. I suspect that the tradition of

00:04:52.660 giving young people, especially young people, advice to accomplish big things and do big things with

00:04:59.600 their lives, I suspect that's nothing new. I think that what makes this modern moral of advice

00:05:06.200 somewhat novel is that it requires a certain kind of cultural background that didn't exist until

00:05:12.560 fairly recently. And even now probably only exists in some parts of the globe. So think about what has

00:05:18.800 to be true for a society's social elite to tell young people to get out there and solve the world's

00:05:26.620 biggest problems and make a name for yourself. I mean, one thing that sort of has to be true is you

00:05:32.440 you have to have a society that's pretty affluent. I mean, you know, to be able to spend your life

00:05:38.260 working at a nonprofit or like going door-to-door canvassing for your favorite political party,

00:05:44.240 like you have to have a society that's pretty affluent. It's hard to imagine people giving

00:05:48.040 advice to lots of young people like this and, you know, this 1500s or something. And I think you also

00:05:54.180 have to have a global culture. I mean, to see the world as a repository

00:05:58.080 of problems to solve and people to help requires, you know, having access to far-flung parts of the

00:06:07.980 globe. So, you know, if you listen to like NPR, like that's the sort of information you have to

00:06:12.880 have access to. I mean, it's hard to imagine even just 200 years ago, young people being told to sort

00:06:18.100 of like get out there on the globe and solve inequality in the far-flung places. So I do think,

00:06:25.600 you know, look, young people have been getting advice about how to live their life for a long

00:06:29.800 time, but this particular brand of commencement speech morality is probably fairly recent.

00:06:35.500 And you also talk about in the book that utilitarianism could be seen as an ancestor

00:06:40.860 of this commencement speech morality because commencement speech morality is all about

00:06:45.420 doing big things and affecting as many people as possible. And utilitarianism, I mean,

00:06:50.960 one of its mantras is the greatest good for the greatest number of people. You want to

00:06:55.300 try to do things that will have the biggest effect on people.

00:06:59.820 That's right. So utilitarianism typically says that there's one most important value. And depending

00:07:06.940 on who you ask, it's something like happiness or pleasure or well-being. And what morality tells us

00:07:14.560 is that you need to be doing the most good that you can do, or at least, you know, a lot of good.

00:07:22.360 You got to be out there doing a lot of good in the world. And so you can see why there's some overlap

00:07:26.980 with utilitarianism and commencement speech morality, even though you will rarely, if ever, hear in a

00:07:32.080 speech, you know, Bill Gates say utilitarianism is true. You got to go maximize the pleasure in the

00:07:37.920 world. But there is this overlap in the following sense that there's this kind of, you know,

00:07:42.840 kind of single-minded focus on being useful and making the world a better place. And I think

00:07:51.540 those things are important. It's important to be useful. Obviously, it's important to do good in

00:07:55.700 the world. But the question is, is that the most important thing? Does that dominate all other

00:07:59.880 concerns? And one of the things we argue in the book is it's that's a very distorted moral vision.

00:08:06.740 Yeah, because it ignores just the small day-to-day things. It ignores spending time with

00:08:12.080 a parent who is aging and has dementia. And you're watching The Price is Right with them for,

00:08:18.440 you know, the 10th time this week or something like that. Utilitarianism be like, well, you're

00:08:23.540 doing some good, but you could be doing more good if you spent time on some other project or group

00:08:29.320 that's doing more good for more people. That's right.

00:08:32.200 So the first half of the book is about the dangers of minding other people's business. And the second

00:08:37.720 half is about the merits of minding your own. And one of the dangers of not minding your own

00:08:44.360 business is that it can turn you into a moralizer. There are different forms of moralizing that exist,

00:08:49.760 but you concentrate on a particular type in this book. What type is that?

00:08:54.660 So the kind of moralizing that we focus in the book involves overstepping boundaries when it comes

00:09:01.960 to enforcing morality. And to see what I mean. So just think about what we do when we enforce

00:09:08.260 morality. So morality is important. It's important for people to do good things and avoid doing bad

00:09:13.200 things. And sometimes we enforce morality. We're like morality cops. We intervene into other people's

00:09:20.020 lives. We tell them how to behave or what to do, or we blame them when we think they do something

00:09:26.080 wrong. We say, you know, shame on you, or you shouldn't have done that. We might withdraw friendly

00:09:30.080 relations or censure them some way. And moral enforcement is good. It's useful when it's used

00:09:37.140 properly. But one of the ways that we can improperly enforce morality is when we overstep certain

00:09:44.120 boundaries. So the idea is that, look, just because, you know, even if you're right that someone has done

00:09:50.720 something wrong, that doesn't mean you always have a right to enforce morality. Our rights to enforce

00:09:57.100 morality are limited. So sometimes they're limited just because the thing isn't that important.

00:10:02.480 So suppose you hear someone at the park lying on the phone about their present whereabouts. They say

00:10:09.260 they're at work, but they're actually at the park. That's just not your business, right? There's just

00:10:14.440 not sufficient reason for you to walk up to that guy and, you know, give him a lecture about lying

00:10:19.880 to his, you know, wife or whatever about where he is. You just don't have a right to intervene. It's

00:10:24.200 just not that important. Sometimes we don't have a right to intervene and enforce morality

00:10:29.560 because we don't know enough. We don't often have enough information about the nuances of a situation

00:10:36.460 or a relationship or the histories of the people involved. Other times the issues are just too

00:10:42.940 complex or unclear to warrant, you know, inserting ourselves into other people's lives and, you know,

00:10:50.100 telling them what to do or blaming them. Other times we don't have sort of, you know,

00:10:55.860 standing, social standing to intervene in people's lives. Sometimes this is because we're hypocrites. 0.98

00:11:01.940 So, you know, a chain smoker with no intention of giving up his bad habit doesn't really have the

00:11:09.120 right to lecture people about the harm they're doing to themselves by smoking. Sometimes we just don't

00:11:14.780 have the proper social role. So, you know, Brett, like you might not be doing your dishes, you know,

00:11:21.300 you're the dish guy at home, you know, and maybe your wife, it would be appropriate for her to sort 0.97

00:11:26.800 of like blame you or call you out on this. It would be totally inappropriate for me to do it. Like,

00:11:31.940 that's not my business. Like I shouldn't enforce morality, even though it's true that you, you know,

00:11:36.780 you need to be picking up the slack at home. It's just not my call to make.

00:11:40.720 And so for all these reasons, and probably many more, our right to enforce morality is very limited.

00:11:48.780 And what the moralizer does is they enforce morality anyway. So the question isn't so much here,

00:11:57.140 does morality belong here? The question is, do I belong here? Like, do I belong in someone else's

00:12:04.160 business as an enforcer of morality? And often the answer is no. But what the moralizer does is,

00:12:10.720 intervene anyway. Yeah. You see a lot of this kind of moralizing online, right? People jump into

00:12:16.020 social media discussions to tell strangers, hey, you know, you shouldn't eat that diet or, you know,

00:12:21.560 you shouldn't set up your family life that way. You know, you shouldn't make that joke. There's a lot

00:12:27.900 of policing of comments and discussions amongst strangers who probably don't have the standing to

00:12:32.940 do so. And then related to this idea of online discussion and moralizing, something else you talk

00:12:38.280 about that moralizers do is they inject morality into everything. And as a consequence, they're

00:12:43.440 just constantly morally outraged. But the thing is, if you're constantly morally outraged, that can get

00:12:49.460 in the way of actually doing things to help make the world a better place.

00:12:53.620 Yeah. So another problem with moralizing is it actually is self-undermining. So if you really care

00:12:59.720 about morality, you'll use your moral enforcement. You know, and outrage is one of these tools that we use

00:13:05.800 to enforce morality, anger, disgust. But enforcing morality is a bit like, it's like watering a cactus.

00:13:14.620 I've killed a lot of cactuses in my day because I'm just too nurturing, right? I just care about

00:13:21.220 them so much. And I think, wow, it's been two weeks since they've had water. Of course they need more

00:13:24.820 water. And I end up killing these for cacti. And the point is, look, you don't get better results just 0.84

00:13:30.960 by doing more of something. Cacti need water, but you don't care for the cactus. You don't get better

00:13:36.340 results just by giving them more water. You have to respect the limits. And outrage and moral

00:13:43.360 enforcement, they operate under a similar logic. So if you want to retain the power of outrage and

00:13:50.120 moral enforcement, you have to use them sparingly and appropriately. And the more we moralize,

00:13:56.400 the more we undermine the utility of moral enforcement itself. So in a way, it's a bit

00:14:00.980 paradoxical. Like, you know, if you really care about morality, you will pick your spots. You will

00:14:08.060 keep your powder dry and enforce morality when it really can do good. So moralizers, their big problem

00:14:15.100 is they overextend limits when it comes to enforcing morality. Yeah. They might expand the scope of what is

00:14:23.360 a moral issue, or they might extend their standing as moral enforcers. So I mean, the question is,

00:14:31.620 like, how do you know what those limits are? How do you know when you should intervene with somebody

00:14:37.720 and say, hey, you're doing something wrong here? How do you figure that out? Yeah, this is a really

00:14:43.300 difficult question. And I think any moral philosopher who gives you a very specific test is probably

00:14:51.960 lying to you. I don't think there's really, I mean, morality is just really messy. And Aristotle

00:14:58.200 pointed this out in book one of Nicomachean Ethics. Like, morality is just very complex and difficult.

00:15:04.760 What I usually do is I, you know, there's a kind of moralizing self-inventory. So the idea is not that

00:15:10.520 you ask yourself these questions when you think you're about to enforce morality, but the idea is to

00:15:14.420 sort of, like, become the kind of person who is reticent to intervene. So you can ask yourself

00:15:20.200 questions like, is this really important? Is this a morally complex situation? Am I sure I'm seeing

00:15:27.840 the moral answer clearly? Would I be a hypocrite like the chain smoker for involving myself? Do I 0.96

00:15:36.140 have the right social standing? So is there someone better suited to intervene than me? Maybe, you know,

00:15:41.600 look, I shouldn't be calling you out on your dish duty. Maybe that's your wife's concern.

00:15:46.140 Okay. So one of the dangers of commencement speech morality is it can turn us into moralizers,

00:15:51.920 illicit moralizers, where we overextend our boundary. Another potential problem of commencement

00:15:57.980 speech morality is it can turn us into busybodies. What's a busybody? I think we all kind of know what

00:16:04.100 a busybody is, but how do you define it as a moral philosopher?

00:16:07.200 Yeah. So a busybody, so whereas, you know, a moralizer oversteps the boundaries in enforcing 1.00

00:16:13.180 morality, a busybody is someone who oversteps boundaries and trying to help people. Busybodies 0.96

00:16:18.220 stick their noses in other people's business and try to solve their problems for them or try to help

00:16:24.240 them. So, you know, you might go around the gym and help people correct their weightlifting form.

00:16:30.300 That's like a busybody. 1.00

00:16:31.460 No one likes that guy.

00:16:33.220 No one likes that guy. Or you might interrupt a conversation at a coffee shop and, you know,

00:16:37.860 explain why these people don't understand the economics of minimum wage law.

00:16:41.760 You know, you can imagine a group of, you know, Yale undergrads traveling to a poor,

00:16:46.660 remote traditional village and like explaining to them how they should set up their society to

00:16:51.140 conform to like gender egalitarian ideals. So, you know, a busybody basically goes beyond the proper 0.87

00:17:00.740 limits of helping. And our view is that just like moralizing being a busybody, being a meddler in other

00:17:09.260 people's affairs is a way of not minding your own business.

00:17:13.220 What's interesting about the busybody is ancient philosophers even talked about this guy.

00:17:18.540 Yeah.

00:17:18.840 What did ancient philosophers think of busybodies?

00:17:21.740 Yeah, it's interesting. If you read those, you know, Plato in the Republic says,

00:17:25.160 doing your own business and not being a busybody is justice. The author of Hebrews, actually,

00:17:31.740 I don't know if we actually know who the author of Hebrews is, but the author of Hebrews in the New

00:17:36.100 Testament tells his readers not to be busybodies. Epictetus, Therophrastus, a lot of these ancient

00:17:42.700 philosophers really had this conviction that before you go around trying to solve other people's

00:17:50.040 problems, you should have a pretty good handle on your own. There was something about the idea of

00:17:57.180 trying to help people, often when you don't know enough, when you don't have standing,

00:18:02.600 maybe you're, you know, you're doing it because you have a need, you have a pathological need to

00:18:08.840 help or be useful or be seen as a messiah. I know people like this. I'm sure you and many of your

00:18:14.820 listeners do. They have a need to be seen as extremely compassionate and helpful. This type

00:18:20.860 of character really bothered a lot of ancient philosophers. And I, and I think it's, it's, it's a

00:18:25.240 part of sort of the history of moral thinking that we have lost in a lot of Western society is that

00:18:32.360 it's, you know, look, everyone agrees helping is good. It's good to help people. But I think a lot

00:18:37.320 of people find it counterintuitive that you could actually do something inappropriate by trying to

00:18:42.760 help people. It would be an example of you helping someone, but it's ends up being inappropriate

00:18:48.300 because you just did no context. Yeah. So, you know, you can imagine you over here, a couple at the

00:18:54.760 park, like having a dispute, you know, maybe they're an old married couple. And you read one book

00:19:00.720 on like a relationship therapy or something like couples therapy. You can imagine walking up and

00:19:06.180 say, Hey, you know, I heard you guys were having a dispute. Hope you don't mind. I have a few thoughts

00:19:11.240 about how to handle this and come to a resolution. I think everybody, you know, everybody would think

00:19:18.540 this is none of your business. Like, I know you're trying to help, you know, and it's, so it's,

00:19:23.340 it's not moralizing, right? They're not blaming, they're not calling out, they're not enforcing

00:19:28.080 morality. They are literally trying to help. There's something about this that is inappropriate.

00:19:34.600 And this is a pretty like small scale, fairly innocuous, you know, it's annoying or a source of,

00:19:40.900 you know, maybe minor conflict. You might tell them, Hey, you know, Hey man, get lost.

00:19:45.520 But the problem is that you can also be a busy body and meddle in other people's affairs on a larger

00:19:52.800 scale. So you think about certain kinds of disastrous military actions. There's a lot of

00:19:59.920 failed public policy, what the government tries to do when they're trying to help. And even, you know,

00:20:06.220 a lot of counterproductive humanitarian intervention. It's sort of coming to light now

00:20:10.500 that a lot of traditional charity just lines the pockets of warlords and corrupt dictators and so on.

00:20:19.360 And so, you know, just because someone's heart's in the right place, you know, they, for all kinds

00:20:26.560 of reasons involving the world being extremely complex, they might end up doing more harm than

00:20:32.360 good. This made me think of one of Immanuel Kant's ideas. Kant said you had to balance respect and love

00:20:40.520 in your interactions with people. And sometimes when you show love, you have to show a lack of respect,

00:20:46.640 right? So maybe you, you see someone who's having a hard time because maybe they have a disability and

00:20:51.500 they're having a hard time getting up some steps. The love part will be like, well, I need to go help

00:20:55.160 this person. But when you're doing that, you're putting that person in an inferior position. Like

00:20:59.480 they need to be helped. And I am the helper. Yeah. And Kant would say, well, maybe they don't want

00:21:04.080 your help because, you know, that would be a lack of respect. So I, maybe that's an example,

00:21:09.180 another example of busy body. They, they emphasize the love part and they don't think about the respect

00:21:13.260 parts. Like how would this make this person feel as an individual? Maybe they don't want my help

00:21:18.900 because they, they have a sense of dignity they want to keep and they don't want to be put in a,

00:21:22.760 a helped position. Right. Yeah. Good. So the Kantian idea, you know, as you rightly point out,

00:21:29.860 has to do with, you know, it's like autonomy, like fully functional, mature, moral adults.

00:21:36.360 You sort of have to give them within the wide limits, a lot of freedom to rule themselves.

00:21:42.820 So that's what autonomy means is self-rule. Like, and often what that means, and I think most good

00:21:48.980 parents realize this is you have to let children and adolescents self-rule often in ways that are

00:21:57.560 hurtful to themselves because what you're teaching them is something like how to make wise decisions,

00:22:02.420 how to take responsibility for their actions. And there's something inappropriate. And, you know,

00:22:07.780 as you point out, condescending about intervening in other people's lives, always trying to help

00:22:14.040 them is, you know, like Epictetus says, like, who put you in charge? Like who put you, are you the

00:22:19.160 queen bee of, you know, of the hive? Are you the bull of the herd? Like who put you, uh, in charge of 0.91

00:22:24.740 these people's lives? And so, uh, yeah, I mean, I think in that respect, Kant was onto something like

00:22:29.540 sometimes you, you just have to, uh, you have to mind your own business and let people make their

00:22:34.420 own decisions. So again, the question that this raises is like, when do you intervene?

00:22:40.080 I think one of the lessons from this discussion of busy bodies is, um, is thinking about, well,

00:22:45.880 what are the kinds of moral virtues that can only be exercised with people close to us? A friend of

00:22:52.440 mine, David McPherson has an excellent book called the virtues of limits, I highly recommend it. And

00:22:57.220 one of the things he says is, look, morality requires sometimes treating people close to

00:23:02.560 you differently than others. It doesn't mean you shouldn't be compassionate, um, in ways that are

00:23:06.720 appropriate to people across the globe, but it does require often treating your neighbor, your friend,

00:23:13.160 the stranger at the grocery in special ways as well. We're going to take a quick break for a word

00:23:18.080 from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Okay. So we've talked about some of the potential

00:23:24.280 dangers of not minding your own business of this commencement speech morality. Uh, it can turn

00:23:28.960 you into a moralizer and that can just make things unpleasant for people. And all your energy can be

00:23:34.060 siphoned off into just constant moral outrage, uh, rather than being channeled into something,

00:23:40.060 doing something concretely good. Uh, it can also turn you into a busy body where you spend a lot of

00:23:44.280 time investing in politics, uh, you know, big social programs, large scale public policy. Um, and these

00:23:51.600 things aren't necessarily bad, um, but they can also unintentionally cause harm. You know, people can

00:23:56.300 mean well with these things, but end up causing a lot of damage with their, with their do-gooding.

00:24:01.280 Um, and you say they were much more likely to be able to do real good on a smaller scale. Um, and you

00:24:07.200 make it a case that for why you should just mind your own business and maybe stick to your own inner

00:24:11.980 circle, your home, your garden, you know, your spot, uh, in the world. Um, so you make the case that

00:24:18.700 people should, instead of trying to change the world on a large scale, spend their time and energy

00:24:24.840 establishing roots in their community. Um, I really like this idea of rootedness. Uh, what do you mean

00:24:30.760 by rootedness? Rootedness is an idea that a lot of people in my line of work talk about, but it was a

00:24:37.500 key concern of an early 20th century philosopher named Simone Weil. She, she actually went insane and

00:24:44.440 starved herself at age 34. But before that she wrote a book that after her death was published

00:24:50.380 and called the need for roots. And what she argued is that being rooted is one of the crucial needs of

00:24:56.160 the soul. The problem is she doesn't say much at all about what it means to be rooted. And so what

00:25:02.320 we do in this chapter is try to explain what it means, what it, you know, what does it mean to be

00:25:06.980 rooted? And we take the metaphor of a plant having roots very seriously. So if you think about a plant,

00:25:11.740 the roots attach it to a place, the roots allow the plant to, to receive benefits from the soil

00:25:17.940 nutrients and so on, but the roots also give back. I mean, what farmers know is that like roots, if you

00:25:23.600 leave, you know, sort of plants in, in your field, it helps prevent soil erosion. It helps prevent things

00:25:29.380 from being destroyed. And the idea is that for a human to be rooted is very similar. So rooted people are

00:25:36.320 attached to a place, they feel at home there, they have affection for the place, they're loyal to it,

00:25:41.820 they know it and love it, and they miss it when they're away from it. There's entire literature in

00:25:46.080 psychology on place attachment. But rooted people are attached to a place, and they also receive

00:25:51.540 benefits from that place. So being rooted gives you a sense of security, it helps you feel at home in

00:25:56.820 the world. It provides an anchor and sense of stability through the sort of trials and tribulations

00:26:02.920 of life and all the changes that you can go through. But finally, rooted people also give back to the

00:26:09.980 place where they live. So it's not just a sort of selfish taking from the land. Rooted people give

00:26:17.160 back by preserving it. So people who are rooted, try to preserve the habitats and the institutions that

00:26:25.260 have been created by others and have been passed down to them. So libraries, parks, you know, public

00:26:32.320 schools, Kiwanis Club, T-Ball, like these are all institutions and things that have been given to

00:26:38.860 us by our ancestors. And rooted people are very anxious to preserve our habitats and our institutions

00:26:46.100 so that they can be maintained. You know, a lot of people, like they get real excited about being

00:26:51.800 innovators and founders of charities, political parties, but the world also needs maintainers. I mean,

00:26:59.980 people provide an incredibly valuable service to mankind simply by taking care of and preserving

00:27:06.600 the good things around them. And this is like, you know, if I were to, if I had one message to like

00:27:11.960 tell young people or like stay at home moms who feel like they're not making as much as their lives as

00:27:18.060 they could, or someone who just likes being at home and you can do an incredibly valuable thing for the

00:27:24.800 world by preserving the good things around you. Because, you know, they're not going to preserve

00:27:28.920 themselves. Things erode, things get destroyed, things fall prey to entropy, and it takes people

00:27:35.620 to maintain and preserve the good things around us. You're not going to like make a name for yourself.

00:27:40.720 You're not going to get famous by being a maintainer. And this is the problem with

00:27:44.220 commencement speech morality is it tells people, get out there, make a name for yourself, make a big

00:27:48.480 splash. But we need people who are committed to preserving the good things around them that make

00:27:54.360 life tolerable and enjoyable in the first place. And so rooted people do a lot of good for the world,

00:28:01.280 even when they're not out there making a splash.

00:28:04.820 And I think the other benefit of rootedness, it allows you to solve problems more effectively

00:28:10.120 because you're close to them.

00:28:11.680 That's right.

00:28:12.280 So, you know, for example, I am a leader in our churches and I lead the young men.

00:28:17.340 And they're like teenage boys. And a lot of these boys, I've known them since they were

00:28:21.640 like three years old. And so I've, I know their history. I know their family situation. I know

00:28:27.420 their unique personalities, their interest, et cetera. And so when a problem does come up and I'm

00:28:33.800 trying to figure out how I can help them, I have a pretty good grasp on the situation compared to

00:28:38.600 some, you know, maybe some person at a nonprofit, you know, in another state coming in like,

00:28:43.560 hey, we got this program we're going to do, it wouldn't be as effective because it doesn't

00:28:47.800 take into account, you know, the unique histories and personalities of these boys.

00:28:52.680 Yeah, that's an incredibly important point. I mean, you have a kind of expert knowledge

00:28:56.500 of that group of guys that probably no one else has. And you certainly don't have of a similar group

00:29:03.080 of guys, you know, across the globe. And so you have a kind of insight and expertise

00:29:09.320 that you wouldn't have if you were trying to help people elsewhere. I mean, the other interesting

00:29:15.180 thing about doing these sort of small preservation, you know, rootedness projects is you have to pay

00:29:22.440 the cost if things go bad. Yeah. This is one thing that drives me nuts about a lot of political

00:29:28.120 experimentation and people who love radical politics and revolutions is that often they impose

00:29:34.540 these schemes on people besides themselves, they're not going to have to pay the cost.

00:29:40.240 And so, you know, if you want to introduce a radical risky scheme to your local community,

00:29:45.480 you have skin in the game, and you will probably be more risk averse and more cautious about radical

00:29:51.520 change, and instead be more interested in preserving the good things around you as imperfect as they are,

00:29:57.760 it's better than than destroying everything.

00:30:00.400 Right. And so, yeah, volunteering to be the t-ball coach, volunteering for big brothers,

00:30:05.400 big sisters in your area, that stuff, you might not think it has a big impact, but it does. Like,

00:30:11.840 it really does. And I'm sure all of us listening know of a teacher we had in elementary school or

00:30:17.300 high school or a mentor we had, a sports coach that had a big impact on our life. And they weren't

00:30:22.800 doing the commencement speech morality. They're just trying to help this one kid. And that's all they're

00:30:27.980 thinking about. But their little efforts had rippling effects across time.

00:30:32.900 Huge effects. You just never know. So, I'll be transparent with you. When I was writing part of

00:30:38.380 this chapter for this book, I felt really guilty because I didn't feel like I was practicing what I

00:30:44.200 preached. And so, this is a true story. I signed up for Big Brothers, Big Sisters. And so, I've been

00:30:50.480 meeting with this young man now. He's 15 for about two years. And when I first met him,

00:30:56.080 so, it's a mentor relationship. We do fun stuff, but we help him with his homework and so on.

00:31:01.320 He didn't know how to shake someone's hand. He didn't know how to look someone in the eye and

00:31:04.540 have a conversation. He didn't know how to order at a restaurant. And these are all things that he

00:31:08.500 knows how to do now. And it's one of those things that's like a lot of people take it for granted

00:31:13.040 because they grew up in great homes with loving two parents. And not everyone has that situation.

00:31:19.320 And so, this kid, hopefully, is going to have his life totally changed, not because I made some

00:31:27.820 massive sacrifice, but because he was the student that just happened to be around who I could help.

00:31:35.400 That sounds self-indulgent, by the way. I just said, that sounds a little braggy. But,

00:31:39.220 you know, it really depresses me when people think that they have to

00:31:43.480 do something big to be helpful. And it's just so many smaller things in life that need our attention.

00:31:52.300 Besides rootedness, you make the case that enriching our home life can help us

00:31:56.580 make the world a better place. So, what's the argument there?

00:32:01.420 Yeah. So, we define in that chapter, a good home is just a safe, peaceful, and welcoming one.

00:32:08.460 It provides physical and emotional safety. It's peaceful. It's not chaotic. And it's welcoming.

00:32:13.860 It's a place where people can come in and be shown hospitality. And one of the things we argue in that

00:32:20.580 chapter is the benefits of creating a good home. One is that it provides a refuge, allows us to escape

00:32:27.680 stresses of work in politics, show emotions that would be out of place at work, say. It provides a

00:32:34.720 setting to show hospitality. And what hospitality does, above all, is turn strangers into friends.

00:32:41.880 And it provides a unique kind of social situation where you can't argue with politics. You're not

00:32:47.080 supposed to, anyway. You're not supposed to harangue your guests about their politics and morality. It

00:32:51.000 has to be, you know, to be a good host, you have to show hospitality. And a good home also lays the

00:32:56.820 foundation for, you know, a physically and psychologically healthy child. Peace, peaceful and safe,

00:33:02.800 orderly, loving homes are incredibly important for kids. And homes are often taken for granted.

00:33:08.960 But as I'm sure you and many of your listeners know, like, many homes are bad, very bad. And

00:33:16.220 the world would be much better if more people grew up in good homes. And so, again, it's one of these

00:33:23.380 things that, like, it would be bizarre to hear a commencement speaker get up there and say,

00:33:27.480 hey, you know, and also, be sure that you create peaceful, loving, caring homes. And if you have

00:33:33.020 children, make sure you're bringing them up in a way that's loving and teach them virtue. Like,

00:33:38.200 that's not something you'd ever hear in a commencement speech. But, you know, if you want

00:33:41.600 bang for your buck, creating a good home is one of your best investments.

00:33:45.860 You know, I've heard the idea of family or home. It's like a laboratory where you get to practice

00:33:51.680 what it means to be a good citizen. You get to practice what it means to show regard for other

00:33:56.640 people. It's where you get to practice how you can show love in appropriate ways. And focusing

00:34:01.880 on your family life and your home life can allow you to develop those social skills, those

00:34:06.560 virtue skills to help you go out into the wider world and be a good person and an effective person

00:34:11.400 out there. Yeah, that's right. You also talk about the idea of being alone, just minding your business,

00:34:16.560 being alone can also make the world a better place. People might be hearing that like, well,

00:34:20.020 that sounds selfish. Make the case for being alone. Yeah. So the way the second half of the book works is

00:34:26.480 we kind of shrink the circle of minding your own business. So there's like rootedness, which is

00:34:30.420 like your local community, your home, which is, you know, your house, and then solitude. So we actually

00:34:36.140 defend, you know, not spending all of your time in solitude, but spending a considerable amount of

00:34:41.440 time in solitude, maybe more than many people spend. It's tempting to think that, you know, we only make

00:34:47.840 the world better by being useful, that we are really only morally above board when we're solving

00:34:53.820 problems in the world or using politics to address injustice. And of course, you know, as I said

00:34:59.160 earlier, it's important to be useful, but being useful is not the sole purpose of our lives. And

00:35:05.100 it's a harmful distortion of morality to think that if you aren't trying to solve other people's

00:35:08.960 problems, you're somehow a moral failure. And so in this chapter, we argue that, you know, one way to

00:35:14.280 mind your own business is to spend time in solitude. And we go through several of the benefits of

00:35:19.080 solitude. One is just rest. And rest, you know, the benefit of rest is not just so that you can

00:35:24.560 get back out there and change the world more. You know, you don't go home and take, you know, a nap

00:35:29.200 and find rest and relaxation and leisure just so that you can do more canvassing for your favorite

00:35:34.440 politician. The idea is that rest itself is important. It's important, you know, all on its own

00:35:40.420 to have a healthy mind and body. We also argue one of the benefits of solitude is a kind of

00:35:45.860 intellectual freedom. So 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill thought it was really important

00:35:51.560 to be able to keep a critical distance from your society. So if you're constantly, you know, imbibing

00:35:58.400 social messages from social media, from friends, from work culture, you know, entertainment, if you're

00:36:04.840 constantly bombarded with the watchful eye and social censure and expectations, you will basically

00:36:11.820 become an unthinking, uncritical, walking sort of automaton that sort of mimics the norms and

00:36:18.560 expectations of your culture. And he thought it's actually no, it's good to step back and take a

00:36:22.960 critical eye towards your society. And he thought solitude is the best place to do this, to have time

00:36:28.540 to read and to think and to actually critically assess your society. And the last benefit is just being in

00:36:35.980 solitude allows you to appreciate things and to achieve things that you can't achieve in society.

00:36:43.800 So in solitude, we're able to appreciate things like natural beauty, going for a hike, for example,

00:36:49.200 or going fishing by yourself. It's also probably the best setting to develop your talents and create

00:36:55.260 beauty. So, you know, just practicing piano, painting, becoming a better swimmer, you know, prayer,

00:37:01.800 cultivating virtue. These are all things that are important to do by yourself. And what's important

00:37:06.120 to see is not that these things are valuable just so that you can be in a more effective at solving

00:37:11.340 other people's problems. These things are important in their own right. You know, Roger Scruton, who's

00:37:16.880 passed away a few years ago as a philosopher, I really admire, you know, he says, look, humans are not

00:37:22.640 here merely to be useful. You are here to be lovable. And what we argue in the book and how we conclude is

00:37:31.660 that solitude is one way for us to become people for whom love and appreciation are fitting responses.

00:37:39.720 We're not here just to be tools and to be useful. We're here to be lovable.

00:37:44.820 It's interesting you mentioned John Stuart Mill, and he was a utilitarian, right? And he was raised to be

00:37:51.640 a utilitarian Ubermensch. Like his dad raised him from like, since he was a kid to become the ultimate

00:37:59.040 utilitarian. And so John Stuart Mill, like his whole young life was dedicated to these big projects.

00:38:06.140 You know, he fought for women's suffrage in slavery, et cetera, alleviating poverty. And his whole identity

00:38:13.980 was wrapped up in this idea of being a moral reformer and trying to make the world a better

00:38:18.780 place. But then in his twenties, he had an existential crisis and he got depressed. And the thing that put

00:38:24.360 him in the funk was, he thought, what if suddenly all these things I'm trying to fight for, they were

00:38:30.600 realized, like all the changes in institutions and opinions that I'm looking forward to, they were

00:38:36.740 immediately solved the way I want it. And he asked him, would this be a great joy to me? And he said, the

00:38:41.760 answer would have been no, because I would have nothing to like work for because I've tied up my identity and my

00:38:46.300 happiness and all these things. And so it put him in an existential funk. I mean, he contemplated suicide.

00:38:51.460 And the thing that saved him was what you were talking about, like finding things to do for their

00:38:57.840 own sake. So he got really into poetry. That was his thing. He just spent time alone reading and

00:39:03.420 appreciating poetry just for the sake of reading and appreciating poetry.

00:39:08.540 Yeah, that's a nice little background story to Mill. I mean, I think it illustrates two things. One is

00:39:15.080 the dilemma of the activist and moral reformer, is that when you derive most or all of your identity

00:39:23.040 from accomplishing social or political ends, what are you left with when you're done? And I think a

00:39:31.440 lot of people do have a crisis of identity when they accomplish their goals. They have to find new

00:39:36.780 ones or invent new problems to solve. I think the other thing that his life shows is, you know, it's a

00:39:41.960 kind of concession to many of our critics. So a lot of our critics are going to be utilitarians or

00:39:48.660 social reformers, people who think it's really important to be out there on social media and

00:39:54.440 having discussions. I mean, these are all things that are right up Mill's alley. However, in spite of

00:40:00.300 all that, he also recognized the importance of these other kinds of goods in life. Life is not just about

00:40:07.900 being politically active and solving social problems. You also, for example, have to spend

00:40:13.040 time in solitude. And so that's a kind of like, you know, even if you disagree with us about a lot

00:40:18.500 of this book, I think his example shows that commencement speech morality cannot be your entire

00:40:24.660 outlook. Well, Brandon, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more

00:40:28.860 about the book and your work? Well, the book is on Amazon and most online booksellers. And so that's

00:40:40.040 where you can find it. You can also just Google me. And that's about it. That sounds like enough

00:40:45.400 information. Fantastic. Well, Brandon Warmke, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:40:48.940 Thanks so much, Brett.

00:40:49.860 My guest's name is Brandon Warmke. He's the co-author of the book, Why It's Okay to Mind

00:41:01.160 Your Own Business. It's available on amazon.com. Check out our show notes at aom.is slash ordinary

00:41:06.060 morality. We find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another

00:41:11.840 edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com. We find our

00:41:15.880 podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much

00:41:19.780 anything you think of. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute

00:41:23.480 to give us a review on Apple podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already,

00:41:27.280 thank you. Please consider sharing this show with a friend or family member who would think we get

00:41:30.980 something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time,

00:41:34.660 it's Brett McKay. Remind you until I listen to AOM podcast, put what you've heard into action.

00:41:49.780 Bye.

The Art of Manliness - January 29, 2024

The Case for Minding Your Own Business

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