We all overreact. To everything.

Our rush to judgement is toxic... and stupid. And we know it.

I was reading a post from a friend the other day, where he described a teacher reprimanding a student for turning in work that was purely derivative, a research paper that contributed nothing to the world’s repository of knowledge. The reprimand was … very descriptive, lacking criticism about the paper but only targeting the work involved in making the paper lack merit.

My friend’s reaction was not positive, shall we say. He said the reprimand was funny - and I guess it was funny if you enjoy that sort of thing, and I think I used to - but his main observation was that it was the act of a bad teacher, and as a result, he was unhappy with the reprimand.

I get it. But I disagreed with the conclusion, with a caveat.

I also saw a discussion recently, inspired by the lizard people running for President in the United States, over the pronunciation of Kamala Harris’ name, with much hand-wringing from people associated with a political party whose symbol is a donkey, shall we say.

“How could you not know how to pronounce her name, she’s running for the highest office in the land,” was the sentiment.

If you’re wondering, the accent on Kamala Harris’ name is on the first syllable, as in “Pamela,” except with a softer “A” sound. “KAH-mah-la,” not “Kah-MAH-la.” “Harris” apparently suffers few mispronunciations. I don’t know why. Wait, yes, I do.

Just yesterday, I saw a … short video, maybe a TikTok, I don’t know, I don’t pay attention to those sites, of a black woman screaming in rage at a local government about mismanagement of priorities. (It happened to be dominated by Democrats, if not a totality. This is important.)

Nearing the end of this rant, she said that she didn’t know why blacks would vote for the Democratic Party… and the black imitator, “Ka-MAH-la Harris,” was among the worst of the party.

Now, let’s be really clear here: Kamala Harris has the right to pronounce her own name. She should know it, and does. I didn’t realize that I’d been mispronouncing it myself for quite some time, because I prefer written media to audio or video, so my sources for pronunciation were varied and just as misled as I was, so I wasn’t sure; when it became an issue, I went to things created by her family that described the pronunciation, and I think that those things should be considered authoritative.

Further, while Ms. Harris might change her ethnic behaviors to fit the audience she’s trying to communicate with, that doesn’t have anything to do with whether she’s “really black” or not. She’s mixed-race (Indian and black, as I understand it) and that, plus $14 in Biden’s joyful economy, will almost buy you an overly bitter cup of coffee. Ms. Harris can’t be “imitation black.” Rachel Dolezal might, because she’s, like, literally not black (unless the “drop of blood rule” is applied, and that’s gross), but Kamala Harris is black if she considers herself that way, and I see no reason to doubt the authenticity there.

She might not act like the boyz in the hood, I guess; she’s unlikely to flash gang signs with any authenticity. (In fact, given her history, she’s far more likely to enslave gang members for state labor than identify with those gang members… unless she wants their votes, I suppose. Maybe she’d hold off on the enslavement until after the election.) Maybe to some, that means she’s “coded as white,” or something, given her education and natural manners of expression.

But both of these situations - the outrage at a teacher reprimanding a student without focusing on the errors of the student, the trepidation over the pronunciation of a “favorite” candidate’s name - they’re symptoms.

They’re symptoms of a rush to judgement.

It’s partially the fault of social media, because the attention economy incentivizes reactions: you want to be the first to create a torrent of likes, clicks, responses. That’s how you win this block of five minutes. (In the next five minutes? All bets are off, you’re forgotten: you better find some more outrage, buddy, if you want to stay relevant.)

It encourages short posts (because they can be read quickly, and because they can be so pointed) and a lack of nuance. Who wants to think about meaning? Who wants to look for what’s really relevant, when you can say something provocative and get all those eyeballs nodding mindlessly in agreement - or enraged rejection?

To me, the intensity of the emotions involved are offputting. The desire for mass movement is mildly upsetting. I don’t mind if people agree - in fact, on a lot of issues, I think it’s rather healthy that we agree - but I want us to agree with intention, not agree because that’s what every moron around us thinks is appropriate.

I don’t want us to think that blacks are equal to whites because that’s what we’re told to think - I want us to think that because, if the question was put forth, we thought about it and see no inherent difference in value between our fellow human beings. The question might be rather gross (and it is, to me) but shying away from unpleasant questions is what leads a generation of men to be unable to form meaningful relationships, what leads a large swath of women to not understand their own bodies.

I want to be willing to question everything. Authority tells me that I should slow down when a school bus is slowing down? Well, why? Should I really? (It turns out that yes, I should: this may surprise you, but school buses carry children, children will be likely to walk across the road, children are the future, we shouldn’t mow them down under our vehicles.)

Authority tells me I should want to vote for Harris? Well, why? If you want me to think something, don’t tell me to think it, convince me. Take the time. Otherwise, you’re trying to inspire me emotionally, and I think that’s the same social media illness that I find to be ineffective for human life.

That teacher’s response? Taken on the surface, I actually agree with the outrage. It was purely remonstrative to the student. It offered nothing but castigation of errors made by the student. It said nothing about the paper, offered no examples, offered no possible improvements: it was all about the student’s failure to perform.

But note the phrasing I used: Taken on the surface… and as a single image, well… chances are, the surface is misleading. It might not be; it might be a teacher who’s just had enough, a student submits an uninspired research paper and the teacher flies into a quaking rage. But how likely is that? That would be a bad teacher, and I’m sure most of us can imagine bad teachers fairly easily… but do we know anything about this teacher?

Anything?

I say we probably do not, and there’s context likely that we do not have. Maybe this was the end of a semester’s worth of work, filled with the teacher informing the student that turning in work written by an AI wasn’t sufficient, maybe the teacher had been begging the student to actually show up during the class for once, to do anything but parrot the words of others, only to have the student turn in yet another opus of words written by others, stirred lazily into an uninspired melange.

If that’s the case, what would our feelings be about the teacher’s remonstration? Might we not nod at the intent, even if we’re not comfortable with the way the message is couched? Wouldn’t the student have some role in deserving the castigation?

The point is, I don’t know the situation. Neither did my friend. We don’t know the student, we don’t know the teacher, we don’t know the history, we don’t know anything besides the one grainy image of the teacher scolding the student.

Similarly, we don’t know what’s going on with the people who don’t know how to pronounce Kamala Harris’ first name. That black lady who mispronounced it - was she being racist? Or was it perhaps that Harris is a common name in the United States, while “Kamala” is not, and thus people err by virtue of their unfamiliarity?

We judge. And we’re stupid for it.

There’s an aphorism in Judaism, in Pirkei Avos (“Wisdom of the Fathers,”), that says this:

Find yourself a teacher, make yourself a friend, and judge all to the side of merit.

I have spent most of my lifetime desiring to fulfill the first two phrases of that aphorism, but in the last decade or so, the beauty of the last phrase has become far more apparent to me: Judge all to the side of merit.

It means to weigh others as if they had the best intentions, if possible. It doesn’t mean to wear rose-colored glasses, seeing the world as endlessly benevolent as it slaughters you and yours. It means to try to see the actions of others as if they’re motivated for good, if you can. If.

That mindset means that you look at the teacher’s over-the-top message to his student, and think, “Is there a way that this could be anything other than a bad teacher?” Maybe there isn’t, but maybe there is.

That mindset means you listen to people’s imaginative pronunciation of a candidate’s name, and think, “Is there a world in which I might not know how to say her name as well?” - Maybe there isn’t, but let’s be real: there’s a strong possibility there is.

Worth noting: people mispronounce names from Judaism constantly, to the point where if someone uses the correct pronunciation, it’s jarring. So… yeah, take your outrage at the mispronunciation of unfamiliar names and stuff it, please, unless you’re all of a sudden going to use my culture’s names properly. They’re common enough.

I would love to see a world in which people thought about their reactions and why they tried to provoke others’ reactions: it’d be a better, kinder world.