Spotless Reputation Still Valuable

Dear Miss Manners: An acquaintance recently confided to a small group of us that, as a young man some 20 years ago, he’d served jail time for multiple counts of assault and battery. While I believe my friend today to be a gentleman of good character and am happy he was able to turn around his life, I was troubled by those in the group who responded in a wistful, hearty spirit of “Ah, wacky youth!” to his admission of shameful acts that sent people to the hospital.

I was once interviewed for a government position by a man who openly disbelieved me when I told him I never used illegal drugs. Job applicants who affirm they never stole from an employer are rejected because “everyone steals and only liars would deny it.” A political candidate with no history of “youthful experimentation” with drugs or sex is viewed as suspiciously out of touch.

It seems that well-mannered people who respect others and the law - partly out of desire to build and protect their reputations - are penalized for it, while thugs and cheats enhance their reputations with a “colorful past.”

While I recognize that rogues have always borne a certain attraction, why are we so quick to provide them a clean slate? In a fast-paced mobile society in which everyone comes from somewhere else and anything can be forgiven, does reputation matter?

In other words, why did I miss out on all the fun?

Gentle Reader: You might comfort yourself that you also missed out on jail and other possible consequences of misbehaving. You might even (warning: Miss Manners is about to sound prissy) take comfort from having behaved morally.

But it is true that the social consequences once attached to bad behavior are disappearing even though Miss Manners doesn’t believe society’s inexplicably proud claim that it has learned to be nonjudgmental. It has only shifted its area of disapproval: Criminals may be tolerated, or even lionized, but smokers and fat people are not.

Miss Manners confesses to mixed feelings about the new tolerance. It is true that etiquette can play a large role in making people behave themselves by shunning them if they fail. But just as the legal system needs both to dispense justice and show mercy, manners must both maintain standards and exercise compassion.

Society’s new refusal to condemn illegitimacy has very likely contributed to its increase; yet its former condemnation was cruel to innocent children and weak adults. And when society condemned divorce, it never looked into the reasons; it discouraged divorce for frivolous reasons, but it also discouraged divorce for extremely serious reasons.

The dilemma is difficult enough that most people are relieved to retreat from dealing with the situation at all on the grounds - also strongly backed by etiquette - of minding their own business, not rushing to judgment when they don’t know the full circumstances and practicing forgiveness.

Given the choice, Miss Manners would prefer non-interference to unreasoned interference. But she has never understood why choices between extremes are always posed, as if no middle course were possible.

Your acknowledging both the seriousness of your acquaintance’s crime and his accomplishment in having seriously changed shows respect not only for society, but for his reformation.

The others privy to his confession may have simply been embarrassed into offering what reassurance they could. But to provide such automatic and unthinking forgiveness is to dismiss moral law as trivial, which does great damage to the society. Pride in having a spotless reputation is a powerful incentive for doing right, and Miss Manners agrees that this is meaningless when society feels wrong about holding anyone accountable. But she wants to remind you that it should not be the only incentive for doing right.