Moral Health

Revenge may be sweet, but it is almost always costly—so costly in fact that, from a strictly cost benefit analysis, a person is very rarely better off on account of having sought and obtained revenge.  Indeed, it is often the case that persons make themselves worse-off in seeking revenge.  To be sure, there is much to be said for showing that one has fortitude and courage, and that one is willing to stand up for oneself.  But revenge is not exactly about doing these things.  Quite the contrary, it is often about using one’s resources in order to inflict a harm upon a person on account of the harm that one takes the person to have committed against one’s own person (or a member of one’s clan/community).  Let’s call this classical revenge.

The desire to want to inflict upon someone who has harmed us is perhaps natural enough.  The issue is whether acting upon it is rational.  My view is that classical revenge is rarely if ever rational.  And it is interesting that something that is so irrational can be so satisfying to folks.

My motto is very simple: “Don’t get even.  Get ahead”.  In truth, I suggest that the sweetest revenge lies not in harming another but in getting ahead.  For there is no better evidence that one’s soul and spirit have not been vanquished than that one succeeds notwithstanding the damage that someone has done to one.  After all, if I hurt myself in order to hurt you, then what we end up with is two people who are hurt.  And the person whom I have harmed in the name of seeking revenge might very well say “Yea, he got me but look what it took for him to do that; things are pretty much awash for him now !”

By contrast, if in the face of the harm you inflicted upon me, I nonetheless move ahead, then I have rather masterfully eviscerated the potency of your intended harm.  Why, I have barely left you with anything at all to boast about, as my very success evaporates the proof, as it were, of the harm that you inflicted.  Nothing makes the claim that someone has harmed another seem so utterly incredulous than that person who is said to have been harmed is flourishing mightily.

Classical revenge, on the other hand, often leaves the first party with something to boast about even if the second party has, in the name of revenge, inflicted a harm and is now suffering on account of doing so.  For the first party can say “Yea, he got me but look what I did to him”.  And this, needless to say, takes away some of the glow, if you will, from one’s revenge.

So, as I have said, while the classical view of revenge has an initial appeal to it, owing to the ever so reasonable desire to harm someone that has harmed one, it turns out that acting on the desire is considerably less than optimal from a rational point of view.

In common parlance, classical revenge is often tied to having a sense of self-respect—and so of not being willing to put up with certain things.  There is much to be said for this mindset.  Indeed, it in fact seems to me that people put up with more things than they should.

We should certainly not let people abuse and exploit us.  That said, classical revenge still seems to have things wrong.  If John has harmed me and rather than using my resources to harm him I advance myself—so much so that people cannot even imagine that he had actually harmed me—in what possible sense can it be said that I have put up with up with or accepting the fact that he has harmed me?  And why do I have to squander my resources harm John in order for it to be true that I am not putting up with or accepting his having harmed?

But in terms of revenge: What could be sweeter than doing so well that John’s claim to having harmed me simply has no credibility at all in the eyes of anyone?  This is revenge that upstages the person.  And I maintain that revenge that upstages is preferable any day—and on all accounts—to classical revenge.  As for underwriting one’s self-respect: surely upstaging-revenge does wonders in this regard.

At first glance, classical revenge has the advantage of coming across as a direct response to the harm that one has done.  Classical revenge is indeed a sign that the person did get one’s attention.  It is proof par excellence that person had caused one pain.  But in the end upstaging-revenge is still so very much sweeter.  This is because in no time at all it becomes clear to the person that harmed one that he was, as it were, morally impotent, which is tantamount to nagging him from the inside out.  And when one’s continued success so disembowels his claim to having harmed one that the claim simply has no credibility, then one’s revenge is surely sweet if only because there is nothing else left for the person to but acknowledge one’s own successes.  And that, needless to say, is the last position in the world that he wanted to be in.

“Don’t Get Even.  Get Ahead”.  This is what rationality counsels.  Significantly, it does so without requiring us to ignore the reality that there is indeed something very satisfying about getting even.  This is because getting ahead is invariably the best way to get even, which points to another truth in life, namely that it is so often the case that how we go about doing something matters enormously.

Squandering precious resources in order to get revenge is just plain silly.  Fortunately, no such thing is required of us provided that we are willing to exercise foresight and self-command.  The exercise of these two virtues together allows us to extract revenge will keeping our resources for ourselves.  If that is not a matter of having our cake and eating, too, then I do not know what is.

Some of the most horrendous form of cruelty that I have both witnessed and experienced, short of brutal physical cruelty, can be properly characterized as black-on-black cruelty.  The viciousness that blacks can display towards one another over the issue of being “black” may have no parallel in social interaction.  In fact, I will go so far as to say that black-on-black viciousness can rival racism itself.  Only a fool would think that racism no longer exists.  I do not think that.  Indeed, there is no one I know who thinks that, although we no doubt differ as to its extensiveness and character.

The thesis that black-on-black cruelty sometimes rivals racism itself hardly diminishes the reality of racism.  For evil is not impoverished.  One form of evil rarely precludes other forms.

If racism, broadly speaking, can be characterized as the view that blacks are intellectual inferior, black-on-black cruelty is the view that a black person had better more importance to being black than she or he does to anything else.  And this a black had better do otherwise she or he will be ostracized and made the object of any number of fulsome characterizations.  Outright character assassination is perfectly acceptable.  (more…)

I personally know three individuals who have shared with me the fact that they were adopted.  These are three very talented people.  More importantly, all three of them are among the most well-adjusted and highly motivated people that I know.  My admiration for each of them is considerable.  I have met the parents of two of them: the friend from France and the parents of one of my students.  I hope that I shall have the occasion to meet the parents of the third one.

To date, not a single one of them has ever said to me that there is a fundamental piece of their life missing on account of not knowing their biological parents—that meeting their biological parents will give them the key to who they “really” are.  And that I find very significant.  I find this significant because nowadays it is not uncommon to hear people insist that they need to meet their biological parents in order have a complete conception of who they are.  Indeed, the claim nowadays is that one has a right to that information.

On her radio program, Dr. Laura has claimed that it is just so much nonsense to think that one does not fully know who one is until one has met one’s biological parents.  I wholeheartedly concur.  It does not take much reflection to see that she is right.

Suppose that Opidopo is adopted and it turns out that both of his biological parents are hardened criminals.  Opidopo, on the other hand, has been a model citizen on every account, doing admirable charity work that has won the praise and esteem of all.  So what key to who he is might he possibly gleam from meeting his biological parents? (more…)

In an article that appeared in The Seattle Times entitled “Animals Exhibit “Gay” Behavior” (19 June 2005), we find this fascinating sentence: “From whales to buffalo to Caspian terns, a profusion of animals exhibit behavior that in humans would be called gay”.*  And, of course, there is the story of the gay penguins in the Central Park Zoo reported in The San Francisco Chronicle (7 February 2004).  We are told that “For six years now, they have been inseparable. . . . [T]hey entwine their necks, they vocalize to each other, they have sex.  Silo and Roy [the names of the two penguins] are, to anthropomorphize a bit, gay”.

Good science makes it abundantly clear that anthropomorphizing is quite bad science.  The issue is this: What might we infer about human beings from animal behavior?  The answer is not much.  And holding this view has nothing whatsoever to do with being for or against homosexuality among human beings.  Consider, for instance, that fidelity in the animal kingdom is relatively rare.  All the same, no one supposes that this is thereby a reason to eschew fidelity as an archaic notion of no relevance to human beings.  Again, in most instances, though not all, the male bares very little responsibility for raising the children that he sired.  Yet, we do not argue for moment that this is how human males should behave.  Indeed, our sentiments are exactly the opposite.  Then there is the reality that animals have little or no sense of shame with regard to when and where they relieve themselves, whether this is about urinating or defecating.  I can only hope that we should not regard this as virtuous.

Getting back to so-called homosexual behavior among animals, we might ask whether animals have anything like a sense of sexual identity that is as robust as that which we find in human beings.  Not surprisingly, the answer is a deafening “No”. (more…)

There can be bad arguments for a morally defensible position.  The case that readily occurs to me is that of gay marriages.  Some argue that gay marriages should be permitted because anything that takes place between consenting adults should be permitted.  We might add the proviso that the consenting adults are not deranged so as to avoid the case in Germany where a person answers an advertisement for sex where in the end he is literally to be eaten a live.  The argument that follows is adopted from my introductory essay, “Virtuous Disagreements in Social Philosophy,” Contemporary Debates in Social Philosophy (Blackwell, 2007)

If we restrict ourselves to persons who are not deranged (which I shall assume throughout) does it then hold that anything that takes place between consenting adults should be permitted?  Well, consider the following example.  Susan had a son when she was 16 years old.  At the age of 18, the son went into military service for three years.  He returns home after a three year absence.  He is 21 yeas of age and his mother is 39 year old.  He, as it turns out, is absolutely gorgeous.  It is also the case that his mother is stunningly beautiful.

Upon seeing one another again for the first time in three years, they find themselves unbelievably attracted to one another sexually.  They cannot keep their hands off of one another.  In the words of one of those love-songs: “How can it be wrong when it feels so right?”

We certainly have consenting adults here: a 39-year old mother and a 21-year old who has served in the military.  That notwithstanding, what I have described unequivocally constitutes incest.  If anything between consenting adults goes, assuming that the adults are not deranged, then incest between consenting adults is just fine.

But if you draw the line at incest, for example, then you are opposed to the argument for gay marriages that turns simply upon the premise that anything between consenting adults is permissible.

But why should the case of incest give us pause?  Why isn’t that, too, just a carry over from some antiquated religious view?  Adults are adults.

Why on earth should it matter that they are biologically related?  Besides, no one thinks that being biologically related, plain and simple, should exclude sexual interaction between two people, but only a certain degree of biological relatedness.  Most people accept sexual liasons between folks after the 3rd cousin.  So, if sex between 4th cousins is just fine, then why not sex between mother and son, where they are both adults?  Sex is sex; adults are adutls.  Who can argue with that?

To the best of my knowledge, no one defending gay marriage solely on the grounds that it is between consenting adults has ever considered this argument.

I do not intend to argue that gay marriage is wrong.  My point is the limited one that a certain line of argument for gay marriage is most indefensible.

What exactly is wrong with sex between a mother and her son or a father and his daughter or a mother and her daughter or a father and his son given that everyone involved is unquestionably a consenting adult?

This brings us to the issue of foresight in a most dramatic way.  Even if one holds that in and of itself there is nothing wrong with consensual sex between a parent and an adult child, surely it is wrong in a most egregious way for children as children to be the object of the sexual desires of their parents.  It is not possible for a parent to raise a child in a wholesome way and, at the very same time, treat that child as an object of sexual desire.  By the way, this point holds true whether we are talking about parents who are biologically related to their children or parents who have adopted their children.  For it is the role as parent, and not the genes, that is relevant here.

If we look at parent-child sex a temporally, where both are adults, then it might very well be true that sex between parent and child is not morally objectionable.  If a parent and child met for the first time as adults: well, there would not be much to say against their having sex if that is what they wanted to do, whatever uneasiness they or we might have about the matter.  I mean they would in fact be strangers to one another.  And if the parent and the child are of the same gender, then the problem of producing offspring with defective genes does not even get off the ground.  But, of course, this sort of encounter is relatively rare.

Typically, parents raise their children.  And we must never lose sight of this truth.

A culture in which there sexual relations between parents and children where all parties are consenting adults sets itself upon a most fulsome trajectory, given proviso there is public approval of this or, in any case, no strong public disapproval of it.  13-year old teenagers need to know unequivocally that the hug from their mother or father is not sexual; and they will not be able to know that if it is commonplace for there to be sexual relations between adults and their children.  The moral backdrop of strong disapproval of sex between parents and child constitutes the social environment in which the child entertains ideas.

The last point of the preceding paragraph is not defeated by the proviso that it is only between consenting adults that the sex is occurring.  For there would be the issue of whether mom’s hug or dad’s hug today is taking place with a sexual longing with regard to tomorrow.

What we want, then, is a world in which no child has to wonder, on account of prevailing social practices, whether a parental hug today bespeaks a sexual longing to be fulfilled tomorrow.  This, then, is why the argument for gay marriage is untenable if it rests solely upon the premise that whatever takes place between consenting adults is morally permissible, provided that neither party is deranged.

By definition, it is only over time that we have moral stability.  And sometimes we have to consider not merely whether doing something would make us happy now, but what would be the long term effects if the thing we now want to do were a widespread practice, and so a practice that at the very least did not meet with social disapproval.

There are lots of instances in life where a single occurrence of something does not impact upon us negatively or positively, but where the occurrence of that thing over time does, indeed, have either a positive or negative impact upon.  Parental praise and criticism are both cases in point.  No child will ever flourish on the strength of a single “I love you”.  But those three words uttered with sincerity and depth over time constitute a tidal wave of parental wave of affirmation that has no equal in a child’s life.  From the other direction, a constantly berated child will suffer mightily.

These remarks have been a classic example of philosophical disputation.  I have not at all argued against gay marriages.  I have merely examined a particular line of argument for gay marriages and found it wanting.  There is merit to this precisely because we do not want bad arguments to hold sway in society.

A final remark: You will note also that the argument given counts against the privacy argument as well.  It is public knowledge that there are certain things that people do in private: go to the bathroom; have sex.  Even if parents and adult children are having sex in private, the argument of this essay goes through if it were public knowledge that this sort of thing went on and, moreover, there was public approval of it (or least not strong public disapproval of it).  The issue is about a practice that would have untoward effects upon children.  This issue does not become a non-issue because parents and their adult children have sex in private.