D’Souza on authenticity
ToTheSource has sent out a brief essay by Dinesh D’Souza that gives some insight into the conservative majority’s point of view. I find myself agreeing with much of it, but then feel dismay and disappointment as D’Souza swerves, betraying a contempt for those with whom he disagrees. (I can’t find the essay online — what’s up with that, ToTheSource?)
He quickly traces the historical/philosophical roots of the notion that morality is grounded in following one’s inner voice. In his narrative, our inner voice gets increasingly removed from the larger, outer voice:
Augustine contends that God is the lamp that illuminates the inner soul. Rousseau broke with Augustine by severing this connection between the inner voice and any external authority. For Rousseau the inner voice is the sovereign and final authority.
This is the moral code that we have inherited today…
D’Souza avoids the easy rant against the “imperial self” (although the term gives away his attitude towards it):
…We are wrong to dismiss this as a mere affirmation of selfishness, a rejection of morality. It is a massive shift in the source of morality — away from the external order, toward the inner self. Nor should the new code be understood as relativism or nihilism. It does not affirm that “anything goes.,” It insists that the inner voice is morally authoritative and should be followed without question.
Yes, it isn’t “anything goes,” but the imperial self is still non-moral. Imagine that when we’re born, we “imprint” on the third person we see and believe that morality consists in being true to #3. That’s not “Anything goes, but it’s not moral. So, why is doing whatever #1 says any more moral than doing what the random #3 says? But D’Souza doesn’t draw that conclusion. Instead, he proffers what at first sounds like respect for this alternative view of morality:
I do not believe that this new ethic of the Imperial Self can be completely uprooted, as some people who bemoan the decline of the old moral consensus would like to do. But I am also concerned with the moral danger of conceding final moral authority to the Imperial Self. Human nature is flawed and the “voice within” is sometimes unreliable and sometimes wrong. As Immanuel Kant warned, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”
Perhaps a more practical goal is to contain, and perhaps to roll back, some of the excesses of the new ethic of authenticity. This involves a recovered sense of the moral sources that continue to inform our moral self-understanding, sources that can be found in our religious and ethical traditions but which have disappeared from our public debate. The urgent task at hand is to recognize the power of the new ethic of authenticity while steering it toward something higher, to ennoble the self by directing it toward the good.
There’s a bunch of signs and signals going on here. On the one hand, we have the imperial selves. D’Souza has made it clear earlier in the article who they are, for the imperial self:
…was first adopted by intellectuals and artists in England, France, and the United States. These elite groups, of the kind that dominated the Parisian café, the Bloomsbury society in England, and Greenwich Village in the United States, have been living according to the bohemian code for a long time. What changed in the 1960s is that these values, once confined to small enclaves in society, now became part of the social mainstream.
Then we have the traditionalists who “bemoan” the decline of the “old moral consensus.” Think: The preaching Christians who chastise and berate on the channels you skip over. D’Souza is distancing himself from them.
Then there are the moderns like D’Souza who recognize that ideas have histories and who adapt to modern practicalities. These moderns recognize that you can’t reform hippies; they’re always going to insist on “doing their own thing.” They’re too far gone to ever become truly moral the way D’Souza is. The best you can do is try to redirect the inner light to better moral goals.
There’s arrogance there. It’s one thing to think that following one’s inner light is only accidentally moral — like happening to imprint on a moral #3 — and another to recommend dealing with those who hold such a view as if they were children.
And there’s also some pernicious line-drawing by which only those who believe in a particular “external moral order” get to count as moral:
One can no longer make a public appeal to the external moral code. The Clinton sex scandals were clear proof of this: some Americans considered his actions morally scandalous, but others thought it was no big deal.
Say wha’? Many of us who thought that Clinton’s adulterous blow jobs and lies about said blow jobs were not enough of a big deal to impeach him but still think adultery and lying are morally wrong. Thinking that MonicaGate was blown out of proportion (so to speak) by a right wing that was lying in wait doesn’t mean that one forsaken all external moral codes.
In fact, here surfaces the danger of D’Souza’s view: External moral codes disagree in theory and in application. With the Clinton example, D’Souza reveals that he’s playing a game of shirts vs. skins in which those who do not believe in a particular moral code are bohemian hippies who immorally follow their own “inner light.” But the real game is that we have skins of many colors and shirts of many stripes that desperately need to figure out how to share a planet. That can’t be done with either of the positions D’Souza gives us: Follow your inner lighters can’t do it because they have no way to mediate disputes with inner lights that point elsewhere. Eternal moral coders can’t do it unless they accept that they don’t have a lock on what that their external authority (um, G-d) says.
D’Souza’s compromise is phony. Doing an end run around someone’s immorality does morality a disservice.
By the way, D’Souza’s notion that our “religious and ethical traditions” have “disappeared from our public debate” is a hoot. Was D’Souza away during the recent election year?
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Who’s he to say inner voice is based on imprinting?
If you listen to the inner voice, you’re transformed.
“Inner voice” is very rarely “what I want to do, now!”
I think it’s a connection with God. A God that can’t be written down.
What he’s trying to say is that: “The Inner Voice is your connection with God; Here: Let me tell you what God is. If you disagree with me, you disagree with God.”
No, it doesn’t go like that. It goes like this: “There is God. It communicates to us by the Inner Voice. Nobody can tell you what God is. That’s because you have to listen (paitiently) by the Inner Voice to commune with God.”
What if the Inner Voice tells two different people two different things?
Well, what can we say? God works in mysterious ways. He sees subtlety and circumstance in ways that we do not.
God is your best friend, and interacts with you individually. We have no right to say what God’s relationship with someone else is; We can only talk with God by our own relationship with him.
God isn’t a machine you use to change and subvert other people. To “make them behave.” No, we already have a tool for that: It’s called laws and social norms and stuff like that.
God is an intensely personal thing. You can share witness of God, but: In the end, there’s just you and God, and everything else is just so much stuff.
Lion, I’m the one who gave the imprinting example, which I think takes D’Souza’s thought where he wants it to go. And I agree with him. Remember, his argument is that over the ages, our culture has snipped the tie between the inner voice and G-d’s voice. If that’s the case, then it’s dangerous to follow your inner voice. And even if G-d does talk to us through our inner voice, since so many of us have inner voices that disagree with one another, how can we possibly know that our inner voice is actually G-d talking?
FWIW, I don’t think it’s necessarily true that in the end it’s just you and G-d. Suppose G-d speaks to communities and peoples more than s/he talks to individuals?
The issue here is one of authority, not morality. Although I obviously haven’t read the full text of what D’Souza wrote, it appears to me from what you’ve offered that his concern is less with moral conduct than with the source of authority, and the role of external authority. As long as there is some external source of authority, then there are any number of individuals who may arrogate to themselves an authority _on the_ authority – and therefore a basis for legitimacy that is presumably unassailable, as in the infallibility doctrine. To the extent that individuals may assert an authority unto themselves, at least as regards their own _selves_, then the role of external authorities is diminished. An intolerable situation for those who rely on authority for their own security both in the hierarchy of society and for their sense of safety and place in the world. Defending this notion supports their own claims to authority and helps to secure their place in the world. It is also a means of preserving the integrity of the “group” – the larger social entity.
There’s a lot more going on here than all this. I have in the hopper my own feeble attempt to explore authority and the individual, authenticity and individuality, they are obviously closely related. Kind of a serendipitous bit of synchronicity your posting this.
I admit that I can scarcely follow the heady arguments above. But my central concern with regard to morality is not who’s “voice” is issuing the decisions, but rather what considerations is the voice taking into account? Do these considerations exist in the real world of people and consequences and facts? Or in the make-believe world where super-human creatures and other-worldly realms hold sway? I think the answer is a lot more important that what we label our consciences. When making moral decisions I don’t think it’s too much to ask that when we focus on, you know, reality.
David, Thank you for such an important topic and thoughtful treatment. In 1995, I wanted to do something practical with my structural thoughts on life, so I started work on “good will exercises”. Their purpose was to address the situations where we believe one thing in our heart, but everything is different in the world, and it riles us. The idea was to set up an exercise where we would assimilate the truth of the heart by taking a stand, following through, and reflecting, so as to show ourselves that we could do it, and what it meant. I spent a year preparing with friends and colleagues and ended up setting up about 40 exercises and doing about 20.
From the very first exercises I came to an amazing observation: the person who is riled is ALWAYS WRONG about which is the truth of the heart, and which is the truth of the world! (That’s why they are riled). Additionally, there are three other tests that agree as to which is the “truth of the heart” and which is the “truth of the world”. It’s also, of course, noteworthy, that on any abstract topic we always find exactly two truths pulling in opposite directions. (I’m sure that part is hard to believe, but that’s what I found again and again). A diagram of this method is at: http://www.ms.lt/en/andrius/understanding/understanding.html#verbalization and scroll down to “Good Will Exercises”. Example, I was riled whenever I met panhandlers on the street For the subject of “helping somebody” there are two truths: “I should help somebody who needs help” and “my help could make things worse”. These are both true, but I was wrapped up in the latter truth, it was my “inner voice” (which, of course, turns out is the truth of the world – the riled guy is always wrong). This first test is phenomenological.
Second test is logical direction: the truth of the world follows from the truth of the heart, but not the other way around. If I truly should help others, then it will also be relevant not to make things worse. But my concern is not to make things worse, then I will never care to help anybody, that won’t follow.
Third test is epistemological: you can learn the truth of the world from real life examples, but the truth of the heart you have to know a priori, you have to appeal to the person that this is already in them. I can show lots of examples where my help made things worse, but I can’t show anybody that they *should* help somebody, that has to be rooted inside them.
Fourth test is structural: on any abstract topic, like “helping somebody” there are four questions (like Aristotle’s causes): whether? what? how? why? where I’ve listed them in increasing broadness. The heart always asks the broader question. So the world may ask “what” help am I giving (is it helpful) but the heart is asking “why” I am giving (because I should). In this case, it’s really about me, the deepest me.
So these four tests together allow one to realize that their “inner voice” is not the “INNER VOICE” whenever they are riled (they’ve lost touch with their deepest universal heart and have gut stuck in its corollary heart, our persona in the world). This is why the Bible can say that people have wicked hearts.
The “heart” is a very important outlet for God as part of an “inversion effect”. We can think of God as ranging from cold to warm: wishing for nothing (self-sufficient, lacks nothing), wishing for something (certain, things are just as he wants), wishing for anything (all that happens is good for him), wishing for everything (loves us more than we love ourselves, cares seriously even about the total nonsense that we worry about, like a parent loves a child). The latter God is so over-the-top that in order to conceive of him we have to use an “inversion effect” and flip everything over so that nothing becomes everything (the boundless unknown) and everything becomes nothing (the HEART within the depths of our heart, deeper than we can even feel or know). Then this deeper HEART looks out through us into the unknown.
A set of practical conclusions: A) the person who is calm is THINKING correctly, the person who is riled is thinking incorrectly B) the person who feels good, positive is DOING correctly, the person who feels bad, negative is doing incorrectly C) the person who is sensitive, responsive is BEING correctly, the person who is insensitive, unresponsive is being incorrectly. You get all combinations, and it’s practically very helpful as a self-check.
People didn’t want to do these exercises, and then I did a whole bunch on myself, and they really sorted out a lot of issues (it’s a great kind of therapy because it leaves no scars, it simply says – that was the wrong (yet true, natural, understandable, unfortunate, irrelevant, secondary) way of looking at things. It calmed me down on all manner of issues. I stopped doing them because I realized that the point was to address the “riling” but it didn’t make sense to look for “riling” and make a deal about that if there wasn’t a real need. The point is to be calm (and responsive, like still water that ripples when a pebble strikes) rather than excited (like stormy water responsive only to one thing, oblivious to any other issue). When we are alive than we will be living on a very subtle cusp but when we are dead than we have all kinds of pent up energies that are just sapping our ability to respond.
If anybody is interested in this kind of stuff I’m going to be setting up an encyclopedia of conceptual structures at our wiki http://www.openpeople.info and I hope to relate these to the practical issue of people’s “key interests” and how that can be integrated in the development of “global villages”. Peace, Andrius
I guess: I agree with your article, and I agree with what Dave Rogers just said.
The hardest idea, I think, for me, is the idea that a person, (Rousseau, in this case,) or even a culture, (Bohemians, in this case,) can apply metaphysical scissors, and undo the link between G-d and the Inner Voice. Not only do this, but do it for generations and cultures to come.
You ask: Since different people here different things by the inner voice, how can we possibly know that the Inner Voice is reflecting G-d?
I don’t think that we can. I don’t think that we can be sure that the Inner Voice is reflecting G-d. Continuing with that thread of questioning, I think we have to say: “Wait. There’s NO source that we can know to reflect G-d.” That is, this is skepticism.
My faith is:
G-d lives in all of us. G-d drops revelations onto us, in everybody’s lives. Our work is to piece it together- the revelations we receive in ourselves, and the revelations we receive from others.
Why do we have to piece it all together? Why don’t we “just know?”
This may well be wrong, but my faith (what I live my life by) is that we’re on a path of development.
Amino acids couldn’t “just know.” They can’t know anything. Worms couldn’t “just know.” Dinosaurs couldn’t “just know;” They can’t even talk.
Now, we are people. We can think, we can talk. Why don’t we “just know?”
Well, I think we’re still incomplete. We can only consider so many possibilities and things at the same time. We have “finite mental resources,” you could say. We’re still learning how to piece things together.
We’ve been at it for thousands of years, and, I think, we’ve been doing a pretty good job of things. Here in the US, we don’t do slavery any more, and the idea of “equal pay for equal work” (feminism) is starting to take hold as well.
I think of it sort of like “booting up” a computer. It has to go through stages of incompletenesses, before it gets to the “booted up and now running” stage, where you can actually use it. I think we’re still in this “booting up” stage.
I mean, can I seriously believe that God didn’t talk with slave-owning Christians in the past? No, I can’t seriously believe that. That means, I have to believe that God gives us partial revelation.
That people don’t hold slaves (in that formalized way) any more, and find the idea repugnant: I think that’s a sign of progress.
This is all summed up in: I believe in meta-physical progress.
Disagreement is just showing that our understanding is incomplete.
Back to authority:
I think the only authority we can really, truely, deeply, respect: is the Inner Voice.
We “respect” the authority of custom, we “respect” the authority of the government, we “respect” all these authorities. We respect the authority of certain trusted people, we respect the authority of some arguments, we respect the authority of some books. But I would never expect anyone to really respect anything more than the Inner Voice.
Andrius, I’m being pulled away right now, and can’t finish your post, but I discovered the SAME thing.
I was working with my notebook system, and really analyzing my ideas. I found the same exact thing: It’s multiple truths pulling in different directions.
I call it the “tensions” model of thinking, because there are all these tensions pulling us in different directions, both as individuals, and as societies.
wish i was smart enough to deal with all of that, but, one tiny point maybe. is there really still public debate about our “religious and ethical traditions”, or is it all just about yes or no or silence on the crap some folks are attempting to install in place of our traditions, with no real connections to anything outside of or prior to themselves?
keep on thinking, i’ll keep trying to keep/catch up.
Andrius, that’s some heavy lifting there!
What you’ve noted is what Heraclitus called “the harmony of binding opposites;” the Chinese, yin and yang. Self and other. Faith and fear. Nothingness and the negation of nothingness. Duality. The broken symmetry. Nothing may be said to be “good” except that there need be something else that is “bad.” Darkness and light. It’s that “consciousness” thing. Gives me a headache!
Weird world, isn’t it? I’m with you. That “still, small voice” is the ultimate authority in one’s life. That doesn’t mean “anything goes.” Of course, anything pretty much “goes” anyway. I think that’s because most people don’t listen to that still, small voice. They’re too frightened to. Well, I was anyway. But other “authorities” will tell you that listening to that voice “means” anything goes, and that you’re not truly “moral,” in order to engage your fear and challenge your faith. Authorities who teach and preach from their own fear are perhaps the last ones one ought to pay attention to.
And if that “still, small voice” is actually verbalizing things… Well, that ain’t it. Be still. A little more Heraclitus: “The harmony past knowing sounds more deeply than the known.” You’ll know when you get there.
I’m probably not advancing the discussion. But this is the good, chewy stuff of life. ;^)
What do you say to people whose still small voice tells them that enslaving an African is a charitable act of Christian compassion? That homosexuality is a sin from which our children need to be protected? Or, for that matter, those whose inner voice tells them that slavery is a moral horror or that homosexuality is just another form of love?
Doesn’t history show us that still small voices are unreliable moral guides?
“Doesn’t history show us that still small voices are unreliable moral guides?”
We get into some pretty gooey going here, but I return to this: If your “still small voice” is verbalizing, that ain’t it.
Here’s what I think most often happens, though I can’t prove this in any sort of accepted, demonstrable way. Most of the activities you described were defended by people who were actively ignoring that “still small voice,” and vigorously defending their actions in spite of it.
That “still, small voice” proceeds from a place of faith, not one of fear. Justification or rationalization of slavery proceeds from a place of fear, not one of faith. I can’t begin to imagine all the fears, but here may be a few:
I’m a good person. My “people” are good people. Since we are, by definition, “good” and we keep slaves, slavery must be “good,” or at least “charitable.” To confront the still, small voice that tells us what we’re doing is wrong, is to enounter fear that we are not, in fact, “good.” (In fact, we’re both “good” and “bad” and we all are. But fearing to confront the “bad” leads to ignoring the SMV.)
Alternatively, perhaps anyone who was considering the morality of slavery was afraid of confronting the economic consequences of abandoning slavery. Again, I expect there are several fears that work to drive rationalization and self-justification.
Now, I can construct a similar argument that would describe how the more conventional “moral” view of the evil of slavery can proceed from a fear of not being “good.” And, I believe that that happens as well. And I would maintain that that is also not listening to that SMV.
To “listen” to the SMV is to proceed from a place of faith, an affirmation of what is and an acknowledgment that all “things” are transitory. I would suggest that this is perhaps not the same thing as a faith “in” God, or a supreme being. This gets kind of icky too, because it’s close, but I think it misses the mark. But I don’t want to get into a big argument with people who believe “in” God, because that’s not the biggest problem.
To me, what makes any view of morality “unreliable” is its relationship with fear. Fear must inform our morality, but it must not proceed from it. In my opinion.
I must guess that much of this proceeds from how a consciousness apprehends the world. To me, there is a polarity at work there as well. There is an affirmative approach, “faith” – I am in the world, and all things pass away and I too shall pass away, one that engages and embraces. And there is a negative approach. I am in the world and I do not wish to pass away or for the things in it to pass away. I wish to protect all things so that nothing changes and all things remain as they are. Both are essential in order for survival, the harmony of binding opposites.
Further complicating the issue of morality is our nature as social creatures. We must exist as members of groups because we cannot survive as individuals. This has built hierarchy and recognition of authority into our nature, and an acute sensitivity to rank within the hierarchy. So authorities within groups seek to command our attention in order to maintain or expand their authority; and we’re also members of many, many different groups, each with their own hierarchies and authorities, each vying for our attention. As a result, we give very little attention to our own authority, that SMV. Instead, attending to external authorities and monitoring our rank and its fortunes (rising or falling) within the group. “Morality,” in this context, is just another lever worked by external authorities to command our attention and promote their authority.
And this is where we get to the matter of individuality and authenticity. But I’m afraid I’ve already made enough of a mess of this in this tiny box. Again, I’m not sure I’ve advanced the discussion in any meaningful way but I welcome your thoughts.
Faith is overrated. Small voice? Inner voice? Extra-special voice? C’mon. The only voice I will listen to is the one that is well-informed by the best empirical data at hand and tempered by as much compassion as I can muster. It’s an imperfect system, but I don’t see a better one. Not by a long shot. Faith? Nonsense. Faith is just belief without evidence. I say the world has had quite enough of it, thank you very much.
First, thank you for your patient contributions to this conversation. Y’all.
Dave, correct me if I’m misrepresenting you, but we’re agreeing that some people who claim to be listening to the Still Small Voice (SSV) have in fact done bad things (e.g., held slaves). So, since you’re basing morality on listening to the SSV, you have to find a way to distinguish authentic SSVs from inauthentic ones. Inauthentic ones, you say, are driven by fear. While you and Andrius are eloquent on the topic, this approach still seems flawed to me…unless one believes that the SSV comes straight from G-d. Otherwise, why believe the voice (or gesture) in your head? D’Souza’s point is, however, that we generally haven’t believed that since Rousseau. And, frankly, enough wickedness has been done in the name of G-d’s SSV that I thank Rousseau for his help.
So, I look at your analysis of morality and I worry that it’s one of those concepts that can’t be challenged. If I point to Charles Manson as a terrible example of someone who followed his SSV, you’ll assert that he was acting out of fear. But your reason for thinking that is (I’m guessing) that he had to be acting out of fear because his SSV was so far out of whack. Isn’t it circular reasoning?
I’d be more amenable to the SSV theory of morality if I saw some reason to think that the SSV is morally right and not just the inarticulate reflection of our deepest cultural values.
I do have an alternative theory of morality, if that helps. It’s what I was going to make my name with as a philosopher, but then I didn’t get tenure, and I’ve seen it surface since. It’s really simple: We are socially and maybe genetically disposed to care about other people. We are sympathetic. Sympathy is the basis of morality. It’s always good to enlarge your realm of sympathy.
There you go. It’s a bit like Anne Elk’s theory of the dinosaur from Monty Python, but it’s the best I can do. It at least shares with the SSV theory the virtue of not supposing that moralit is a matter of principles.
There is some–and growing–evidence that what we refer to as morality is instinctive, that is, hard-wired, biological. It seems to be an inborn version of the golden rule. For more info on this, read “The Evolutionary Origins of Morality,” edited by Leonard Katz.
This is how Amazon describes the book, one of many on this subject:
“Four principal papers and a total of 43 peer commentaries on the evolutionary origins of morality. To what extent is human morality the outcome of a continuous development from motives, emotions and social behaviour found in nonhuman animals? Jerome Kagan, Hans Kummer, Peter Railton and others discuss the first principal paper by primatologists Jessica Flack and Frans de Waal. The second paper, by cultural anthropologist Christopher Boehm, synthesizes social science and biological evidence to support his theory of how our hominid ancestors became moral. In the third paper philosopher Elliott Sober and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson argue that an evolutionary understanding of human nature allows sacrifice for others and ultimate desires for another’s good. Finally Brian Skyrms argues that game theory based on adaptive dynamics must join the social scientist’s use of rational choice and classical game theory to explain cooperation.”
For me, this kind of thinking is not only the explanation of that inner voice we all hear, it is the explanation for the various attempts at codifying that voice, which we know as religion.
Unlike, say, dogs, human beings can easily subvert their instincts with their intellects, or use other instincts against it–for instance, greed or fear (both pathological inflations of the survival instinct). We can hear the inner voice but choose to ignore it or even thwart it. Neurosis can also distort it or make us mishear it.
It may be that when we say we believe in God, we are affirming our trust in our inner voice. It may also be that when we feel the need to strictly adhere to the rules of one religion or another, we are saying we insufficiently trust our inner voice and, like someone with bad vision, are seeking corrective lens, or maybe magnifying glasses.
By attacking the validity of our inner voices, therefore, D’Souza may be attacking the basis for his own higher authority. This may sound anti-religious, but it doesn’t have to be–any more than evolution has to be anti-religious. Those to whom religious faith is meaningful can simply see it–those inner voices, that is–as the way God works.
“and not just the inarticulate reflection of our deepest cultural values.”
Uh, well, thanks for that, I guess.
Dave, it appears to me that you’re looking for an external answer that is separate from yourself that you can point to and claim that _it_ is unassailable, and therefore _you_ are unassailable by embracing it. This is essentially the doctrine of infallibility. No such external standard exists.
I would offer that every evil you care to name committed by people who claimed to have been listening to the SSV, I can point to being committed by people embracing some external standard of morality. And we can never know what any of them were “hearing” in their heads.
The external standard serves the needs of authorities in hierarchies, and is therefore embraced and promoted at every turn. For those who feel the dilemma of life is too much to embrace on their own, they will accept such authority. They are encouraged to feel that way by arguments such as the one you just offered.
It’s not as though we’re born fully equipped to behave “morally.” Obviously, we’re not. But I believe that as we grow and, hopefully, mature, we can become attentive to that SSV, our own authority, and find our way to moral behavior by being authorities of our own.
I’m sympathetic to your sympathy theory, but then one has to wonder about things like the Stanford Prisoner Experiment, Stanley Milgram and Abu Ghraib, don’t we?
This is no prescription for a utopian existence, and is of little help to those who rely on external authority and wish to exercise it. It is merely a prescription for an individual to experience everything that life has to offer, and to live that life as _authentically_ as possible.
Such people understand that they live in the shelter of the group, and that there are other authorities they must attend to. But where those authorities conflict with the SSV, the authentic life is the one where the person living it gives precedence to their own “conscience,” if you will.
What does Charles Manson have to do with anything? Even were one to believe that Manson was acting in accordance with some SSV, Manson remains responsible for Manson, and all choices have consequences. Clearly, external authority, which our society is rife with, fears to the contrary notwithstanding, did not prevent Manson. So what’s the special virtue of external authority?
No, the person who recognizes their own authority in life, also recognizes and affirms all of the “real world” and that includes consequences attendant to one’s choices. Thoreau and Emerson come to mind. I forget which one was in jail, I believe it was Emerson, and when Thoreau asked, “What are you doing in there?” Emerson replied, “What are you doing out there?”
The question ultimately becomes, who’s life are you living? Yours, or the one the authorities in your life would have you live?
It’s never easy knowing the answer to that. A large part of the problem is the nature of ignorance, we simply never know what we don’t know. In the place of ignorance, we can rely on faith, or we can rely on fear. In practice, it’s usually some combination of both; though fear seems to hold the dominant position our our culture, as it is exploited by almost all authorities.
But we can know some things. We know that we cannot survive as individuals, that we must affiliate and act in groups in order to survive. We know that we have evolved a complex set of behaviors to make such affilation and action more efficient, along with a competitive streak that allows the rapid identification, promotion and assimilation of ideas and beliefs that appear to have survival value. We also know we have a singular, subjective experience _of_ life, and some knowledge of “good” and “evil.” It seems to me we’ve grown far too adept, as learning organisms, at promoting the best (or worst, depending on your point of view I guess) features of the role of functioning as a member in the group, at the expense of knowing all of the experience of life.
So, I’m afraid we’re at the impasse we always seem to arrive at in these sorts of discussions. People want proof, empirical evidence, an “external authority,” and I have none that I can offer. I can tell you where you might find your own, but I can’t take you there.
I’m not claiming to be one of the people I’ve just described, though I unashamedly admit I’m trying to become one of those people. It has made a difference in my life, and one that I’m grateful for. It hasn’t always been fun, and it has never been easy, but it has been worth it. And many wonderful things have been the result. I am not an authority on these things, though I am trying to become an authority on my life. If I am to be truly responsible for my life, then I must be the authority in my life. It’s no different for anyone else.
Dave, I’m not asking for proof or demanding infallibility. Nor am I promoting the use of external authorities. The closest I’ve come to stating a positive viewpoint on this is to point to the role of sympathy, and that hardly counts as an external authority.
Those who believe that morality is a matter of finding and following the right principles are faced with a tough question: What gives moral principles their force? Why is an “ought” compelling? My answer is that moral principles ultimately derive from our natural sympathy for others. We can step into their shoes. (We don’t always — Abu Ghraib, as you point out.) When we do, we can feel their pain or anticipate their joy, and that’s what gives moral statements their power.
But, sympathy can steer us wrong. There are some awful long term decisions we have to make that require hurting people in the short term. So, we learn to temper our sympathy, but we feel conflicted and terrible when we do…as we should.
I don’t entirely throw out external authorities, though. Too many wise people have thought about these issues for too long. There’s amazing value in what they’ve said. But neither can we simply adopt what they say. Fundamentalism and literalism are fundamentally and literally not possibilities. That’s one reason I respect the Jewish tradition: It brings to its sacred text a community of scholars that span the generations; it’s understood that the truth is in that never-ending conversation.
All this is consistent with taking accountability for your actions and beliefs. There’s no external authority relieving you of that responsibility. I have to say, though, that taking responsibility for oneself has never seemed to me to be way up there when it comes to moral values. Better that one should do good in the world and not be an asshole. Besides, responsibility is sooo complex because our world, our language and the totality of our history help make us who we are. Who can ever figure out who’s responsible for what?
Dave, I have the highest respect for you. I admire what I know of how you treat others. Your inner light I trust. It’s them other people’s that worries me.
I’m sorry I misunderstood the thrust of your critical questions. I thought you were criticizing the idea of attending to one’s own authority because of issues of reliability, from which I inferred you preferred some external source of authority that was reliable.
I think you’re a great guy too! (Or I wouldn’t be here.) And you suffer dilettantes like me with exceeding grace, so thank you for that. ;^)
Dave, at one point I pretend to professional status but I felt like a dilettante the entire time. We’re all dilettante’s here.
It may be of passing interest here that an important segment of the American public were apparently convinced that George W. Bush follows his own SSV.
I learned recently that a text of Jewish mysticism, the Tanya, states that we have two souls, one enraptured with worldly desires (and fears) and the other oriented to God. Sufism teaches similarly — the “nafs” is the ego-soul, the human manifestation of our instinctual nature with all its drama.
The difficulty with the “inner voice” is knowing which of those “two souls,” if you want to use that metaphor, is speaking. You can probably learn to distinguish it both by the kinds of things it urges and by its felt quality. The “nafs” is passionate. It would be the source of the inner voice that tells you a particular man or woman is THE ONE destined for you when he/she is, say, someone else’s spouse. The God-linked soul’s voice (from what little I know of it) comes from much deeper and is very still. And trans-personal. It tells you what is true at that moment, not “what you want to hear.”
Dinner with Joho & Meng Wong
I have a wonderful dinner with David Weinberger (of Cluetrain Manifesto fame) and Meng Wong (of (of