Is it Ethical to Break Social Norms?
A Defence of Harmless Mad(wo)men
My best friend is a madman. At our first encounter he opened with a sexually laden question that some might perceive as crossing boundaries, if not a light form of sexual harassment. I was fine, since the way he said it and the context he created made it intrusive yet not intimidating or transgressive. He is well trained in this skill. I would soon learn that this guy is the most accomplished breaker of social norms, rules, and expectations I had ever met. You will not find him talking about the weather. Rather, he will yell at you from the other side of a crowded hallway (possibly by a spontaneously improvised nickname), make random, hard-to-rebut comments, or ask questions that are either unexpected, slightly intrusive, difficult, altogether weird or any combination of those things. He dresses inappropriately, talks informally to superiors, and makes jokes in situations no one else would dare to. This is done with such skill that he gets away with it most of the time. He owns it
Yet I find myself warning people: “Don’t be surprised, he’ll probably do or say something weird, but don’t let him throw you off guard.” A fair warning, since he might just start singing a song or call you a fair-haired fairy in front of a crowd when he meets you for the first time. He might ask you how many of your fingers you would be willing to sacrifice in order to have a perfect memory, not letting you go before you give a well-founded answer. This obviously breaks with our expectations of how meeting a person plays out. When these social expectations are not met, many people are thrown off guard and won’t know how to respond.
We expect people to abide by social rules of which we all have some vague intuition. Getting acquainted, for example, commonly involves asking questions about the other’s profession or interests before moving on to whether they would trade fingers for memory. Some of these rules have a moral load, making them social norms. Singing to someone in front of a crowd, for example, often makes them uncomfortable and might therefore be considered something one should not do. Some degree of moral blame is laid on those who do.
It is precisely this experience of being thrown off guard and feeling uncomfortable as a result of someone breaking social rules or norms that interests us here. It is not the case that we can simply condemn people who disregard social norms, even though that is often done legitimately. Uncovering the ethics of breaking social norms implies that the function of social expectations, rules and norms should first be clarified.
Social rules and norms have an invaluable importance for the social world and our engagement with it. Society can only function because of them, because we intuitively know them, and because we know others know them too. We know we shouldn’t bargain prices in the supermarket or punch somebody we just signed a contract with, that is not how things work. It is because everyone knows what to expect from others that we can get our food, or know that a contract will be respected (which is something one might doubt if it is followed by a punch).
More generally, social norms are communal givers of meaning. We know that a handshake indicates a deal will be upheld, it is a sign of respect between persons. A nod with the head or a smile indicates recognition of someone’s presence and welcomes it. A middle finger is less welcoming. Bursting into a song is plainly odd. It is only because people share an idea of the meaning of these gestures that we can feel respected and recognised by others (of course, the meaning of certain gestures varies across regions and cultures). When we expect to see or display certain behaviour and these expectations are met, we create a space where people feel safe and competent to engage with others. Social rules and norms are there to facilitate the process of creating a safe, comfortable social space in which people can function, making society run smoothly.
Social rules seem to answer the ethical question of how we should act. The whole point of ethics is to prescribe rules for behaviour in order to make people feel respected, safe, and recognised in a functioning society. Social norms have precisely this ethical prescriptive function. They are the fibre of a social structure that secures our social competence and sense of safety and recognition.
What happens when someone disregards these social rules and norms? We will be surprised when this person’s behaviour does not meet our expectations. The discomfort we experience is the result of the disintegration of the structure of communal meaning that secured our social competence. Simply put: we don’t know what to make of the other’s gestures and behaviour anymore. We are confused about whether they recognise or respect us, and we don’t know what response is expected. We are at a loss for how we ourselves should behave, since the rules we are used to following have been thrown out. The social space has stopped functioning smoothly. This is what legitimates the warning I give people about my friend: I indicate the possibility of everyday ethics falling apart in the next couple of minutes.
We might conclude that social norms are identical with ethics, and that breaking them is therefore always an unethical thing to do. However, this depends on the degree to which the existing social rules and norms – everyday ethics – meet their own goal. It is not necessarily the case that by following them, we create a safe, smoothly functioning social space. These rules and norms might just as easily generate a cage of oppressive social structures and dysfunction. For example, the taboo on sexual violence in large parts of the world makes thousands of victims feel unrecognised and unsafe. The social norms of Apartheid were so oppressive we would not call them ethical. A more common example: It is considered inappropriate to weep in public. Many even find that bursting into tears in front of a group of friends is not done. Yet depression and burn-out are on the rise, and societies would function a lot better without them. Social norms that restrict the open display of emotions, thereby encouraging people to bottle them up, do not make sense in this light. Finally, one could generally distrust social norms, precisely because they make interaction so predictable. If your conversation partner constantly follows all the social rules, you might start to question her sincerity. Is she being her own person or just playing the part the situation ascribes to her? Is she being honest? Breaking social norms most of the time indicates sincerity, or openly displays someone’s personality. Picture someone walking down the street singing or weeping. There is at least an air of sincerity there. How many people would honestly tell you when you look awful or say something idiotic?
This shows the full ethical scope of social norms and problematises the question of how we should act. Simply following the social norms is not always the right choice, we might be endorsing structures of oppression or denying people recognition. The question we need to raise is whether it is better to maintain the social structure in which we find ourselves or to strike a blow to it. Is it a safe space wherein everyone feels respected, whilst also being functional? How do we want to be recognised? What is a safe social space? How do we create it? Do we need to break taboos, start to allow certain behaviour that is now considered inappropriate? The ethics of breaking social norms in fact imply an evaluation of the existing social rules and norms. This evaluation needs to be done in the concrete situation where we as individuals come face to face with others and the question of how we should act imposes itself. It cannot be done in advance or in abstracto.
This puts the task on the individual, she needs to be aware that abiding by existing social rules is not always the right thing to do. There are always two ways of judging whether her own behaviour or that of others is appropriate. On the one hand, it can be tested against the prevailing social norms and the social structure they maintain. On the other, it can be judged based on the need of individuals to be recognised, to feel safe, or to make the social situation work, even when the social norms which were supposed to ensure this fail to do so and need to be broken. Sometimes it is necessary to sit through the uncomfortable feeling of unexpected behaviour in order to comfort someone who tears up in front of us. It might just push the norms a bit, make public display of emotions a bit more acceptable, for example.
Even though these are small pushes that do not radically change the norms at hand, they probably made a real difference to someone, who can in turn pay it forward. This is not about big societal change, it is about the effect our actions have on the concrete person in front of us. I tend to call people who weep in public courageous, although that is probably the last thing they think themselves to be at that moment. Yet they are, because they break social norms in a way that I believe will make the social space a safer place for many. That should be encouraged. In fact, they shouldn’t have to be considered courageous, but normal.
The real art is to act in such a way that you enable people to choose consciously between acting in accordance with social norms they find valuable, or breaking them because it seems more just.
My friend is such an amazing norm-breaker because this is precisely what he does. He makes people feel uncomfortable by his weird behaviour. The effect is that the social rules we are used to automatically follow, become visible. He lowers the threshold for other people to break them as well, somehow tearing open the social space for a larger variety of behaviour. His conversation partners have choices to make. Following social rules is here no longer automatic, but a conscious endorsement of the way the social world usually functions. Breaking them shows that one would wish that they were different, while subtly pushing in that direction. For me, it feels like liberation.