What Comes First?

In one of our discussions yesterday, Brigitte suggested that technology comes before science! I certainly wholeheartedly agree. The example that always comes to my mind is Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell; I had a post contrasting those two early last year (link). Faraday was a foremost discoverer of electromagnetism; Maxwell captured the laws of this phenomenon in mathematics. In Wikipedia entries (and that publication may be seen as a random sample of current views), Faraday is described as a “contributor” to electromagnetism and electrochemistry; Maxwell, in contrast, is described as a “great unifier” in physics, the second after Isaac Newton; the third, one presumes is Einstein.

My interest today, however, is not in physics or the emergence of reputations; it is in what comes first. It does not in the least surprise me that in the physical realm all of the great discoveries begin (and began) with hands-on experience—and that the formal descriptions of experimental results come (or came) later. Without observations, no one can later, by measurement and analysis, discover hidden laws.

But what comes first in those realms of experience not rooted in the physical? Let’s pick on ethics and render it simply as “the right thing to do.” What is the root of morality? A very difficult subject—particularly in such times as ours. First of all, in our times, all things are rooted in the physical and anything transcending it is denied to exist. But if that is so, “the right thing to do” loses its absolute grounding. Therefore our times are suffused with pragmatism. The right thing to do is that which produces the best results: pragmatism. How “best result” is to be defined is, of course, relative to the viewpoint of some person—never an absolute.

When we come to hard grips with this situation—where outcomes justify the means and the outcomes themselves are relative—we begin to see in quite harsh light just what is wrong with our collective life. It is built on the sands of relativity and, if we like the outcome, the ends justify the means.

Am I stirring the sewage here? Over the last few weeks we’ve watched the entirety of a very laudable British series called Foyle’s War. It has a mysterious attraction. The right thing to do is shown us, in that series, as an absolute, its root the inner nature of the human soul and Whatever created it. Innate, as I would call it. Such thoughts, therefore, tend to arise.

Truth or Consequences

A subject futurists almost never mention is that some features of the future are indeed predictable with certainty. Two are famous: death and taxes. There is a tiny minority who think that death itself may be an endangered species if we but put our trust in Science—something sure to please those people who sniff insulin to stave off Alzheimer’s disease. Tea party enthusiasts, a little more numerous than the would-be life-extenders, also hope that taxes will someday also be forgotten—but they will surely die before that glorious day dawns. Unmentioned is human nature which, as sure as I am sitting here, will deliver at least as much trouble in the so well predicted future—beyond Alvin Toffler’s Third Wave, beyond Daniel Bell’s Post Industrial Society, beyond Francis Fukuyama’s Last Man.

The futurists intend to prepare us for the future, but their emphasis is on big things rather than basic, vast societal transformations the individual influences about like ants shape continents. What they emphasize is foresight and adaptation rather than the practice of morality. But such practice, as it happens, is the most practical approach to the future’s uncertainties. Therefore, at least alongside warnings and cautions about foreseeable changes, futurists should urge the effective teaching of morality as Job 1.

(Here parenthetically I would remind the bristling reader that the word ethics would work as well. We associate morality with sex here in the West, and sexual morality reeks of political incorrectness. Ethics sounds less threatening. Both words, alas, derive from the overlaid Greek or Latin root meaning custom.)

This thought arose from yesterday’s contemplation (on LaMarotte) of the European debt crisis—which was created by minimally amoral piling up masses of governmental deficits—and today’s reading of a column by David Brooks in the NYT. Brooks wrote about a study showing that young people today have the absolutely vaguest concept of what morality is all about—beyond thinking of it as an individual sort of thing. Brook’s title is “If It Feels Right…”.

The study of morality has been squeezed completely out of education because, wouldn’t you know “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” (First Amendment), which we’ve come to interpret to mean that the R-word may not even be whispered in schools. But we associate morality as rooted in religion (rather than, as etymology asserts, in custom).

Now the thought that floated into my mind was that a deep sort of study of morality, begun in the earliest grades of school and continued with more force and refinement right up to college graduation is a necessary preparation for understanding much more subtle cases, such as that excessive borrowing, borrowing that you know, in the gut, will be near impossible to repay, is immoral, not just a life-style choice. It might feel good, to be sure, but it is wrong. And immorality has consequences—not least in the here and now.

Many people have come to doubt this last point. They point at amoral lords of the universe enjoying gargantuan bonuses. They suggest that the rich and powerful never suffer the consequences of their depredations. And here, of course, the dilemma of our situation comes to the fore. A holistic concept of morality is anchored in religion, thus that its violation will have consequences, if not here then elsewhere. Or are you indifferent to starting your next incarnation as a sewer rat? We respect all religions on this blog.

A Time of Shatter

Healthy societies are complexly integrated whereas decadent societies are engaged in a process of slow-motion shatter. If I stare at the word complexity long enough, I realize that in a complex system every part and aspect of the whole is equally important although the parts are always hierarchically related. In a monoculture everything is the same. My Mother used to say, by way of dismissing certain kinds of views, “Everything is wood.” When asked what she meant, she would say: “Those people are just like termites. For them everything is wood.” Or everything is money. I picture a book in its normal use. Every word in it is meaningful—in placement and in sequence. So are the letters in the words. The covers have their purpose, the pages are numbered, and the use of the book is governed by its internal arrangements. But if that same book has been discarded, perhaps because it has been damaged, and is now relegated to serve as kindling next to the fireplace, it matters not what page you tear out to light the fire. Complexity has been reduced to monoculture. The words have lost all of their relevance.

Disintegration manifests by the separation of parts once meaningfully linked. So in a decadent society mutually supportive orders became alienated one from the other. What used to be relationships turn into uses. People are commodified. They become markets, human resources, labor, management, constituencies, blocks, interests, lobbies. Creative work becomes content. These are not merely verbal distinctions. They come with feeling tones attached. They are attitudes. They signal distance and indifference. “We’re having some labor problems. But we’re getting on top of them.” My favorite symbols for this include the recorded telephone call (“Your call is very important to us”) and the old Russian communist adage: “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.”

This situation is pregnant with meanings—as is its opposite, community. For instance: as society loosens, freedom increases but relationships weaken. As one Russian émigré writer, living in New York, once complained: “At least back home the NKVD read what I wrote.” The urge to escape the oppressive integration of the small town or the village—in order to enjoy the freedom of city life—becomes the oppressive anonymity of urban life where you don’t even know your neighbors. When community shatters a complex network of relationships yields a single means of relating to everything—through money. Only money carries universal value. Thus is born celebrity and the yearning for visibility—that fifteen minutes of fame on television. And this is what feeds American Idol, brings it contestants and the vicarious participation of the vast alienated masses.

But life in a complex community has its down-side too. It requires attention, time, and effort expended on the community itself—very often “just because,” as in noblesse oblige—thus without any compensation in return. The obligation to work for the common good is not pragmatically rewarded—or, if it is done for reward, it is not that kind of effort. Nothing forces you to do it. It can be and often is felt as a burden. Its support is ethics, thus a moral sense. And this moral sense is reinforced by a hierarchical conception of reality, thus it has a religious connotation or underpinning.

Now, it seems, societies decay by a curious process. Community spirit and complex relationships produce order; order produces wealth; and wealth, as it spreads, weakens the sense that effort on behalf of the community is necessary. It is easier to avoid its burdens. This tendency to turn aside is felt as liberating. The notion is then expanded philosophically into a cult of freedom and individualism. This, in turn, damages the hierarchical arrangement on which the whole society rests. How wide this alienation spreads depends on the extent of the wealth produced. In pre-industrial times, only elites became wealthy enough to lose their bearings—hence also dynasties fell. The so-called ignorant masses kept clinging to whatever spirits or gods they worshipped. In our times, the devastation reaches much deeper into the population because the wealth produced has been so great.

The process of decay is also marked by a movement from the personal to the abstract—because love (one of the three theological virtues) is withdrawn. The farmers market where contact is vividly real becomes capitalism. Trade—at core a vital, complex, two-way river—becomes soulless globalization. It is a negative phenomenon because its single glassy eye is focused solely on gain. It produces a monoculture of technique. Everything must align with it or perish. Good-by to the shop, farewell the local merchant. In agriculture we literally have it—monoculture. Industrial means of raising chickens, pigs, and cattle are, frankly, obscene. What is the justification for this? The only denominator common to everything in a shattering culture: money. When a hierarchy of values is absent, complexity begins to disappear. When complexity begins to show cracks, only time is required for the whole to fall apart. In the midst of this process it is almost impossible to believe that the society is doomed. But such is the case.

The human community revives from these long and painful periods of desertification only because minorities fiercely cling to the more complex value systems which are the full expression of humanity. Small communities, often isolated, certainly separated, continue to exist. As things fall apart, these seeds begin to link. Out of them are formed new cultures which, for a time anyway, realize the values we celebrate over the centuries. To this I might add that the Decline of the West (as Spengler called it) can be and is resisted by those other societies in which the ethical current still flows strong.

Ends, Means

It is almost a truism that “the end does not justify the means.” For that very reason, the rule or doctrine contained in that phrase invites a closer look. If it is true, why is it violated in so many small and, indeed, shocking ways. One of the most visible and outrageous examples is the sanctioning of torture by artful interpretation of Section 2340 of 18 U.S.C. The United States Code actually prohibits torture; it defines it as follows:

[A]n act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody of physical control.

One is tempted to ask Jay Bybee: What part of “no” don’t you understand? Is it the “n” or is it the “o”? Bybee was an Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department, the man who gave the CIA the green light to use waterboarding and several other nasty techniques. The artful way of escaping this dilemma, adopted by Mr. Bybee, was to find that (1) the CIA did not intend to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering; it had other, more lawful intentions; and (2) so carefully, indeed artfully, parsing the concept of pain and of suffering that, miraculously, the actual effects of waterboarding (it makes you feel as if you’re drowning) don’t quite measure up to the definitions of 18 U.S.C.—or so at least Bybee argues. If you wish to read the memorandum yourself to check on my veracity, you can begin on this site. The item to download is labeled as “A 18-page memo, dated August 1, 2002, from Jay Bybee, Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA.” Finally a footnote to the definition above: the parenthetical phrase refers to such things as capital punishment.

Having laid this out, I’m not going to say too much more about this business except to point out that the Administration’s acrobatics, turning itself into a pretzel to get around the law, was done for a “worthy cause.” That cause is the security of the United States and the prevention of another terrorist attack. That is the “end” for which “torture” is the means. And it’s that relationship I want to examine.

The more I pondered that relationship—and why it is both misunderstood, misstated on the Internet in discussion forums, and ignored in legal tight-rope walking—the more puzzled I became—until the actual solution to this problem hit me. But before I go there, I want to point out what I stumbled upon on the way. One is that the phrase is understood by young people in a reverse formulation: “the end justifies the means.” I found a site where this very concept was being stoutly defended, although, to be sure, by what sounded like teenagers. In slightly more adult discussions, the emphasis of the argument is on the nature and grandeur of the end. The glorious end is then allowed to shed its radiance backward, haloing whatever kind of action is sincerely undertaken for the noble cause. It does not surprise me, therefore, that senior senators will actually use the same argument, not quite as bluntly of course, but in circumlocutions. For a sample of such a presentation, I would suggest you check out this interview on PBS’ NewsHour aired April 22, 2009 and available in transcript here.

Now for my insight. The reason it didn’t come to me at once is because I hold, as a matter of habit, an old-fashioned concept of truth. And the insight, really, is that many people must not. The fundamental issue that illuminates the end/means argument is that there is such a thing as absolute truth. Some things are simply wrong, and they are wrong in an absolute and not merely in a relative sense. In the modern usage, including the way senators and teenagers approach this subject, an act, a means, is neither right nor wrong, not on the surface, not out of the box. You have to ask what the circumstances were. If the means served some noble end, its character undergoes a change. If it serves some low or indifferent end, then it may seem loathsome. This is moral relativism, and it seems to be widespread—not because the public is malevolent but merely because it’s ignorant.

The final point that I think must be made is that any kind of absolute truth also implies a hierarchical order in the entire universe, hence demands that there be a God. If the prevailing worldview is very fuzzy about such a being, the public's morality will eventually become quite blurred. The public will instinctively adopt a stand-in for the highest value, typically choosing the political collective. This view will be interestingly self-centered, so that waterboarding captured Muslims will be far more acceptable than waterboarding CEO’s of too-big-to-fail financial institutions. But I’d better curb my lower instincts here and stop.