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Finding
The Right Thing
What do we mean when we call something "immoral"? We mean that
it crosses a line, breaks a rule. We mean that something is absolutely
wrong, not because of its effects or intentions, but because its simply
wrong. A moral is the point at which we stop arguing our case. If something
is contrary to a moral rule, its wrongness is self-evident, and no further
argument is necessary. Nobody feels the need to argue why the holocaust,
or September 11, or child abuse are wrong. They just are, and only the
bravest of devil's advocates would seek hows and whys.
This view of morality as the first principle of argument stems from the
religious view we share of what a system of morality is, even if not religious
ourselves. This is because of our upbringing and because the dominant
values of western society are Christian, by tradition if not in practice.
In the Christian view of the world, God is the full stop. When we say
something is immoral, we are saying that it is against God. Even if we
are not believers, this tends to be how we view morality, as something
which speaks for itself and requires no explanation. A moral absolute,
if such a thing exists, exists prior to human society and to any human
laws enacted and enforced. A moral absolute, in this view, is about good
and evil.
And this is why "Morality" is a word that makes many of us nervous,
particularly those of us who would consider ourselves politically liberal.
We hear the word "morality" and we think, "Oh God, this
is going to be about abortion or something". Morality suggests preaching,
it suggests someone asserting their rightness and denouncing someone elseās
wrongness.
In certain societies (ancient Greece for example) our view of morality
would be utterly incomprehensible. How can something be a code of living
when it's based not in actual social life, but on a higher power, which
many of the adherents of the code don't even believe in in the first place?
They would have had an utterly different view of what morality is. In
this view, morality is a system of values by which we can chart our lives.
It is a means by which we as humans can get along, by which humanity can
survive and flourish, by which we can avoid suffering, unhappiness and
pain and pursue safety, happiness and pleasure. To many this will seem
an overly pragmatic or even cynical morality, one barely worth the name
at all. But it is a view that should be given some credence if certain
pitfalls are to be avoided.
The word "pragmatism" has been much misused over time and has
come to mean an amoral making-do. In fact it is a coherent and comprehensive
philosophy, in which the test of the truth of a proposition is its practical
use, the purpose of an idea is to guide our actions, and the effect of
such an idea is more important than its origin. The key thinkers behind
the movement, philosophers William James, Charles Peirce and John Dewey
were working in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War. From
our own vantage point in history, that war was unquestionably just, but
from the pragmatist's point of view, anti-slavery though they were, it
was simply a horrific slaughter. The influence of the war was a profound
mistrust of purely abstract ideas, of "principles". A principle
had become an idea that was valued above human life. The pragmatists would
have agreed with the phrase "a principle's a principle" but
would have added, "and that's all it is". To be right in principle,
but wrong in practice would not be sufficient to salve a pragmatist's
conscience. The defence of "I did what I believed was right, whatever
the consequences may have been" was no defence at all. If the consequences
were adverse, then you couldn't possibly have been right. Rightness has
nothing to do with what a person believes or how strongly, but is something
to be shown by reference to fact.
Having seen the horror of the war, they sought to drag philosophy down
to human level, to avoid either idle speculation, or the kind of blind
faith in pure ideas had lead to violence and conflict. Another prominent
pragmatist, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, gave the
philosophy an application in law and politics. Immutable and inflexible
moral laws were not imposed on cases; rather the cases were decided one
by one on their own merits. In the common law tradition, decision builds
on decision to provide a body of law that aids judges in making yet more
decisions. This is a perfect illustration of pragmatic morality. Laws
come from life, from human behaviour. Though they are there to be followed,
they are our tools, not our masters. Laws, rules, morals, whatever one
may call them, are not imposed from above, but are created by human society
in order to aid human society.
Most politicians will share this view, in so far as it relates to their
own profession, at any rate. Politics is about the give and take required
in evaluating competing interests and ensuring that they are all, to some
sufficient if not satisfactory degree, met. Ideology may drive the order
of priority in which those interests are placed, or the method whereby
interests are met, but politics is really more of a practical matter.
Certain politicians are attacked for having no ideological beliefs, and
this is a fair enough criticism, but there are certain people, be they
on the religious right or the hard left, who ignore the pragmatist view
entirely. Rather than reserving only certain difficult issues for special
moral consideration, for some, there is a tendency to characterise every
choice as one of good or evil.
This disturbing discourse is currently in use by the American right, in
the form of the Bush administration. It is destructive of a liberal, civilised
and tolerant society, and is no less destructive when employed by the
left. It also leads to a polarising and often bad-tempered debate. Instead
of trying to make a case for how effective and beneficial any proposed
measure will be, we are told that it is the right thing to do. This is
why certain parties on the left are so often attacked as being "holier
than thou". Often a party further from the centre will denounce the
measure as not going far enough and withdraw their support. The vote is
lost, the measure is not implemented, the problem remains unaddressed.
The more extreme party are accused by the moderates of sabotage, but they
really don't care. Safe in the knowledge that theirs was the moral choice,
they are unhurt by the criticism. And yet politics is (or should be) about
doing the right thing, not about saying or thinking the right thing. It
is, famously, the art of compromise. Politics is what we have instead
of civil war, and when it ceases to be about compromise, and begins to
be about good versus evil, then we are in serious trouble.
There is a story about a Jewish boy who reached a crisis of faith in his
teens. He went to his rabbi and announced that he didn't believe in God.
"Tell me" the rabbi asked, "What makes you think God cares?"
I am often reminded of this story when I listen to the sort of bellyaching
dinner-party radicals who are outraged at every turn but treat politics
with disdain, no party being good enough for them.
They and their heroes John Pilger and Noam Chomsky are entitled to their
views, but they have made these views irrelevant in the purity of thought.
They can luxuriate in this purity, but at the expense of the satisfaction
of actually changing the world for the better. The Pilgers and Chomskys
of this world are very often correct in their analyses, but who cares?
Ask them what to actually do about say, the Middle East, and we are merely
told that we wouldn't be in this mess if America and Britain had behaved
better after World War II. This is about as helpful as road directions
from a man who says, "Well, I wouldn't start out from here".
What is the point of all this? After all, life is not an intervarsity
debate: you don't get marks for being right.
The point is that, religious or not, this kind of person not only cannot
bear to accept what they see as a cynical amorality, but insist on importing
their own brand of right and wrong into practical problems that are far
from simple. Instead of engaging, they settle, with a disturbing willingness,
for the austere pleasure of lonely opposition. This is a narcissistic
indulgence. It is about the pleasure of being in the right, rather than
about caring about the issue in question. The issue itself can be resolved
by lesser mortals, the kind who make compromises and get their hands dirty,
but to the narcissist it is merely something else to be outraged and appalled
by.
Perhaps the most extreme example of this attitude is to be seen in the
human shields in Iraq during the war. In interviews, many of them spoke
about how they knew they couldn't stop the war, but hoped that if they
died, it would be as martyrs to the cause of peace. Now this is essentially
a romantic notion, a belief in the beauty of the grand gesture, the symbol.
As such it is not particularly useful to the people of Iraq, who were
noticeably less willing to tell journalists, voices quivering with emotion,
that "If we die, we'll all die together". It is certainly less
useful to them than the aid workers who arrived in Iraq as soon as the
fighting ended, and are still there, at risk to life and limb, helping
to provide essential services and rebuild some kind of very basic infrastructure.
Young, committed and idealistic, the human shields were not unlike the
aid workers.
They could have similarly make a difference, gone some small way towards
making the world a better place. And yet they were willing to throw that
youth, commitment and idealism away on a grand but ultimately empty gesture.
It requires bravery to do that, but that bravery seems misplaced. It requires
a different sort of bravery to be in Iraq now, to live for your ideals
rather than die for them. This is the bravery to get down off the moral
high ground and into the messy hollows in which life is actually lived.
You will regularly be disgusted by what you see, you will make compromises
that leave you wondering what you believe in, you will never know the
splendid isolation of moral purity. But you will sometimes get something
good achieved, not in theory or on paper, but in hard human reality. So
perhaps we've got our ideas the wrong way around. Maybe it is a pragmatic
view of what is good for people, here and now, that is the only morality
worthy of the name.
by
Fergal Crehan
22nd June 2003
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