Altruism or Egotism?

The question springs from an answer to an earlier log. To my correspondent's proposal that the very idea of ethics “requires in an essential way the bond with another,” I reply that regarding such bonds I remain agnostic.

Let me clarify that I am not proposing a philosophical egotism in the style of Ayn Rand -- nor much less a Milton-Friedmanesque political economy. Absolutely not.

The point of departure is myself merely because I am the unique constant to myself. The other, male and female, can always go off merrily skipping away in verdant pastures … I'm one that I have left.

The right to satisfy my needs, however, does not imply a justification of oppression of the he, she and all of you who are not me. It merely means a certain hierarchy of needs.

My correspondent does not stop with altruism, but instead raises the matter of self-awareness (or conscience) in philosophical terms. The questions prompt me to imagine a whole series of Descartes thinking in their attics in Paris, London, Florence, and deriving from such thought patterns of knowledge that are impossible to collate or to compare. Then there are the problems of error and the surprise, which arise from outside the self.

This strikes me as attempting to know too much. What I propose is much simpler: that the task of developing a scheme by which it is evident what I must do and what I must not needs to begin with a healthy respect towards myself. To love to myself passionately.

The gospel says it: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matt. 22:39). But how shall I love my neighbor as myself if I do not love myself first?

Let's be clear about this: it's not an idea that began with or is unique to Jesus or Christianity. The Hebrew scripture already taught it (Lev. 19:18), as did Confucius five centuries before Jesus, Mohammed in its last speech, the Vedas in India, Gautama Buddha in his second truth, et cetera, et cetera.

The idea is a commonplace, almost an archetype.

The difference I propose lies in the place of precedence. Instead of denying myself in pursuit of heavens, salvations and nirvanas, I propose fulfilling myself first. Loving oneself enthusiastically, without thinking about another one, dividing oneself, holding back, until my self overflows with love and from this a love of others is born.

Mourning the Mourners

Two men died; one forcibly, the other died quietly in his bed. Yet it seems as foolish to revel in the execution of Saddam Hussein, as it is to revise history to put Gerald Ford on a pedestal.

Hussein's hanging will go down in history as yet another mistake in the huge series involving Iraq. Why? Writing in the second century of our era, the Christian writer Tertullian provides the classic explanation in another context. "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church," he wrote.

The word "martyr" comes from the Greek, meaning "witness." The early Christian martyrs gave witness to their faith to the point of death. Their example inspired the growth of the Christian movement to the point that it eventually took over the Roman Empire.

More to the point of Hussein's death, in Islam a martyr (shaheed) is also a witness, particularly when defending the Islamic world from an expansionist adversary. There is some controversy whether the suicide bombers could properly becalled martyrs, since Islam prohibits suicide.

No such obstacle stands in the way of the crown of Islamic martyrdom for the strongman ruler of Iraq.

You may object that Hussein ordered people killed and was despotic. Care to name mild and democratic leaders in the Arab world whom Hussein might have chosen to emulate? Which emir or pasha was elected? What Arab nation is renown for regarding the habeas corpus and due process devoid of cruel and unusual punishment as standard operating procedure?

What might Hussein be compared to globally that it warrants a U.S. puppet government executing him? Was Hussein's treatment of Kurds and dissidents worse than that of the secret SAVAK police under the CIA-installed Shah of Iran? Worse than that of Gen. Pinochet of Chile, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines or the Apartheid regime of South Africa, all of which received lavish U.S. support over the course of decades?

Was Hussein worse than the carefully cultivated Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia (whose rule Hussein's regime most closely resembles)? The gallery of cruel dictators aided by Washington is long. Why pick on this one?

The reverse could be asked concerning Ford. The man who told New York City to go bankrupt has now, in the words of Daily News headline writers, dropped dead. Why the gushing accolades?

Not mentioned in the Ford hagiography is that he opposed public housing, the minimum wage and called for the bombing of North Vietnam. When Congress blocked Nixon's attempt to appoint white supremacists to the Supreme Court, Ford launched an effort to impeach the liberal William O. Douglas.

As to Watergate, he is now presented as a visionary of healing, but in 1972, it was Ford's parliamentary maneuvers that prevented congressional hearings on the burglary of the Democratic Party's headquarters before the elections took place. In January 1974, Ford charged that “the AFL-CIO, the Americans for Democratic Action and other powerful pressure organizations [are] waging a massive propaganda campaign against the president of the United States.”

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward has documented a meeting between Ford and Nixon chief of staff Alexander Haig on Aug. 1, 1974, eight days before Nixon resigned, in which three options were presented to Ford, all involving pardons of Nixon. Ford later claimed no deal was made, but it's obvious that the quid-pro-quo was part of the fix that led him to his unelected presidency.

So what's to be gained by elevating Hussein to the status of an Islamic folk hero, when he could have been allowed into old age in prison for decades until his name and being became as thin and harmless a public memory as Ford's?

Love Thyself

Let's be honest and admit that at the center of our existence lies one person: Number One. We're taught to curb #1: parents and teachers insist that #1 take second place to others, that #1 learn a little self-hatred, take joy in self-punishment, aspire to self-abasement. Nonsense!

In the end, I can only count on myself.

You, too, can only count on yourself. You thought the president was going to take care of those night terrors? You expected Mommy to come hug you through the unemployment line? Ha!

What's more, I can't divorce myself. I'm stuck with me through thick and thin.

That's the via negativa to self love. We can turn it around.

You see, I can make myself better as no one else can. You, too, can grow and enhance yourself in ways no one else can match.

Start thinking small. I can wake up hungry and feed myself. I can be dirty and wash myself clean.

That's quite a lot! I am, as a person with disability told me some time ago, temporarily able-bodied; one day I may be bed-ridden and incontinent. For the moment, I can do for myself everything that my mother once did for me when I was a newborn -- and then some. I can probably do all this with greater precision than anyone else, since I know exactly what I like and want, what will make me feel good.

In the Republic of Me, I am the people and the representatives. I am the sovereign and liege in my own kingdom.

In my inner conflicts (dialectics, anyone?) I aim, for my labor and management, my male and female (yes, Virginia, there's also a guy lurking inside you), the boss and the bossed, to make things better in the end. My inner selves live in covenant with one another and we have the potential to be at peace.

We are a prosperous happy little realm, I, me, and myself. At heart we are delighted to greet ourselves in the mirror. That wonderful familiar face.

Is it too fat, wrinkled, sebaceous, sallow? We can choose better food, use better makeup, or simply choose to ignore it.

I have that power. I can love myself.

Oh, sure, there comes the moment or three in which we see that movie star on a magazine cover, that actor or actress on TV, that politician, that carefully groomed author on a dust-jacket ... and, for that moment, the worms of envy and hatred drive us into a rage at the gall of those daring to upstage the star of our lives, so easily, so totally!

Our looks seem so ... I don't know, lacking. No wonder I didn't get to be the Paris correspondent for The New York Times and marry a blonde Nobel-prize winnning novelist! I don't look right.

But that's totally wrong! In the Dominion of Me, Myself & I (note the ampersand in the august title) those terms and rules have no jurisdiction, no claim, no extraterritoriality.

In the personal channels of my brain, Entertainment Today (or whatever those shows are called) features the perennial celebrity: me. My Academy of Language accords me its highest honor every year. To ourselves, we are, as the Beatles claimed, more famous than Jesus.

We have so much that we overflow to others. Of course, we're in love ...!

Imperative

Some time ago, in 2004, when I was still an angry atheist and not merely a snotty agnostic, I argued that doing good made sense. Today, I am convinced good is a dire necessity and that without good, a radical good that beautifies everything in its path, we will not long survive.

Good is an imperative. Say it: "I will not long survive unless I embrace a moral order that begins with my survival and demands behavior that enhances the survival of all humanity."

A moral order is not a series of orders that pretends to be moral: wave the flag, work for a living, keep you genitals zipped up except in certain circumstances. That's just a set of manners to keep us all in line for whomever the powers that be happen to be; it's a vision made squalid by rulemakers, churches, schools, mothers without a sense of humor, fathers with belts that are too tight.

A few nights ago, out of nowhere, I had a dream about this.

I found myself in the atrium of a very modern school. A priest was sitting at a desk with some books in front of him. A nun sat beside him.

She explained that everyone in the school would be going door to door throughout the neighborhood to make sure that every family had a copy of the catechism, the Bible and another book I can't recall.

"What if the families can't afford the books?" I asked.

"Why, this is the key to eternal life," said the priest.

"So Jesus didn't really say 'Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in: Naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited me: I was in prison, and you came to me.' ?" I said.

Then I asked: "What he really said was 'Come, for you have sold catechisms and Bibles and good books' ?"

I woke up just then. Just in time to avoid the scene I had set in motion.

This did not strike me as a dream about Jesus or Christianity, only a criticism of the way visionaries have been defanged and declawed so that their challenges might be more palatable and profitable to the shamans and the kings they serve.

The real imperative is much wilder, impractical, almost impossible. It breaks through laws, regulations, tame social manners. It doesn't justify war or profiteering or sexualizing; nor does it provide the convenient hypocritical tut-tutting. The great visionaries saw something far, far beyond a well-ordered society and the churches and armies and brothels and cotillions.

Don't just do something, as Buddhists like to say, stand there!

Turn the other cheek. Begin the ending. Love the hate. Paint colors over what is gray or black or white. Do nothing.

We must.

The Godless Law, Commented

Starting from the principle of survival, it is possible to flesh out a set of ethical imperatives modeled, for the sake of familiarity, after the tablets of Moses. To make the purpose of each imperative clearer, I have appended after each a brief explanation.

I. THOU SHALT LOVE THYSELF WITH ALL THY POWER, THY WILL, AND THY MIGHT, FOR THOU ART THE ONLY ONE UPON WHOM THOU MAYEST ALWAYS RELY.
Replacing any god with the true center of anyone's life, oneself, these ethical imperatives start at the real source of one's scale of values. The imperative to love oneself is not an endorsement of indulgence and bacchanalia. Alcohol abuse leads to diseases of the liver, promiscuous sex can kill, excessive eating leads to obesity, and so forth. You can't say you really love yourself if you inflict yourself any of these problems. The corollary proposes the reality that, in the end, no one loves you as much as you love yourself.

II. THOU SHALT MAKE TRUE IMAGES OF THYSELF, TO REVERE, CHERISH AND KNOW FULLY.
Lying to others about yourself through false images, false impressions, a false facade, is the beginning of lying to yourself about yourself. You can be proud only of the true self you are, which in one way or another is sure to have commendable traits, as well as drawbacks. Learn to know yourself as you really are and to respect yourself.

III. REMEMBER TO SET APART TIME FOR THY RECREATION AND JOY, FOR THOU HAST ONLY ONE LIFE IN WHICH TO REJOICE.
The Protestant Work Ethic deserves to be challenged. It is not a source of joy. Do you live to work or work to live? If you work hard, is it because it fullfills you or is it for some other reason that does not give you joy? Are the things you get through the fruits of labor really sources of joy to you, or are they what you think you are expected to have? Remember: you have only one life! Enjoy it for yourself, the true self mentioned earlier.

IV. BE MINDFUL THAT THOU CANNOT LIVE ALONE FOR LONG, THUS RESPECT ALL THOSE WHO NURTURE THEE.
In the Mosaic decalogue, this applied to parents. In reality, it should apply to all who are in the nurturing chain. We are not islands, we are social animals.

V. THOU SHALT NOT DIMINISH THE LIFE OF ANOTHER FELLOW HUMAN, WHETHER BY TAUNT OR PREJUDICE OR DEPRIVATION OR THE TAKING OF LIFE, FOR EVERYONE IS IN THE NURTURING CHAIN THAT NURTURES THEE.
I have expanded and made more explicit the most common ways in which even civilized human beings are likely to rob one another of life. Whenever we make life miserable for someone else, for even one second, we have stolen a possibility of joy that is irreplaceable. That second will never come again, that chance at some semblance of happiness is gone forever. We have killed that person for one moment.

VI. THOU SHALT RESPECT THE SURROUNDINGS THAT SUSTAIN THEE AND THY FELLOWS.
Biblical adultery, which was the object of the item at this location in Moses' law, was ultimately about maintaining an unquestioned lineage for the purposes of inheritance. I have expanded it to deal with a respect for not merely personal property but all things in the environment that allow us to live.

VII. THOU SHALT RESPECT AND HONOR THOSE THINGS THAT ENABLE THY FELLOWS TO SURVIVE, THEIR PROPERTY, THEIR FAIR AND JUST WAGES, WITH THE SAME RESPECT THAT THOU SHALT CLAIM FOR THAT WHICH IS THINE OWN.
The opposite of stealing is to respect what others need to survive.

VIII. THOU SHALT HONOR THINE OWN REPUTATION BY BEING A TELLER OF TRUTH AS BEST THOU SEEST IT.
This needs little commentary.

IX. THOU SHALT ENJOY THE FLESH OF OTHERS, RESPECTING THEIR OWN DESIRES AS WELL AS THINE AND TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY CONSEQUENCES THEREOF.
We need a positive imperative about sex, a principle that will allow us to enjoy our sexual side, so long as we respect others and live up to the duties that may arise as a consequence (parenthood or disease).

X. THOU SHALT REIN IN DESIRES THAT GIVE RISE TO HATE, THEFT, DISRESPECT OF OTHERS, DESPOILING OF THE EARTH THAT SUSTAINS THEE, AND THE DIMINISHMENT OF LIFE.
Here I take the ancient notion of coveting as a source of much mischief and expand it to cover any desire that, unbridled, leads to disrespecting nature and fellow human beings -- including greed, envy and prejudice. To raze a forest merely to make more money, to wish an accident for a neighbor who has a car that is better than ours, to derive one's own self-respect from a pejorative view of entire classes of people, these are instances of what this imperative is intended to prevent.

Now I have come down from the mountain.
Copyright © 2004 by Cecilieaux

Godless Ethics

A common argument wielded by many theists, that no ethics are possible without a deity, need not hold true. Indeed, the argument is a curious inversion of the Marxian notion that religion is a tool of social discipline.

Without any god it is possible to arrive at what I call the Ethics of Survival. This is a stance of moral philosophy that begins with me, the individual who is essentially alone; no one is intrinsically and reliably for me, in the sense Rabbi Hillel wrote of, so I must be for myself.

Inexplicably, I find myself alive. In considering what behavior is good and of the sort I should strive for, and which is bad, and to be avoided, I have no god, no tablets of law, nothing to guide me but my meagre intellectual resources.

Now, since ethics, or moral philosophy, is the discourse about human behavior, a moral philosophy requires at least one living human, as dead people do not exhibit observable behavior. Survival itself, therefore, is the essential element of any such philosophy: we cannot behave well unless we are alive.

Thus the first ethical principle: all behavior that enhances my survival is good and desirable, whatever detracts from it is bad and to be avoided. This is a universal norm.

In invoking universality I do not mean to proclaim an absolute principle. Rather, I mean that, with very few exceptions (primarily insane people or people under unusual amounts of stress), life is universally valued by human beings. Many of us may not know the best way to preserve or enhance it, but we still value life, our own to begin with.

Now, then, I value my life. But I cannot survive alone. Oh, yes, ever since Rousseau the noble savage sustained by beasts has plagued human discourse; yet in reality, human beings need other human beings to survive.

I would not have reached my first year without a certain hospital in New York where I was saved from near death at 11 months. Most newborns are utterly incapable of caring for themselves, a condition that continues for years.

Most adults are in a similar situation. We don't all provide for all our needs individually; most of us today couldn't keep our current style of living without a society around us. There's enough anthropology around to tell us that this is true almost axiomatically for all human beings: we are a social species.

So here's the corollary of the first principle: my own survival is linked to the survival of others, whose survival is linked to still others more, who in turn are linked ... on and on, to the point that my survival is linked to the survival of all humanity. The moral order that begins with my survival demands behavior that enhances the survival of all humanity.

John Donne said first:

"No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less ...
... therefore never send to know
for whom the bells tolls;
it tolls for thee."

Some may well object at this point, that most people seek survival when they look out for themselves, and therefore, that they live by this ethic instinctively. My response is that they may well think they are, but that is true only in a very limited, ephemeral sense.

When I behave to promote only my survival, others be damned, I am really being shortsighted.

Suppose I decided not to pay taxes that pay for public schools on grounds that I, personally, do not need schools any more. I expose myself to the risk that one day, a half-literate driving an ambulance will be unable to read the map that takes my infarcted body to the cardiologist I sorely need, causing me to die at an earlier age than might have otherwise been the case.

Telescope it further, owning an SUV, for example, has endless moral ramifications. In the immediate, superficial sense owning an SUV may not seem involve a moral question. But when considered in its global context ... we can start from the proven poor safety record of these vehicles, to their polluting effects, to the wars that continue to be fought in order to control the non-renewable resource they consume voraciously: oil. If I buy an SUV I make a choice to consume and despoil more than is my fair share.

This is, in sum, an ethic that makes sense in and of itself. This is moral philosophy without a god, afterlife nor, the quintessential boogeyman, hell.

Doing good and avoiding evil because it makes sense.

Copyright © 2004 by Cecilieaux