Does the person who creates an air of discomfort with the RBF have a level of moral culpability?
The RBF: resting bitch face.
An innocent and harmless expression?
Or a culpable and harmful one?
I started wondering about that after reading Jacques Philippe's observation in Real Mercy that a look can give life or give death. There's a way of looking at people, says Philippe, that gives goodness, mercy, encouragement, and hope. And there's a way of looking at people that accuses, closes, judges, and rejects.
If there's a way of looking at people that is so full of moral implications, is there a way of looking in general that does the same thing?
I used to think, “What I do is between me and my God. I mean no offense to anyone else, so my moods, tempers, and outbursts are my affair.”
Then I read Francis Fernandez's observation that “gloominess does great harm . . . to those around us.”
Mere gloominess does that?
“Frick,” I remember thinking. “I wonder what throwing the stapler against the wall and referring to a form of prison bonding does to those around us.”
It was an “a-ha” moment, but an embarrassing one. I had become fully conscious of something at age 40 that most people intuit by age 17 and understand by age 22.
So what about the RBF? Is she innocent or guilty of a moral wrong?
And what about the RBFer with the real heavy, hurried, pounding walk? Clomping forward like they want to kill everyone? Rushing, Robin Daniels noted, is a form of aggression. Everyone around you can hear, feel, and see it. It exudes, “F you. Get out of my way.”
So yes, the foot-pounding RBFer is definitely morally culpable, like the gloomy guy.
But the woman who just sits there, gazing into space . . . with the look of Ayn Rand without the winsome charm?
I'm inclined to say “no, she's not morally culpable.”
Current science indicates that the RBF results from the physiology of a person's face, which the person can't control anymore than she can control, say, the size of her hand. The stomping walker can simply slow down or take lighter steps. The RBFer would need plastic surgery.
Maybe.
They say ministers can walk around the worse urban neighborhoods without getting harmed, as long as they're wearing their collars (this was before the Muslim invasions and the rise of the Antichrista). I've found that a similar thing works: a smile. A bad or potentially bad situation is disarmed by a smile. I've often referred to it as the “layman's clerical collar.”
It seems the RBFer could try it.
There's little doubt that the RBFer makes other people uncomfortable. Famous RBFer Anna Kendrick says people have been begging her for years to smile more. It's pretty obvious that the RBF causes discomfort in others and the fix is easy: smile. Heck, you can probably just smirk or grimace a little. At a very small price, you'd improve everything around you.
I feel bad that the RBFer is saddled with such a burden, but it's just the way it is. None of us are perfect. We all need to do what we can to change nature's imperfections that make us a nuisance or painful to others.
The guy with bad body odor needs to shower more and wear cologne.
The loud talker needs to tone it down.
The guy with the bad temper simply needs to stop it.
The close-talker needs to . . . well, get the hell away from me. Those bastards simply don't get it.
We all have an obligation to make the room better when we enter it. If we don't, we're morally at fault, at least a little, especially if we could meet that moral obligation with very little effort.
