Moral Health

Nowadays, it seems that people feel entitled to just about everything.  What grounds this feeling of entitlement seems to be none other than a strong desire for the thing in question.  This new view of entitlement seems to be that a persistent desire over time becomes an entitlement simply in virtue of its persistence.  Notice that entitlement thus understood is not even about to what a person in fact needs in order to live, but merely what about what a person continues to want and want and want.  Needless to say, entitlement thus understood is most problematic.

Surely no one is owed something merely because she or he has a strong and abiding desire for it.  Indeed, this conception of entitlement very much trivializes the humanity of others.

What intrigues me, though, is that this conception of entitlement effectively undermines the sentiment of gratitude; for nowadays, people take themselves to be getting what they are owed, since they have a persistent and intense desire for it.

Of course, strictly speaking, entitlement does not preclude gratitude; for there is a multitude of ways in which we can do for others what we ought to do for them.  We can, for one, do so most begrudgingly.  Or, for another, we can do so with great joy, taking enormous delight in being able to do for the other what we owe them.  Gratitude is owed in this latter instance.

Still, a spirit of entitlement is having an adverse impact upon the sentiment of gratitude, as increasingly people place more importance upon getting what they want than the spirit with which others act on their behalf.

It is no accident surely that the proliferation of entitlements has coincided with the decline of moral objectivity.  One of the defining features of moral objectivity is that it identified rights and wrongs that were not determined simply by our desires.  Indeed, rights and wrongs were often enough diametrically opposed to our desires.  Not only that, it was expected that people would do what is right even though they felt very much inclined to act otherwise.

The decline of moral objectivity created a moral vacuum; and increasingly that moral vacuum has been filled with the desires that people have.

Even moral if the idea of moral objectivity as people once embraced it is indefensible, this much is clear: It is even more indefensible to base entitlements merely upon desires.

In order to have a stable society, there has to be well-defined limits to the claims that people can make upon both society and one another.  And that is impossible if desires alone suffice to generate entitlements.

It goes without saying, if course, that not all desires are held to give rise to entitlements.  No one thinks, for instance, that the pedophile is entitled to have sexual access to young children merely because he desires them.  And this example is telling.  For it is not the desires of the child that makes pedophilia wrong, since the typical child is shorn of desires regarding sexuality one way or the other.  And certainly pedophilia would be wrong even if most adult human beings did not think so.

More generally, insofar as children should be protected, this truth cannot be ground merely in desires.

The preceding remarks are illuminating in another direction.  The very idea of entitlements is supposed to speak to something that is both very deep and precious about human beings.  Innocent children can be seen as a representation of this truth.  They are surely precious.  They cannot speak for themselves; they cannot protect and provide for themselves.  Yet, in the spirit of H. L. A. Hart, if there are creatures who have natural rights, surely children do.  The present tendency to base entitlements upon desires is at odds with this truth; and that is good reason to think that it is considerably misguided.

Now, there is an interesting irony here.  As adults increasingly advance a view of entitlements tied to the satisfaction of their desires, whereby they (the adults) increasingly excuse the ways in which they are neglecting their children, it turns out that children are increasingly feeling less and less gratitude towards their parents.

The sentiment of gratitude requires a nourishing environment; and a world of entitlement based merely upon desires cannot provide any such environment.  Indeed, a world of entitlement based merely upon desires is rather like moral quicksand in that it is incapable of withstanding the weight of those obligations that we all owe to one another, whether we like it or not.  Gratitude is owed to those who embrace those obligations with grace, goodwill and purity of heart, because their respect for the other has been forged in their loins.

As the front runner in the democratic primary, Hilary Clinton’s claim that she is not being treated fairly because she is a woman is utterly appalling, and so most inexcusable.  And if I had been inclined to vote for her, I would surely now be disinclined to do so.  I would not want a woman for president who needs to rely upon charges of sexism in order to silence or, at any rate, to attempt to silence her critics.  The very idea of victory by any means, including unwarranted charges of sexism, is most despicable on various fronts.

To begin with, there is the simple truth that we have enough genuine injustices in the world to occupy us for a very long time.  We should not muddy the moral and political waters by making false charges of injustice.  For that is a grievous form of injustice in and of itself.  It is to engage in a form of malicious character assassination.

For another, making false charges, be they regarding sexism or racism or whatever, sets a horrendous moral example.  Furthermore, doing so bespeaks a profound lack of moral integrity.

The issue is not whether there is sexism in the world.  Of course, there is.  Rather, the issue is whether Ms. Clinton has been a victim of sexism in her bid for the democratic presidential candidate by the other candidates and reporters.  And there is absolutely no evidence of that at all.  She has enjoyed extraordinary privilege and clout.

On the issue of whether illegal immigrants should be granted a driver’s license, as Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York wants to institute, Hilary Clinton equivocated mightily.  And it was not at all unfair of anyone to zero in on this fact.  This is a major issue; and where she stands on the matter is rightly taken to be of great national interest.

Clinton wanted to be in support of Spitzer’s proposal in order to have his support but yet not quite be in support of the idea giving a driver’s license to illegal immigrants as such.  Which part of drawing attention to this glaring inconsistency is sexist?

Barack Obama may be surprised that blacks are not giving him nearly 100% of their support.  But he has not been foolish enough to suggest that blacks who fail to support him are Uncle Toms or servile or ashamed of their African heritage or whatever.  And this is to his credit, though it is far from obvious to me why either he or his wife, Michelle Obama, should expect support from blacks merely because he, candidate Obama, is black.  I did not know that skin color counted as a qualification for the presidency.

And if the idea is that some sort of ethnic solidarity requires blacks to vote for Obama, then it is not clear to me how the Obama campaign could expect whites to vote for Obama.  And once we have privileged ethnic identity, why on earth should we stop there.  Let us go for gender identity, too.  This is all absurd.  Besides, I digress.

Although Michelle Obama has expressed her indignation that blacks are not running to Obama on the order of some sort of Pavlov-like reaction, Barack Obama must be given credit for not having expressed such a stupid view and a blatantly indefensible view.

But back to Ms. Clinton.  An ounce of foresight suggests that she is doing herself more harm than good by playing the “sexism card”, precisely because she makes herself look weak.  The stakes are high; and the males in the campaign are not going to refrain from going after her because she makes the charge of sexism.  Quite the contrary, she give them a reason to continue their pursuit in the hopes that she will continue to call attention to the fact that she is a woman by making the charge of sexism.

As for Governor Spitzer’s proposal: It is obviously a red herring for her.  By that is her problem and not anyone else’s.  And her campaign ought to have been smart enough to have talked to Spitzer about this at the outset.

So it is now apparent that she is a bit inept.  For it is does not take an Einstein to figure out that the Spitzer proposal raises deep, deep issues for the presidential election—especially for a New York member of the United States Senate who is running for president.  Her campaign ought to have brought Spitzer’s silence by promising him a key position in the cabinet.  This would have been the savvy thing to do.  Or would that have been too much to expect from a woman such as Mrs. Hilary Clinton?  People who make charges of racism or sexism, whenever it is convenient to do so, make for awful leaders.  They do not inspire confidence; and they cannot be trusted.

The hope of a better America does not lie in a presidential candidate who is willing to sully people’s character with the charge of sexism in order to secure power or to block criticism.  Quite the contrary, the country suffers a major moral setback should any such person obtain the Oval Office.

A most provocative thesis advanced by many blacks is that blacks cannot be racist.  What makes this thesis so provocative is that it seems so incredulous.  How, one rightly asks, did it turn out that any and everyone can be racist except blacks.  Being mere mortals, themselves, what possible consideration might lend one iota of support to the thesis that blacks cannot be racist?  As I shall show, although there is a very strict sense in which the thesis might be true, blacks cannot take any comfort in that truth.

If by definition a racist is someone who thinks that people are morally or intellectually inferior in virtue of their ethnic make-up, then it is arguable that whatever the attitude of hostility that many blacks have towards whites might be, that attitude cannot be rightly labeled racist.  Why?  Because it is not generally believed by blacks that whites are either morally or intellectually inferior in virtue of being white.  Blacks could believe this; and it has sometimes seemed that this is in fact what the Nation of Islam actually believes.  Still, it has to be acknowledged that for the most part blacks believe no such thing.

But if by the strict definition above it follows that most blacks are not racist towards whites, what also follows, however, turns out to be, at once, quite disturbing and quite illuminating. (more…)