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Essays, Thoughts and Speculations
by Richard Sansom
Contents
1. Morality Without God
2. Puzzlements
3. Saving Private Minds
4. Another Take On The Matter
5. Morality, God and Language
6. Abstractions
7. Wars and More Wars
8. A New School of Law
9. A Few Votes or A Single Voice
10. Church and State Etcetera
11. Looking Forward – Looking Back
12. What Is Thinking?
13. Progress in Western Civilization
14. Speaking Out
15. Dictatorship? – Close
16. What To Do About Values
17. The Senate is an Abomination
18. Rights and Wrongs
1. Morality Without God
Introduction
This is not a polemic against religion. It
is an argument for a secular morality that
can be as powerful and effective and less
potentially aggravating in disputes among
religions and between those with and those
without religious faith. The long history
of humankind is filled with two opposing
urges: that towards caring,. stable and secure
societies and that toward selfish, aggressive
actions between people and between nations.
It may be false to assume that the former
is based on rational and the latter on irrational
thought – the workings of the human mind
remains a mystery in these matters. Whence
comes the feelings of empathy, compassion,
tolerance? Do they arise from some homunculus
who is intrinsically moral? And, equally
problematic is the question, whence comes
our aggressive and selfish behavior under
certain circumstances – from that same, perhaps
Janus-faced homunculus? Dividing the mind
into categories related to how we behave
toward one another is a dangerous undertaking
since little to nothing is known as to how
our mental processes operate across the spectrum
of individual and social needs. While it
is the purview of science to analyze these
processes and to provide understanding for
dealing with what we may term aberrant behavior,
it will remain the purview of the secular
humanist tradition to evolve the means, putting
it quite simply, for humans and nations to
get along with one another. Karen Armstrong,
in her A History of God, says:
Humanism is itself a religion without God
– not all religions, of course, are theistic.
Our ethical secular ideal has its own disciplines
of mind and heart and gives people the means
of finding faith in the ultimate meaning
of human life that were once provided by
the more conventional religions.
This essay attempts to shed some light on
we might go about finding and using these
“disciplines of mind and heart.”
What IS Morality?
No doubt many or most will agree that “morality”
has to do with human behavior towards other
humans, and perhaps even toward other animals.
Moral norms have changed over time and among
cultures for thousands of years, and many
have had associations with religions, but
not all. One might ask, which came first,
religion or morality? Do the prescriptions
and proscriptions related to our behavior
come from some transcendent source such as
the allegedly divine author of the Christian
scriptures or the Koran, or have those sources
been guided in their behavioral regulations
simply through the evolution of what works
in the maintenance of a stable and secure
community or society? Religious believers
will probably claim that even primitive man
had some kind of spiritual connection with
a deity , and today so-called primitive cultures
who worship various gods can be said to be
misguided simply because they have been kept
away from the teachings of a “true faith.”
Further, the idea of a transcendent power
or guiding force is not thwarted by the belief
in those primitive gods, but rather made
more evident. The Ten Commandments, held
by the Jewish and Christian faiths as God-given
moral guidance, having come directly from
God or Yaweh to Moses, are considered to
be sacrosanct because they came from God,
not because they are generally good rules
for a community to abide by. A reasonable
question is: Does it matter what the source
of moral guidance is, as long as it is effective
in the maintenance of a civil, stable and
secure society? I maintain that it does matter
in a most general and serious way.
Morality that is based on secular, not religious
doctrine is said by many of our preachers
to be at the mercy and whims of society as
it is not founded on transcendental and unchallengeable
law. Societies are viewed as composed of
humans with all the frailties, weakness and
“sins of the flesh,” and without the guidance
from on high, guidance that cannot be revoked
or challenged, those sins can and will prevail
in the behavior of man. In other words, without
the guidance from an omnipotent deity, one
that exists outside of the mind and body
of man, society can sink into sinful disarray.
In all matters of morality there must be
a court of last resort from which there is
no appeal and such a court must be the word
of God or, in the case of Islam, Allah’s
surrogate, Mohammed. It is a curious fact
about our religions over our known history:
there have always been a variety of gods
and religions – never, on a global basis,
has there been agreements as to any specific
religion or specific god or gods. Wars and
conflicts have abounded over the doctrines
of these various religions, many willing
to die for their belief in their God. I say
curious since a rational person may naturally
question this obvious disparity, if there
is assumed by all of a given faith, that
there is only one supreme being. This suggests
to me that the ultimate choice of a religion
or a god is a purely subjective and personal
one. One’s personal set of moral values usually
comes about from parents and other very early
influences and experiences. In a few, changes
in their religious affiliation come about
through thoughtful examination of church
doctrine as compared with other sources of
information, but in any case what they believe
in is what they choose to believe in. What
cohesion there is in accepting any one set
of moral rules in this or any other country
is simply a matter of tradition and common
life experiences and teachings. But, I have
the strong suspicion that any two people,
even of the same faith, would not define
their view of morality as identical. Morality,
from a global and even a national or local
perspective is unquestionably relative and
contingent.
Where Did God Come From?
The existence of thousands of books on this
topic makes it clear that I could not, in
a few pages, lay out a definitive answer
to this question. But, the very presence
of so many disparate voices on the topic
makes the point well that there is no agreement.
To answer, God is the supreme force or intelligence
of the universe, or some equivalently simplistic
definition merely begs the question further.
For the purposes of this paper, however,
the meaning of the term “God” must be put
in some useful context that allows me to
discuss the matter vis-à-vis the general
topic of morality. Instead of discussing
what God or religion is, I will discuss a
possibility for their source, and the ingredients
of the possibility has ramifications for
the purpose and thrust of this paper.
History shows that God, or gods, have been
a part of recorded human activity from the
beginnings of the written word, and archeological
evidence indicates religious functions may
have occurred prior to that. While it is
risky to claim that there is some intrinsic
psychological urge toward needing a deity,
there is little doubt that such an urge has
come about, probably at an early stage in
at least the history of homo sapiens. It
is my opinion that the original impetus for
this tendency in humans grew out of an awareness
of causality. From the time that homo sapiens
discerned that every effect had a cause it
was natural for them to assume that all effects,
such as earthquakes, floods, disease, tornados
and the growth of plants also have causes,
but those causes were invisible, inexplicable
and in general, mysterious. There have been
many philosophical debates surrounding the
existence and meaning of “cause and effect.”
To many philosophers, causality is an anthropomorphic
creation that is but a useful tool in dealing
with the observed world, even in the absence
of any ontic presence beyond human perception.
While this may or may not be the case, it
is not arguable that causality is the sine
qua non of science, and that without its
stalwart (real or constructed) presence there
could be no science, and in fact little or
no human achievement of any kind. Early man
perceived causality as a fact in the world
– a fact he used in his daily life virtually
every day or every moment. It is natural
to assume that inexplicable natural phenomena
would be assumed to have a cause, and eventually
that cause became some kind of deity. This
situation does not diminish the value or
usefulness of believing in that causal deity,
and indeed was no doubt a means of dealing
with the natural world in a semi-rational
manner.
Aristotle pursued the idea of causality to
what can be termed its reductive conclusion:
If every thing has a linear cause-effect
relationship it is logical that at some point
the original or prime cause will be found,
beyond which there exists no other originating
cause – which Aristotle named “the unmoved
mover,” which is, or must be, God. Today
such reductive reasoning is challenged, if
by nothing else, the immense complexity and
interrelatedness of the universe, not to
mention the findings of quantum physics --
recent theories and experimental findings
in quantum physics indicating that linear
reductive analysis does not always apply
in the observed world.
To the scientist, even the pre-Socratics,
the inexplicable is not acceptable; while
there may indeed be gods, the goings on of
nature can be examined using the mind as
a tool to separate out and analyze matter,
process and events. Beginning with the ancient
Greeks the great exploration of natural phenomena
commenced and it moved steadily onward using
the power of rational thought to make step
by step headway. By the time the Enlightenment
arrived Deism was chosen by many scientists
over authoritarian religious or philosophical
doctrine – God may exist, but nature can
be examined using reason and logic and God
need not be an intrusion in this enterprise.
But organized religion lived, prospered and
is alive and well today, though divided among
many organizations and sects. The advance
of science has not thwarted the desire of
most people to seek spiritual guidance and
assign to God the province of creation and
cosmic design, not to mention rules for human
behavior.
Today in the USA there are an estimated roughly
160,000,000 avowed members of the Christian
faith, which represents some ninety different
denominations. Those of Jewish and Islamic
faith represent a small fraction of those
of religious faith, and Buddhists an even
smaller fraction. Those who claim to be atheists
are almost too small to be counted – in the
USA. It is estimated that over ninety percent
of adults in America believe in some kind
of god. Having pointed this out, it should
also be mentioned that the codified law of
the land is purely secular, and is obeyed,
for the most part, fully by believers, even
when the secular law runs counter to a religious
tenet. Thus, like it or not, we are a secular
nation when it comes to law and the maintenance
of social order. It must be added, however,
that for most Christians, it is believed
that the basis for our laws and our constitution
was, and continues to be religious.
Today it is doubtful that any preacher, priest,
rabbi or mullah would agree with me that
the origins of religion, gods and God can
be traced to early man’s cognitive awareness
of causality as an apparent ubiquitous feature
of the world. God is seen by these religions
as being above all such speculations – God
makes causality; if it indeed does exist,
it is a manifestation of his will. Contemporary
theologians who do not rely on the various
outdated so-called proofs of God’s existence
sidestep the issue entirely, resorting to
faith as an unquestionable feature of the
saved person.
So, God and religion remains a large ingredient
in our American culture, becoming even more
involved in politics, much to the chagrin
of those who hold strongly to the implied
separation of church and state within our
constitution – including some prominent religious
leaders. Nietzsche said: God is dead, but
we know different – He is alive and well
in churches large and small across the land.
Laws that attempt to enforce the separation
of church and state are being challenged
by those who believe that religion has a
vital role in governance, and to exclude
it is to exclude a large portion of the belief
system of the population. The important questions
I attempt to answer are these: Is God and
religion necessary for maintaining a stable,
secure and equitable society? And: Are our
generally accepted moral norms separable
and “spiritually” supportable in the absence
of religious faith?
What Are Good and Evil?
When Ronald Reagan was president, he called
the Soviet Union “the evil empire.” George
Bush (II) labeled Iraq, Iran and North Korea
“the axis of evil.” To many of a religious
bent, evil is a palpable force among us,
not merely an adjective, but a noun as well,
and it exists in contradistinction to good.
A person not only can behave in an evil manner,
they can be evil, as if somehow possessed
by this force. Plato discussed “the good”
as an existing thing that is more than a
quality, but something with substantive or
ontic reality. Philosophy and theology has
dealt with these concepts for hundreds of
years and for many they remain as problematic
as ever in terms of their reality. It is
reasonable to ask where these terms and concepts
come from and how they are perceived in the
modern American psyche, since what they mean
strikes at the heart of any discussion about
morality.
If we begin with Plato we find that things
are laid out rather neatly, but as time goes
on and the Christian and Judaic religions
become involved, they become more and more
complex. However, the Platonic idea of the
dichotomy of good and evil was infused into
the Christian faith with little difficulty.
Even with Aristotle’s influence on St. Thomas
Aquinas, Plato’s “Platonism” remains dominant
in Judeo-Christian faiths. Why is this?
I believe the answer lies in our natural
human tendency to see the world in terms
of dichotomies, and this tendency is quite
in line with Platonic as well as Cartesian
thinking. We see the opposite of good as
evil – one is either a good or a bad person.
This attitude was echoed by President Bush
when he said, regarding the “war on terrorism”
that other nations were either with us or
against us – i. e. translating, they were
either good or evil, according to his moral
code. Much morality does not allow for gray
areas.
What are Human Rights?
Our Constitution states: We hold these truths
to be self evident, that all men are created
equal and endowed by their creator with unalienable
rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. This is normative ethics writ
large in one of the greatest documents ever
created, but it begs interpretation and gets
it from many sides. Almost every phrase,
every noun, demands a philosophical, religious,
political and sociological reading. It is
a statement that grew out of John Locke and
the enlightenment and those thinkers who
considered man, the individual to hold a
special capability and supremacy that rises
above governments and rulers, and even Church.
It was part of the foundation that Jefferson
attempted to take to the limit in his version
of democracy. He, along with many of his
cohorts, believed that the individual was
born capable of determining his destiny through
a process of government that structured his
participation in an equitable manner. He
believed that humans are born with certain
rights, that those rights are not ephemeral
or at the whimsy of government and monarchs.
This is a faith, a faith in the basic inclination
of humans to seek certain basic needs unfettered
by arbitrary governmental control. It is
not anarchy, but rather what might be called
managed individuality. We have the right
to act and express ourselves as we choose,
but not in ways that detrimentally affect
others or the population at large. The structure
that enables this process is through representative
government, as opposed to a pure democracy
which is not only unwieldy but too subject
to the volatility of public opinion and the
day-to-day and year-to-year fads that we
are prone to imbibe.
But is the principle of human rights one
that rests on their endowment by “our creator,”
or is it a concept that has been born out
of our historic experience as to what does
and what does not work in forming and maintaining
stable and secure societies? Notice that
the word creator was used instead of God.
It is my belief that this choice was a nod
to both the religious and the secular ideologies
of the time. After the advent of Darwin’s
theories of evolution, one might reasonably
claim that our creator may be seen as nothing
more than the evolutionary process Darwin
describes. Taking this further, humans have
evolved into cognitive creatures with the
ability to make decisions and influence their
lives, alter their environment, make advancements
in technologies, etc. Or – our creator is
us – our beliefs, our institutions and our
science. The rights we call human rights
are simply that -- human, and they are rights
we have endowed upon ourselves because, in
general, they work for the betterment of
our societies.
Circles of Empathy
The United States and Europe are today labeled
multicultural to a large degree. This means
far more than multiethnic. If we examine
the lines of division in this country we
see many: ethnic, religious, economic, geographic,
moral and political that include rules on
abortion, gun control, cloning, taxation,
free trade, the environment, and so on.
(culture includes all that a group or society
does on a daily basis) Going into personal
choices we may even include such relatively
mundane things as alignments with sports
teams , and even whether or not one is a
vegetarian or not. The steady influx of other
nationalities and religious affiliations
over the history of our nation, in addition
to the freedoms we are allowed by our constitution,
have allowed and to some extent encouraged
this multicultural situation. It is troubling
for politicians since they depend for support
on a mix of beliefs and affiliations that
align with their own ideologies and political
ambitions. One can look at this multicultural
mix as a collection of what I call circles
of empathy. These circles are many and they
overlap in many areas and few are mutually
exclusive. These circles may also be ephemeral,
coming and going with the turn of events
and changes of mind, and only the most robust
remain permanent. Among the more robust and
permanent are (in no order of prominence):
Race
Religion
Language
Nationality & Appearance
Family connection
Political persuasion
Economic status
Geographic location
If a politician taps into the right mix of
these, he or she might win a district, or
state or national election. On the other
hand, if they step on the toes of one or
more, they may lose. To point out the ephemeral
nature of these circles, one need only to
look at what happened immediately following
the 9/11 tragedy. A large majority of Americans
(and the world) was sympathetic with our
situation and with the administration. One
might say that an immediate 9/11 circle of
empathy formed and dominated the psyche of
the nation for some time – perhaps still
does, but to a lesser degree. But fleeting
alignments and circles are not what holds
a community or nation together – they must
be lasting and deeply felt.
The issue that is relative to this paper
is whether or not there is or there is the
chance for a national and even a global circle
of empathy that has permanence and cohesion
that is independent of the winds of political,
national and economic differences – one that
transcends day-to-day concerns and remains
paramount in all serious matters of living.
Were we to ask everyone on the planet the
following questions, I believe the answer
to that question would become clear:
Is personal freedom important?
Is the safety and health of one’s family
a high priority?
Should everyone have an equal opportunity
to obtain an education?
Should the aged, poor, mentally impaired
and the infirm among us be taken care of?
Is the “Golden Rule” one that we all should
employ when dealing with our fellow humans?
Should the governance of a local or state
or nation be based on the will of the governed?
I am guessing that a vast majority would
answer “yes” to most or all of these questions.
Granted, there will be those hard line so-called
individualists and some libertarians who
believe that we owe our real allegiance to
ourselves alone, and that we are the only
ones responsible for success or failure in
life, but I think these voices are really
a minority. Thus we see, if I am correct,
that a large circle of empathy does exist
among all humans based on a set of purely
human and humanly invented credos that transcend,
in the end, governments and all other circles.
These six items come about not because of
religious or political doctrine, but because
they are reasonable and effective rules for
our social behavior. It is when political,
economic and religious forces intrude on
one’s consideration of these questions that
the mind gets befuddled and the focus strays
beyond the basic questions.
Using our Minds
Most of us live in the moment or the day
or week, especially those who eke out a living
and can only afford by necessity to pay attention
to the task at hand of providing for the
family. While they might answer yes to most
or all of the questions above, they are more
concerned with dealing with their task of
existence in a sometimes harsh and unforgiving
world. In fact many might rebel against the
forces they perceive to be marshaled against
them in these basic needs of existence and
resort to violent measures as a means to
express their anger and frustration, and
take revenge – thus the current suicide bombers
in various parts of the world. This means
that if one is denied, by their government
or outside influences any or all of the six
items listed above as desirable, they tend
to reject them when it comes to their own
behavior.
We focus our thoughts and actions on threats
when we perceive threats – even if, in fact,
there are none, or at least none that can
be attributed to another person or institution.
The key issue here is what can be done to
deal with not only real, but also imagined
threats to our way of life. If we truly believe
that there is palpable evil in the world,
that the devil incarnate does indeed exist
in some people and in some institutions and
nations, then we are doomed to see the world
divided into the camps of evil versus good,
and we will adhere to President’s Bush’s
doctrine of a world full of good an evil
doers with whom we may or may not choose
to associate. When the threats are perceived
as great, as they were following the events
of 9/11, we tend to shift out priorities
and take the side of caution, believing that
we must combat those evil forces that are
counter to our beliefs and way of life –
including our religious faiths. But we often
fail to dig deeply into the sources of our
own angst, the causes, the historic reasons
for the events that plague and frighten us.
We feel a deep anxiety and fear of the Islamic
faith because those we see as being a threat
are, apparently of that faith. And yet, how
many of us have taken the time to read the
Koran and its related commentaries ( of which
there are many)? Do we know the history surrounding
the difference between the Shiite and Sunni
Muslims? Do we know the five principles of
Islam? Do we know who Mohammed was, when
he lived, why he acted as he did, who followed
him and why? But then, do we know the theories
and actions of Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson,
Franklin, Paine, and many others who are
a vital part of our own history? If we do
not, then we are incapable of making reasonable
and rational decisions about where we are
and what we should do about things today.
History teaches many things about humans
and the institutions humans invent to deal
with human behavior, and yet I wager that
most of us are sorely wanting in knowing
much about that history. Does that, on its
own, disenfranchise many or most of us, in
terms of deciding matters of great import
in the ways of government and human behavior
(morals)? Yes, it does, to a great extent.
We may, in part, depend on the natural inclination
of humans to lean toward an empathetic and
compassionate feelings about our fellow man,
but on the other hand, without an awareness
of what has gone before in this regard, we
may fall into the trap of repeating previous
errors because we have failed to learn the
lessons that history may teach – and they
are legion.
Today, as witnessed by much of history, decisions
by governments are made for two reasons:
1) political expediency (i. e. power), and
2) ideological imperative. Embodied in the
latter is the overarching influence of religion
and it has been so for two thousand years,
at least. But if one examines this characteristic,
one finds that it is part and parcel of 1).
Thus, the connection, and in many cases,
a fervent and lasting one, between church
and state. In the time of Queen Elizabeth
I, both sides, the Protestants and the Catholics,
were bent on the slaughter of the opposing
side, and hideous torture and executions
were carried out in the name of God. Little
has changed in this regard, though it is
often cloaked in the guise of respectable
political give and take. Today, we invade
a sovereign nation ( that is, incidentally,
of a non-Christian faith) and claim that
we do so in the name of righting the wrongs
done by an evil force that, again, incidentally,
happens to be aligned with Islam. We see
a convenient nexus of economic value and
moral zealotry in a war that could have been
avoided by continued diplomacy and containment
of any bellicose intentions. There is no
moral component here, but only one of extended
economic hegemony that uses moral and religious
doctrine as one strong element for the sake
of gaining public support. What would we
do as a nation if our population was thoroughly
well versed in the history of all parties
involved? And, what might we have done if
our moral compass was more aligned with the
six items mentioned above than with those
of a strong particular religious component?
History has shown, though for some reason
many of our leaders choose to forget it,
that great moral forces abide in the hearts
and actions of non-violent leaders, such
as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and
great social changes can arise from such
forces. The invocation of “God” was rare
in Dr. King’s speeches and even more so in
Gandhi’s. Instead, they depended on a foundation
of what may be an innate desire for equity,
tolerance, compassion and respect for human
life, all of which do not require faith in
an omnipotent deity.
Morality and Science
Many scientists of the Enlightenment were
deists – they chose not to quibble or argue
about the existence of God and the role of
religion in the way the world and the cosmos
work; there is a God, somewhere, but the
laws of science, whatever their source and
meaning, exist, and we can discover and use
them, as a function of our own human intelligence
and capabilities. Today, we witness great
advances in all the sciences and we witness
no “advances” in religious thought. Many
who are questioned in various polls appear
to have religious beliefs that are not all
that removed from those of the middle ages,
but those same people are quick to admit
to and enjoy the accomplishments of science.
In defense of such seemingly archaic theological
positions the argument relies on the belief
that as far as God and religious faith goes,
there is a stability of religious reality
that does not exist in science – we Christians
have the same God today as did Moses and
Thomas Aquinas, whereas new facts and scientific
truths emerge almost daily. This permanence
of religious truth is, in fact, the real
strength of a religion – that which is omnipotent
cannot change, nor can one’s belief associated
with it. There are scientists who are religious;
and there are religious people who accept
the constant advancement of scientific frontiers,
and take advantage of what science offers
in terms of better health, communication,
transportation, entertainment, and so on.
But for many there is, or may be, a serious
conflict in the works. When science begins
to tap into the formulations and empirically
provable functionality of life itself, heretofore
considered the sanctified purview of God,
many are troubled that science is exceeding
its rightful domain. This occurred with Darwin’s
publication of his The Origin of Species,
and in many ways has never stopped. But today
the situation is exacerbated by recent findings
in microbiology and the real possibility
that human life can be created via biological
manipulation, in the laboratory. To the devout,
this is considered “playing God” and is criticized
as being both sinful and dangerous to the
natural order of things. In this new expanding
world of genetic engineering we see a serious
conflict of ideologies.
It is one of belief versus knowledge, and
this conflict has been with us for a very
long time. Belief (a. k. a. faith) is frequently
not rational or not empirically provable,
whereas the sine qua non of scientific knowledge
is rationality and provability – therefore
the conflict between these two. Unless one’s
religion can bend sufficiently to include
the possibility of a science that operates
but autonomously within the existence of
a supreme being, and unless one’s science
can be seen as the “clockwork” of a master
designer, the two remain at odds. But there
is a way out of this conflict.
A Clash that can become a consensus
What I see as a substrate of moral belief
that is not at odds with either religion
or science, and one that can, in fact, bring
these two into an agreement on a set of principles
that are not at odds with either position,
is the acceptance of the six concepts listed
above, and repeated here – not as questions,
but as tenets:
Personal freedom is important
The safety and health of one’s family is
a high priority
Everyone should have an equal opportunity
to obtain an education
The aged, poor, mentally impaired and the
infirm among us should be taken care of
The Golden Rule is one that we all should
employ when dealing with our fellow humans
The governance of a local or state or nation
should be based on the will of the governed
None of these is at odds with either most
of the world’s religions or with science
– they are possible secular moral principles
in communities large and small. All that
is required is for them to be incorporated
in rearing and teaching children and in governments.
No small achievements. But my point here,
as the title of the essay suggests, is that
this set of principles represents morality
without God, and yet does not infringe on
either religions or the sciences. Taking
these one at time we see how they can fit
into daily life and into governance, or politics:
Personal Freedom is important:
While we are usually free to think as we
choose, we are never fully free to act as
we might choose. Complete freedom of action
leads to anarchy and a collapse of social
order and security. However, personal freedom
within the framework of a universally agreed
to form of the Golden Rule is desirable and
workable. We know that freedom of thought
and action allows for innovation, exploration,
invention, all of which can profoundly aid
the advancement of a society.
Safety and Health of the family
While there is surely an instinctual component
to this area, much can be accomplished by
community and national institutions. Modern
Western governments all tend to ascribe to
their responsibility in providing security
in the form of police and standing armies,
as well as health institutions that deal
with research into the cure and prevention
of disease. Most would consider this a moral
responsibility of governments as well as
of families, neighborhoods and communities
in general.
Equal Opportunity for Education
General education, from kindergarten through
a university, if not open to all, leaves
a nation weakened in terms of a population
that is sufficiently enlightened to make
sound decisions in a democratic process.
Just as it is a moral responsibility for
a community or nation to provide for the
security and health of its citizens, it is
equally a moral responsibility to provide
for their education.
The aged, poor, mentally impaired and the
infirm among us should be taken care of
Given the inclusion of the Golden Rule in
this list, this item should not be required
– however, it is not the case that communities
and nations all take on the often heavy burden
of caring for those who are marginalized
by virtue of their mental, physical and age
conditions. Many on the political Right cast
a blind eye on the homeless, the aged and
those with mental problems, a modern version
of casting out the deformed and the infirm
at birth since they will be a burden on society.
If a nation is a family then all members
of that family need equal shares of security
and health; those should not be the sole
possession of the well-off.
The “Golden Rule” is one that we all should
employ when dealing with our fellow humans
If all others in the list are ignored, this
remains as the most important and the most
effective moral prescription for any society.
In my opinion it might be innate, in that
it could be based on an evolved empathy for
our fellow humans and in some cases other
animals as well. In a general sense, we wish
to be treated kindly, fairly and with understanding
and compassion; if we wish it for ourselves,
it makes logical and practical sense to wish
it, as Kant would say, to be a universal
imperative.
The governance of a local or state or nation
should be based on the will of the governed
Without getting into the intricacies of governmental
structure and the virtues one form of democratic
rule versus another kind, the question is:
In lieu of the consent of the governed (in
some form or the other) as the foundation
for governance, what other form of social
law, order and collective social prescriptiveness
within the specified boundaries of a nation
could best serve the population? We know
from history that Hitler, a monster who caused
the death of millions and the destruction
of nations, was elected by a democratic process.
We also know that a strong religious fundamentalist
population could very well elect a leader
who subscribes to a form of government that
is contrary to many of the six items under
discussion here. Do these examples belie
the virtue of a democratic process? Yes,
but only for a populace that is uninformed,
uneducated and generally of the same mind
as that of those elected. I have heard the
opinion that a good king is better than a
stupid electorate, and there is some truth
in this. However, depending on a good king
is like depending on good weather or finding
one’s true love, whereas government by the
people, as fickle and volatile as it may
be, has a legitimacy that is hard to deny
and one that has the virtue of hopefully
being correctible at the next election if
mistakes are made.
The Philosophies of Ethics and Morals
The role of morality and ethics in philosophy
has, up until recently, been a serious one.
The great mistake of ancient philosophers
was to treat these aspects of human thought
as tidbits for philosophic inquiry instead
of seeing them mainly from the perspective
of behavior – a very practical matter. It
was not until the era of Darwin, William
James and Freud that discussions about ethics
and morality assumed the status of a disciple
that should be separate from that of philosophy,
and perhaps more aligned with that of psychology
and sociology. Philosophers discuss what
is above the normal discourse of humans,
in fact most ancient philosophers had no
mind to include the daily grievances of the
ordinary person in their arguments, but tended
to deal in the abstractions that gave them
pleasure in debating. If such terms as pain
or pleasure or good or evil arose, they were
treated no differently from those like hard,
soft, up and down as abstractions that could
be located in some system of meaning.
2. Puzzlements
I am sure that it is as much a puzzlement
to a great many as it if for me that so many
in a supposedly enlightened nation such as
ours offer such ebullient and passionate
support for an administration that has done
so much to pull that nation down. We must
ask why this is the case, and why, given
the results of the policies that have foundered
over the past four years, the support has
not waned, but seemingly waxed. Even if the
Democrats win in the upcoming election, we
are faced with a continuation of a fiercely
divided country, with anger and deep suspicions
awash on both sides that no election can
hope to eradicate. It is a puzzlement why
this division is at hand and a deeper puzzlement
as to what can be done to change it to a
semblance of civil discourse and rational
debate that may have some hope for resolving
the still pending ills that befall us in
both domestic and foreign matters of the
gravest concern. In his introduction to The
Federalist Papers, Hamilton posed the prescient
(for all times) concern that faced our young
nation, and faces us yet:
It has been frequently remarked that it seems
to have been reserved to the people of this
country, by their conduct and example to
decide the important question, whether societies
of men are really capable or not of establishing
good government from reflection and choice,
or whether they are forever destined to depend
for their political constitutions on accident
and force. If there be any truth in the remark,
the crisis at which we arrived may with propriety
be regarded as the era in' which that decision
is to be made; and a wrong election of. the
part we shall act may, in this view, deserve
to be considered as the general misfortune
of mankind.
The operative phrase is undoubtedly: whether
societies of men are really capable or not
of establishing good government from reflection
and choice, given the fact that, even in
the face of overwhelming evidence that the
power structure that obtains today is attempting
to thwart the principles that helped form
the basis for our country and the health
it has enjoyed the past two-hundred and twenty-five
years? Are we capable of seeing past the
rhetoric that surrounds this push toward
something close to a monarchy, to a future
in which we the people can take control of
our own political, economic, environmental
and global status?
It is a puzzlement that so many of us gleefully
accept the lies and deceptions that have
attended this administration – why is this
the case? Has rationality, civility, discourse,
debate and the give-and- take that must accompany
any decent democratic structure vanished
out of some perverted sense of loyalty to
a regime that plays on the lowest common
denominators of the human spirit – i. e.
those of aggression, fear mongering, superiority,
black and white morality, and domination
by force?
If this is the case, then we are in for more
difficulties, regardless of who wins the
upcoming election. Something sad and discomforting
has happened in the spirit of the United
States – and not just since the tragedy of
9/11. Thomas Paine said: These are the times
that try men’s souls, when we were on the
brink of loosing a freedom so devoutly desired.
Today, though not as imperiled as at that
seminal moment, we nevertheless are on the
brink of loosing a part of the American spirit
that has bound us together for so long, though
good and bad times and provided us the respect,
admiration and envy of much of the world.
When I see the faces of the crowds cheering
G. W. Bush, I try hard to see into the minds
behind the faces, to see their reasons for
supporting such a person. I have come to
the conclusion that that crowd is an amalgam
of the following types: on one end of the
spectrum, those who hold dear the fear of
loosing their guns and bibles and hold equally
dear the fear and hatred of gays and abortion,
and these fears seemingly trump any concern
for their own or the nation’s economic future;
those at the other end, the wealthy, and
those highly desirous of being so, who care
only about their personal economic future.
An odd mixture of types. What both groups
have in common is an apparent disdain for
the country as a whole, and its future. One
other commonality seems to be the irrational
attraction to this man, George Bush, whose
constantly smiling face, feigned macho behavior
and supposedly common-man-value-system give
him a façade of bravado and strength he surely
has not earned by accomplishments in his
life. If people are to be fairly judged,
they must be judged by what they do in life
– not just by what they preach and what they
seem to believe, nor especially what they
look like.
An important consideration, religion, cannot
be overlooked. People who turn to religion
to the exclusion of most or all other considerations,
usually do so because something is not quite
right with life at the moment. Prayer and
the acquiescence to a deity is not often
brought demandingly into play when one is
happy, secure, prosperous and up to the task
of facing tomorrow with hope - - they come
into play in the absence of these things.
(God would probably not be required to the
same extent in some Rousseauean utopia of
peace, prosperity and health among us all.)
But the clearly present influence of religiosity
today, and its infusion into the political
system, indicates that there is indeed some
void, some missing piece of the human spirit
(for many, at least) that helps see us through
hard times to a better and safer future.
A president who claims the mantle of religious
guidance may be seen to be better equipped
(his true beliefs, whatever they may be,
aside) to provide the leverage that plays
well into the minds of those who need this
kind of surety. They need it because they
cannot provide it for themselves – thus the
age-old dependence on a leader who has the
perceived power to bring God readily to his
aid – God being seen to be on his side, as
opposed to his being on God’s side. This
Crusade-like ideology is a powerful medicine
for those in need, especially when those
in need imagine that we were attacked by
an alien and vicious religion, Islam, that
dates to the past era of iron-clad moral
and religious distinctions. I pause to ask:
have we really progressed from that era,
wherein the world could so easily be divided
between the heathen and the true believer?
As long as this hovering stigma of religious
war prevails here and abroad we will risk
more aggression and senseless killings in
the name or the two kinds of God, which should
be the same, and which are, dogmatically,
not all that different.
So, what is to be done? If an asteroid is
seen aimed at the earth with a surety of
massive destruction for us all, there is
little doubt that the world would coalesce
around a major defense initiative to protect
the human race at whatever costs are needed.
But we see no such “asteroid” in the form
of massive destruction, and are willing to
accept that time and the slow but steady
workings of the rational human mind can see
us through whatever tribulations we encounter
at the moment. This simply means that our
priorities are at a relatively low level
of meaning in terms of what is good for this
human race in the long run. We don’t want
to perish as a species, and yet are seemingly
content to survive as a species that advances
(or not) in a direction that may derail the
ambitions of those who truly care about life,
liberty and pursuit of happiness -- for all.
In the absence of some impending great disaster,
we recoil into our personal concerns about
our own tomorrows (and only those – not those
of our grandchildren!) and we cater to a
system, a belief, an administration, a leader,
who promises our salvation and rewards if
we but follow his lead and accept his ideology.
The history of humanity is replete with examples
of empires, nations, communities and governments
that made promises and/or held the sword
over the heads of the populace enforcing
whatever set of principles were deemed necessary
to maintain the status quo of order and power
at hand. Thus, the clear distinction between
liberal and conservative. The Liberal is
traditionally open-minded and curious as
to the possibilities of progress as they
might enhance our state of well being for
now and for our tomorrows; the conservative
is more frequently content to maintain an
order that preserves the system at hand for
the purpose of keeping the current regime
of ideas, political, economic and foreign
programs more or less the same, since they
serve the interests of those in charge. We
Liberals hopefully offer the possibility
that change, growth, daring, curiosity, science,
imagination are all geared to a movement
that is bound to be advantageous, since it
offers the only way to move upward – not
trapped in the stasis of an unchanging universe
of ideas and a halting of progress of the
human spirit. Those who cheer the current
president, those who latch so easily onto
the rhetoric of a religious certitude that
is based on nothing more than dogma (ancient
dogma, at that) and not possibilities, hope
for an improved state of life, are those
standing in the dark wings of the stage of
our political drama. If they are not beaten
down by sheer logic and rational thought,
a thin majority may dominate, and who knows
for how long? This does not question the
efficacy and value of a democracy, or a republic,
but it does question the degree to which
we have become enlightened to the extent
necessary to make that democracy all that
it can and should be. Recall that Hamilton
asked: whether societies of men are really
capable or not of establishing good government
from reflection and choice. I believe that
in the end we are capable.
In his American Soul, Jacob Needleman says:
“…all the bloodshed and violence of human
history are rooted in mankind’s incapacity
to will the general good.” However true this
is, in the absence of knowing what comprises
the general good, his dictum is weak. For
some, that good arises from religion, and
the moral basis for social decisions and
governance has dogmatic faith as its foundation.
For others, morality, a self evident ethic
of human behavior, is itself the basis for
religion – not the other way around. In either
case there must be some bedrock, some kind
of superstructure for determining what the
general good is and could be. I have the
feeling that in both camps today, the right
and the left, a consensus could be reached
as to the truly useful and lasting ingredients
of the general good. But what has happened
is the introduction of issues, some call
them purposively divisive ones, that cloud
the mind for the moment and rise to a prominence
they would not normally deserve. Let us hope
that such issues will eventually fade from
the stage and leave only those that are important
for today, but more importantly, for tomorrow.
I believe we all know, deep down, what they
are. If we do not know, that too is a puzzlement….
3. Saving Private Minds
We have what are called “reality” TV shows,
depicting the supposed struggles of young
men and women under the duress of competitive
combats dealing with all kinds of natural
nastiness, and the TV public apparently loves
them. If that is “reality” then I am from
another planet. Reality is a view of 1,200
flag-draped coffins returning from an illegal
war; reality is the killing of thousands
of innocent Iraqi civilians in the prosecution
of that war; reality is the sad countenance
of maimed-for-life returning soldiers, without
legs, without arms, without sight; reality
is the documented facts surrounding the alleged
reasons for making this war in the first
place; reality is the financial burden we
will suffer as a result of the war and other
Bush initiatives, and end up borrowing from
China, Japan and other nations; reality is
the set of blatant lies that we have been
given in the recent Presidential election
campaign regarding the threat of terrorism
that will increase if Bush looses. Reality
is here – we just have to be allowed to see
it. The recent decision by the major TV networks
to not show Saving Private Ryan (shown on
national TV in 2002) reflects the propensity
of those organizations to cater to the wishes
of the administration in terms of playing
down the horrors of war -- the current war
– under the rubric of not airing foul language.
Is that presenting reality? Of course not;
it is presenting a null set, a vacuum that
is filled with the trivia, an inconsequential
and cognitively undemanding consideration
of what is being viewed. (Hoosiers as a replacement?)
Saving Private Ryan, probably the most honest
depiction of the horrors and vicissitudes
of warfare, is not to be seen because (presumably)
it may offend the sensibilities of those
who find the word “fuck” offensive. Never
mind the overall message that war is hell,
(not heck) that war is bloody, impersonal,
sad and, though perhaps sometimes necessary,
a tragic way in which to deal with the serious
travails of our human condition. We have
now gotten to the point where censorship
is no longer in the traditional purview of
government, but accomplished through its
surrogate corporative agents, who donate
large sums of money to the folks in charge
and expect (and receive) kind treatment in
exchange. The quid pro quo is: We will not
show the truth about your illegal war, as
long as your grant us dominant roles on the
airways of TV and radio. We will not show
the bloody results of your war if you continue
to grant us ownership of large chunks of
that lucrative news and entertainment business
and give us plenty of tax breaks. Makes good
business sense, right? Yes – it does, and
at the same time it makes a dreadful kind
of sense in terms of protecting the public
from the truth, the reality, of what is going
on.
Recall the “reality” of saving private Lynch,
wherein we were shown the flickering green
nighttime images of our brave rescuers rushing
to the aid of a helpless and heroic woman,
caught in the grips of foul mistreatment
at the hands of vicious Islamic madmen. The
TV news was given the OK, no -- more than
that -- they were given the explicit
(we assume) footage of those brave helmeted
soldiers rushing into an unoccupied hospital,
greeted by Iraqi doctors, to carry out a
wounded woman who had not been molested,
but rather had been treated humanely by her
captors following her vehicle accident. We
were led to believe that she was some kind
of heroine who fought to the bloody end against
her attackers, when it has come out that
this was not the case at all. Reality? Reality
is an illusive and abstract term that resides
in the eye of the beholder – like beauty.
But we can only judge by what we are given
to see and consider. We are not given the
facts, such as they can be ferreted out by
the scant representation of the news media;
and are thus at the mercy of that media,
and if it is in any way controlled and manipulated
by the administration, then we are in the
midst of a censorship state – like it or
not.
We have been told by various (non- USA) international
news sources, that the deaths of innocent
Iraqi civilians is between 20,000 and 100,000;
even the low end is sufficient to give concern.
General Tommy Franks says, regarding such
numbers: “We don’t do body counts.” But we
do accurate body counts of our service people.
We suffered close to 3,000 deaths on 9/11;
we have wreaked vengeance on an innocent
populace that may exceed ten times that amount
or more, and yet we don’t seem to care about
this. Is not the administration playing to
this vengeance and simply displaying the
kind of insensitivity that accompanies the
passion of revenge? The reality is that we
are killing innocent humans in the process
of waging an illegal war. I have seen no
major TV news that investigates this allegation.
Where are the probers, the investigators,
the truth seekers in all this? Where are,
indeed, the Bernsteins and Woodward’s who
dug out the truths of the Nixon shenanigans?
Where are the Ken Starrs who so dedicatedly
pursued the Clinton misdeeds? Where are the
true patriots who see this war and its consequences
for what they are? Reality? Reality is being
swept under the rug of corporate protection
for the sake of increased viewers. It has
become far more important to sell toothpaste,
cars and Bowflex exercisers than it is to
tell the truth about what is going on.
We have been led to believe that the so-called
Iraqi insurgents are young men who enter
Iraq on some nefarious holy mission to kill
Americans and pursue the mission of bin Laden
and his ilk. However, reporters not beholden
to the American corporate-run TV media tell
a different story. When Paul Bremmer, presumably
from orders from the White House, dismantled
the Iraqi Army and declared all member of
the Bathist party to be persona non grata,
he essentially fired hundreds of thousands
of soldiers who had no jobs and no future
and had only the recourse of either begging
in the streets or joining organizations that
might rid their country of a not too friendly
occupying force; they are doing just that.
But this is not the reality that we are given.
We witnessed the famous “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED”
event aboard the Aircraft Carrier. So many
patriotic hearts beat fast and hard at this
spectacle of our Commander in Chief, in his
macho flight suit (with the prominent crotch
bulge), grinning among those who actually
honorably served, and so many of us accepted
this staged event as having some reality.
We are given images and sound bites that
the media and the administration know will
work to their advantage, and we sit back
and enjoy the spectacle as if it was a sporting
event in which our side was winning and was
assured to win. Remember the early days of
the invasion, during which all the network
TV shows came on loud and clear with excited
and supporting comments about the fast moving
and successful attack on a nation that possessed
little more than a beleaguered third world
military? Remember that? Remember Brokaw,
Jennings and Rather, not to mention the talking
heads from Fox, waxing jubilant about our
victories in so short a time? Was that reality?
Was that responsible reportage, given the
fact that so little attention was given to
the original reasons we went to war in the
first place? Was everyone duped by the rhetoric
from Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice, to
the extent that not one iota of questioning
challenged those reasons? (I omit the questioning
voices of the Noam Chomsky’s and Howard Zinn’s
since they were but a small whisper among
the large media outlets. Middle America knows
as much about those men as they do about
what a stem cell is.) I suppose that is the
case. It is a sad reminder that the news
media here in the USA is not free and uncontrolled,
not an unfettered voice of what the true
reality might be in a case of monumental
national and international significance.
The press, probably our last hope for truth
and investigative analysis of what is going
on (as it has sometimes been in the past)
is no longer given that mantle of responsibility.
It now seems that the internet has taken
over that duty, and the thousands or millions
of sources of information that emanate from
that source are far too much for us to digest
and act upon. Alas, we must resort in the
end to our own intellect and rational consideration
of the situation as we can determine it.
This may be just too much for most of us.
We have lives, jobs, concerns, that may not
allow for the kinds of in depth research
for the reality of what is happening today
in Iraq and in our government. A democratic
republic such as ours depends so much on
our voting populace to be informed; how can
we be informed in the midst of such continued
misinformation?
On the other hand we must share the blame.
Recent TV news viewing has been focused on
the Laci Peterson tragedy, Janet Jackson’s
right breast, Michael Jackson’s troubles,
Kobi Bryant’s rape case. Our relationship
with TV news and alleged news programs (such
as the adversarial blather shows, presumably
dealing with reality) is symbiotic – they
get high ratings by catering to our prurient
interests, then we buy more products because
of flashy TV advertising and everybody’s
happy. But what falls through the cracks
is real and significant news, because it
is either boring, too dark and unsettling
or guilt producing. As Jack Nicholson said
with a grimace in the movie: “You can’t handle
the truth!” Well, we apparently can’t handle
much real reality.
Should it be shoved down our throats by some
brave and patriotic or very intellectually
honest TV network? An uninformed population
does not have the necessary cognitive ammunition
to make rational choices. If no one of national
prominence will step up to the plate and
deliver reality to us, and we don’t seek
it on our own, where are we? We will be at
the mercy of the government and big business;
government telling us what they want us to
believe and big business, in cahoots with
government, selling us what we probably don’t
really need, or can certainly do without.
Recall that VP Dick Cheney said, with such
gravitas: “There is no doubt that Saddam
has weapons of mass destruction.” When we
hear phrases from our highest officials like
there is no doubt it makes a serious impression
– it’s like jerking the training collar on
a dog. That impression was so deep that even
after it was shown that there was scant evidence
of such weapons in Iraq, a majority still
had strong suspicions that there were. Thus
the power of the administration’s voice.
Not a single person of national prominence,
challenged this statement and called for
a rigorous investigation of its verity. Since
accepting it as true was our (alleged) basic
reason for going to war, it should have had
the greatest scrutiny. The same kind of duplicity
was used in suggesting that Saddam had a
role in 9/11, a serious accusation that one
would think needed the most rigorous kind
of verification. These deceptions by the
administration, even after being shown to
be untrue or highly suspicious, have been
repeated over and over like a mantra that
is heard so often they are is accepted as
true. Reality? Reality is the fact that we
have been deceived into supporting an illegal
war and tens of thousands are dead as a result.
As a free and democratic society, we cannot
afford much more of that kind of reality.
4. Another take on the matter: (November
3, 2004)
While time may not heal, it does occasionally
ameliorate the pains of the moment. When
waking this morning and discovering the loss
to this country (and the world), I was angry,
frustrated, disappointed and saddened. As
the day wore on, the sun coming and going
among the clouds, the sporadic rain seeming
to echo the depression of the event, I have
arrived at the evening with a somewhat different
mind – a sense that there is bound to be
found some wisdom in what has occurred, and
as we all know, there is always tomorrow,
and all tomorrows can, if we let them, bring
hope and change. We have been told, in the
clearest terms, something about our country,
about its will, its fears and its beliefs,
and such revelation is ignored at our peril.
We cannot, on this side of the political
aisle, deny that there is a substantial religious
element involved in the opposition that decided
the vote. There is a moral substrate that
motivates so many as to make them ignore
the really substantial aspects of their livelihood,
their future and the future of the nation.
I must respect this motivation, though I
strongly disagree with it. All we can do
is to find and demonstrate a moral high ground
that is at least equal to their own. I believe
this is possible. I believe such a high ground
is to be found in most of us, at some level.
I go to bed tonight believing that enough
of us who care to find this high ground can
make a difference.
I will try very hard to not focus on my natural
disdain and disrespect for our President,
as deeply embedded as it is. I will even
hope (since I am no praying man) that he
might even have another and more real and
sincere epiphany that aims at the highest
calling to which any leader can aspire: the
health and betterment of his people.
5. Morality, God and Language
I am always amazed at the power of language,
especially when discussing morality and God.
I am reminded of the conservative anti-judicial
activists who claim that it was the founding
fathers intention that such-and-such be the
truth and not something determined by the
society of today and judicial activists who
claim to understand the needs of society.
Would that we could go back and find the
“founding fathers” of our frequently used
abstractions, many of which are influential
guides in what we do, say and believe in.
What immediately comes to mind is “goodness”
or “good and evil” as the opposing forces
humanity supposedly must deal with. We know
how Plato felt about this abstraction (which
for him was not an abstraction) but where,
and for what purpose, did the word/concept
“goodness” or “good” arise? (Nielsen discusses
this concept at great length in his book
I mention in essay 16) Bentham defined it
in his utilitarian philosophy, and his opinion
is not all that bad – and difficult to argue
with. But what did the idea embrace long
before the 19th century and before the Christian
era, and even before the pre-Socratics? I
am guessing that what was “good” was anything
that reduced or prevented suffering, or,
even more primitively, was simply desirable,
satisfying some bodily need. But over time
the word/concept gradually morphed into a
transcendent state, in which one could be
considered good if they acted in certain
ways, usually in conformity with a religious
doctrine, following the connection of a deity
with “goodness.” But as Nielsen asks, did
that mean that God embraced goodness because
it was a desirable (Platonic?) state, (outside
of God) or because God and “goodness” were
synonymous? Once God and goodness became
intertwined the issue became a messy metaphysical
problem. Long before that I imagine that
the term had very mundane and unambiguous
uses, as is probably the case with many or
all such abstractions. (I can imagine Gorg,
upon receiving and devouring his hearty meal
of freshly speared water buffalo, grunting
an equivalent to our Good!!) Perhaps it is
the case that all or most abstractions originated
out of some very basic, impressions and bodily
encounter. But things changed, especially
with the ancient Greeks. Words became elevated,
less unambiguous, open to a variety of meanings
and connotations, and finally, following
the Judaic and Christian revolutions in thought,
“goodness” became something far more complex.
How and why did Gorg’s grunt, meaning satisfaction
or “alls well,” transform into a moral term?
I am guessing that it was considered good
when Zeus or Athena were pleased enough to
reward a hero, and bad when they angry enough
to show their wrath. To the Spartans, loyalty,
courage, strength and honor were good and
their opposites bad. To Moses, following
the Ten Commandments was good and disobeying
them was bad. Since they were the word of
God, it was natural to connect goodness to
God. Today, good has a plethora of uses:
He played a good game. That was a good dinner!
I had a good time. He is a good person. Etc.
(I even have a friend, who has a PhD in astrophysics,
who frequently uses the odd phrase: Good
on ya!)
6. Abstractions
I love the comment by Jacques Barzun in his
Science, the Glorious Entertainment ( 1964,
Harper and Row) where he says:
Soon every situation will be simulated and
dealt with at the second remove, for abstraction
has biased us in favor of the inferential;
we act not upon understanding but upon signals;
and this, however successful, can never sustain
the feeling man yearns for, the feeling that
he is touching the real.
How wonderfully well put this is! “…touching
the real.” All abstracta, and some more than
others, have a very distal relationship with
the real, and it is the real that we desire
– it is a desire that is seemingly built
into our system of language and though. We
don’t want simulations, we want reality.
However, today, simulations have taken the
place of much of reality and we have been
seduced by the promises of pleasure of these
artifacts. We have gotten to the point of
accepting them as what they stand in for,
and taken pleasure in them, as the young
do with various computer games. But it is
the intrusion of abstractions that are pawned
off as real that are the most seductive and
the most dangerous. We have gotten to the
point of accepting the existence of evil
as a force that must be challenged and defeated
– for example. This is tantamount to believing
that evil is something REAL – some hovering
presence that can, if we do not have the
wherewithal to prevent it, intrude upon our
conscious mind and decision making process.
Why are abstractions so dangerous? It is
not that the abstraction of “apples” will
lead us into a quagmire of confusion, but
that all that fall under the rubric of generalized
concepts of what is real (and yet is not)
can lead us into a bramble of mistaken truths
about the world. Granted that abstractions
are useful, but the danger is in their reification.
How much more safe we are in a world wherein
all we know is the human mind that creates
these illusions of existing entities. Why
do I say this? I say it because science has
proven that observation, prediction, analysis
lead to a more solid foundation for what
might be called “truth” than does the belief
system that takes a short cut to truth via
the path of abstracting what is seen and
thought about into a fantasy of what is really
not there at all, but yet seems to satisfy
the need to relegate what seems to be there
to something we can name. What we name something
is intimately bound up with the cognitive
machinery that gives that something credence
either in the world of the known, the felt,
the sensed or in the world of the imagined,
the invented, the surrogate world of names
that try hard to capture something that cannot
be captured – i. e. the “reality” of the
entity. I put reality in quotes since it
is also (itself) in a class of abstractions.
We want to believe that there are really
these buckets of things like heat,. love,
bravery, evil, beauty, truth, meaning, that
have some kind of “reality: that transcends
the human blessing of giving it a name. There
are no such realities. There is THIS apple
I am about to eat, and that’s all I can say
with complete conviction about “apples.”
If one claims that there is an Aristotelian
class of “apples” that I use according to
his hierarchical delineation of classes,
I deny this, since I can find “apples” that
defy any such classification. We use these
classifications casually and for convenience
– not for philosophical precision.
Why is it dangerous to not only reify but
accept the reification of abstractions? Certainly
not all uses of abstractions are deadly,
poisonous or dangerous to our thought and
actions, but there are some that are. Further,
it is the inculcation of the inner sense
that some abstractions (or perhaps all, for
some of us) that direct our cognitive machinery
towards a way of seeing the world that is
patently wrong. The effects of such beliefs
are not trivial. I will give some examples:
Take the abstraction that has so much relevance
for any age of man who toils to live and
find joy in life: Hope. The poor man in prison
may claim that it is hope that gives him
succor in his times of fear and dread, and
yet we know that hope is an idea, not a reality.
Is it not risky to believe that hope is like
a ripe fruit we can pick and hold dear when
it is needed most? How about Beauty, that
some believe has an eternal quality that
transcends any particular instance of it.
This is Platonic realist ontology that is
surely alive and well today, and yet very
little examination of the use of beauty finds
that it is always a subjective thing, and
being subjective is (only) created in the
immediate application and not an essence
that pervades the universe – falling on this
and that entity, like a certain sunset, poem,
or person. By claiming that there is such
a thing as “beauty” we accept Locke’s idea
of the reality of abstracta, while very little
examination of the matter (along with Hume
and Berkley) we see that all ideas, including
abstracta, are particular and not belonging
to a Platonic set that possess an ontic reality.
While it may be that the very concept of
abstracta is essential for our communication
of ideas, action, work and invention, we
run the risk of going overboard in believing
that reality obtains with such concepts.
The mathematician who believes that the universal
constant, pi, is real is lured into the general
belief that such constants are constituent
aspects of cosmic reality, and this, in my
opinion is dangerous. Why? Because it not
only limits the possibilities of other cosmic
realities, but locks into place the surety
that is born only out of the inductive findings
the human mind has found. The speed of light
is even a better example. If all cosmological
investigations are tied to the surety of
the constancy of the speed of light, then
all findings will be skewed by what one feels
is the reality of that constancy. Likewise,
if one believes in the existence of evil
in the world, as some kind of nefarious gauze
that can fall on our unsuspecting heads,
then we are at the mercy of that gauze as
a reality against which we must struggle
with the countermanding force of good – another
kind of gauze, but a beneficent one. Thus,
the battle of abstracta, and one that may
be seen as taking place on Olympia, with
the gods.
7. Wars and More Wars
Introduction
One has to wonder how much of the American
psyche is enthralled with war. Following
the tragedy of 9/11 and even after the war
was being more or less satisfactorily prosecuted
in Afghanistan, we struck out against Iraq,
apparently as a means to assuage our fear
and hatred of Islamic terrorists. The Bush
administration, knowing full well that the
intelligence community had serious doubts
as to the culpability of Iraq related to
any threats against our country, went full
steam ahead with a massive propaganda program
to fire up that war-oriented part of our
psyche – and it worked well. Further, during
this Iraqi war, other than the thousands
of service people who have died and been
wounded, we at home have not been asked to
sacrifice and indeed more tax cuts are on
the horizon. (In no previous war have taxes
been lowered – rather the opposite.) We are
not allowed to view the flag-draped caskets,
and the horrific events of the ground war,
in terms of innocent Iraqi deaths are kept
well out of sight, unless one has access
to non-American TV and news sources. This
means that this war is kind of a non-war,
and yet the “Bring ‘em on!” bravado seems
to have done the job of making us believe
we are fighting, fighting well and winning
the fight for freedom and against terrorism.
Not being a signatory to any kind of world
court that might bring Bush to heel for prosecuting
what many consider to be an illegal war,
we, with our five percent of the world’s
population, flaunt our military hegemony
without fear of world-wide recrimination
or serious challenges. Our press and media
seem content to merely occasionally nip at
the edges of this truth, possibly fearing
being labeled as liberal wimps, peaceniks
or, according the likes of Ann Coulter, traitors.
This president should be prosecuted for war
crimes and crimes against humanity. The estimates
of dead Iraqi civilians range from 20,000
to 100,000, with the number of maimed and
wounded unknown. How we can stand back, knowing
full well that we invaded a sovereign country
that had neither the intentions nor ability
to harm us, and not cry out for justice is
remarkable. Is it that our war-like psyche
dominates our rationality and common sense?
Do we see in war (any war -- it doesn’t seem
to matter) a kind of relief valve that allows
us to believe we are doing something useful
and securing?
The president and his administration constantly
claim a moral high ground in terms of spreading
Democracy and freedom, and we are killing
tens of thousands of innocent people to supposedly
accomplish this. Perhaps it won’t be long
before the truth of this farce, this charade
of moral certitude, will become evident to
the majority of us. But it cannot happen
until the media and those with positions
of power in the Congress find their voice
and not use it to whisper, but to shout out
the dreadful truth of what is happening.
Someone with such a voice should recall what
was said to Joseph McCarthy during the infamous
and sad days of the House Un-American Activities
hearings, and say it to Bush: “Sir, have
you no shame?”
There are now over 1,200 American soldiers
dead in Iraq. Each one leaves a family behind
– mother, father, wife, sister, brother,
friend, lover, companion, and we are compelled
to ask: Was this death necessary? Was this
cascading suffering of friends and family
necessary for the protection of our nation?
Why have we sent so many to die for so little
in the way of security for the rest of us?
Why is it that many of the soldiers, when
writing home, believe that they fight for
the safety and protection of their country?
What has been planted in the minds of so
many to convince us that this war was needed
to keep us safe? We can only recall the alleged
evidence that justified this invasion and,
finding out the truth of the matter from
reliable sources, after the fact, we must
know, deep down, that this war was waged
on false pretenses. So many lives have gone
wasted in the sands of that distant place
for no reason strong enough to give us any
moral high ground for waging it.
We might also consider the loss of other
lives in the process – the lives of other
innocents – reporters, business people, aid
workers, doctors, nurses, NGO employees,
camera-men, bystanders, all caught up in
the fury of a war that had no rational reason
for occurring. We all must again ask of Bush:
“ Sir, have you no shame?”
Since the end of the Second World War, we
have had no wars of necessity – only those
of choice. Neither the Korean nor the Vietnam
wars were needed to preserve our national
security, but rather as political instruments
borne out of fear of communism. The so-called
war in Afghanistan is really no “war” at
all, but a messy “mopping up” operation aimed
at clearing out the supporters of bin Laden
and his ilk – the Taliban and the al Queda.
The diversion of Iraq is indeed a war but
it is one of our choosing. We must face the
reality that, given this clear propensity
for war, war that takes care of our problems,
war that shows the world how strong we are,
war that generates profits for some, war
that smashes the hopes and dreams of thousands,
war that cannot be justified, is, in fact,
justified by those in power because it serves
their purpose. What is that purpose?
Our Aim of Global Domination
Some will claim that the need for oil is
the only raison d’etre for our warlike intentions
and actions, and there may be much truth
to this. But it is clear from the actions
of several administrations, including Clinton’s,
that it is much more than that. Following
the collapse of the Soviet Union, we had
a nearly global military and intelligence
“footprint.” Today, that footprint has not
diminished in size, but instead has grown.
We have over 700 military bases in 138 countries
around the globe; close to half a million
service people, military and civilian support
personnel and families (see U. S. DOD Directorate
for Information) doing various things to
“keep us safe.” We are creating thirteen
carrier battle groups, consisting of the
following: an aircraft carrier with its compliment
of aircraft and cruise missiles, two cruisers,
two or three destroyers, a frigate, an attack
submarine and a combat support ship – a floating
base with thousands of personnel. With but
five percent of the world’s population, we
are seemingly either very afraid of the rest
of the world, or intent on something more
than defense. What might that be? Let us
consider some possibilities:
Control of oil and other natural resources
Domination for ideological reasons (and to
be sheriff for the world)
Part of the American war-psyche
OIL
Few might be aware that even before the invasion
of Afghanistan, we were part of an effort
to construct an oil pipeline that went through
that country; our invasion has simplified
the political and geographic aspects of this
effort – now we can see it through more easily.
We all know that Iraq sits on top of an enormous
reserve of oil, second only to that of Saudi
Arabia. Our insatiable need for petroleum
may mean that 1. above is reason enough for
gaining global control over oil. Following
the severe tightening of oil supply from
the Middle East in the seventies, we did
things to conserve and began buying smaller
more fuel efficient cars. Gradually we have
gone back to wasteful practices and the presence
of so many SUVs on our streets is witness
to this fact. While being only five percent
of the world’s population, we use over twenty-five
percent of the worlds resources. The growing
need for oil in China puts us in competition
with that country; how much easier to deal
with them from a position of oil control
(read: ownership) than one of fair and equal
access.
IDEOLOGY
There should be no mistaking the ideological
intentions of George Bush. As an avowed “born
again Christian” he has made it perfectly
clear that the United States should be the
moral arbiter for the rest of the world.
In a speech given at West Point, the President
said: “Moral truth is the same in every culture
in every time, in every place.” If we are
to take him at his Christian word, this must
be read as an ultimatum: we know the moral
truth for the world and we will enforce it.
The preamble to the National Security Strategy
document says: “ The United States must defend
liberty and justice because these principles
are right and true for all people everywhere.”
What more is needed for one to see the overt
ideological intentions of this current administration?
Further, the President has said on more than
one occasion words to the effect: “If you’re
not with us you are against us.” Such rhetoric
can be seen as a prologue to and justification
for preemptive attack. Such ideological intentions
can be seen either as pure ideology at work
– i. e. we truly believe that we are and
should be the moral leaders in the world
– or else as cover for nefarious schemes
of world domination for other reasons, e.
g. oil and economic domination. The citizens
of our nation are generally what can be called
moral folks, believing in things like the
Ten Commandments, an equitable rule of law,
fairness and humane treatment of fellow man.
Presented with the simplistic and forceful
argument that our morals (i. e. so-called
Christian morals) are best, and should apply
to all people of the world, most accept this
as reasonable and right. Most of us have
not delved into the complex religious and
political histories of other nations to see
what makes them tick morally. Appealing to
our sense of moral certitude we have as a
Christian nation is successful; witness the
recent presidential election which turned
to some extent on the issue of morality.
It is hard to counter the President’s appeal
to our morality, and he and his cohorts have
managed to weave in a moral persuasion for
our so-called war on terror. At the beginning
of our retributive actions following 9/11
the administration even was so insensitive
to Middle East, Muslim sensibilities as to
use the term “crusade” in the name of the
forthcoming military operation to deal with
terrorists. The world of Islam, long on tradition
and long on memory of past Islamic glories
and defeats, were rightly insulted by such
blatant rhetoric. They quickly backed off
from the term, but not because they didn’t
believe it indeed was a crusade.
WAR-PSYCHE
This nation, as are most if not all, was
born out of war, and without that war of
independence, had we acquiesced to King George
III, we would not be what we are today. We
have made war with the native Indians, war
with the Canadians, war with ourselves, war
with the Spanish, war with the Philippines,
Mexico, then the two great world wars, then
Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Grenada (!) and finally
Afghanistan and Iraq. Historians may quibble
over which of these was necessary for our
security and which were wars of political
choice, but the fact remains that we have
been more or less at war since our inception.
I recall reading that three things won the
west for the pioneers: the barbed wire fence,
the windmill and the six-shooter. In other
words, the three pillars of any society:
territorial protection, development of natural
resources and defensive means. If we removed
the six-shooter from the equation, who would
defend the fences and protect the well rights?
Of the three, surely it is the most important
since it was the guarantor of the perceived
rights. Though it is patently clear what
the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution meant
originally, it is used to justify the bearing
of that six-shooter in its many modern guises.
Recall that it reads: “A well regulated Militia
being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and
bear arms shall not be infringed.” Today
we have no Militia, save what one might interpret
to represent that 18th century concept –
namely the National Guards of the States.
And yet, this Amendment provides for the
production and ownership of millions of guns
in millions of households and on the corners
in thousands of neighborhoods. With an almost
religious fervor we cling to this Amendment
as a “right” since it is indeed part of our
Bill of Rights. We can place no blame on
the gun manufacturers for this fervor, any
more than we can blame the drug cartels for
one’s addiction to crack cocaine. Guns are
now an integral part of the American psyche,
never mind barbed wire and windmills. Now
it is my opinion that we embrace this right
not because it is in the Constitution, but
because it is in our blood. The original
intent of the Amendment is long since become
null and void, and it has become transformed
into a tool that supports the defensive and
war-like part of our collective psyche.
Think about our government’s use of the term
“war,” The War on poverty, the War on drugs,
and now, the War on terror. We understand
that term to be a natural response to whatever
might threaten or appear to threaten us,
and we use it freely and often with gusto.
At the beginning of the Iraq war, we witnessed
all the TV news showing the bright green
flashes of bombs and rockets exploding in
Baghdad, the TV announcers swept up in the
excitement of the new war, not ever challenging
its legality or pondering the potential cost
of human lives – ours and that of innocent
Iraqis. We watched these scenes with the
sure knowledge that we were winning and would
continue to win. Never mind that we were
defeating a country that had virtually no
defenses and had not threatened us in any
way – the glory of imminent victory was all
that counted for most of us, and certainly
the news media. This tells me that it was
the war and its sure success that counted,
and not the reasons behind it. This is surely
enough evidence for me to believe that there
is something deep inside of the American
psyche that relishes war, especially a winnable
one.
Yes – a winnable one. While Bush incautiously
referred to Iran, Iraq and North Korea “the
axis of evil,” he chose to attack the most
defenseless of the three, the most easily
defeated by our vastly superior modern forces.
If his bravado does not extend to countries
that might offer some degree of serious resistance
it is hollow indeed -- some might even label
it as cowardice. After Vietnam it is not
in the cards for us to fight any more losing
battles. What this means to me is that the
war mentality that is based on fighting only
clearly winnable wars, is one that is intent
on winning for the sake only of winning –
never mind the purposes involved, never mind
the arguments that might be marshaled against
such wars – it’s full steam ahead to a sure
victory. And the nation rallies to this clarion
call for sure victory.
When I say that our war-like propensities
are “in our blood” I do not mean that they
are genetically determined, but rather that
they have been born out of our history and
are part of the social fabric of our race,
or our nation. One can make grand arguments
that we, homo sapiens, are predisposed to
aggression and violence simply based on the
evidence of horrific wars and mass destruction
of people and their homelands that make up
a great deal of our history. On the other
hand, we can also look to the balancing forces
of moderation, rationality, discoveries of
common needs among potentially warring states,
non-violent resistance to state cruelty and
repression, the many voices that cry out
for the human and humanistic values that
seem to be universal in their appeal. The
single person acts one way toward an infringement
on their perceived rights – the group, the
mob, the nation in some cases, acts differently
toward such perceived infringements. A multiplying
factor comes into play, a tide of collective
adrenalin begins to flow and a movement is
begun that has its own agenda, its own complex
purpose, its own inertia , which can be quite
difficult to manage or control. Why is it
that at the beginning of the war on Iraq
all the major television networks and other
news media failed to offer a single challenge
as to the reasons for going to war? Even
after the proffered reasons for the war were
debunked, we heard no serious outcry from
the media, but only an acquiescence to the
follow-up justifications by the president,
his cabinet members and those on the right
– i. e. Saddam Hussein was a very bad guy,
a dictator who had used WMD on his own people.
(How many times did we hear this?) The fact
that there were few if any serious challenges
in the media leads me to believe that even
those given the duty (and I would say, sacred
duty) to challenge the government, when such
challenges deal with the life and death of
our citizens, were seriously remiss, and
continue to be.
The War On Terrorism
While the so-called asymmetric terrorist
enemy cannot be usually linked to a sovereign
regime or state, it emanates from some geographical
locale, such as in the case of al Queda,
Afghanistan. Bush has made it clear that
any nation that is complicit in this regard
will be treated as an enemy as well. But
if the dispersal of the terrorists makes
it hard to find that harboring geography
and complicit government, what then? Thus,
we use the phrase: The global war on terror.
We promulgate our war on drugs by various
covert and overt operations in countries
that produce and sell drugs, but we know
where these countries are and usually know
who is doing the growing and selling.
(However, interestingly, we have yet to win
this war on drugs.) But we are told that
terrorists (in all cases they are Islamic
terrorists) exist and operate in far flung
places such as Malaysia and usually function
autonomously, with little if any central
control and authority. Those groups require
some but not a great deal of money; we know
that the attacks of 9/11 were rather cheap
to execute.
Considering this situation: think for a moment
about what you would do if you knew someone
or some group was out to get you, harm you,
kill you or destroy your home, but you had
no idea who they were or their whereabouts.
There are three choices: do nothing, or run
all over the place knocking on doors, paying
others to hunt with you, or even killing
those you thought were the ones after you,
or put your energies into protecting your
home and those in it. Which is the more sane
and reasonable? We have done little or nothing
to protect our ports, nuclear facilities,
electrical grids, and perhaps least protected
of all is our communication system and the
internet. But doing those things offer up
little to the public in the way of visible
and tangible evidence that we are really
making a war on terrorism. Going to war with
Iraq is quite visible and tangible, even
if it not only does little to thwart terrorists,
but in fact is probably encouraging them.
In addition, since we are worried about the
terrorists getting hold of nuclear devices,
we have done little in the way of getting
rid of the thousands of such devices in Russia
and other parts of the old Soviet Union.
Doing those obvious and very pragmatic things
do not have the ring of war and it is that
ring that gives us at least the illusion
that we might win – we usually do.
The war on terrorism is unique in our history.
All other enemies, either real or imagined,
were well defined as being related to a nation
or group of nations. We might be better served
in terms of more than semantics if we called
the current efforts against terrorism, something
like our conflict with terrorism, or our
problem with terrorism, but we know that
war is the operative and inspiring concept
that we embrace, rather automatically.
Wars on Islam
“Therefore we took vengeance on them and
drowned them in the sea, because they treated
our signs as falsehoods and were heedless
of them.”
(The Qu’ran, Sura 7, verse 130)
“See, the Lord is coming in fire, his chariots
like a whirlwind, bringing retribution with
his furious anger and with the flaming fire
of his rebukes. The Lord will judge with
fire, by his sword he will test all mankind,
and many will be slain by him.” (The Christian
Bible, Isaiah 66: 15,16)
We should not be sanguine about our own seemingly
benevolent attitudes towards non-Christian
faiths and about the consequences of the
duplicity in this alleged position. There
is far too much evidence that we have progressed
very little in the settlement of the ago-old
conflict between the Christian and the Muslim
faiths, going back to the beginnings of the
latter’s influences in the world around the
Mediterranean and Arabian geographies and
elsewhere in the world. While Bush can proclaim
that the recent terrorist related conflicts
are not of a religious nature, the facts
and actions of this administration belie
this. We have a president who is an avowed
Christian; our known enemies are of the Islamic
faith. The perpetrators of the events of
9/11 and those that preceded it have made
it quite clear that, all else being equal,
(and the cultural influences and their ramifications
aside) there would remain the fact that we
are of profoundly different faiths. Why is
it that the terrorists targeted the United
States and not Sweden (a very secular nation)
or France or Germany or the U. K? It is not
only because the United States is the most
telling presence of global economic power,
but more importantly to those brought up
in the madrasas of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia,
a Christian United States is the arch enemy
of Islam. This is not only due to the fact
that we are a Christian nation, but we have
a (heretofore!) secular government. Thus,
there are two reasons for wishing us ill.
We know so little of the Islamic psyche,
while we actually know little of our own.
We may claim that we are open minded as to
religion, pluralistic in our ideas of social
order and for a free and democratic world,
the Islamic world sees us differently and
indeed we behave differently. If it be known,
we are actually not of this open minded opinion
about Islam. The wars that raged for over
a thousand years between the Muslim and the
Christian faiths are not so distant in the
collective historic memory of all of us as
to be ignored. In addition, the two faiths,
in the most general terms, do not agree on
critical principles that guide the actions
of governments and daily life in our respective
cultures.
Our Constitution is a secular document. We
(here and in Europe) disavow the control
of any particular faith in the management
of our government. The merging of religious
influences with those of governance has been
from the outset one that has been rejected
in the United States and most European nations,
and yet this merging is seen to be not only
acceptable but necessary in most Muslim societies
in order to preserve the teachings, proscriptions
and prescriptions laid down in the Qur’an.
(Turkey is somewhat of an exception.) This
is not a trivial distinction, but rather
a profound one. Governments and its laws
that are based on religious tenants are bound
to be at great odds with those that choose
secular and Enlightenment based ones. Add
to this the obvious facts surrounding Bush’s
Christian faith and his clear intentions
of bringing this faith to bear on his decisions
and those of our government, we have a dangerous
brew of conflict that may not be soluble
via diplomacy alone. Thus, both sides may
see war as the answer. We are no less complicit
in this than are those who fly airplanes
into our buildings, though this remark may
bring down the wrath of many who see us as
innocent in all this -- we are not. Regarding
the West and the Muslim world, Samuel P.
Huntington says:
Both sides have, moreover, recognized this
conflict to be a war. Early on, Khomeini
declared quite accurately, that “Iran is
effectively at war with America,” and Qadhafi
regularly proclaims holy war against the
West. Muslim leaders of other extremist groups
and states have spoken in similar terms.
On the Western side, the United States has
classified seven countries as “terrorist
states,” five of which are Muslim (Iran,
Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan)………This in effect
identifies them as enemies because they are
attacking the United States and its friends
with the most effective weapon at their disposal
and thus recognizes the existence of a state
of war with them.
(His remarks, from his Clash of Civilizations,
written prior to 9/11)
The West is more than the United States.
It is composed of nations with deep family
ties, most of which have for a thousand years
been more or less a cohesive force against
Muslims. Until their failed siege of Vienna
in 1693, the Ottoman empire was huge and
powerful and was held together in large part
by the Islamic faith. European countries
cased their internecine religious and hegemonic
squabbles to stop the onslaught on Vienna.
From that time on the Ottoman empire was
pushed and squeezed to the point that the
West, including Russia (also a Christian
nation) held sway in much of the Muslim world.
Today, the over one billion Muslims in the
world are governed by a mixture of pro and
anti Western regimes, but the common thread
that binds them remains their Islamic faith.
Further, in all Muslim nations except Turkey,
it is Koranic law that is the primary basis
for governmental action, as contrasted with
the secular governments of the West. However,
with the clear and unmistakable Christian
influences on Bush and some of his key advisors,
the United States is being seen lately as
a Christian nation. This only exacerbates
the ongoing conflicts since it infuses religion
into the mix of other grievances both sides
might have. Europe, a far more secular group
of nations, is less inclined to join the
fray of Christianity versus Islam, thus we
see their refusal (except for the U. K.)
to join in the war against Iraq.
Does that mean that we are engaged in a “religious
war?” I believe that to the extent we hear
and pay attention to the far Christian right,
and, more importantly, act on their remonstrations,
we will indeed be in a religious war. Much
of the rhetoric from that quarter is downright
dangerous and probably influential – depending
on who is speaking. Army Lieutenant General
William G. Boykin, speaking in uniform before
a Christian fundamentalist audience said
that Christians believe in a “real God” and
the god of Islam is “an idol.” (Not only
was General Boykin not reprimanded or fired,
he was actually promoted following this incident!)
The Christian Reconstructionist, David Chilton,
said: “The Christian goal for the world is
the universal development of Biblical theocratic
republics, in which every area of life is
redeemed and placed under the Lordship of
Jesus Christ and the rule of God’s law.”
These kinds of sentiments, while considered
by some to be on the fringe of the religious
debate, do leak out into the community and
are legitimized to some extent by the very
fact that they are in print and spoken by
seemingly prominent men and women of the
faith. They cannot be ignored. They are every
bit as virulent and dangerous as those of
the mullahs and Ayatollahs in Muslim countries.
The extent to which we are in the midst of
a religious war will be decided by the direction
we take in Bush’s second term and the extent
to which he continues to be influenced and
guided by not only his personal faith, but
the positions taken by his advisors, many
of whom share his religious convictions.
If he sees the United States as a Christian
nation, and believes that the recent vote
gives him some kind of mandate to continue
in the direction he has so far shown, we
may no longer be viewed as a nation under
secular law, but one that is under Biblical
law. I know this sounds rather far fetched,
but if there is the slightest danger of it
being true, we will have to muster our vigilance,
hammer our representatives, march in protest,
write millions of letters, and find again
what Jefferson believed to be the core principles
of our governance as embodied in our Constitution.
Conclusion
The Constitution wisely placed control of
the military in civilian hands. Why was this
done? The founders, well versed in European
history, knew that governments that were
either run by or beholden to the military,
or the Church, were often guided by principles
that were neither democratic nor necessarily
in the best interests of the nations. This
is of course no guarantee against a militaristically
inclined government or populace. Oddly enough,
several high ranking Generals were either
opposed to or reluctant to condone the war
in Iraq, and it was the civilians that pushed
for it – none of them, incidentally, having
had any real military experience. It doesn’t
take generals to make wars. Further, the
nation, having suffered the attacks of 9/11,
was ready to take retribution anywhere it
could find it. The war in Afghanistan was
not big enough, did not yield up enough retributive
passion, did not yield up the arch villain
bin Laden, was more of a small, mopping up
operation than a real war. But Iraq was another
matter. It was easy to persuade seventy percent
of the country that Iraq and Saddam Hussein
had something to do with al Queda and even
9/11; after all, they are Muslims, they don’t
like us, they are ruled by a dictator, they
are weak militarily and are in drastic need
of being reformed into a “free and democratic”
society – like ours. If we look carefully
at what happened, knowing what we know today
in terms of the ostensible reasons for making
war, we see that there must have been some
other reason for Bush and most of his administration
to push so hard for war. We cannot know the
secrets of George Bush’s mind; all we can
do is be witness to his actions and draw
our own conclusions. To me, they seem obvious:
God is on our side; we know best for the
world; we are at war with Islam; we will
prevail.
Postscript:
As I was finishing this piece, the news of
the death of Margaret Hassan, the long time
director of CARE was announced. She was murdered
apparently by the militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
having been held hostage when asking for
the release of all Iraqi women detained in
prisons. Margaret was a Muslim, married to
a Muslim, and had devoted decades of her
life to providing food, medicine and humanitarian
aid to the Iraqi people. We in the West,
especially here in the United States, will
aim our anger and vengeful emotions toward
the militants. We must remember that had
there been no invasion of that country, there
would be no such murders, no deaths of 1,200
American soldiers, no seriously wounded and
maimed for life returning soldiers, no deaths
of thousands of innocent Iraqis, not to mention
no vast expenditures of funds that might
build schools and hospitals here at home.
The spoils of this war are the spoiled and
soiled souls of those who perpetrated it.
8. A New School of Law – With Christ at the
Helm
“If our graduates wind up in the government,
they’ll be social and political conservatives.
If they wind up as judges, they’ll be presiding
under the Bible.” Jerry Fallwell, Chancellor
of the Liberty University, including its
new Law School
Here we go, in the wake of the election of
a born-again Christian president, retrogressing
back to the pre-Enlightenment era wherein
religious dogma ruled the political, social,
cultural and even military systems. One of
the teachers in this newly created (Christian)
Law School, Professor Tuomala, said: “Something
that is contrary to the law of nature cannot
be law.” and “The statues of the Lord are
trustworthy….” Given these pronouncements
on what is law and what is socially desirable
today, we see that the Christian Right is
attempting to make inroads, not only through
the avenues of discourse and local grass
roots movements (as strong as they are becoming)
but in the very heart of our system of jurisprudence.
Notice that the language of Jerry Falwell
is blatantly theocratic, and makes no bones
about this. His swagger is, in his mind,
and no doubt in the mind of George W. Bush,
justified by the interpretation of the moral
value issue that reportedly played some significant
part in the recent presidential election.
Bruce W. Green, the dean of the Liberty Law
School, says: “The prevailing orthodoxy at
the elite law schools is an extreme rationalism
that draws a strong distinction between faith
and reason.” Yes – well, and should it not?
Apparently statistics indicate that a very
large percentage of law school professors
are Democrats or Liberals, and this is the
metric that is being used to justify a law
school that intends to counteract this liberal
inclination of most professors of law. I
must wonder: is there perhaps some strong
and defensible correlation between (especially
in the case of law) those Democrat professors’
beliefs and opinions and sensible, rational,
logical, historically based thought? I find
it peculiar and even humorous that so many
in the Christian Right (and fundamentalist
religions in general) equate liberal or secular
humanism with “extreme rationalism,” and
thus the cognitive experience of seeking
truth and objective analysis, over unproven
and often superstitiously based religious
dogma! They seem to find it unacceptable
that truth and objectivity might very well
be based on positions of rational inquiry
as opposed to religious orthodoxy, myth and
superstition.
But we mustn’t forget that the preachers,
such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell,
are one thing, and the public perceptions
and beliefs surrounding what is rational,
possible more plausible and true, are another
and more potent and dangerous aspect of all
this. The current, though for now rather
small movement toward teaching creationism
along side and in contradistinction to the
teachings of Darwinian evolution, is an example
of a movement that is frightening – not only
because it throws up logically indefensible
challenges to a virtually proven theory,
but that it represents a mind-set of accepting
dogma and faith over rational thought. Such
a trend (if indeed it is a trend) can undermine
not only the necessary and correct teachings
of biology, but broader concerns of society
that deal with a host of issues from gay
marriages to stem cell research. Once a young
(or old!) mind is suckered into a justifiable
way of seeing the world that is simple, straightforward,
defensible by the “word of God” and requiring
no investigation or serious research (i.
e. using the full mind to the fullest) it
is hard to undo that mental paradigm. Our
researchers, scientists, thinkers, philosophers
and educators spend years of preparatory
study in learning their field. But a single
sound-bite from the lips of a prominent and
respected person (of the same or related
religious faith) can make a person become
an instant accepter of an idea or “fact,”
and challenger of a host of learned people,
Nobel laureates included.
We, and by that “we” I mean all of us, religious
zealots too, must be on guard. The history
of religious control of governments is replete
with horrors that we in the country have
so far managed to avoid, mainly because the
structure of our founding principles as embodied
in our constitution, insures against, or
tries to, the usurpation of our governance
by any religious creed or dogma. If those
who would redo this to instill some form
of a theocracy, they might be warned and
informed by history, that it just doesn’t
work – instead it leads to internal struggles
and even warfare that can bring a nation
to its feet. (Examples are too numerous to
mention.)
9. A Few Votes or a Single Voice
One would like to believe that important
matters are decided by substantial, not thin,
majorities, to give weight and effectiveness
to the decision, not to mention mitigating
the frustrated divisiveness that usually
follows such marginal results. But recently
we frequently see the occurrence of thin
majorities, and in the case of the 2000 Presidential
election, when Gore won the popular vote
and lost by only a relatively small handful
of votes in Florida (via the electoral college
process), that thin majority has caused laughter
and tears among us all. Supreme Court decisions
that are 5/4 are always disheartening and
9/0 or at least 7/2 ratios are far more desirable
and respectable for issues that affect our
lives for the foreseeable future. The recent
margin of victory for Bush in the 2004 election
was that of about 119,000 votes in Ohio,
which means, had that state gone for Kerry,
he would be the one taking the oath on January
20, 2005, not Bush. One voice in the Supreme
Court probably decided the Bush v. Gore case
in favor of Bush; stop and think what that
one voice has done, regardless of where you
stand politically, assuming that a full recount
of the Florida votes would have made Gore
the winner –questionable but possible. Those
thin majorities make many of us nervous,
angry and frustrated because very narrow
victories/losses leave roughly half of us
dissatisfied. Just a one seat majority in
the Senate results in a profoundly significant
legislative process and results, since the
majority, no matter how thin, controls all
of the powerful committees. One might opine
that, well, this is democracy at work, but
is it?
Lani Guinier, in her The Tyranny of the Majority,
makes the excellent point that our winner-take-all,
or zero-sum game of governance is frequently
a profoundly unfair mechanism, especially
when the margin held by the majority is extremely
thin.(This reminds me of our judicial and
legal system of criminal law, in which the
adversarial system is at work to insure that
one or the other side wins – not at work
to find the truth of the case and the real
cause of the crime.) What drives congressional
decisions, in addition to the efforts of
lobbyists, the influence of money, the desire
for pork and the quid pro quos made among
members, are the ideologies of the members
and the parties. We see that strong willed
and persistent leaders of the majority can
ram through legislation that is vehemently
opposed by the minority, even when that minority
is a whopping 49%! (If roughly half the people
in your family hate you, you have problems!)
(See essay 17 – The Senate is an Abomination)
There have been periods in our political
history during which amity, cordiality and
cooperation have prevailed and resulted in
legislation that was balanced in terms of
dealing with the needs of both sides of the
political spectrum. Those days now seem far
behind us. We might ask why this is the case
today. I have the feeling that something
unique and quite dangerous is happening to
the system: a strong ideological force is
moving into congress, and that force is seemingly
well removed from the secular humanism that
was the foundation of our Constitution and
the original intent of the founders. The
imbalance in legislation that is created
by the thin majority, while it should signal
a divided nation that needs a conciliatory
hand of fairness, has, instead, given that
winner-take-all construction the power to
run rough shod over roughly half the desires
and needs of the nation. When but a handful
of votes in congress can decide the expenditure
of trillions and the passage or defeat of
critical legislation we must take notice
of the situation.
I assume that when the public gives their
vote, they do so based on a set of criteria
that they perceive to be the ones that most
seriously address their lives and livelihood.
i. e I assume that they are quite parochial
and concerned mainly with bread on the table,
jobs and the security of their families,
friends and neighbors. If they vote their
morality, as some have suggested was the
recent case for many, then they will vote
for a candidate who is of like mind, or is
believed to be. They don’t care about the
niceties and rules dealing with how the system
operates in its complex congressional machinations.
They go to the voting booth with one or a
set of beliefs and emotions that are then
manifested in the touch of a button or the
punching of a card. They don’t think about
the “winner-take-all” result that may indeed
disenfranchise roughly half the electorate;
they don’t think about any arguments that
may be raised against their position on matters
of national consequence; they think about
their own immediate needs and persuasions
– moral and otherwise. This is, of course,
democracy at work. But it is not a pure democracy
– it is a representative one, in which we
elect those in whom we place a trust to vote
on legislation the way we want them to. Some,
but certainly not all, may know that the
person for whom they vote, will vote according
to the pressures of either an ideology or
financial pressure from contributors, and
at the same time vote, believing that their
candidate truly represents their needs and
interests. If and when these align, like
planets in the predictions of astrologers,
to form a cohesive direction, there is little
doubt that the voter will smile in satisfaction
that they have cast the right vote at the
right time. I wonder how many times such
an alignment is propitious? Who knows the
minds of their representatives? Who knows
the pressures that have been placed on that
person selected to ostensibly serve their
interests?
In any case, the representatives march to
Washington, meet their colleagues, receive
the bombardment of special interest and monies,
examine the legislation before them and vote
from a position of singular power invested
by the vote of their constituents. The outcome
is what it is –be it 51/49 or 80/20, the
democratic process is at work tending to
the needs of the voting populace. They will
not pay much attention to the fact of a 51/49
result, contending that that is the way it
is, and the laws of the land will proceed
based on the winner-take-all process. It
seems that winning is what’s important, never
mind the best interests of the national population
in terms of their needs and wants. Again,
I am reminded of the adversarial composition
of our criminal court system; what’s important
is winning – truth is irrelevant.
Whatever happened to cooperation? Whatever
happened to a real concern for the health
and well being of the whole nation? The thin
and fragile majority can dominate the national
scene in terms of what is deemed to be important
by that majority; the large and cast-aside
minority (even if it is 49%) can be ignored
to the peril of roughly half the nation.
Is this right?
There is little we can do about this; it
is the current nature of things. We are a
divided nation – that is obvious. It brings
into question the whole matter of not only
what a democracy really is, but also what
it serves in terms of a balanced consideration
of the larger population – those who do not
vote; those who are confused or vote passion
and not rational consideration; those who
are duped and swayed by TV commercials and
the hammering of ideologues or corporate
controlled media; those who accept the moral
credos of the supposedly like-minded moralists.
I have suggested in other writings that it
has been the ingredients of fear and ignorance
that produced the recent election results.
But I should not belittle those emotional
proclivities as marginal and without merit;
they do have merit. Who I blame are the paid
and unelected consultants who manage these
campaigns and who infuse all kinds of extraneous
factors that detract from the more serious
matters at hand. The thin margin, the one
voice, the fragile majority is ruling the
country and we must become aware of this
and decide to do something about it. What
can really be done is complex and difficult.
We cannot expect that millions will mount
a movement aimed toward some abstract concept
of fairness and balance as their primary
reason for voting a certain way – that will
never happen. We will all continue to vote
our emotions, needs, our hatreds and our
fears. But perhaps some Lincolnesque figure
may come along and remind us with his or
her eloquence, that there is far more to
our vote than our immediate parochial interests;
there is a vote for the health and well being
of the nation. We might look to altering
that thin majority rule, that winner-take-all
construct that has so much impact on our
lives, to something that reflects the whole
body of the nation. I know that this might
require that we look outside ourselves, to
others, to the poor, the downtrodden, the
mentally ill, the homeless, the non-voters
who cannot or choose not to be involved in
the process. It might even require that we
adopt what the Christian Right claim as their
domain of expertise and domination – the
teachings of Jesus, as written in the New
Testament: Do unto others as you would have
them do unto you.
(How quixotic that suggestion is!) This profound
dictum alone might be sufficient to alter
the great divide that we now see and will
suffer in the coming few years.
The recent coalescing of groups under the
general rubric Christian Right is large and
growing. There are secular groups too, disparate
and loosely ideologically related, but they
are usually far less outspoken, less passionate,
appealing more to our rational not our emotional
sides than the religious groups. As for influencing
the minds of those in that Christian Right,
these secular groups are almost entirely
ineffective. The thin majorities in Congress
do not reflect the majorities of the states
and counties of the so-called Red States.
Southern states generally had substantial
majorities for Bush. This means that we are
divided geographically. The Red/Blue map
of the nation clearly shows this divide,
the Blue States hugging the North East and
West coasts and representing the center of
gravity of our manufacturing, financial,
economic, cultural and educational systems.
(The federal subsidies provided farmers in
those southern and Midwestern Red States,
come from taxes, the majority of which come
from the Blue States – this goes without
notice.) This means that the thin but controlling
majority in Congress is apparently more reflective
of the beliefs and desires of the Red States
than of the Blue ones. This is an interesting
situation, since the bulk of the controlling
cultural, economic and financial forces of
the nation reside in the Blue states! This,
in turn, means that issues like abortion,
gay marriage and fear of terrorism (as pounded
into us by the Bush spokes people prior to
the election) are the controlling factors
in Congress – not those of the general health
and well being of the whole nation. I realize
this is a somewhat simplistic view, and possibly
overstated to some degree, but there is truth
in it, and it is an important consideration
to be aware of.
10. Church and State Etcetera
Introduction
Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s
and to God the things that are God’s – Jesus,
Mark 12:17
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully
as when they do it from religious conviction
– Blaise Pascal
One can only speculate as to when the conflict
between secular and religious authority began;
probably between the first shamans and the
tribal leaders; the shamans speaking from
their revelations, and the tribal leaders
from their practical responsibilities. There
were undoubtedly two separate agendas from
the start, and by the time our Enlightenment
arrived those agendas had become distinctly
separate to the extent they were in a serious
conflict. One would have thought, given the
great strides in science and technology from
the Enlightenment onward, particularly in
the West, that secular humanism would have
had the upper hand, and in Europe it probably
does. But here in America, this is not at
all the case. Lately we have even seen a
rise in what is called the Christian Right,
a movement that is not composed of any single
religious denomination, but an amalgam of
Christian faiths that tend to be fundamentalist
in their beliefs and generally opposed to
secular humanism. The issue seems simple
enough to frame in a few words: from the
side of the Christian Right: Either one accepts
the Christian scriptures as the word of God,
whose omnipotence is incontrovertible, or
one is virtually a heathen and should be
ignored. On the other side, the issue would
be framed quite differently: Believe what
you choose but acknowledge and respect secular
authority and science because they, for the
most part, act in your best interests over
time. Both of these are problematic and they
are in profound disagreement. The Christian
Right denies the validity of opinions that
veer from the scriptures and the admonitions
of the preachers, and the secular humanists
claim that their pursuits and methods are
aimed at doing the right thing for society
and are not at all bound by any religious
dogma. We know that politicians, business
people, even scientists often are not truly
concerned with the health and betterment
of society, but more concerned with their
own wealth and aggrandizement. We also know
that some preachers preach hatred and bigotry;
there’s lots of human fallibility to go around
on both sides.
But when it comes to the nuts and bolts of
governing, making decisions for the nation,
dealing with life and death matters, health,
poverty, foreign involvements, wars and keeping
the peace at home, the issue of Church and
State are lately rising to the fore more
than in the recent past, and this should
give us pause. It is important to look into
the causes and possible solutions dealing
with this recent development.
Causes for the Recent Rise and Influence
of the Christian Right
The movement is certainly not new, but it
seems to have gotten a head of steam during
the Clinton presidency. But at the beginning
of the 20th century the religious right was
a strong social presence in our country and
while it may have waned for a period, it
waxes today.
We cannot know the extent to which those
who claim to be practicing Christians are
truly practicing Christians – i. e. those
that adhere to the teachings of Christ as
chronicled in the New Testament. But we do
have a handle on the number who profess to
be of that faith. Here are the numbers as
of 2000: (NY Times 2004 Almanac)
Total Christian Churches = 158, l29,022
Roman Catholic Church = 62,018,436
Baptist Churches = 28,293,420
Methodist Churches = 13,090,542
Pentecostal Churches = 11,326,188
Lutheran Churches = 8,316,331
Latter-Day Saints Churches = 5,066,052
Orthodox (Eastern) Churches = 4,013,497
Churches of Christ = 3,451,052
Presbyterian Churches = 4,114,350
Episcopal Church = 2,364,559
Reformed Churches = 1,948,167
Jehovah’s Witness = 1,040,283
Adventist Churches = 866,081
Church of the Nazarene = 627,054
Salvation Army = 471, 416
Mennonite Churches = 316,267
Christian and Missionary Alliance = 345,
664
Churches of God = 277,255
International Council of Community Churches
= 250,000
Evangelical Free Church of America = 242,
619
Brethren Churches = 280,411
Friends (Quaker) Churches = 186,282
Christian Congregation = 117,039
Christian Brethren = 100,000
Other Christian (39 denominations ) = 480,
l479
Out of a national population of over 290
million, this represents a percentage of
roughly fifty percent of the people to be
acknowledged to be some variety of Christians.
We can assume that the balance of the population
is composed of the Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist
and other faiths, together with those who
disavow any kind of religious belief or affiliation.
(That does not mean that they are necessarily
atheists, but simply that they are not practicing
any kind of organized religion.)
That number is large by any standard of national
influence, however we must be mindful that
that number does not reflect that portion
of Christians who are what may be considered
as “far right Christians.” There is a clear
divide among Christians regarding major social
issues that their faith may inform, and that
number is hard to define. There are those
who recommend the bombing of clinics that
perform abortion and the murder of doctors
who might perform them, and there are those,
using more circumspect and Christian ideals,
who disavow any connection to such murderous
intentions. But the fact remains that the
influence of that far right element of the
Christian faith is telling and significant
in today’s political scene.
The origins of the Christian Right can be
traced far back, but most importantly, they
should be traced to the McCarthy era, wherein
this nation faced what it believed to be
the threat of Communism, with its profound
disconnect of and revulsion for any kind
of religion. Marx, who was seriously misused
in the Soviet Union to justify the version
of Communism that that nation embraced, stated
that religion is the “opiate of the people,”
but this was a less important aspect of his
economical, philosophical and political agenda
for the world. The Christian Right began
to decry against: Jews, Catholics, Communists,
atheists, to the extent they formed organizations
that mounted volumes of polemics and groups
to defeat those people and organizations.
They tied their religious beliefs to those
of patriotism, thus melding a jingoistic
and religious fervor that is potent and remains
today.
The issue of abortion is apparently the fuse
or touchstone that coalesces many of the
faithful into either action or serious spiritual
and financial support, and an example of
the rhetoric that has been used in this effort
among Christians is the following from the
“A Pro-Life Manifesto” my a major Christian
publisher (Westchester Ill: Crossway Books,
1988)
If we are going to attempt to close abortion
clinics and end abortion by the current strategy,
then the only logical thing to do is to take
that strategy to its ultimate conclusion,
to take it all the way. We would take the
Declaration of Independence at its word and,
since we have attempted to change the laws
to no effect, we would change the government.
That means revolution….. It would mean serious
armed aggression against both the clinics
and hospitals that perform abortions and
the abortionists themselves.
If armed aggression were the answer, it would
have to be aggression that did not hesitate.
It would have to be done on a large scale,
and more than a few abortion clinics would
have to be destroyed. To succeed, it would
require the destruction of all hospitals
or clinics that performed abortions. Heroes
who would lay down their life for the cause
would have to come forth. Armies would need
to be organized. Companies producing abortifacients
would have to be bombed and their employees
terrorized. In short, we would have to be
willing to plunge ourselves into civil war.
It is hard to reconcile this severe rhetoric
with any teachings of Christ, which means
that those teachings have been subverted
to the uses of those who have an agenda of
their own construction. Why and how this
happened remains a mystery to me. The “Operation
Rescue” founded by Randal Terry, had the
overt support of the likes of Jerry Falwell,
Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Beverly LaHaye
and Cardinal John O’connor, and espoused
the following in a letter to its followers:
Our specific task is to save babies by placing
our bodies between the innocent victim (the
pre-born) being transported by another victim
(the mother) and the executioner (the abortionist).
We are part of a larger community of rescuers
united by this common purpose with different
but complementary callings. Crisis Pregnancy
Centers, Birthrights, Heritage Homes, Post
Abortion Syndrome counselors and many other
ministries that offer compassion and alternatives
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