James K.A. Smith Quote
Our age makes higher demands of solidarity and benevolence on people today than ever before. Never before have people been asked to stretch out so far, and so consistently, so systematically, so as a matter of course, to the stranger outside the gates (p. 695). How do we manage to do it? Or how could we? Well, one way is that performance of these standards has become part of what we understand as a decent, civilized human life (p. 696). The mechanism then becomes shame: to not meet these expectations is not only to be abnormal but almost inhuman. One can see this at work in a heightened version of holier-than-Thou: You don’t recycle (gasp)? You use plastic shopping bags (horror)? You don’t drive a Prius (eek!)? You won’t wear the ribbon?!44 This has to also be seen in light of Taylor’s earlier analysis of the sociality of mutual display and the self-consciousness it generates (pp. 481-82). So what we get is justice chic.
Our age makes higher demands of solidarity and benevolence on people today than ever before. Never before have people been asked to stretch out so far, and so consistently, so systematically, so as a matter of course, to the stranger outside the gates (p. 695). How do we manage to do it? Or how could we? Well, one way is that performance of these standards has become part of what we understand as a decent, civilized human life (p. 696). The mechanism then becomes shame: to not meet these expectations is not only to be abnormal but almost inhuman. One can see this at work in a heightened version of holier-than-Thou: You don’t recycle (gasp)? You use plastic shopping bags (horror)? You don’t drive a Prius (eek!)? You won’t wear the ribbon?!44 This has to also be seen in light of Taylor’s earlier analysis of the sociality of mutual display and the self-consciousness it generates (pp. 481-82). So what we get is justice chic.
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