Why Adapt When You Can Recontextualize?

Q: How much of an unrepentant narcissist do you have to be to squander the power of one of the mightiest elected offices in the world on the unrelentingly incompetent pursuit of a lofty and admirable but hardly unreachable goal, and then declare yourself a "dissident" when the wages of your blundering come home to roost, as though the unquestionably-universally-yearned-for-and-fought-for idea onto which you latched to give flight to your ambition was some sort of unpopular, counter-intuitive seed that you have been furtively trying to plant in the hard, unyielding soil that is potted in the hearts of men?

A: Duh. We know where to place blame when our ideas don't come to fruition, right? It's the system's fault, or the press's fault, or the opposition party's fault, or just plain rotten luck. We certainly wouldn't ever dream of placing that blame in our own fumbling hands. The time for examining our own efforts and assessing the validity of our methods may one day come, but for heaven's sake not now while we're busy strutting around in an unabashed dilettantic fugue. History Will Vindicate Us. Print it on the currency. Brick by brick our good intentions will pave us a mighty road down which we shall gaily skip, eyes aglow in anticipation of the just desserts that await us at the end.

Nicomachean Efforts

Michael "Axis of Evil" Gerson wrote an interesting editorial today that I believe bears addressing. He attempts to designate morality as a purely religious idea, one that exists outside the confines of religion (and let there be no doubt about which faith he assumes in his arguments) only as a fluke, a "cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution, but destined for disappointment." He pretends to give ground by saying he can't prove the existence of God, but then asserts that atheists have no objective way to judge the goodness of other people. What? Yeah, seriously. He is actually saying that without religion, human beings would have no impetus to behave in an ethical manner. Let's examine this claim.

I wrote him a brief note informing him of the existence and writings of one Immanuel Kant, who similarly, if more effectively, pitted his own intellect against this very quandary. Kant, as I'm sure you (as a high school graduate) are aware, articulated a sort of Golden Rule that formed the basis of deontological ethics, known as the categorical imperative. It attempts to transcend situational or hypothetical ethics by stating: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." In practice, it encourages respect for the rights of others, equal treatment in matters of law, and a general acknowledgement of the dignity of man. Not bad, right?

Well, what if you don't believe in ethical behavior? What if you have no interest in morality, but are driven by and given over to personal lusts and covetings? Is there any external force that can compel you to observe and respect the rights of others? Not really. And this is the elephant in the room, because while Gerson says that a person who is religiously motivated to be a moral actor does so out of a desire for "love, harmony and sympathy because [he or she is] intended by a Creator to find them," note that he does not invoke the threat or fear of punishment. He indicates that love, harmony, and sympathy are not inherently good or pleasurable, but are designated as being good by God, and therefore the pleasure that one feels from those states is actually the joy of pleasing God. He is pasting the veneer of religion over love, harmony and sympathy, and then using that as a springboard to give religion credit for the pleasures that anyone else would recognize as inherent in those things. Clever. Because the alternative to declaring that goodness is the desire to please God (which is, in the mind, in no way different from the desire to please oneself) is to admit that religiously-motivated goodness is the desire to avoid God's wrath, which is NOT a moral code, but a response to the threat of reprisal, the old knee-jerk self-preservation impulse.

So let's parse this out. If one desires to be a moral person, and one chooses to base one's moral code on, for instance, a Christian sect, let's say evangelical protestantism, can one justify the repression of outward expressions of homosexuality in one's fellow man or woman, whether by law, violence, or any other means of compulsion, if those expressions cause no manifest harm to other people? What about under Kant's version of ethical behavior? I would contend that the answers to those two questions are different and contradictory, because one code is beholden to the subjective determinations of its inceptors, while the other one is self-contained.

How about a second example: does Christian morality prevent the seizing of occupied territory and the enslavement of the indigenous peoples? Not if that land is granted you by God. And what is the difference, to the conquered and enslaved people, between an aggressor who attacks for God and an aggressor who attacks for his own personal enrichment? Not a whole hell of a lot, right? And on the other hand, what is the difference to a poor and bedraggled beggar if he is given soup and a warm bed by a Christian or by a morally upright atheist? Not a whole hell of a lot, right? Because kindness is objectively good and cruelty objectively bad for the recipient, no matter the motivation.

So if you come across a moral actor and he tells you he has no religion, you can be sure that he is a moral person. But if you come across a moral actor and he tells you that he has a God who tells him to do right, you cannot be sure if he is a moral person or a profoundly immoral person who is deathly afraid of being burnt by the everlasting fires of Hell or smitten by the angry right hand of the Lord and cast into penury for twenty moons. Which means, of course, that religion is a crutch for the immoral. It is the goad that keeps those who are not inherently righteous on a socially acceptable path (or a reasonable facsimile). It promotes, to quote another of Mr. Gerson's speechwriting gems, "the soft bigotry of low expectations" insofar as it encourages immoral behavior by not holding human beings to the standard of ethically defensible behavior in the absence of the sword of Damocles.

Now factor in confession and absolution, and tell me which one you would rather hire as a babysitter. Right. Checkmate, Mike. Please stop assisting those who run religious sects in their quest to expand their power and influence via taking undeserved credit for the good and noble qualities of man. It's unseemly and it restrains the potential of the human race for the enrichment of an over-reaching few. Like, for instance, certain other employers of yours.