Moral Health

Democracy is generally held to be a most significant political advance over Aristocracy.  This is especially so in view of the simple truth that at its most profound level the idea behind aristocracy is nothing more than a myth, as there is no bloodline that renders one group of human beings superior to others, to say nothing of being fit to rule others.  One of the most alluring features of democracy is just the fact that it allows in principle that any member of society is capable of exhibiting extraordinary excellence in every walk of life.

The genius of Alex de Tocqueville lies in the fact that he saw drawbacks to democracy more than 200 years ago that seem quite applicable today.  In just a few pages in Democracy in America (II, Part III, Chapter 19), Tocqueville proved to be brilliantly insightful about an important problem with democracy.  He recognized that the ideal of equality can be employed or insisted upon to a fault.  And indeed we are finding just that in our public schools.

Many public schools now downplay that idea of the gifted student.  This they do in the name of not offending anyone.  Indeed, it seems that the very idea of the public school is defined these days in terms of teaching to the lowest common denominator, making a virtue out of stupidity.  The irony here is that by the time we finish not leaving any child behind there is a real sense in which we have left just about every child behind.  Or, in any case, we have done more harm than good, as we have ignored the gifted in the name of being supportive of those lacking in talent.

Time was when gifted students were much admired for their imagination and creativity.  It was not considered an embarrassment that one was not gifted, precisely because it was fully understood that being gifted meant that one exceeded reasonable expectations.  Accordingly, a student who had no difficulty measuring up to reasonable expectations fully grasped that she or he was doing just fine.  There were no self-esteem problems.

But nowadays, it is supposed that acknowledging differences in intellectual abilities is none other than the harbinger of low self-esteem.  Democracy has resulted in a slide from the tenable and true thesis that all are morally equal to the untenable and false thesis that all are intellectually equal.

To be sure, injustices of various forms have in some instances been an impediment to our recognizing the talent of various individuals.  But needless to say, the solution to this injustice was not to declare all members of an oppressed group as gifted.  After all, no one believes that—including members of oppressed groups.  There is all the difference in the world between holding, on the one hand, that Native American culture (for example) is richer than had been supposed and holding, on the other, that anything any Native American does or says is breathtakingly brilliant.

This brings me to another insight that Tocqueville had about democracy, namely that it cultivates short-sightedness: people are so concerned with immediate satisfaction that they give next to no thought to long-range plans.  Credit card debt in America is a prime example of this.  It is no accident that we distinguish between credit card debt and mortgage debt.  The former is typically indefensible and speaks only to the moment; whereas the latter is a debt that secures one’s future well-being.  That is all the difference in the world.

It goes without saying that companies prey upon short-sightedness.  Mere options are made to feel like needs.  Does anyone really need a new ringtone each month for a far from nominal fee?

But perhaps the more pernicious form of short-sightedness lies with social advancement itself.  We are pushing equality in ways that borders on absurdity.  I have two interesting examples regarding toilet facilities.  One involves the concern we find at some universities with regard to having toilet facilities for transgendered folks.  To the best of my knowledge: (a) toilet facilities (for use by several people at once) observe the penis-vagina difference and (b) the point of such facilities is to relieve oneself.  They are not really about how one feels on the inside.  At a very practical level, it is irrelevant that a woman feels like a man or a man feels like a woman.

There are, in fact, some moments of being uncomfortable that are simply a part of life.  I am uncomfortable whenever there is more than one person in a public restroom.  Depending on the size of the facilities and the degree of urgency, I have walked out and waited for a less busy moment.

And we do not need to know whether a person is transgendered or not, any more than we need to know whether a person is gay or straight or not (whatever ‘not’ means in this instance).  Toilet facilities should not be the place for self-discovery with regard to sexual identity.  And only a rather perverse view of equality could make it so.

The second example pertains to the distribution of public toilets on the streets that took place in New York City (an enclosed single person facility the automatically cleaned itself after each use).  Several organizations for handicap people complained that these toilets did not accommodate handicap people, with the result being that all the toilets were removed.  The thought obviously was that either all should have the advantage of toilets on the streets or none should have it.

Now, the proof that this was more political posturing rather than a genuine social reality is that to date many, many airplanes are not equipped with handicap facilities.  In this case, no one thinks that either there should be facilities for all or for none.  That would be absurd.  But this tells us what we already know, namely that sometimes we need to bow to practical considerations.  We do this with regard to swings in the park, as there are no special swings for wheel-chair bound individuals.

This gets to the very heart of Tocqueville’s point, namely that democracy seems not to be able to acknowledge differences between people without supposing that a moral difference is thereby being invoked, however subtlety.

The final example that I shall give pertains to the importance now attributed to standardized tests.  These came about as a result of inflated letters of recommendation which, in turn, came about as a result of the concern to avoid comparisons between students.  One deadly consequence of this is that we now have in place a system that makes it so much harder for idiosyncratic excellences to be acknowledge, though we know that test scores alone are not a very good measure of the excellences that a person will accomplish in life.  In the name of equality, then, we are thwarting excellence.   In the meanwhile, shows like “American Idol” are a runaway success.  This tells us something very important, which is that there is no substitute for the affirmation of success earned the old fashion way, namely through fierce competition.

Aristocracy decided in advance, as it were, who would succeed—even who was worthy of succeeding.  Democracy’s revolutionary contribution is supposed to lie in giving everyone the chance to be the best that she or he could be, without prejudging anyone in advance.  Democracy’s failure, as Tocqueville grasped, lies in mistakenly thinking that we must treat everyone in exactly the same way in order to give everyone a chance.  This effectively takes away from democracy its greatest gift, namely individuality.  And this, we have become too short-sighted to see.

On my way to Europe recently, I had a most remarkable conversation with a rabid Anti-Semite.  The man, let us call him John, is as unabashedly antisemitic as I am a frequent traveler.  The conversation took place in Newark Liberty International Airport while we were both waiting for our respective flights to Europe (Brussels for him; Paris for me).  There is, of course, no such thing as a rabid antisemitic look.  But whatever profile I might have had in mind, John most certainly did not fit it.  Casually dressed with his baseball hat on, and not a tattoo or piercing in site, John is a white man who had been married to a black woman.  He plays blues as a hobby; and he is a masterfully articulate and clever person.  Moreover, he is quite a keen observer.

On the flight from Syracuse to Newark, he had heard me mention that I forgotten some medication.  And as I passed the gate where he was waiting around for his flight to Brussels, he struck up a conversation with me by inquiring as to how I had resolved the problem of the medication that I had forgotten.  What a cordial beginning. (more…)

I have heard it said that blacks cannot be racist.  I have heard this thesis advanced by blacks with the conviction that is appropriate only for a manifestly obvious self-evident truth such as the claim that “Newborn Infants need protection and care; otherwise, they will die”.  Everything anyone has ever experienced in the world confirms the truth of this statement about newborns.  But the very idea that blacks cannot be racist seems radically counterintuitive from the outset.  I shall end this essay on a provocative note by talking about moral healing and systematic child sexual abuse.

Now, no one in her or his right mind thinks that blacks cannot be biased or that blacks cannot hold distorted views about non-blacks or, for that matter, even about blacks.  Surely the thought on the part of blacks cannot possibly be that everything that blacks believe about themselves or others is true.  If that isn’t turning self-love (or whatever the parallel to a group might be) into a vice, then I do not know what is.  No one has a monopoly on truth regardless of the topic.

Still, many blacks are utterly convinced that blacks cannot be racist.  And that cries out for an explanation.

The typical case of racism is that of believing without justification or reasonable warrant that a people are inferior, whether the inferiority be intellectual or moral.  And, of course, we know that racism against blacks is tied to this belief about black inferiority.  (more…)

It is perhaps a very good thing that I am not God.  For if I were, there would be some serious changes here on earth.  I am afraid that there would be a sharp decline in the population, at least momentarily, until people got their act together about some things.  No, I would not impose the agenda of the religious right.  Indeed, it is far from obvious to me that the religious right is the best representative of God’s will.  In fact, if I were God my very problem would be that I would find the religious right a tad too sanctimonious.

For instance, it seems to me that the doom-and-gloom approach to religion just has to be offensive to a God of righteousness, as this effectively turns God into little more than a coercive monster: “Do this and that or I will kick you ass”.  Just as this is surely no way to be a good parent, it seems to me that this is no way to be a God of righteousness.

Not only that, the gloom-and-doom approach is rather self-defeating.  To be sure, fear is a very powerful motivating force.  But the idea is supposed to be that righteousness is one extraordinary counterbalance.  Constant talk about gloom and doom gets in the way of seeing God in this way.  If I were God, I most certainly would not not want these moral idiots representing me.  They are a mockery of all that is constitutive of righteousness.  And I would regard their abiding arrogance as a clear impediment to their realization of this truth.  Their hell would be a perpetual reading of the story of Job.

Then there is the issue of perspective.  Even if it is true that, as God, I do not consider homosexuality be ideal (I have my reasons, as parents often say), it is just so much nonsense to carry on as if it is the worse possible sin.  Let’s see: murder, rape, vicious betrayal, and homosexuality.  With whom do we have greater problem?  The one who is a homosexual or the one who is a murderer, rapist, or vicious betrayer?  If I were God, my view would be that if I have to tell you, then you are part of the problem.

So if I were God, I would rid the earth of all those self-righteous bastards who, in the name of speaking for me, are doing more harm than good.  I would have no patience with them, since their moral posture is odds with common sense, let alone righteousness.

Let’s see: suicide bombings versus homosexuality.  Just how plausible is it to think that killing innocent people and killing two 16-year old homosexuals both count as righteous behavior that honors God?

So when I say that there would be some serious changes if I were God, I trust that you can see what I mean.

But my real wrath, if I were God, would be visited upon those who neglect the most innocent of all, namely children.  Parental love that neglects children is surely an oxymoron.  Parents who see their children as an opportunity to bring to fruition unfinished business are most disconcerting, as are parents who somehow think that love in absentia is virtuous.

Parents want the undying love of their children.  But it seems to me that increasingly parents do not want to pay the price that comes with obtaining that love.

Suppose that I bring you into the world, and then get on with my career.  So I will be absent for some of the most important learning moments in your life.  Indeed, I will not be there to aid you through some of the most important learning moments in your life.  So, then, tell me: Why exactly do you owe me your undying love?  Simply because I brought you into the world?  I think not ! ! !

Yet, it has become fashionable for parents to hold precisely this view.  To some extent, this works with marriages.  But children are not spouses.  And it is simply not enough to talk about the material benefits that the child receives.  After all, we do not suppose, at least ideally, that rich people get married in order to enhance their material well-being.  Rather, we suppose that there is a spiritual richness they seek in joining their lives together that has nothing whatsoever to do with increasing their material well-being.  Needless to say, to suppose otherwise for children is abominable.

The child never gets to live those years again.  One can marry again and get it right the second or perhaps the third time around.  But one can never be a child again.

Then there is the child sexual abuse, which for me is perhaps the very epitome of evil on an isolated basis—to be contrasted with institutional evil such as American Slavery or the Holocaust, where legal norms were in place to underwrite the evil.  The damage that systematic sexual abuse does to a child warrants nothing short of something on the order of castration.  And it pains me enormously that we live in a culture that can find a way to see the child abuser as a victim of some affliction or disorder.

Child sexual abusers are generally masterful in their ways of capturing their human prey—and that is precisely the word for what is going on.  Not only that, these abusers exhibit remarkable self-restraint along the way.  I am not sure if anyone has ever heard of a child sexual abuser uncontrollably attempting to have sex child with a child in public square.  Murder can be a matter of blind rage.  Child sexual abuse is never that.

The act of child sexual abuse is masterfully deliberate and intentional.  This, in turn, tells me something quite important, namely that every child abuser could have acted otherwise.  If I were God, I would perhaps not kill such individuals, but I can assure you that unthinkable impotence would be the order of the day for a lot of people.

Finally, if I were God, there is one profession that I would completely redefine; and that is the profession of being a lawyer.

I am, of course, well aware that lawyers of done much good.  But there is this truth: lawyers have taught us how to lie entirely without compunction and to take advantage of every loophole possible without the least bit of contrition.

More than other profession, lawyers have turned not owing up to one’s wrongdoing into an art form.  Indeed, a test of a lawyer’s prowess seems to be a function of his ability to get a not-guilty verdict for an obviously guilty person—the more obviously guilty, the better.  This is not trivial when one considers the influence of this profession upon society.

I understand that not every lawyer is this way.  There are many respectable lawyers out there.  One of my dearest friends is one such person.  But glitter and glamour does not follow him around.

Johnny Cochran, for instance, became a celebrity for having gotten a non-guilty verdict for O. J. Simpson—a man whom just about all the world regards as guilty.  No doubt, Cochran had a successful career before this.  But winning that non-guilty verdict for Simpson made Cochran an icon.

Who became an icon?  The man who won a non-guilty verdict for a man whom a great many people regard as manifestly guilty.  What a model for our children in society.  If Cochran is a good lawyer in the instrumental sense of being able to win a non-guilty verdict for an guilty person, then it follows, all too painfully, that a bad lawyer is one who cannot do that.

So if I were God, lawyers would be sworn to acknowledging the evidence; and anyone who was found tampering with or hiding the evidence in order to win a guilty non-guilty verdict would be automatically disbarred.  The idea in the beginning was never that a good lawyer was supposed to circumvent the evidence.  Rather, she or he was supposed to make sure that prosecution actually provided the jury with sound evidence.  What we have now is, in practice, a very long ways from that.

To state the obvious, though: I most certainly am not God.  One thought is that the moral morass that continues to unfold is but proof par excellence that there is no God.  I very much appreciate the force of that point.  Fortunately, there is another possibility, namely that it might very well take something like an all-loving, omni benevolent, and omnipotent God to see all this moral morass unfolding and not do a great deal of harm to us mere mortals.  On this alternative, then, the obvious is merely resoundingly re-affirmed: I am not good enough to be God ! ! !   But, of course, you knew that.

There is very provocative and powerful rhetorical statement going around that goes like this:

Fighting for peace is rather like fucking for virginity

Taking this statement at face value, then it follows that going to war to defeat Hitler was a conceptually absurd thing to do.  Likewise for the Civil War.  This in turn shows the absurdity of the rhetorical statement.  But this is to get ahead of ourselves.

Particularly good rhetorical statements have the character ringing obviously true even as one hears them.  So there is no need for further reflection.  The rhetorical statement above is a case in point.

The idea behind the statement, of course, is that it is conceptually impossible to achieve peace by way of war; hence, anyone who goes to war, in the hopes of attaining peace, is absolutely and utterly misguided.  This is even a stronger statement than the thesis that all wars are unjust.  For there is no conceptual incompatibility in saying that a war was wrong, but that as a matter fact something very good unexpectedly came out of that war; for there is no incompatibility at all in saying that something good can came out of an evil event that occurred. (more…)

One of the striking things about society is that it beginning to blur the distinction between an addiction and an intensely strong desire.  The two are simply not the same.  By definition, an addiction effectively minimizes, if not entirely destroys, a person’s will to resist engaging in a certain mode of behavior.  The best evidence of an addiction is that (a) it manifests itself even in the face of a clear and present harm that will follow the addictive behavior and (b) the failure to behave in accordance with the desire tends to have harsh withdrawal symptoms that cause genuine pain to the individual.  This is why our classic example of an addiction is drugs.

At this point in time, addictions have become rather wonderful things to have.  Or so it is at least from the standpoint of diminishing personal responsibility.  Why, people have an addiction for just about everything: gambling, porn, sex, and so on.  But we must be careful not to blur the distinction between an addiction and an intensely strong desire. (more…)

I begin with a confession: I never had sex with any of my high school or junior high school teachers.  Of course, my classmates and I talked about sex; and all of us claimed to have had a multitude of experiences.  But sex with one of our teachers?  I can say with the utmost confidence that such a thought never ever crossed our minds.  It is not that we couldn’t recognize that so-and-so was “hot”.  It is just that teachers were people we looked up to and respected.  By the same token, we never ever supposed that a teacher would hit on one of us.  That thought never even made it to the level of a bad joke ! ! !  And that, too, was a respect thing.

But welcome to the present.  I understand that times have changed.  I certainly understand that we are more open about sex in many, many ways.  And I might even think that there are respects in which this is a good thing.  It is a good thing, for instance, that women are more appreciative of themselves as sexual beings than they were in the past.  This progress notwithstanding, I am hoping that no one thinks that it is a good thing for teachers in junior or senior high school to be seducing their students.

The obvioius question, of course, is this: What has happened in society that has resulted in increasing numbers of junior and senior high school teachers pursuing sexual liaisons with their students?  Part of what animates the question is the age difference, and the concomitant difference in maturity.  Pamela Turner, for instance, is a 27-year old woman who had sex with a 13-year old student.  Debra Lafave is a 23-year old who had sex with a 14-year old.  The qualitative difference in maturity here ought to be so stark—and on a number of levels—as to make the very idea of a sexual liaison seem incongruous.

Now, let me draw attention to something that is, at once, most illuminating and very frightening.  If anything is clear, it that with regard to racial diversity people have learnt to be uncompromising in their political correctness in their public remarks and behavior.  Why, I can’t even get a student—certainly not a white student—to say the word “nigger,” though she or he is reading the word from a passage in, say, Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mocking Bird.  Students from abroad here at Syracuse University who cannot always make themselves understood in English nonetheless say “African-American”.

So what this tells me quite unambiguously is that public standards can make an absolutely formidable difference with regard to how people actually behave.  Because society does not tolerate the word “nigger”, even when one is reading the word from a passage in a book, then it is the rare white person who will actually utter the word.  Although there are no legal penalties that attach to anyone uttering the word “nigger”, the depth of social opprobrium for one who does so has no bounds.

So I find it wildly incongruous that we live in a society that pretty much assures that no white person will utter the word “nigger,” even when reading the word from a literary masterpiece, but somehow manages to allow junior or high school teachers to have sex with their students.  Yet, there is no question as to which form of behavior is more harmful.

If political correctness is any indication, then I just have to assume that if society were as adamantly opposed to junior and high school teachers having liaisons with their students as it is to saying the word “nigger”, then such behavior on the part of teachers simply would not exist.  End of story.

So to my earlier question, “How did it come to pass that teachers are now hitting on their junior and high school students?”, the answer is mind-boggling in its simplicity: Society has lowered its standards of moral excellence with respect to sexual behavior.  And, along the way, we have made the mistake of jettisioning the idea of shame.

We have moved mistakenly from the correct view that sex is a good thing to the incorrect view that, therefore, any bounds with regard to sexual behavior are inappropriate.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

For one thing, from the fact that people are capable of sex physically, what most certainly does not follow is that they are capable of handling it emotionally.  And it most certainly is a mistake to divorce sex from its emotional component.

When social standards are operating as they should, then they serve as a small but deeply important reminder of the truths of the preceding paragraph.  Some people do not need such a reminder.  There is always the saint or the hero in society.  But most of us will never rise to that level of excellence.  I probably will not, though (if you will permit me) it is probably true that in terms of character I am stronger than most.

As both John Stuart Mill and Sigmund Freud saw, when the proper social standards are in place they serve as a reminder of the kind of excellences that our lives should display and also as a kind of damn that prevents the inappropriate overflow that the typical person might experience.  Thus, social standards are rather like a gift that the members of society give to themselves—a moral savings account, if you will, that yields enormous dividends.  In this regard, shame plays a vital role.

Life being what it is, we are all exposed to temptations of various sorts.  Sometimes the exercise of foresight enables us to deflect the temptation.  But there are moments when, unexpectedly, temptation seems to envelop us.  This is when social standards of excellence can provide us with a measure of fortitude that we would not otherwise have.  Many a person has, in some instance or the other, resisted temptation because she or he wanted to avoid the shame that yielding to it would occasion.

The present schizophrenia of society is most revealing.  On the one hand, we worry endlessly for the safety and well-being of our children.  On the other, we have destroyed, and continue to destroy, the social standards that underwrite the very well-being that we wish for our children.  We have done so in the name of liberty.

Alas, it is only among the gods that unfettered liberty would not have any untoward moral consequences.  We mortals are a very long way from being gods.  Thus, it is mere naivety on our part to think that we do not need symbols of moral excellence around us.  Liberty without shame is an absolutely deadly combination.

It has become fashionable to eschew religious institutions, as if they are places for the psychologically warped.  Not so.  These institutions have served, as George Will noted in Statecraft as Soulcraft, as the husbandry of moral virtue in society.  And their demise has created an enormous moral vacuum in our society—a vacuum that is being filled with behavior that is excruciatingly and manifestly inappropriate.

If this analysis is correct, then as long as we go on maintaining that social standards of moral excellence are not necessary, because after all liberty is the ultimate good, then not only will our children continue to be unsafe, but society itself will invariably become so much the worse for it.  Or so it is given the basic assumption that our children are our future.

We are living under the delusion that the law can or should cover all behavior that is appropriate and inappropriate between individuals.  The unvarnished truth, however, is that the law cannot do that, nor was it ever intended to do that.

The inappropriate sexual behavior towards their students on the part of the Pamela Turners, the Debra Lafaves, and the like is simply a case of reaping what we have sown.  The law is not and cannot be a substitute for a commitment to moral excellence in our hearts and souls.  This is an axiom of human behavior.  And as long as we remain oblivious to this, thinking that somehow we can get around the truth of this axiom of human behavior, then the moral reality is that we can expect to see more, rather less, despicable behavior of the type exhibited by the individuals named above.

Standards of moral excellence, and nothing else, stand in the way of a most undesirable reality: “Hot Sex in the Schools: Get It Now”.

The choice is to embrace excellence or to be devoured by vice.  To convince ourselves otherwise is, quite literally, to be too clever for our own good.