Everyday Ethics

 

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

The writer of a paper on the subject of ethics will likely find that he can fill several pages on various philosophical and religious theories and many more on terms, and more again on a seemingly endless list of philosophers and theorists who have contributed to a maze of sub-categories under the main branches of the subject. That is an ambitious project for the scholar, but what of the man and woman on the street who wants only to do what is right? High-sounding theories and ten-dollar words offer interesting reading, but in the end do nothing to help the average person know how to behave in situations in which the “right” choice of action is unclear. For that reason, this essay does not dwell on those arguments that rely on supernatural authority.

A look into the study of ethics reveals a glaring question that the reader cannot ignore: do ethical rules of behavior exist outside the individual? Does the external world contain something called ethics? The question persists even without reliance on supernatural authority.

If the answer to those questions is “yes,” then the individual is naturally ethical, and unethical behavior is an aberration. If the answer is “no,” everyone must answer to a code of behavior imposed on him from the outside, whether he chooses to honor or violate that code. Society, in that event, decides what constitutes an unethical act.

Thrasymachus thought that “people believe in right and wrong only because they are taught to obey the rules of their society. Those rules, however, are mere human contrivances. Thrasymachus added that the ethical code of a society will reflect the interests of it ruling classes…” (Rachels, Problems from Philosophy, 2nd ed. p.149). But Thrasymachus did not have the benefit of our long view of history; a view in which we have seen that it is the ruling classes most in need of ethical codes. It is the reverse of Thrasymachus’ thesis that appears true — those morals or the lack of morals by rulers “trickles down” to their subjects. That is, we, the people.

So, in societies in which religious courts hand down draconian punishments, shouts of approval by the citizenry reflect the corrosive influence of the courts and of the corruptive power of the society’s religious influence. In societies such as ours, in which commerce and profit carry tremendous power, the citizenry is often quick to apologize for the crimes and atrocities of the ruling class.

The disagreement about objective moral values need not rely on dictates from a god or on the arbitrary rules of a society. Enter Evolutionary Ethics. Philosophers disagree about the existence of, and the nature of evolutionary ethics and many do not even take the subject seriously. Yet, morality as a factor of a psychology that has its roots in survival answers the question of whether ethics exist in the “real” world. In the sense that human and animal behavior is “real,” the answer is “yes.”

Philosophers like to nit-pick the details of any particular ethical theory, but such microscopic scrutiny does little to aid our average man and woman with day-to-day ethical choices. A woman seeking an abortion will (unless evolution has failed her) consider the consequences of her actions. She will look at her own beliefs and opinions as well as those of her society. She will short-cut some of those considerations, ponder over some, and eliminate others. But her final decision will come from a soup of her personal philosophy, her religion, her place in society, and the whisperings of her psychology, both genetic and learned.

A soldier might consider that killing is wrong, but his training and the survival merits of killing the enemy can outweigh any thought of philosophical absolutes. He knows it is wrong to kill his kin or a member of his group, but the killing of an enemy in combat contributes to the survival of the kin or group. After all, morality has survival value, and the fine-tuning of his moral code is every bit as important, and likely more so, than any absolute statement concerning moral behavior. Apes have been shown to practice reciprocity in lice-picking by other apes. If a fellow simian does not reciprocate in the practice, he will be shunned in future lice-picking sessions. If a human behaves ethically toward another, he will cease that behavior if the other does not in turn behave ethically toward him.

But humans have shown an amazing ability to rationalize their behavior in ways that are not beneficial to the group, and to believe their own rationalizations. When banking and business executives brought down the world economy through acts of unregulated greed, enhancing their own fortunes by vast amounts of money that drained retirement, pension, and investment accounts around the world, they continued to pay themselves and their cronies extravagant wages out of taxpayer bailout money. They justified their actions by stating (and believing) that ludicrous compensation was necessary to keep the best executives in place and not lose them to foreign markets. Their rationalization was so complete that they were unable to see that those “best” executives had displayed incompetence beyond comprehension.

If an objective morality exists, and if it exists in the evolved mind, then we can assume that the mental fountainhead of morality does not “think out” the fine tuning of an individual’s decisions nor does it offer perfect answers to the problems of lying and misinformation, larceny and greed, and murder. That is left to another part of the mind/brain. The evolved morality knows only that it is wrong to injure a member of the family or group or to engage in behavior that limits his survivability.

Dependence on supernatural authority for our morals is to rely on unicorns. The average person without formal education in philosophy must depend only on his and her own evolved mind to provide a moral code. We can only hope that when listening to that inner ethical voice, he and she will hold to or develop the understanding of rationalization in the role of violating both their own moral code and the ethics of their society.

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This essay also appears online at 
https://kenshel717.medium.com/everyday-ethics-5f48cbbda3dc

God's Graffiti

Photo by Alonzo Skelton

All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach. --Adolf Hitler

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A disclaimer: Readers who have some psychological need to convert others to belief systems involving supernatural characters will be offended by some of the contents of this essay.

 I’m almost finished reading Revolutionary Characters, by historian Gordon S. Wood, and have recently read biographies on George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. I intend to squeeze in Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton as soon as I can acquire the books, and I’ll look up the others on the internet. I look especially for information on their religious views. So far, I have found nothing to indicate that the founding fathers were religious men. They were deists, the prevailing sentiment held by the educated upper classes of the time, and they held in varying degrees of indifference and contempt the evangelical Christianity of the masses.

 The religious right in this modern age like to point to references to God in the founders’ letters and documents as proof of the religiosity of the framers of the Constitution, but the God of the deists bore no resemblance to the angry meddling God whose words contemporary evangelist would have inscribed on every surface of every federal facility on the planet and taught as science in the classrooms of our public schools. Appeals to God in those letters and documents were appeals to Providence, not to some denominational creator who heaps beneficence on the faithful and severe judgment on those not obedient to His authority as expressed by one or another interpretive branch of His dictates.

George Washington, ever aware of his public image, attended church to display his affinity with his constituency in much the same way modern politicians, steeped in corruption and self-interest, cater to a religious constituency to appear as one of the people. Alexander Hamilton used Christianity to achieve political ends, and did not express any adherence to the faith until the early nineteenth century, decades after his prominence in Revolutionary politics. John Adams openly expressed in belief in deism, but thought church attendance essential to man’s morality. Thomas Paine’s masterpiece, The Age of Reason, promoted deism and criticized Christian doctrine. Benjamin Franklin considered himself a deeply religious man, but in his writings he often refers to “the deity” and “providence,” without mention of Christianity. He endeavored to virtue, but of course, virtue does not rely on religion for its practice or existence. James Madison rigorously defended and promoted religious freedom. Of the founding fathers, only John Jay and Patrick Henry attested to orthodox Christianity. They did not belong to the class of educated men who adhered to the prevailing theology of deism among the landed elite in the northern colonies. Evangelical Christianity was, to those who aspired to a republican aristocracy in the Age of Enlightenment, the religion of the unenlightened masses.

 Proselytizers and enforcers of religious have only the motto “In God We Trust” as a wedge and as justification for their attempts to force fundamentalist Christianity on an entire nation, but that motto did not appear on American currency until nearly a century after the signing of the Constitution, at a time of religious revival in the United States and was not adopted as the national motto until the Eisenhower administration in 1956, when the aristocratic values inherent in the Age of Enlightenment ceased to have relevance.

The most militant atheist quarrels with inscriptions of the national motto on currency and the Ten Commandments on the face of federal buildings, but most Americans view those allusions to religion with ambivalence. The motto refers only to “God” and does not promote the god of a favored group, and the Decalogue represents a historical event and is not the sole province of any particular philosophy. The exact wording belongs to the Judeo-Muslim-Christian heritage, but identical admonitions come from multiple cultures and religions ranging from the code of Hammurabi to definitions of proper behavior in Scientology. It does not require religious thought to know that rules set forward in the Commandments represent common-sense applications for an individual to live by if he is to live at peace in a society. The problem many deists have with religious graffiti on taxpayer-funded property lies in the rigid enforcement by brown-shirt religious leaders to limit those inscriptions to their particular faith. Why not include Buddhism’s Eightfold Path, and the Sutras of Patanjali? Buddhism and Hinduism, are, after all, well represented in American society, as are Wicca, Paganism, Scientology, and any number of groups and doctrines that have sprung up to challenge the rigid and chauvinist dogma of Christianity and its history of torture, mass murder, and denial of reason and free thought to enforce its adherence.

If I sound critical of militant religiosity, it is only because the Flying Spaghetti Monster (www.venganza.org/) has not received equal billing with Christian thought.

A Rude Awakening

 

Photo by Dylan from Pexels

A friend recently made a snarky comment to me regarding my atheism. I called her on the remark: I asked her why she would say such a thing.

As an atheist, I am used to sarcasm and contempt from members of the various Christian sects-- that religion, along with its sister, Islam-- are most demanding that its followers work to convert others not of their faith, and unofficially to treat them with ill-disguised loathing if they refuse to convert. Seeing that loathing come from a friend was a wake-up call. I came to see that the hate for the unbeliever is a feature of Christianity; that even friends and family members are not immune to it.

I did not face indoctrination into religion at an early age. When the subject finally did enter my life at aged twelve years, I faced a world of people who came of age steeped in a belief in what appeared to me as the power of wishful thinking; in an invisible person who would come to their aid in times of trouble; and that some undefined element called a “soul” would arise from the body to represent the believer in an infinite utopian existence following his or her death. Reading those responses to my newfound knowledge might give a slight insight into the confusion those followers of faith aroused in me at that tender age. How could otherwise reasonable adults believe such nonsense, I thought. The awareness that they did, in fact, believe those things to be true was a rude awakening.

Even before my introduction into religious thought, I bowed my head as instructed for the school prayer that started each day, just before a geography class taught by a devout teacher who denied the science of meteorology. She taught us that rain was not caused by condensation and air temperature but came as a gift from God. Even at ten years, I knew she was spouting bullshit, though “bullshit” was not in my vocabulary at that time. I knew instinctively of its prevalence in matters of belief.

I hid my thoughts about religion from others, even pretending to agree with it to avoid strife. Then, sometime after my thirtieth birthday, I came across three books that forever changed my own world view by introducing me to philosophy: Richard Hittleman’s introduction to Hatha and Raja Yoga, Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and the works of Alan Watts. Those tomes led me to the entire panoply of philosophical writing, careening through the Greeks to the Enlightenment, the Existentialists, and currently—Alain de Botton. Now, as a novice student of philosophy, I have become more tolerant of religion. I work to understand belief: its causes and effects and the reasoning behind it.

If only believers would extend that same tolerance.