AlterNet.org

AlterNet / By Adam Lee

Believers Think We Need Religion to Behave Like Good, Moral People -- Here's Why They're Wrong

Morality is real, objective, and perfectly compatible with a worldview that includes nothing spooky, mystical or supernatural. 

 

August 24, 2011  |  

 

 

The most common stereotype about atheists, the most common reason why religious people fear and distrust us, is the belief that people who don't believe in God have no reason to behave morally. In the view of the planet's major religions, the way we know what's right and what's wrong is that God tells us so, and the reason we follow the rules is because we fear divine retribution if we break them. This worldview is simple and emotionally satisfying and to those who believe it, it's a natural implication that a person who no longer believes in God has no reason not to indulge their every selfish desire.

Now, I've never claimed to speak for every atheist. Because nonbelievers are a diverse and quarrelsome lot, there may in fact be a few who think this way. But if there are, they're staying well hidden. The vast majority of atheists, like the majority of human beings in general, are perfectly good and decent people. This should be no surprise, as the evidence shows that human beings all tend to have similar moral intuitions, regardless of whether we profess a religion. But that doesn't address how an atheist justifies acting morally. When we're wrestling with an ethical dilemma, how do we make up our minds? What can nonbelievers appeal to as a reason for their action?

Again, atheists are a diverse bunch. There are some who would argue that morality is just an opinion, a mere matter of taste, like preferring vanilla ice cream to chocolate. But I reject this view, just as I reject the view that morality can only come from obeying what people believe to be God's will. I believe that morality is real, that it's objective, and that it's a thoroughly natural phenomenon that's perfectly compatible with a worldview that includes nothing spooky, mystical, or supernatural.

To see how this can be, consider the question from another angle: What's the point of morality? What quality are we trying to bring more of into the world?

The problem with most common answers to this question is that they're arbitrary. If your answer is something like freedom or justice or familial duty or piety, you can always ask why we should care about that quality and not a different one. Why should we care about freedom more than stability? Why should we care about free speech more than harmony? There obviously can't be an infinite regress of justifications, but we should keep asking the question as long as it can be meaningfully answered. And if you do keep asking, there's only one answer you'll find at the bottom.

The only quality that's immune to this question is happiness. You can ask someone, "Why do you want (good friends/a loving family/a fulfilling job/etc.)?" and the answer is, "Because it will make me happy," but it's meaningless to ask, "Why do you want to be happy?" Happiness is its own justification, the only quality in human experience that we value purely for its own sake. Even theists who say that morality is based on following God's commands, whether they realize it or not, are really basing their morality on happiness. After all, if you should do what God says because you'll go to heaven if you do and to hell if you don't, what is this if not a claim about which actions will or won't lead to happiness?

This is my answer to moral anti-realists who say that facts are out there in the world, waiting to be discovered, but morality isn't. They rightly point out that there's no elementary particle of good or evil, that it would be bizarre to have a moral commandment -- an "ought" -- just hovering there, hanging over us with no prior explanation for its existence. This is a spooky, mystical, weird notion, and they're right to reject it. But as I've said, this only applies to arbitrary qualities chosen as the basis of morality with no real justification. Happiness is not an arbitrary choice; by definition, it's what we all wish for. This, then, is where that "ought" comes from. It comes from us: from our essential nature as human beings and from the fact that we all have this basic desire in common.

My definition of happiness isn't just physical well-being or pleasure of the senses. Nor is it limited to economic stability, or meaningful human relationships, or productive achievement. Rather, it's a balanced approach that includes all of these and more besides. Some might charge that this is too vague, but I'd answer that any moral theory which reflects the almost limitless variety of human experience is bound to be multivariate, sprawling and diverse, and not reducible to a single number on a measuring stick. As the neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris notes, "health" is a similarly broad concept -- the inability to leap three feet straight up could be perfectly normal for me, while for an NBA player, it could be a sign of crippling injury -- but no one would argue that therefore the concept of health is too poorly defined to base the entire field of medicine on.

The next question is I should care about other people's happiness, rather than just my own. In theory, you could use happiness as the basis of morality and construct an Ayn Rand-type moral system where everyone is perfectly selfish and cares only about themselves. But the problem with this is that human beings are intrinsically social creatures, designed by evolution to live in groups, which is why people who are deprived of contact with others, like prisoners in solitary confinement, tend to go insane in short order. Our social nature gives rise to the phenomenon of emotional contagion: for better or for worse, we're affected by the moods of those around us.

This means that, if you value your own happiness, it's not in your interest to live in a society where it can only be achieved by the downfall of others. Friendly competition has its place, but there's greater potential for happiness in a society structured to encourage cooperation and reciprocal altruism, one where we can achieve more by working together rather than fighting against each other. If your success is others' success as well, they'll have every reason to work with you and assist you, rather than opposing you and impeding you from achieving your goals. Regardless of what you personally desire, the best thing for you is to live in a society that values honesty, generosity, fairness and the like. A rational being will always come to this conclusion, regardless of their own desires.

One more key piece of this moral synthesis is that we should choose our actions so as to create not just the least actual suffering and the most actual happiness for those immediately involved, but the least potential suffering and greatest potential happiness. In short, this moral system asks us to care not just about the immediate impact of our actions, but the precedent they set down the line, which establishes a basis for principles like human rights. Even if you can come up with contrived and unlikely scenarios where a temporary gain in happiness could be realized by violating a fundamental right like free speech, in the long run, it's far better for all of us to live in a society that respects those principles.

Now, I acknowledge that this argument won't win everyone over. If there's someone who believes that happiness can't be proven to be the highest good, there's little I can say to them. But then again, no rational system can derive its starting principles out of thin air. Every field of human inquiry, from science to history to mathematics, is based on assumptions that a stubborn person could reject. Just as a morality denier could say, "Why should I care about happiness?", a science denier could say, "Why should I care about the scientific method?" The only answer you could give that person is that science works -- it discovers truths about the world, and thereby makes it possible for us to achieve our desires.

And the same is true of morality. The only real, practical reason for believing in it and adopting it is because it works -- because it makes the world more free, more fair, more peaceful, and makes it possible for more people to lead happy and fulfilling lives. In this respect, morality could even be seen as another field of science, like a subdomain of anthropology or sociology: the study of how best to promote human flourishing.
With these basic ingredients, we can build a moral system that's completely secular and religion-neutral, one that's in no way dependent on following the decrees of a holy book or a religious authority. By always seeking to bring about the greatest happiness, we have a guide for what we should do in any situation, one that's rooted in human nature and based on something real and measurable.

That said, I want to emphasize that I don't claim to possess the definitive answer to every ethical problem. The theory of morality I've sketched here is more like the scientific method: not a list of claims to be taken as dogma, but a way of thinking about certain kinds of problems. It still requires people to evaluate evidence, offer reasoned arguments and use their own judgment, and I consider this a point in its favor.

But even in its broadest strokes, a world where everyone agreed on the goal of advancing human happiness would be dramatically different from the world we live in now. In this society, other, more selfish goals -- increasing the wealth of the wealthy and the power of the powerful, maintaining the privilege of the few at the expense of the many -- often interfere and cause suffering and inequality to persist. But a world where happiness was the primary goal, and where every human being's happiness was judged to be of equal value, would necessarily entail some major changes.

It would be a world of democracy, where all people have a say in how their society is governed, and where human rights are fixed and inviolable. It would be a world of free enterprise, where people succeed on the basis of effort and merit; but it would also be a progressive world with a strong safety net and a more equal distribution of wealth and resources, rather than the law-of-the-jungle capitalism championed by libertarians or the Dickensian dystopia sought by Tea Party conservatives. It would be a world that valued sustainability and environmental conservation for the sake of future generations that have yet to come into existence, but whose happiness matters no less than our own despite that.

It would be a world in which all people have access to education and the other public goods needed to develop their talents to their fullest extent; since, after all, a society where everyone is educated, productive and prosperous offers far more potential for happiness than a world with a vast gap between rich and poor, where people succeed or fail based on accidents of birth. For the same reason, it would be a world of free choice, where no woman would ever become pregnant against her will, where population is sustainable and every child is wanted and cared for.

And, most of all, this would be a secular world. Whether religion still existed or not, it would be a private and individual matter, not the loud, overbearing presence in public affairs that it currently has, and moral rules based purely on religious belief would fade away. As I said earlier, most religious moralities are also based on happiness; but their error is that they arrive at moral decisions through unverifiable private faith, rather than facts and evidence that can be demonstrated to anyone's satisfaction. The fact that the world's longest-running, most destructive and most intractable conflicts all stem from religion only highlights this problem... and in a world built on secular reason and compassion rather than faith, it's entirely possible that these would finally cease.

Imagine a world where the sun rises on olive trees and vineyards growing where once there was barbed wire and checkpoints; a world where religious terrorism is unknown and the holy books that preach war and vengeance on the infidels peacefully gather dust on shelves. In this world, the churches, mosques and temples, institutions which teach doctrines that divide people from each other, will have become libraries and museums, institutions that teach wisdom and advance the common good; and human beings care about each other's happiness in the present, rather than looking wistfully to an afterlife where evil will be eradicated.

I freely admit this is a utopian vision. But even if it's unattainable, it still has value as a guide, a best-possible outcome that we should try to approach as closely as we can. If every person was willing to work together, it wouldn't take much effort at all to create a better world. All I'm suggesting is that we each do the small part that would be required of us in that ideal scenario. As the great orator and freethinker Robert Ingersoll said, we can all help "toward covering this world with the mantle of joy." What higher purpose, what deeper meaning, could you ask for in a human lifetime, regardless of what you do or don't believe?

The Daily Beast

Are Ethics for Suckers?

When even Warren Buffett looks bad, the financial world is begging for a backlash. In this week's Newsweek, Joanne Lipman looks at the increasing moral bankruptcy of Wall Street.

Apr 10, 2011 8:01 PM EDT

If there's anything that Warren Buffett has prized more than his billions, it's his company's reputation. Which is why there was a collective gasp of betrayal when Buffett's onetime heir apparent, David Sokol, resigned in the aftermath of pocketing $3 million from trading in the stock of a chemical company Berkshire was acquiring. Buffett furiously spun the departure, insisting nothing "unlawful" transpired. In a Reuters survey of 23 top bankers, 21 said Sokol's trades looked ethically wrong to them, yet only one in five expected any insider-trading charges to be brought. The incident has raised the question, yet again, about what it takes to succeed in finance. Do bankers think of the law as something to be scoffed at and ethics as only for suckers? Increasingly, even veteran investors say the answer is an outraged "yes."

A trader scurries across the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at the closing bell, Friday, March 18, 2011. (AP Photo)

"What you're seeing on Wall Street is disgusting," says Vanguard Group founder John Bogle. "Not so many years ago there were some things one simply didn't do. Period. And that's evolved into moral relativism, into 'When everybody else is doing it, I can do it too.' I've only been in this business 60 years," adds Bogle, and it is "absolutely" worse now than before. He believes that "we have a societal problem, not just a Wall Street problem. But like other problems it gets magnified beyond belief on Wall Street, where the money is." Former Goldman Sachs chief John Whitehead also told Newsweek that ethical standards have slipped, as did former PaineWebber CEO Donald Marron. "We're dealing with more difficult problems than ever before, and it's simply harder to maintain standards of ethics and doing business," says Whitehead, who ran Goldman until 1984. Both Whitehead and Marron say most players are honest. "The vast majority of business," says Marron, "is done at very high ethical standards."

And yet, if you wanted to design a psychology experiment to tempt otherwise honest people to cross an ethical line, it would be hard to beat Wall Street. "It's the culture of success," says Jeffrey Leeds, president of Leeds Equity Partners, a private-equity fund. "Where people are playing for super-high stakes and where you're attracting alpha men and women, you're going to see more people tend to bend the rules, because what you get for success is out of proportion." Perhaps in no other business is there more tension between the rules and the incentives. For starters, investors are both banned from trading on nonpublic information—and rewarded for getting that information first. "The idea that no one can do anything until it's disclosed to the market—that's really not possible. It's an impossible ethical rule," says Eric Orts, a legal-studies and business-ethics professor at Wharton. At the least, there must be hard-and-fast laws about insider trading, right? Nope. "There are a number of gray areas," says Orts. "One of the problems is that insider trading has never really been defined by Congress."

If you wanted to design a psychology experiment to tempt otherwise honest people to cross an ethical line, it would be hard to beat Wall Street.

Complicating matters is the growth of the financial markets. "The scale of Wall Street is bigger by several orders of magnitude," says Marron. "Many more entities are touched by it: pension funds, endowments, 401(k)s. There's no question that the geometric growth of the money and scope of Wall Street has put a strain on ethics and business." Whitehead says that when he was at Goldman, the firm shunned dubious business practices like financing hostile takeovers. "Goldman Sachs became known for its integrity and not doing the thing that made the most money." And how does he feel about the firm now that it's been cast as an empire of greed? "The damage to their reputation saddens me," he says.

Will anything chasten Wall Street? Oliver Budde, a former Lehman Brothers lawyer, says many bankers "really feel awful about what they do," but "there's this other dynamic of 'Look, if we don't do it, then someone else will do it.' " As he puts it: "Morals, ethics—that's not their job. The view on the Street is that that's Congress's job." Washington, are you listening?

Joanne Lipman founded and was editor in chief of Condé Nast Portfolio, the National Magazine Award-winning business magazine and website. Previously, Lipman was a deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, where she created and was editor in chief of Weekend Journal and created Personal Journal. She is a frequent television commentator on business issues.

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Slashing Programs for the Poor while Exempting the Rich

HUFFPOST

Jim Wallis

The Moral Default

The debate we have just witnessed has shown Washington, D.C. not just to be broken, but corrupt. The American people are disgusted watching politicians play political chicken with the nation's economy and future. In such a bitter and unprincipled atmosphere, whoever has the political clout to enforce their self-interest and retain their privileges wins the battles. But there are two casualties in such political warfare: the common good and the most vulnerable.

So how will vulnerable people fair under this deal? "The Circle of Protection," a diverse nonpartisan movement of Christian leaders, has been deeply engaged in the budget debate to uphold the principle that low-income people should be protected. But it is hard to evaluate a deal that averts a crisis when the crisis wasn't necessary in the first place. Over the past few weeks, our economy has indeed been held hostage as politicians negotiated the price of the release. Ultimately, I think most of us wish that no hostages had been taken in the first place, and this was no way to run a government or make important budget decisions.

The deal just passed by the House and Senate raises the debt ceiling with enough room that the issue won't have to be revisited until 2013. The first phase is a set of agreed upon cuts of nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years. The second phase sets up a committee of legislators that is tasked with finding another $1.5 trillion in cuts over the same time period. If the committee fails to come up with a deal then a "trigger" is pulled and automatic cuts are enacted. These triggered cuts are designed to be distasteful enough that, in theory, both sides will stay at the table until they have an agreement.

It appears that the voice of the faith community was at least heard and made some difference in the outcome of the default debate. We met with the President and Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and all of them fought to defend low-income people as we asked them to do. The White House protected low-income entitlement programs from automatic cuts in the "trigger" and successfully defended Medicaid. We also pleaded for low-income people in meetings with Republican Paul Ryan and with the staffs of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. They told us they agreed with the principle but did not uphold it in their final proposals. We hope and pray that the protestations of the faith community will work on the hearts of both Republicans and Democrats as the details of this plan are worked out.

Genuinely reforming federal programs, including entitlements, with a special eye to protect the most vulnerable, is something the faith community has supported; but slashing programs for the poor while exempting the rich from sacrifice is repugnant to our spiritual values and contrary to scripture. This plan could still go either way.

The most glaring problem with the deal is that it doesn't, at this point, include revenues. There is no balancing between spending cuts and tax increases, and this deal, so far, falls completely on the side of spending cuts. It is possible that revenues will be revisited in the new super committee, but given the insistence of a cuts-only approach by the Republican leaders, it is not clear how likely a more balanced approach will be.

Corporate tax loop holes for the very rich were protected, while the core safety net for the most vulnerable is still in great jeopardy. The private jet industry mobilized to protect its tax deductions, the most profitable oil companies in the country will continue to get their public money for offshore drilling subsidies. But programs like WIC and SNAP, which provide critical nutrition help for low-income mothers and their kids, or malaria bed nets and vaccinations for children in Africa, are threatened. If the wealthy are not asked to share in the sacrifice, then cuts will undoubtedly come from those who can least afford it. But if sacrifice is shared, we can both reduce the deficit and reduce poverty as our country has done before.

We heard from those inside the negotiations that the voice of the faith community was heard: Your voice mattered. People across the country who joined the "Circle of Protection" have shown that poor people do have a constituency looking out for them -- and that's what matters in these debates according to the people involved in them.

This national debate about our priorities and, indeed, our character, is far from over. When all is said and done in any final deal, the faith community will be watching to see if the most vulnerable are being protected or savaged for the financial sins of the rest of us. If low-income people are not exempted from deficit reduction, the result will be a fundamental moral default. And, with your help, we will continue to remind our legislators to remember that God is watching them too.

Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: A Guide for Economic and Moral Recovery, and CEO of Sojourners. He blogs at www.godspolitics.com. Follow Jim on Twitter @JimWallis.

Time to Reset Our Progressive Moral Compass

Published on Saturday, July 30, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Time to Reset Our Moral Compass

by Norman Mathews

Progressives are suffering from debilitating cognitive dissonance. Incapable of reconciling President Obama’s rhetoric with his actions, they have created an elaborate, but flimsy, structure of rationales to harmonize this dissonance. These rationales began shortly after Obama took office, with progressives blaming all those nasty triangulating, progress-by-tiny-increment advisers from the Clinton Administration, who were leading him astray from his principles. From the outset, the Administration supplied it’s own excuses for its failure to achieve audacious goals: “Change comes slowly” and “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Then, despite control of the House and a sizable Democratic majority in the Senate, the party was deemed the problem, because it couldn’t keep its troops in line to get the 60 votes required to pass his agenda. This morphed into a much larger obstacle—the Republicans, following the 2010 landslide. In the recent debt-ceiling debate (and particularly with progressives’ denial that he would actually cut Social Security and Medicare) we’ve seen a rebirth of the meme: “He's playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.” Numerous current articles indicate that we now face an epidemic of “he’s just not a competent negotiator” rationale.

In the 1930s, Dorothy Parker said, “Which is worse—the perpetrators of injustice or those who are blind to it?”Glenn Greenwald adroitly addressed this in his April 14, Salon.com article, “Why Do We Assume Obama’s Actually Trying to Enact a Progressive Agenda.” The crisis is now so threatening that a rational mind can no longer make such excuses credible. His supporters correctly maintain that he’s a man of extraordinary intelligence. They seem blissfully unaware that it is impossible to hold this belief concurrently with the notion that he is just not capable of learning the most basic negotiation skills, or that his advisers, who have been both hardened politicians and businessmen and who, after all, include a vice president who was a senator since 1972, are incapable of instructing him in these arts.

Let’s look at the argument that his advisers are preventing him from delivering on campaign promises. Name a manager any field who is not held ultimately responsible for hiring choices. Again, if we assume that the fault is with the advisers, we must concede that Obama was so politically ill informed or did such a poor job interviewing these people that he had no idea what they stood for—not to mention that he refused to fire them upon learning they were reading from a different play script. Further, we would have to entertain the absurd idea that he is powerless to override his appointees’ suggestions. Beyond that, we would have to acknowledge that not only did he make poor choices with his first appointments, but also that he chose badly the second time around, i.e. William Daley and Jeffrey Immelt.

We are long past the expiration date for denying that the Obama we now know— through his actions rather than his words —is anything other than the real Obama. We must come to grips with the fact that much of the rhetoric we heard during the campaign was fraudulent—or more charitably, that we heard only what we wanted to hear. How many ominous signals did we ignore during the campaign?

• The choice of Joe Lieberman as his mentor in the Senate. And his campaign on behalf of Lieberman over the anti-war candidate Ned Lamont.

• NAFTA. Obama professed to seeking changes in this trade law, but when he was about to give a speech in Ohio (a state devastated by NAFTA), Austin Goolsbee delivered a message to Michael Wilson, Canada’s Ambassador to the U.S., that his criticisms of the agreement should be considered campaign rhetoric, not to be taken too seriously.

• Reagan as hero: "I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.”

• FISA. Though an Obama campaign statement declared, “Senator Obama is unequivocally opposed to retroactive immunity,” for telecom companies participating in Bush’s warrantless wiretappging, he still voted in the telecoms’ favor.

• Safety net. Politico pointed out before inauguration that Obama echoed “Bush’s claim of an entitlement ‘crisis’, warning of ‘red ink as far as the eye can see’ in Social Security and Medicare. Obama promised that those programs would be a ‘central part’ of his plan to reduce the federal deficit.”

Should liberals blame themselves, as so many are suggesting, for missing these red flags? How can we when so many were convinced of his sincerity? He is the most gifted orator in generations. He made us hear what he wanted us to hear. We so needed to find hope after eight dispiriting years under Bush that we had to believe—the alternative, that he was just another slick-talking politician, would have been nihilistic.

We must stop making excuses for him and stop blaming ourselves for blindly supporting him. Rather, our fault lies in not holding him accountable and pushing back firmly when early in his presidency it was clear that he was not putting up even an appearance of fighting for the changes he promised.

If memory serves, it was during a press conference in which he was defending himself against socialism charges that he astoundingly said: “In many places in the world, I would be considered a conservative.” This may be the most revealingly honest statement he has made, but it’s certainly not what his campaign was about.

By continuing to absolve him, we are unable to move forward with any progressive policies or to demonstrate to Congressional Democrats that we still hold firm beliefs in justice and fairness. The madness of the Republicans has lowered the bar to such an extent that Obama’s capitulations seem sensible by comparison. In the 1930s, Dorothy Parker said, “Which is worse—the perpetrators of injustice or those who are blind to it?” Friends complained about Bush’s war mongering and civil rights abuses, declaring, “Not in my name, do you do this.” Now Obama is expanding these wars (note the Administration’s drive to convince Iraqis to let our troops remain beyond the signed deadline—and remember, ending the Iraq war was central to his campaign). He also is accelerating civil rights abuses, yet I hear not a word of criticism from these same friends. Our silence is surely leading to the death of liberalism—and of hope. What sort of moral compass allows us to condemn actions by one administration only to be silent (complicit?) when our own candidate commits them?

We sit passively as Obama appears intent on proving that his hero, Ronald Reagan, was right: “Government IS the problem.” Progressives must not allow this to happen.

Norman Mathews is an award-winning composer and playwright. He has written for the concert stage and the musical theatre. He has been news editor for Dance Magazine and managing editor of Sylvia Porter's Personal Finance Magazine.

There is No Lesser Between Evils

Evilism: There Is No Lesser

The Left Can Pose Its Own Challenges to Ron Paul

by Kim Petersen / July 29th, 2011

At the beginning of his essay, “Ron Paul’s Challenge to the Left,” John Walsh writes, “On the question of war and empire, the Republican presidential candidates from Romney to Bachmann are clones of Obama, just as surely as Obama is a clone of Bush.” Hence the contention of my title, there is little substantive difference between the Republicans and Democrats; they are both corporate dominated and controlled parties. As futile as lesser evilism is, it is also futile to talk about there being a lesser evilism between the two utterly dominant political parties in the United States.¹

Walsh argues there is a difference: “Rep. Ron Paul (R, TX) the only contender who is a consistent, principled anti-interventionist, opposed to overseas Empire, and a staunch defender of our civil liberties so imperiled since 9/11.” His argument is that because Ron Paul is anti-war that the Left should embrace his candidature, and he views it as a challenge to the Left.²

Without a doubt, any president that would put an end to the imperialist wars being waged by the US would be light years better than a slew of corporate-backed warmongers that have long sat in the White House, including Obama. This means that a future president Paul, insofar as he would and could implement a policy of no wars, is far preferable to the irredeemable warmonger Barack Obama, who curries negligible favor among progressives.

Paul, however, carries a regressivist side with him that many progressives consider anathema. I consider Paul’s ideology as anti-human, basically every man and woman for his/her self.³ Under Paul, tough luck for those people that fall through the cracks.

Yet Walsh makes the case that Paul is the moral choice. However, based on Paul’s libertarian ideology (which he, arguably, does not always adhere to), the morality of a Paul presidency is open to criticism.

Walsh asks, “Is not the very first obligation of the Left above and beyond all else to stop the killing, done in our name and with our tax dollars? Is any other stance moral? And does not the Paul candidacy need to be seen in this light?”

The Paul candidacy needs to be seen in the light of all his stances and the morality of all those stances. Morality is not a unitary, single issue.

Thus, insofar as participating in rigged elections is a correct strategy, if there were a candidate who is anti-war and progressive on other issues, would not the moral choice be to vote for that candidate? For example, if Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney were to run again?

Nevertheless, should no progressivist candidate stand for the next presidential election, can one argue seriously that lesser evilism is a moral choice?

Obama is not a lesser evil. He is on par with any other Republican candidate — with one exception. Based on Paul’s anti-war stance, it appears that he is a lesser evil to Obama (or any other Republican candidate). Does that make Paul the best candidate to vote for?

Two quotations stand out well for me about the dangers of lesser evilism. Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián warned: “Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other ones invariably slink in after it.”

Lesser evilism has pushed most parties to the Right. The lesson of lesson evilism is that if a party wants to grab a section of the Right, it appeals to with receptiveness to certain rightist issues, believing that it can hold onto whatever leftist base it has because there is no other viable alternative. The result worldwide has been a slide to the right among all prominent political parties. In the US, the Democrats have slid side-by-side with the Republicans; in Canada there is little to distinguish the Conservatives and the Liberals (and the so-called leftist New Democrats are hardly what I would call a part of the Left, at best right of center); in the United Kingdom, the Blairites shoved the Labour Party over toward the Conservatives (and the Liberal Democrats work hand-in-hand with the Conservatives to form a government); in Germany the Social Democratic Party slid to the Right under Gerhard Schröder; etc. What this rightward shift did is vanish, neuter, or marginalize a leftist electoral option. This phenomenon, occurring far and wide, has paved the way for neoliberalism — an extreme form of capitalism — that has caused the middle and lower socioeconomic classes to fall farther behind.

By sliding to the Right, only the corporatocracy wins. Lesser evilism in the form of a Ron Paul government might result in a roll back of the US military — admittedly a stupendous achievement. However, a rightward drift economically might fuel xenophobia, blaming outsiders for the problems caused by right-wing economic policy. This sentiment eases launching of wars against outsiders. Paul does appeal to a base that fears immigration. Moreover, the Tea Partiers, whose support Paul is courting, contradictorily call for reining in government but supporting militarism — a huge drain on the public purse.

Only by holding onto it principles and political goals will the Left, in the long-term, be able to realize its goals in government.

If lesser evilism opens the doors to other evils, then British preacher Charles Spurgeon opted correctly when he stated, “Of two evils, choose neither.”⁴

1. See Kim Petersen, “The Utter Futility of Lesser Evilism,” Dissident Voice, 24 May 2007. [↩]
2. Charles Davis earlier made the argument that Ron Paul is a lesser evil compared to Obama. “Ron Paul: A Lesser Evil?” Dissident Voice, 28 April 2011. [↩]
3. See Pham Binh, “Don’t Fall for Ron Paul,” Dissident Voice, 16 May 2011. [↩]
4. See Kim Petersen, “The Lesser-of-Two Evils,” Dissident Voice, 19 April 2004. [↩]

Kim Petersen is co-editor of Dissident Voice. He can be reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org. Read other articles by Kim.

This article was posted on Friday, July 29th, 2011 at 8:02am and is filed under "Third" Party, Anti-war, Democracy, Elections.

Education, Ethics, and Equality

by Kim Petersen / July 18th, 2011

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Our morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.

To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education.

– Albert Einstein¹

While at university, I was once required to write an essay on personal ethics to guide an educator. Of course ethics entailed respect for the rights of all humans, but mere respect for rights is insufficient.

Each person must decide on which principles they hold and abide by them as much as possible.

I propose the following as a simple basis for making decisions that have ethical consequences.

1) Respect that others abide by different principles. Therefore, before rendering any decision, the reasons held by others for or against any action must be heard and considered.

2) Principles must be open to scrutiny. If a superior conception of a principle exists, then an inferior principle must be abandoned.

3) Given that a principle is morally and logically sound, decisions should be rendered upon this principled basis.

4) Since mass participatory democracy is preferable to dictatorship, decision-making should be achieved, as much as possible, through a consensus.

As for my personal ethics, I hold that all humans must be not only regarded as endowed with equal rights but provided with equal conditions. The United States Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal.” This is factually inaccurate. We are all created unique, each person with his own strengths and weaknesses. From this mindset, how “we” value certain attributes determines how “we” view equality among humans. Society² values certain attributes more than others; consequently, individuals proficient in certain skills or possessing other attributes valued by society will be treated differently than individuals who do not possess society’s valued skills or attributes.

The phrase “all men are created equal” is obviously a platitude. It would have been much more honest to simply state that we are all different; nevertheless, we are all entitled to equal rights – and importantly, because it is not stated in the Declaration of Independence – equal conditions. (The Declaration of Independence undermines itself by referring to the Indigenous peoples of “America” as “merciless Indian Savages.” This is pertinent because it is a document held sacred by most Americans; and Americans and Canadians hold a similar — not identical — colonial origin and culture.)

That everyone is entitled to equal conditions is seldom stated as a principle in society. This is not surprising because it does not exist, and this is unsurprising because it thoroughly undermines all notions of equality in society. Canadian society is capitalist (with socialist elements). Theoretically, capitalist society is predicated on competition in the market, and current capitalist mythology holds that anyone with skills who works hard enough can make it to the top of society. There is a top and there is a bottom. That fact that there is a top of society, itself, refutes the notion of equality.

Yet, it is simple to demonstrate that equality of conditions is a sine qua non of a society where equality of rights exists. For example, very few people would argue that a 100-meter race where some runners start from positions far behind the start line is fair. It is axiomatic. Very few people would argue that a professional boxing match between a heavyweight and flyweight is fair.

Yet, many people — and most educators!! — think it is fair to grade children using identical parameters, despite the inequality of their conditions. In the education system, a child from a poor, single-parent family who is poorly fed, often going to school in the mornings with an empty stomach, and who must help out his parent will be assessed the same as a child from a wealthy, loving family where both parents are professionals and the shelves are filled with books and educational DVDs. Is this fair? I submit it is not, but the system requires educators grade regardless of conditions outside the classroom.

The obvious solution seems to recognize the inequality of conditions and reflect this in the assessment of students. Better would be to provide for equality of conditions.

Not only is a system of testing and grading unfair but it is inefficient, as study after study shows that cooperation is superior to competition in promoting achievement.

Cooperation is something that should be fostered in society. Therefore, the imposition of competitive grading should be eliminated and cooperative learning encouraged. It seems sufficient that students can decide upon their own goals and plan (with facilitation from a teacher/parent) their paths to their goals.

Yet education is fraught with authoritarianism, and one consequence of this authoritarianism is that learners are taught that it is normal in society to wield power over others, often without accountability to those the power is being wielded over.

Hence, a discussion of ethics in education is rendered moot because education (in the mainstream of the capitalist system) is flawed by an unethical foundation.

1. Albert Einstein: The Human Side, Helen Dukas and Barnesh Hoffman (Eds.), Princeton University Press, 1979: 83. The quotation continues: “The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.” [↩]
2. Here I am not referring to the masses in society because society is not governed by the masses; society is a function of agendas set by owners of corporations and their political faces. [↩]

Kim Petersen is co-editor of Dissident Voice. He can be reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org. Read other articles by Kim.

This article was posted on Monday, July 18th, 2011 at 8:01am and is filed under Education, Philosophy, Students.

Should Sociopathic Behavior Be Criminalized?

Sociopathy

What is sociopathy? To many in the field of psychology this is an outdated term that was replaced the Antisocial Personality Disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (1994) or by the term psychopathy, which is most commonly associated with the work of Dr. Robert Hare. However, David Lykken describes sociopathy as a relevant concept and presents a fairly solid argument that sociopathy helps explain the alarming increase in violent crime in the last 50 years.

According to Lykken (1995), sociopaths are created by ineffective parenting and inadequate socialization during childhood and adolescence. Lykken continues by stating that there are four types of sociopaths.

Common Sociopaths

These individuals are created by poor parenting and develop a lack of remorse, shame and consistently break the rules of society.

Alienated Sociopaths

These individuals, again created through poor socialization, do not develop the capacity to love or form attachments with others. This creates a person that lacks empathy and can be quite callous with victims. Within the Alienated Type are four further subtypes.

Disaffiliated Type

Individuals of this subtype develop antisocial traits and an inability to relate emotionally to others, which affects relationships on a global level.

Disempathetic Type

Although these individuals are capable of demonstrating affection and attachments to relatives, friends, or spouses, they are prone to relate to others as objects. This serves a protective function due to childhood experiences of trauma, which can be viewed as being dissociative in nature and a form of desensitization.

Hostile Type

A hostile sociopath is an angry, resentful, and aggressive person that purposefully rejects the social norms and mores of society and displays antisocial and traditional psychopathic traits as a result of their hostile beliefs.

Cheated Type

Much like the hostile type, these individuals are hostile, antisocial and reject the norms and mores of society, but for different reasons. These individuals feel rejected by society due to real or perceived inadequacies, most likely learned through experiences with an abusive parent, which in later life create specific beliefs that rules do not apply to them because they have been wronged by others.

Aggressive Sociopaths

These are dangerous individuals that enjoy hurting others and can often be described as sadistic. Dominance and control are at the heart of their psychological needs, which are fulfilled by developing and maintaining traditional psychopathic traits as a means to obtain, degrade, hurt and sometimes kill victims.

Dyssocial Sociopaths

This type was probably created by Lykken as an afterthought to explain all other individuals that did not fit within the previously described types. According to Lykken, these individuals would not normally be a sociopath or psychopath, but found themselves involved with, relating to, and loyal to other sociopathic or psychopathic individuals. This loyalty influenced their own development or belief systems and they became sociopathic due to assimilation of beliefs.

Whether or not sociopathy is a valid concept can be argued, however as a person that has researched criminal behavior for many years, it is my opinion that not all individuals that demonstrate traditional psychopathic traits are born that way. Violence in our society is becoming commonplace and poor parenting as well as abuse of all sorts is a real problem facing children today. Violence on television and video games, in addition to increasing exposure to sexuality in early life may be creating sociopaths. It is difficult to study or predict, but with the increasing violence in our society it is becoming more difficult to state that psychopathic traits are genetic in nature.

References

American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Lykken, D.T. (1995). The antisocial personalities. Hillside, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.