Category Archives: morality

An Ominous Future?

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In 1935 Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel: It Can’t Happen Here, detailing the horrors of a totalitarian dictatorship. In the novel the ‘corpo’ government takes control, restrictions on personal freedoms emerge and the press becomes the voice of the state, dissidents are rounded up and imprisoned or executed and minorities become scapegoats. Young men are conscripted into the quasi-militaristic “Minute Men’ whose task is to seek out and arrest anyone suspected of subversive activities. As people began to realize their loss of freedoms mass demonstrations formed and were brutally put down by the oppressive regime

In America today we see militaristic ICE agents assaulting immigrants deporting them without legal recourse to interminable prison time in Venezuela. We see attempts to suppress free speech in the racist intentions to cancel Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs in colleges and universities. We see ICE agents removing books from public libraries which can only be seen as an attack on education.

This totalitarian wave we’re experiencing is intended to overwhelm us; resistance is necessary; silence is acquiescence.

The Dissolution of Hope

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I’ve been thinking about what happens when life imposes obstacles so overwhelming one loses the hope a better life is within the realm of possibility. A darkness settles in with the realization a livable future doesn’t exist. Socially enabling behaviors, neighborly connections, dissipate, alienation results, hostility develops, obsession finds only the enemy.

Does such a one entertain a death wish or strike back and initiate an evil response?

Moral, Amoral Immoral

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I’m wondering lately what part morality plays in our social behaviors these days, how morally ambivalent we’ve become in our acceptance of the less that morally stellar actions of some of our public figures. The ‘designer’ morality many of us assume these days lacks the omniscient overseer Christian believers have: an entity able to impose punishment or reward for behaviors well spelled out and without compromise.

However, we draw our moral guidelines it seems pretty clear that lack of any moral truths has dangerous implications for personal well-being and for our relationships with our fellow man. Amorality turns into immorality that leads to evil intent, the inclination to replace social benevolence with Will-to-Power.

A Shadow Self

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I guess it’s pretty clear that we are all innately susceptible to wicked behaviors. That, while we maintain a respectable public persona within us burns a shadow-self, a dormant entity that when motivated surfaces to exhibit behaviors that can only be described as evil.

There are various reasons why an evil shadow-self might reveal itself: fear of the Other among them. An obsessive jealousy might ignite one’s Darkside as well as vain responses to threatened identity. Instigators might arouse the shadow-selves in whole populations by demonizing a scapegoat as happened with the witch burnings during the Middle Ages and antisemitism in the 1930’s and 40’s.

When the eruption of the shadow-self occurs, our moral imperatives will likely be overwhelmed allowing our innate wicked behaviors to flood in.

A Fall From Grace

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A stable upbringing will usually set most of us on a path to becoming someone worthy of self-respect. Through responsible participation in the mechanisms that contribute to a functional society we will find ourselves woven into the social fabric of our communities, thereby garnering the respect of our peers who share our moral values. Our sense of self-worth will grow into the assumption of political power, of being a man among men.

If, though, pride-in-self becomes excessive one may slide with ease into vanity, a character flaw demanding constant reinforcing kudos. As the need for recognition grows obsession develops, becomes dangerous, finally producing a loss of identity, a non-person results, immoral, prone to unjustified retribution against imagined nemeses. An inglorious fall from grace.

Our Evil Selves

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I’ve been reading that everyone has within them the potential to behave in ways that can only be described as wicked. The idea is that although most of us develop moral values that help us remain socially responsible neighbors, (you know, do unto others as we would have them………..), a shadow self that has the potential to cause us to engage in evil behaviors, lurks within us.

Sometimes obsessions driven by envy, pride, greed or lust can turn us away from the moral guidelines that have made it possible for us to live socially responsible existences. If these obsessions grow and fester, continue unchecked, they may disrupt our sense of identity to such an extent we may forget who we are. When this happens the potential for evil behaviors against our fellows becomes all too possible may even lead us to actions that go far beyond the disquiet that led us initially to the obsessiveness, which can result in a total annihilation of what was initially desired and spiral us downward into self-destruction.

Fundamentalist Fervor

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I’ve been wondering lately what sort of life events, what kind of social influences one would have to experience to lead him or her to embrace the stringent discipline of fundamentalist religion.  Apart from an innate proclivity toward a rigid, reactionary conservatism (can there be such an inclination?), what, I wonder, propels some people toward angry condemnation of any and all perspectives differing from their own?  

 In fairness, most everyone seeks answers to the big questions: the nature of existence, life’s inherent meaning, but only some of us (a small minority one hopes) determine their answers to be an infallible, absolute truth that leads them to rail against the slightest suggestion that there might be other good answers. 

Some of these true believers have come to the conclusion that the life they had lived before finding the Truth was so despicable that a psychic renewal was required: a re-birth into a total acceptance of, commitment to, their recognized god.  In order to maintain their new persona and recently acquired cosmic world view, an Opposition, an inherent Evil identified as constant reminder that one’s beliefs are constantly under siege, that life is a battle between the forces of God and Evil.  Tension and conflict then become an everyday experience and concern. 

There are, of course, degrees of fundamentalist fervor.  Not everyone who embraces conservative religious beliefs are overtly hostile to those they might consider infidel or apostate.  Still, the idea of immanent cosmic conflict isn’t buried too deeply below the surface. 

These are disconcerting thoughts to my mind, but, I guess, in the end, it’s all about being certain where the truth lies: for these folks it’s not within the empirical but rather the cosmic realm.  For some the rewards of a promised afterlife tempers the outrage and sustains their vision of the soon to be realized cosmic light.  

Populism

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Political populism appears to be in the ascendance these days.  The idea the ‘power’ is in the ‘people’, the ‘people’ being those rightfully in control, dismisses the opposing views of the minority.  Opposition is unacceptable, lost elections must be the result of fraud, theft; criticism the purview of ‘intellectual elites’.   

Populism simplifies, views differences in terms of power, who’s in charge, distrusts the complexities of democratic structures that require ongoing dialog to self-correct when necessary.  The ‘power of the people’ will be placed in the hands of a strongman who will suppress, unde4rmine institutions in order to impose the ‘will of the people’.   

The attraction of such a position must have something to do with a sense of social impotency, a lack of faith in a democratic society.  The danger is the establishment of totalitarian control. 

Streaming through Soundbites

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I’ve been thinking lately about my daily consumption of the news. Anticipating, as I do, the discomfiting nature of what I’m likely to hear I rely on the feeds I get through my phone each morning. I’m realizing my perspective on things is being tainted by the sensational nature of these media soundbites.

As troubling as I find this realization, I will continue my sound bite consumption because I know I will find a more intensive investigation of current events to be more painful than worthwhile.

Moral Truth

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I’ve been reading about the conflicting philosophical thinking occurring among the dons of Oxford in the early 20th century. Conventional exegesis centered on issues of morality, how to think about the idea of the ‘Good’ in action and deed, whether there existed an intrinsic moral intuition directing man’s behaviors.

In opposition to such thinking, others maintained issues of morality were beyond the realm of obtainable knowledge, had no truth value, since such knowledge is dependent on the opinion, state of mind, of the individual thinker. The only knowledge obtainable, the logicians determined, will be found in mathematically verifiable constructs, truths within the bounds of scientific investigation. The Ethicists responded that man’s behaviors are much richer, rely on moral constructs and consist of a multiplicity of remembrances and inputs not reducible to mathematical formula.

I guess the atrocities of World War II must have brought the discussion of Good and Evil back to the philosophical table for everyone.