Moral Health

One of the most riveting lessons to be learnt from the fact that, in prison, many heterosexual men regularly seek to receive oral sex from men or to have the active role in anal sex with men is that most of us can become used to just about anything given that we find ourselves in circumstances favorable to the behavior in question.  Indeed, inmates who regularly penetrates other men for sexual relief is apt to think it obvious that any man who does not fight not to the death to avoid anal penetration is a faggot.  As to what on earth this observation has to do with hatred and the internet, I shall explain in what follows.

For what it is worth, I believe that democracy can survive only insofar as it veers towards the truth.  And while the American democracy once did that with great majesty, I no longer think this is the case.

It is I believe a striking feature of politics in America that politics have become increasingly about cultivating an attitude of hatred towards those with whom we disagree.  We as a nation have increasingly become accustomed to invoking and hearing the language of hatred in reference to others.  This, I maintain, is bringing about a shift in our moral sensibilities.  And therein lies the relevance to the initial remarks about straight men having gay sex in prison.  I gather that the average heterosexual who ends up prison does not suddenly think that gay sex is a good thing.  Rather, as Thomas Nagel observed in his essay “Sexual Perversion,” things have to get pretty bad before we opt for no sex at all.  Prisoners negotiate with that reality.

Every time I recall that Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee both admired one another although they fought on opposing sides of the Civil War, I am pained about how numb our moral sensibilities have become when I consider the rhetoric of today’s political differences.  Both Liberals and Conservatives are at fault here.

A Liberal might refer to someone as a “moral callous bastard who would sell his own mother for profit”.  Conservatives have referred to abortion as America’s holocaust.  In either case, there is very little room to think well of the person so characterized.  Perhaps no one believes this sort of thing at heart.  That, however, does not change the fact that we have become used to employing that sort of language in the way we characterize those with whom we disagree.  And if we have become used to it, then it follows that we have become numb to just how inappropriate such characterizations are.

But how does the technology come into play in all of this?  The answer, quite simply, is that technology has made it possible for human beings to be extremely manipulative in their presentation of things.  In particular, technology has made it possible to invoke rather visceral emotions with all sorts of images.  It almost does not matter what the context might be.  An example of this is seeing images of Muslim women being fired upon.  It almost becomes irrelevant that the women are protecting Muslim men who are prepared to commit quite atrocious acts.  Indeed, it becomes irrelevant that the very scene of the Muslim women surrounding the mosque is staged in order to shock the sensibilities of the Western viewer.

So, while it may be true that technology has made more information available than ever before, it is also case that now, more than ever before, our assessments are increasingly based upon mere feelings rather than reasoned reflections.  Indeed, where we ought to be angry for being misled by images, it seems to me that we are increasingly unable to see that we are being misled by the images.

Increasingly, then, our assessments of events are more consistent with the images that we behold or the sound-bites that we hear (even when those images and sound-bites are misleading) than with the facts that actually pertain to the matter.  This truth gives political opponents a reason to be more concerned with images and sound-bites than truth.  This truth makes it the case that invoking feelings of hatred towards one’s opponent is increasingly a rational strategy to employ even when the facts do not in any way warrant that assessment.

Kant rightly observed that the capacity for rational reflection marks the difference between human beings and other species.  But what is manifestly false is that most human beings can fully realize that capacity in the absence of a social environment that is conducive to rational reflection.  We are quintessential social creatures; and what that means is that most of us are profoundly influenced by the character of our social environment.  That is what the case of prison gays sex shows ever so profoundly.  The example is telling precisely because sexual preference seems so very inexorable.  In prison, the active/passive distinction does work in terms of whether one is gay or straight; yet, on the outside the active/passive distinction seems to have no relevance whatsoever.

Lies repeated in the “right way” and at the “right time” can in fact become accepted as truths.  And nothing has facilitated repeating lies in the “right way” and at the “right time” like technology.

The issue, of course, is not whether there have always been evil people around, prepared to do whatever it takes in order to have power.  We know that this is true.  Rather, the issue is whether technology has facilitated being evil in ways that have, as it were, outpaced our humanity.  I believe that it has.

One the one hand, technology has escalated the language of hatred by making the manipulation of images and sound-bites very easy to do.  On the other, people have become numb to the language of hatred as a result of being constantly exposed to these forms of manipulation.  In particular, it is increasingly the case that, notwithstanding the wealth of information now available, people think more with their feelings than ever.

This brings me back to the point of veering towards the truth.  There is not now, nor has there ever been, a formal correlation between feelings and truth.  And Americans have become a nation of people that privileges feelings over truth.  So in the oddest of ways, we now legitimate hatred.  Indeed, we are no longer united by the truths that we hold to be unshakable but simply by the feelings that we share.  Accordingly, it is not what another says, but how we feel towards that individual.

If this is right, then a most surprising conclusion is that at this point in time a person of Adolph Hitler’s ilk would more likely experience greater success in America than an individual of Winston Churchill’s personage.  Hitler preyed upon the weaknesses of a nation; Churchill called a nation to greatness.  Hitler played upon the feelings of the average citizen of Nazi Germany.  Churchill asked a nation to rise above its feelings.

Are we better off?  You tell me.  A nation whose citizens have become so numb that the language of hatred is an on-going part of the daily experience of their lives is, no matter who is hating whom, a nation that will surely perish in the fulness of time.

Perhaps there is a God after all; for I find that I am in substantial agreement with Al Sharpton regarding the following point.  He thinks that a man does what is offensive in calling a woman a bitch, no matter what the race of the man might be and no matter what the race of the woman might be.  In particular, then, he thinks that Isaiah Thomas is wrong in holding that it is less offensive if a black man calls a black woman bitch than it is if a white man calls a black woman bitch.

While I shall go on about this for a bit, I shall turn to offer what strikes me as quite interesting explanation for the disparity that many see in terms of what blacks say about the wrongs of other blacks, including the no snitch rule.  The explanation shall be quite fascinating; and I encourage readers to attend to it.  I shall then conclude on a surprisingly personal note.

Now, Al Sharpton’s condemnation of Isaiah Thomas is an extraordinary breath of commonsense on Sharpton’s part.  The point, of course, should be one of those obvious truths that requires next to no reflection to grasp.  But that fact Mr. Sharpton should actually hold that a black person is just as wrong as a white person, given that both the black and white person has committed the exact same act is rather like a new-found refreshing spring of water coursing down a mountain side. (more…)

Give me options or give me death!  Monsieur Patrick Henry did not make that claim.  He said “Give me liberty or give me death”.  He was claiming an entitlement that people should be free to choose to live their lives as they please, with the usual proviso that they do not wrong others.  Implicit in his majestic rhetorical claim is the premise that people are best suited to judge for themselves what is good for them; and behind that premise was a very rich view about objective right and wrong.

Here is my view in a nutshell: If we define human progress in terms of creating new choices, then human progress is proceeding exponentially.  If, on the other hand, we define human progress in terms of exercising wisdom, it is arguable that human progress is regressing, in that with more knowledge than ever before our behavior is increasingly indefensible.

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Needless to say, modernity differs sharply from the Mr. Henry’s era.  For one the thing, the very idea of right and wrong has fallen upon hard times.  Indeed, notwithstanding all the talk about equality regarding matters of sex and race and sexual orientation and whatever, people still seem to think that right and wrong does not amount to much more than mere opinion.  So while a great many of us like the idea of equality between the sex and the races, many of these very same people are loathed to say that requiring women to wear a burka is really wrong or that we can really say Nazi ideology is wrong.  For it is all about feelings; and the unvarnished truth is that those folks feel differently about such matters than we do.  And of course: Who is to say that their feelings are any less legitimate than ours?

And if the above difference were not enough, there is the insight advanced by Ray Kurzweil, in his extraordinary book The Singularity is Near, in which he puts forth the thesis that technology will soon afford us options that have the effect of redefining humanity.

I think that Kurzweil is absolutely right.  And that for me is the problem.

It is absolutely wonderful to have choices.  But there is a proviso that lurks in the background to which no one is paying sufficient attention, namely that more often than not most of choose wisely.  Over time, a vast plethora of choices in the absence of wisdom on the part of most people making those choices will result in something akin to Armageddon on earth.

Now, when one extracts from recent human behavior over the last 20 years, there is a very frightening assessment that suggests itself, which is that in general human beings are not prone to making wise choices.

If we were prone to making wise choices, then the possibilities of which Kurzweil speaks would truly be a blessing, precisely because we would have good reason to believe, given our past performance in making choices, that with the options envisioned by Kurzweil we would at least veer towards choosing wisely.

But human beings have shown themselves to be susceptible to the most ridiculous fads and to a lack self-control even in the face of obvious harm to their very physical well-being.  Massive credit card debt shows a lack of wisdom.  The stampedes and fights over toys during the Christmas season reveal an immaturity on the part of adults that is utterly painful.  The silliness of camping out for days in order to be one of the first to own a new gadget is quite mind-boggling.  Calling something an addiction has almost become a fad.  And I shall say nothing at all about that over which we have the most control, namely that which we put into our bodies.  Then there is the fact that ethnic identity has been pushed so far that in some case it has become an impediment to justice itself.

Does anyone think for a moment that the black Whoopi Goldberg would have defended a white Michael Vick engaged in dog fighting?  Does anyone think for a moment that the blacks of Raleigh would have been so venemous towards a black Duke University lacrosse player accused of rape by a black woman of obviously questionable character?  And imagine whites calling for the swift conviction of a black lacrosse player in college accused of rape by a white woman with a quite tarnished reputation.

As I said at the outset: If we define human progress in terms of creating new choices, then human progress is proceeding exponentially.  If, on the other hand, we define human progress in terms of exercising wisdom, it is arguable that human progress is regressing, in that with more knowledge than ever before our behavior is increasingly indefensible.

The problem, obviously, is that an exponential increase in choices coupled with an increasing lack of wisdom is an absolute disaster.

Interestingly, what I am referring to as wisdom is what my parents would have referred as none other than commonsense.  An abundance of choices on the part of those who fail to exercise commonsense even when it comes to the most to most basic choices is a recipe for an enormous crisis in the human condition.

I have drawn attention to two very distinct vectors: options, on the one hand; wisdom, on the other.  It is typically supposed, and rightly so, that options in the hands of those who are evil will result in a catastrophy.  And I will concede for the sake of argument that in some sense there is less evil in the world.

The problem, alas, is that options in the hands of those rather lacking in wisdom will also result in a catastrophy.  And the very considerations that allow me to entertain the hypothesis that there is less evil in the world also force me to say that wisdom, even on the part of the well-meaning, is very much in short supply.

Humans can, of course, change the options that humanity might encounter.  The issue, though, is whether they have the will to do so.  And the evidence thus far is woefully discouraging.  There are, to be sure, beacons of wisdom here and there.  Unfortunately, that is not enough to sustain the light of wisdom that humanity needs.

I very much hope that I am wrong.  For if, in the end, all that we are doing is choosing between which catastrophy will engulf humanity, then we are, in effect, left with no real choice at all.

Once upon a time, there was a TV-anchorman named Walter Conkrite.  It is probably false that he actually reported the news exactly as it in fact happened.  No doubt he, too, put his spin on things.  But there really was the sense that there was an awfully close resemblance between what he said happened and what in fact actually happened.  And this sense is no doubt warranted precisely because the kind of manipulative editing techniques for sound and video and photos available to us now were not available then.  Things are not quite like that, any more; and I should like, in this essay, to bring about the significance of that change.

Back in the day: If Mr. Conkrite showed a picture of a man showing his buttocks to the President of the United States, one could be reasonably certain that something very close that behavior, if not in fact precisely that behavior, actually happened.  Nowadays, by contrast, one can legitimately ask whether such a thing happened or is it the case that picture was photo-shopped in order to express the reporter’s disgust for the President.  The same holds for sound-bites.  A person’s recorded-words can be moved around with such finesse that a person can be presented as saying something that she or he never did say or would have thought to say.

So, nowadays, it is all too reasonable to think that the news that presented to us by various anchor personalities is more likely than not to reflect what the anchor person wants to see and hear as opposed to what has actually happened.

The moral significance of this change is that truth has been substantially devalued.  Indeed, it has been devalued by those who have chosen as a profession the aim of reporting the truth.  The truth has been devalued by those who claim telling that truth is an integral part of their professional responsibility.

Nowadays, the news is treated more like a song to which a person rightly feels entitled to give her or his interpretation.  Mariah Carey sings “Oh Holy Night” as does the Vienna Boys Choir, giving two fundamentally different interpretations of the very same song.

Who really believes that Brian Williams (NBC) or Katie Couric (CBS) or Charles Gibson (ABC) is merely reporting the news as it actually happened?

Now, my thesis is this: This retreat from the truth is having a most deleterious impact upon society in general.  When those who take it as their moral responsibility to tell the truth in delivering the news feel entitled to manipulate this is tantamount to flaunting every publicly the idea that telling the is not important.

With many things in life, witnessing them on a daily basis either repulses us or appeals to us or we become indifferent to it.  The second and third options constitute what I shall call moral numbing.  And one of the most striking things about life is that there is very little wrongdoing to which we cannot become morally numb if do not take the requisite precautions.  A case in point is profanity.

It was barely more than a decade ago when profanity is what was spoken in the movie theater and not on home television.  There may have been the occasional “damn” here and there.  The rare usage of this word marked the importance of the moment.  Nowadays, of course, we commonly hear words like “damn” and “bitch” and “bastard” on television.  We hear these words so frequently that their utterance barely fazes us.  Utterances that would have caught everyone’s attention some 15 or so years ago can go relatively unnoticed at this point in time.   Needless to say, this is an incontrovertible example of social numbness.

We can see social numbness in other areas of life, as well.  The rudeness occasioned by cell phones is now par for the course.  Unthinkingly, these days, many cell phone users do not acknowledge the clerk who is waiting on them at the counter, or it is nothing to put a person on hold in order to answer another phone call.

Well, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to think that when it comes to truth human beings are immune to becoming numb when those in socially respected positions continually treat truth rather like a song that they can interpret.

Increasingly, we are becoming numb to the importance and significance of truth precisely because we seeing all around us that the importance and significance of truth is being made subordinate to ideological interests.  And the distance between making truth subordinate to ideological interests and between making truth subordinate to personal interests is very, very short.

If it is acceptable for respectable anchor personalities—and that is what we often call them now: anchor personalities—to subordinate truth to their ideological commitments—making megabucks, then how wrong can it be to subordinate truth to our personal interests?

Again, if it is acceptable for lawyers, in the name of defending their client, to put forth exculpatory explanations for their client’s morally horrific behavior that simply fly in the face of the facts, then once more: how wrong can it be to subordinate truth to our personal interests?

From news programs to college campuses, it is manifestly clear that truth has taken a backseat to ideological concerns.

The most poignant and flagrante illustration of this in recent years is the case of the Duke University lacrosse players.  The prosecuting district attorney, Mike Nifong (now disbarred), violated more than a dozen ethics rules in going after the now-exonerated Duke lacrosse players.  There was very little evidence that those three guys had done what they were accused of doing.  But a man who wanted to score points with the black community in Raleigh did not want to hear that.  And there were way too many white Duke University faculty members and members of the black community who “indicted” the players without a hearing.

Truth?  It had no relevance at all to the clamoring that was going on.  This was so palpably clear that it is shameful.  I am not for rape no matter who rapes whom.  But when the charge of rape, of all things, has next to no semblance of truth, then we owe it to all to sort through the evidence before we go clamoring for someone’s very soul.

What we saw, instead, was rather like so many vultures descending upon a caucus presumed to be dead.

Increasingly, images matter; truth does not.  The case of the Duke University lacrosse players is as pristine an example of this truth as one could possibly want, especially in light of the fact that the prosecuting attorney was disbarred.  This case is an example that should give us pause—a reason to re-examine our priorities.  It has not, though; and this, in turn, tells us how just how far down on the rung of values that the importance of truth has fallen.

Unless I am missing something, the importance of truth has fallen so far down that the lack of value we attach to it is quickly becoming a threat to the very viability of democracy.  For democracy cannot survive when the denizens of society attach more importance to appearances than to reality; and the devaluing of truth entails precisely that.

If there is one thing, more than any other, that the internet has effectively undermined with absolute aplomb it is accountability.  It goes without saying, of course, that one of the most formidable advantages of the internet is that it brings information at the finger tips of everyone who has access to it.  Sitting in one part of the world, one can in fact learn mountains of information about an entirely different part of the world.  With persistence and diligence, one can become informed about just about anything one’s heart desires.  One can access information from every corner of the globe.  This is it what makes the internet so amazingly wonderful.

The problem, though, is this.  What exactly counts as information?  The answer, surely, is not anything that one reads.  And there is the rub.  Anyone, anywhere, can put up a most respectable looking website that rivals, in appearance, the website of such distinguished newspapers as Le Monde or The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.  One consequence of this is that, thanks to the internet, the distinction between fact and fiction—that is, non-fact—is being effectively obliterated. And this is having an exceedingly deleterious impact upon society.

The distinction between fact and non-fact is key to the very survival of humanity.  There is, to be sure, room for a measure of vagueness and uncertainty in this regard.  What there is not room for, however, is for the very distinction itself to be obliterated. (more…)

It is a striking feature of the times that never have so many insisted upon their right to so much freedom while, at the same time, claiming so little control over their choices.  On the one hand, people insist upon having a right to do anything and everything.  On the other, people invoke the excuse of an addiction at the drop of a hat as an explanation for their morally and rationally unacceptable behavior.  And, of course, there is always a psychology study to be found that provides scientific support for viewing the behavior in question as an addiction.  I am going to show rather quickly that this is all so much nonsense.

Warning: The example I will provide will seem vulgar.  However, the appearance is well worth its illuminating power.  For I shall introduce and comment upon the example on one occasion; and then I shall return to it later.  Part of what makes the example so important is that it does not in any way require a partner.

It is common knowledge that lots and lots of folks engage in the act of masturbation with some regularity.  Presumably, this is owing to the sex drive.  Significantly, though, this common and frequently committed behavior is not referred to as an addiction.  And it is easy enough to see why it not referred to as an addiction, namely that there is next to no evidence whatsoever that people cannot control when and where they masturbate.  There are no reports of people turning the corner in a hallway only to stumble upon a person masturbating.

To be sure, people are sometimes mistaken about whether or not they have a private moment or not.  But that is different from the thesis that they have no control over when and where they masturbate.

Now, if masturbation is not an addiction, then one might very well ask how can be that, for example, playing video games and road rage are countenanced as addictions.

I mean there is no disputing that sex is a basic biological drive that has had an enormous grip upon the souls of humankind since the beginning of its existence.  A like story cannot be told either for video games or road rage.  Nor, again, does either constitute a chemical dependency as is the case with cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs.  Finally, in this vein, it is not enough to say that an intense desire occasions video games and road rage.  For one thing, the same might be said of acts of self-eroticism.  For another, serial killers seem to have an intense desire to kill their victims.  Yet, we are loathed to understand their behavior as an addiction.  Quite the contrary, we insist upon holding them morally responsible for their behavior—as well we should.  The exact same parallel holds—and to the letter, in fact—for child molesters.

Together, these considerations suggest that it is just so much nonsense to speak of a road rage as an addiction or having an addiction to playing video games.  Neither behavior has the right psychological ontogenesis to be countenanced an addiction.

What is intriguing to me in all of this is that, on the one hand, we clamor for freedom at every turn while, on the other, we seem to insist that an intense desire to behave in this or that way thereby undermines freedom not to behave in that manner.

Once again, the example of masturbation proves to be most illuminating.  If all it took to undermine freedom and responsibility were an intense desire, then it would follow that the sex drive automatically renders us less free as moral agents.  Yet, no one seems to be in the least bit inclined to advance this argument.  No matter how desirous of sexual relief a person may be, no one thinks for a moment that the individual thereby has an excuse to satisfy that desire on the spot.  No one thinks this notwithstanding the intense desire for sexual release.

Precisely what everyone rightly assumes, surely, is that each and every person is capable of exercising enough self-control to at least wait until she or he has sufficient privacy.  But if that assumption is plausible, and surely it is, then it is utterly implausible to countenance either road rage as an addiction or the desire to play video games as an addiction.  We cannot have it both ways.

While I have used the case of masturbation, notice that our moral objection to rape is predicated upon the truth that no matter how sexually desirous one person finds another individual, sex with that individual in the absence of consent is absolutely and unequivocally morally unacceptable; hence, a person has the wherewithal to refrain from acting upon the sexual desire for the individual in question.

What I have done in this essay is drawn attention to a simple and ubiquitous features of our humanity, namely the sex drive.  And I have noted that in this area of life it is rightly expected that we can resist acting upon our sexual desires in inappropriate ways, notwithstanding the strength of our desires.  Peace and respect for others is predicated upon our doing so.

I have assumed, with some plausibility, surely, that video games, road rage, and the like have not yet in their intensity achieved parity with the sexual desire.  And it is goes without saying that they do constitute a chemical dependency.

Together, these considerations show that the very idea that playing video games and road rage constitute an addiction is none other than a farce.  Worse, it constitutes a flat out unwillingness to accept responsibility for our actions.  It is in the light of this reality that compassion for such individuals is utterly misplaced.

I have hardly claimed that it is always easy to resist the desires that beset us.  Thought and foresight may be necessary.  But a desire that requires effort to resist—and most do—is not thereby a desire to which we must accede regardless of the facts of the world.  Not at all.  It cannot be, as the case of masturbation so clearly and forcefully and inescapably shows.  Since the sex act in its various forms is thought to be an expression of the self that is like none other and, moreover, the desire for sex is thought to have a potency that is second to none (in the absence of life threatening circumstances), then it has to be acknowledged that intense desires to do not thereby diminish our responsibility.

Either that, or we must acknowledge that the desire to play video games and the desire to commit acts of road rage are more potent than the desire for sex itself.  But I don’t see that happening; and it should be manifestly obvious why I think that.