|
The Moral Premise
Concession
Under the Cover of a
Transgender Night
Unmanned Ramparts
Under Siege
In
Awe of the Moral Chimp
In an episode
of the TED Radio Hour recently
re-broadcast on the amiable and well-intentioned left-leaning airwaves of our
National Public Radio (NPR), listeners were treated to a fascinating segment on
what appears to be the presence of moral behavior among primates (our closest
genetic cousins in the Animal Kingdom).
Well, we say ‘moral’ at least as apparently understood by the kindly,
boyish Guy Raz, who is the host of the show (and one of many high-pitched,
raspy voices featured on NPR – it’s like it’s a new job requirement there to
be allowed on the air). And ‘moral’ as
understood by his erudite and gentlemanly guest for the segment, Dr. Frans de
Waal, a biologist and primatologist known for his work on the behavior and
social intelligence of primates.
In the
segment Dr. de Waal described animal behavior that could be described as
altruistic, and in some cases empathic.
One example was that of a monkey rejecting a favored fruit unless
their monkey partner also got one. In
another, younger chimpanzees regularly aid an elderly chimpanzee, even though
she is unlikely to ever again offer anything in return.
Mr.
Raz in awe says,
It's incredible because we think of like our primal instincts as things
that need to be tamed. And then centuries of civilization and religion have
tamed those instincts to result in morality. But actually, the morality comes
from our primal instincts.
Dr. de
Waal replies,
Well, the traditional
view is, of course, that morality comes either from God or it comes from
philosophers. Our basic instincts are all bad. And then civilization manages
to make it good. We have a good side, which is cultural and religious, and a
bad side, which is biological.
But
that is not exactly what religion says about morality. Even if it is half right, it is critically
half wrong.
Impostor
Morality
The
misunderstanding underlying this view regarding ‘morality’ in animals is the
idea that morality is defined by the mere presence of a biologically evolved
emotion, in this case empathy. This is
a common view among those suspicious of religion or traditional views of
morality, and who favor a scientific explanation for what is ‘good’. But, why is empathy moral and anger
not? If we do something for someone
because it makes us feel good, most religions would see that as a moral
wash. Likewise, if we act in anger, it
is moral or not, depending on the motivation. Both emotions have equal claim to
biological evolution.
If a
monkey refuses a grape for a fellow monkey in one setting, and attacks
another monkey for gain in a different situation, the monkey is not acting
morally or immorally, it is acting entirely on emotion. The Bible says even sinners love those who
love them. By all accounts Hitler was
kind to his dog (not to mention Eva Braun) and was an animal lover. Some drug kingpins are known for the
altruistic kindness they extend to those they care about. These acts of kindness are enacted purely
by desire. They are not moral because
they are not motivated by a concern for morality.
Therefore,
morality is not the presence of the emotion of empathy, nor is it simply
acting on one’s emotion – the easiest thing one can do. Morality is the determination of what ought
to be, independent of what benefits or pleases the self, and certainly
independent of what one feels. Desires
and emotions may or may not align with what is moral (what ought to be), but
their mere presence cannot be said to advise us on the matter. Even most modern intellectual atheists from
Sartre to Nietzsche have argued that biological nature offers no clue to any
objective moral truth. More
specifically, they say it cannot.
Thus,
the premise that seems so self-evident to Mr. Raz and his guest, and no doubt
to many who would like to see science overrule religion, actually makes no
sense on its face.
Morality
Trumps Empathy
So,
yes, to borrow Mr. Raz’s incredulous words, but with the opposite intent,
“our primal instincts [are] things
that need to be tamed. And [] centuries of civilization and religion have
tamed those instincts to result in morality.”
It is how and why we tame and channel emotions from empathy to envy,
and choose which to carefully cultivate and which to constrain. And, it is how we define one action as
‘good’ and another ‘bad’ – regardless of the combination of emotions that may
have played a part. Again, going by
their definition and without using circular reasoning, what makes one biologically
evolved feeling (empathy), anymore moral than another biologically evolved
emotion (jealous rage)?
Morality
only has meaning when one reasons against one’s own emotional (primal)
desires, regardless of whether the feeling of empathy is present, for a cause
other than self-benefit. In fact, the
highest morality is the one enacted in the absence of emotional empathy; that
is, acting on behalf of another even when one does NOT feel empathy, or even
sympathy, but in pursuit of a value that accepts that what ‘ought to be’ is
something higher than anything one might want. In other words, morality is to act rightly
towards one’s enemies even though they may yet persecute you; to not take
what rightly belongs to others, even if this will gain you more power and
chances of survival; and crucially, it means to not engage in actions that
can propagate one’s own kind without the trappings of commitment and
responsibility that will protect the innocent and helpless young, even if it
means denial of one’s pleasures and the limitation of one’s chances to pass
on one’s genetic code. In all of this,
morality is nothing if not entirely against the rule by biologically evolved
primal instinct.
Yet,
as fundamental and plain as this should seem, it is not so in our
society. This is largely because as
we often point out in these pages, Western religious institutions are
completely out-gunned in the battle of social ideas, and it is typical in
history to find dominant moral philosophies growing soft and shallow
precisely because of their dominance.
Once a notion becomes almost universally accepted, people forget its
original reason for being. So the TED Radio Hour passes off to millions
of listeners – without any counter-argument – the notion that we do not need
God or philosophy to explain what is good, only scientific experiments (the
study practically says so!).
See next column >
|
Ultrapolis
World Forecast & Review
Ultrapolis
Project – ultrapolisproject.com
832-782-7394
Editor: Marco Antonio Roberts
Copy
Editor: Michael Alberts
Contributing
Editors:
Mark Eastman
Mark Steele
contactproject@ultrapolisproject.com
|
|
|
Our forecast record cannot be beat. One can follow the herd chasing the latest hyperbolic,
melodramatic, and soon-forgotten micro-trend, or one can be wisely and
judiciously in front of it with UWFR.
|
|
The Moral Animal: What do
displays of animal altruism and empathy tell us about what is moral and
what is not?
|
|
|
|
|
< From
column 1
The Morally Mute
If it is true that the
dominant far-left liberal progressives of today have deliberately not only abandoned
the old codes of virtue and self-sacrifice, but are outright in offense
against them, it is also true that todays’ religious and social
conservatives are practically catatonic in response.
And so, just as this
false premise of how we define morality is everywhere in our social
discourse, and underlies just about every argument about morality and
sexuality in the Western society today (e.g., “I’m born this way,” ergo,
everything that comes from my mere existence is good), so is the failure of
the social conservatives to understand and intelligently articulate their
own philosophies and beliefs, often finding refuge in the emotion of
prejudice (and in more rare cases, the emotion of bigotry). Social conservatives have no leaders to
guide them to defensible positions and this is at the core of what we now
see as a wholesale collapse of socially conservative positions across
almost the entire front of the cultural wars as they relate to issues of
human sexuality, family, and marriage.
Yes, it is true that the
social conservatives and the religious institutions they rely on are
out-gunned, as we said earlier. From
TV sitcoms to cable dramas; from movies and plays to music videos and comic
books; from elementary schools to universities; and from news rooms to
corporate boardrooms, the social and religious conservative point of view
is almost totally absent, except when it is presented in a negative
way. The few exceptions include Fox
News and talk radio, which are often crude, largely aimed mostly at their
own choir, and also often concede the left’s premises. It is interesting to note that even as
liberal-progressives have enjoyed for over forty years a near total
dominance in the presentation of their ideas in our pop culture and
academia, certain traditional social norms and ideas have still nonetheless
stubbornly persisted up until recently.
The Moral Conservatives’ Abandoned Dam
Massive dams, without maintenance
over decades, can hold back incredibly huge amounts of water. But, they do need attention and
maintenance, and without it, they will eventually fail. And when they fail, they do so in a very
sudden way. That’s why we say here
that at the core of the social conservatives’ retreat is not the very real
attack on their moral values, but the social conservatives’ failure in
maintaining the philosophical arguments that underpin their beliefs. This care and maintenance means not only
understanding the foundational moral logic upon which the entire moral
structure sits, but also adapting the structure itself to account for the
changing and growing current of human knowledge.
Now the radical
progressive left has launched a new offensive under the cover of
transgender rights, and the crumbling barricades of the moral conservatives
look to be manned only by the most hyperbolic, emotional, and ineffective
of the right’s rank and file, and seem bereft of the intellectual
leadership required to marshal forces under ideological attack. Its
erstwhile generals and commandants, and past centrist allies, like the
numerous Iraqis in the face of a much smaller, but more determined ISIS
force, appear to be scattering in confusion or in anticipation of defeat.
GOP Ideological Incompetence
The most spectacular, and
most overlooked example of this has been the very public embarrassing
retreats everywhere on the issue of the freedom of conscience, as reflected
in the right to refuse to participate in gay weddings. We say overlooked because the implications
have not been discussed at all anywhere in the media, liberal or
conservative.
Starting with Arizona,
then followed up with Indiana, Arkansas, then less visibly with Louisiana,
Republican attempts to protect religious conservatives from being forced to
participate in gay weddings by virtue of just having a business, failed
miserably in these red states. All
their efforts at passing what are called Religious Freedom Restoration Acts
(RFRA) backfired or have been withdrawn, undermining the social
conservatives’ position even more than if they had done nothing. If one thing was clear from the series of
retreats, it was that the political leaders spearheading this RFRA effort
across several states were totally unprepared for the counter-attack, and
could not offer a coherent defense for what they were attempting to
do. Witness powerful Indiana
Governor Mike Pence’s presidential prospects disappear in what had to be
one of the worst TV performances by any politician since
Sarah Palin spoke with Katie Couric in 2008.
Conservative Lemmings &
Republican Deaf Ears
Worse, the social
conservatives learned absolutely nothing from each political disaster, with
each red state following the next like lemmings over the cliff. Governor Pence, his advisers, and the
entire Indiana legislature had a year to study what happened in
Arizona. Worst of all, we strongly
believe here that this was a fight they actually could have won with public
opinion, and should have won for the sake of Americans of all beliefs. While (strangely) we could not find a
national scientific poll* on the actual question of whether a baker should
be forced to make a gay wedding cake, we found many non-social
conservative, pro-gay rights venues expressing support for the
Christian bakers’ rights to refuse, from the nominally leftist Atlantic to the
libertarian Reason .
In our own anecdotal
experience, when we have
presented the actual texts of the laws to liberal progressives and
explained their logic, over half changed their mind to at least no longer
oppose them, and every pro-gay rights libertarian supported them
already. Moreover, RFRAs laws are
actually arguably too narrow a
protection for the individual freedom of speech, focusing on religious
freedom, when in fact the Civil Rights Act of 1964, upon which all
non-discrimination laws are patterned, actually outlines a much more
limited notion of what constitutes a public accommodation, and thus, a more
limited restriction on how people may conduct their businesses. That is, in America, business owners have
a broader freedom of conscience in running their businesses than just a
religious one, and atheists have that freedom too. Never before had most Americans thought
of a wedding as a public accommodation, yet we saw not a single refutation
on this score from the Republicans supposedly looking out for their social
conservative constituents, even
as plenty of non-Republicans actually hostile to social conservatives tried
to helpfully point this out.
*Polls
on RFRA laws mask the issue, and we consider them biased because most
respondents have only heard descriptions of those laws that are designed to
promote opposition to them.
Therefore, we are looking for polls that ask a specific scenario
question.
Continued column 3 >
|
< From
column 2
Liberals Toss
Intellectual Lifelines - to No Avail
It
is actually falling to liberals and liberal progressives like Jonathan Chait,
Kirstin Powers, and Michael Kingsley – and even gay rights activists like
Andrew Sullivan, to come to the defense of social conservative free speech
- usually grudgingly, but all with a deep concern for the consequences to
liberalism itself if social and religious conservatives are silenced this
way. However, those voices are few,
and in a new twist of the Salem Witch Trials syndrome, they are now
themselves under fire from the left.
If none of this shows the social and religious conservatives that there
is nobody at the helm crafting a sustainable and broad defense, let alone
an offense, for their views and values, then what hope do they have?
GBLT
‘Studies Show’
In a
somewhat related story, last Sunday a Wall
Street Journal editorial
described a scientific fraud that is part of a “bias [that] contaminates
inquiries across the social sciences, which often seem to exist so liberals
can claim that ‘studies show’ some political assertion to be
empirical.” In another somewhat
related note, last week we saw in the print edition of USA Today an interesting statistic published without comment:
25% of Americans say they know or work with a transgender (transsexual)
person. Setting aside the false
premise the published statistic is attempting to advance, we find this
statistic remarkable, and suspect.
We personally know nearly 1,000 people in the GBLT community -
except that we only know folks in the G, B, and L components. Not a single T. Most numbers available
for the incidence of transsexuality put it at between 10,000 to 20,000 to
1, so how is this statistic even possible?
The source of the stat? The
Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a leftist GBLT (or LGBT) organization heavily
involved in the promotion of transsexual rights (as they define them) as
pre-emptive of all other rights of free speech and freedom of conscience,
and any conservative notions of heterosexual modesty.
In
Awe of the Moral Kardashian
Thus
is the entire moral cultural front, which is now currently being fought
most intensely on the transsexual/transgender front, collapsing
rapidly. This swift collapse comes as
the premises underlying the logic of how we understand what is moral and
what is not, on how we distinguish between what is selfless courage and
what is self-indulgence pictured on the cover of Vanity Fair, were conceded long ago without a fight. Since then all the fighting has been
taking place on the challengers’ terms, and the defenders have not even
noticed. Even many Christians and
Jews, rather than seeking understanding through the moral leadership of
those that bring to them their traditions’ accumulated wisdom gathered over
5,000 years of human study of philosophy, look instead to comedy news and
the Kardashians for instruction on what ought to be.
They
think it makes them advanced and progressive.
Long
ago we in these and other pages sought to advance the reform of our moral
framework to account for the changing and growing current of human
knowledge, and we can say we were once at the forefront to effect that
change. Now we look behind us to see
that framework being taken completely apart, and foresee repercussions that
will ultimately be felt most painfully by many of those taking an ax to
it. Perhaps we should not be
surprised. It is the long-running
tale of human history.
Morality,
says the dictionary, is the set of “principles concerning the distinction
between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.” That is a simple definition for a very
complex question. How do we know
when accountability should be tempered by compassion, and when compassion
is being coldly and selfishly used as a cover to avoid accountability? How do we know if a given action is right
or wrong in any way that transcends the individual ideas and desires
of two separate human beings? If one
says that empathy is good, and the other says it is the pleasure of power
over others, what science can resolve that question without employing
circular reasoning, or accepting a premise on faith? How do we ultimately know what ‘ought to
be’?
To
sincerely answer any one of those questions with what a ‘study shows’ is to
have misunderstood the question.
To
counter that answer on its own terms is to prepare for defeat.
Clinton 2016 Presidential
Prospects Watch
Follow Up on Our Forecast
In a
follow up to our forecasts dating from March 2013, on former First Lady
Hillary Clinton’s less than surfire 2016 election
prospects, we bring your attention to the latest polls.
In
separate polls by
the Washington Post-ABC
News and by CNN/ORC, Secretary Clinton’s approval numbers have ‘taken a
hit’. The headline
in Politico says “ Hillary
Clinton unfavorable numbers highest in 14 years”.
To
make matters worse, President Obama’s own approval numbers are cratering,
now falling below those of George W. Bush (see
CNN report), which suggests Obama’s coattails may be very short, if
present at all.
Of
course, there is plenty of time for these numbers to change, and they
will. But we have said all along for
the last two years that Clinton’s prospects are not as pre-ordained as
everyone said they were, and that the Clinton ‘baggage would once again
saddle the Clintons’. From our May
28, 2013, UWFR issue:
As popular as Hillary
Clinton is today among Americans, people forget that not long ago she was a
polarizing figure disliked by even many Democrats - a politician with very
high negatives…What will happen if the curtain is pulled just a bit, and
people get a clear glimpse of what’s really behind this political wizard
that has for the last twenty years managed to overcome every political
scandal, debacle, and charge (“box cars of [incriminating] baggage” as
someone put it in 2008)? It depends
on how long that glimpse lasts.
We
are getting the glimpse.
Comments may be directed to contactproject@ultrapolisproject.com,
or if you receive the newsletter email, also via a reply to the email
address from which you receive it. OR CLICK BELOW
|
|
|
|
|
