The belief in divine justice and the ethics rooted in the code of
honor provided a powerful ingredient which kept society strong well into
the late 20th century. It has been now replaced with the principle of
rational self-interest and pragmatism. Things like psychic phenomena are
now considered impossible and therefore fraudulent. This has been
carried further by speculative scientists like moral naturalists who
think that the traditional view on morality is funny and set to work to
make it less funny by inventing rationalist explanations and denying
validity of transcendent and awesome. If successful they will sweep
aside the whole deep-seated complex of ideas which guided Western
societies throughout the ages. Such is our reality at the beginning of
this century, historically understandable as the reflex of changing
human attitudes but intellectually a mass of confusion.
RESTORE MORAL SENSE
There are no attempts to master the confusion and to elicit from it something which can restore traditional moral sense. The New York Times columnist David Brooks is concerned with the fact that modern science
grounds ethics in sense-derived knowledge rather than pointing towards
awesome and transcendent.
He wrote an article about moral naturalists and asked, "Where does our
sense of right and wrong come from?" Moral naturalists assert that
morality comes from relationships; we observe relationships and then
shape moral norms on that outward appearance. They do not qualify these
sense-derived norms as objectively valid and want to mold them in
progressive fashion. I think that the sense-derived moral norms are
objectively valid. Everything we learn and believe is grounded in
manmade and sense-derived education and culture, like the empirical
statement "grass is green" and analytical statement that "two plus two
is four." These statements are objectively true and so are our moral
norms. They shouldn't be twisted to fit a subjective progressive agenda.
Progressive scientists dismiss the ethics also on a different ground. In
their opinion, the words "right" and "wrong" are mere substitutes for
other words like "enjoyable," "unpleasant," "useful," "useless," etc.,
which only express our feelings. Yet, in fact, ethics consists not
merely of what we do but what is right and obligatory to do. The words
"right" and "wrong" confirm the virtue of acts which are in conflict
with a person's desire for pleasure or utility. They tell us what we
ought to do. If the meaning of the words "right" and "wrong" could be
narrowed to "pleasant" or "useful," then all ethical statements would
indeed be mere duplication and thus useless, and we would not be able to
explain what is the function of such a verbal masquerade.
WASTE OF TIME
These attempts to reform morality are essentially a waste of time. We do
not accept moral norms because we are convinced or converted by Kant,
Plato, Marx, Bible or by Moral Naturalists but because we suffer
feelings of guilt when we breach them.
The commanding function of the ethical norms can cast a long shadow. It
infringes on individual freedoms and influences legal and political
norms. Yet, the feeling of guilt is not an overmastering power and
rational people do wrong. They know that they have been acting
unethically and yet impulses of arrogance, pride, immorality, or the
urge for revenge takes over. There are also cases of misbehavior which
are caused by individuals who were born without a sense of guilt or
empathy as well as cases of senseless misbehavior which are carried by
individuals with a biological disorder (nutritional imbalance, trauma,
brain damage).
But the mystery of human conduct is surpassed by a much deeper paradox -
the influence of the outside agent, or celestial environment, on man's
behavior. In psychology, it is known as the psychic influence, which
stimulates a person's latent psychic abilities and makes them the
vehicle for sudden input from the outer world. A rational mind is
suddenly overwhelmed by feelings that cannot be reduced to rational
considerations. This is particularly difficult in a love relationship in
which two people are romantically fascinated under complicated
circumstances, and yet they are compelled to stay together with no
regard to any consequences - even tragic.
OUTSIDE INFLUENCE
This outside influence is said to have "taken away" a human being's
understanding -- like in the case of Homer's Glaukus who accepted a bad
bargain, by swapping gold armor for bronze. According to the old Homeric
view, such a personality is not truly part of the self, since it is not
within man's conscious control. It is endowed with a life and energy of
its own. It can, according to Sophocles, "wrap to wrong the mind, for
its destruction." This way of interpreting the human fate survives in
Euripides and Plato and in modern literature. It is what we should call
an accident; but in astrology, psychiatry, psychology, theology, or for
Homer there is no such thing as an accident.
It was above all Sophocles who exposed the tragic meaning of human life - the overpowering sense of terror and helplessness:
"Blessed is he whose life has not tasted of evil, / When God has shaken a
house, the winds of madness / Lash its breed till the breed is done:
..."
Today Christians still repeat after the ancient Greeks "... and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
It is possible that our perceptions are doubly determined on the natural
and on the supernatural plane. Logicians point out that there is no
inherent barrier which would prevent us from accepting that there is an
awe-inspired perception at work; such perception could produce our sense
of right and wrong. We don't have to abandon rationalism, but we may
transform its meaning by adding to it a metaphysical extension.
Matthew Jarosinski lives in Waitsfield.
