Augeas’ Immortal Cattle

Yet another story in the papers of toweringly complex corruption in our financial sector brought to mind the stables of Augeas—and, not coincidentally, the absence, no matter how searchingly one looks, of any figure as potently large as Hercules. But our discussion lead me to look up the story of Hercules’ sixth labor. It had made a vivid impression on me reading it as a child—so much so that the mental images I had then formed were back, pristine. But back in those days an important, and in a way amusing, feature of the story did not register in my young mind—or was, perhaps omitted from the account I read. As the Wikipedia article puts it, “the livestock were divinely healthy (immortal) and therefore produced an enormous quantity of dung.” The emphasis is mine. That had us laughing. All things have a bright and a dark side, you might say. It is good to be immortal in this material dimension—but the consequence appears to be the ability to produce fantastic, towering, gigantic, and presumably ill-smelling mountains of dung. But, as a more humble writer of the modern age has put it, “A river runs through it.”

Let’s Ban the Word

Those of us living in metropolitan Detroit now sigh as we read about Governor Patterson’s problems in New York and Representative Charles Rangle’s temporary yielding of the hammer over House Ways and Means in Washington, DC. Here we have been embroiled in a mayoral corruption scandal for more than a year. It led to the ouster of Detroit’s mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick last year; most recently we’ve learned of a belated FBI investigation of his reign about to boil up in earnest. In seeking distraction from steamy and/or monetary corruption charges, we are then treated (we were yesterday) to proof positive that the man appointed to lead the Detroit School Board cannot actually write a grammatical sentence. To describe the Detroit school system as “failing” is to use a euphemism.

I tend to see these things through a cultural lens. Corruption has everything to do with morality and morality with custom. In sorting through these matters in the past, I’ve looked at the distinction between morality and legality on LaMarotte (here) and have pondered the fact that corruption in one domain may be custom in another (here). This morning, glancing at the New York Times over coffee—and setting aside a sudden impulse to join the Coffee Party on Facebook at once—it occurred to me that the loud cries of Corruption! are not, perhaps, relevant to modern, secular culture at all.

Such cries suggest that morality has actual standing in our secular culture. Is not the public promotion of morality the nose of the camel under the tent flap? Isn’t it religion trying to get itself established again? That, my friends, should be treated as a problem, an assault on the modern values of staunch value-free realism. All right. Morality, arguably, has its place, may be tolerated. It belongs to the lower, the less important, the voluntary, the life-style, the private sphere. As such, we know, there are as many different moralities as there are cultures, and we’re resolutely multicultural. If it isn’t illegal, it should simply be labeled behavior.

Let me illustrate. It is perfectly legal to finesse in bridge. If you do it, and it works, you win. If you guessed wrong, you lose a trick. Is it illegal to send a message to the battered mistress of a governor’s aide that she should keep her yap shut? Isn’t speech free? Is it illegal to make assignations to fornicate outside of marriage? Or is the illegality merely confined to using City-owned texting devices when doing so? Get it right, Media. If a presidential candidate sleeps around, isn’t that his private business? Or perhaps his wife’s? If being homophobic is a no-no, shouldn’t being adultryphobic be condemned as well?

I urge all sectors—media, punditry, politicians—to be consistent. Use the word Illegality! Avoid the word corruption. It implies too many things that reek of the Old Time Religion. To be sure, even that nasty word, corruption, is inconsistently applied. Why hasn’t it been applied to the Too Big To Fails when they engage in underhanded, deceptive practices however legal? Why do we call that creativity or financial innovation?

Ban the word, I say. It’s just behavior, stupid. Behavior. Got it? And when it’s illegal, why then, by all means, let the wheels of justice slowly grind away. But let’s not get judgmental. To be judgmental is to act immorally in the context of modernity.