biolog

Like a clock forever being pushed forward, religion’s gears are grimed with an accretion of age-old superstition and custom. One common sticking point is the concept that morality comes from on high and in service of the deity. And with that little chestnut I get the religious telling me atheists are amoral. When I encounter this soft bigotry, I role my eyes and tell them how foolish they look denying all of Antiquity and thousands of years of society, culture, laws, and codes of ethics in a single sweeping ignorant remark.

The historians agree, a million post-dictions aren’t worth a single pre-diction. And so, was there ever a line of sight to guide someone on the correct moral path through the ascending gyre of world events that lead from say World War II to 9/11? What is a moral absolutist, sticking to her guns, to do in the 21st Century?

I recently watched Fog of War, a biography on Robert Strange McNamara, whose extraordinary career began as a U.S. air force analyst during WW II, crested as the Secretary of Defense from 1966-68, and continues at the World Bank. He is inarguably one of the most influential individuals in the later half of the 20th century. He is also a duplicitous, shrewd and dynamic individual, now wizened and a bit long in the tooth. McNamara is smarter than you. Has seen and done more than you. And after listening to him, you get the sense that he should have “Top Secret” stamped in red block lettering across his mottled forehead.

The documentary afforded McNamara the opportunity to look back on his accomplishments and missteps. He’s also written two books on the lessons learned from Vietnam. It is much to ask–especially for someone who’s shaped world affairs–to judge his own actions years later. It earned the director Errol Morris an Oscar. Morris has since moved on, but McNamara still gets up every morning and, as he regards his reflection in the mirror, surely relives how close he brought our country to nuclear annihilation, or the firebombing of Tokyo, and Agent Orange. How would McNamara have done things differently? How would any of us without the benefit of hindsight, of knowing then what we know now? Is there a correct way of thinking about things, a sort of map of coordinates that McNamara could have correctly triangulated…pro-Japan mainland invasion, cut-off negotiations with Khrushchev. The U.S. should not have invaded Vietnam under false allegations and destitute of any pretense to empathize with the opposition. Is the lesson of our last two wars a call to greater understanding for the enemy? How could someone of McNamara’s cunning misjudge the situation in Vietnam so poorly for so long? To simply apply a set of principles to points in time from which a line will emerge leading to the desired outcome seems, at least to me, impractical.

For someone from the American History X generation, the idea that you could plug all your decisions into a set of a priori arguments, just as you would type a destination into a GPS navigator, and come up with the desired results sounds naive. In the heady, patriotic days following 9/11 could a republican have predicted how the right would split over the Iraq war: stay the course or troop withdrawal?

In America today moral relativism serves as a political dog whistle for secular, amoral, intellectual, elitist, liberal bastard. What moral relativism actually means in regard to complex social issues is that one’s standard principles are subject to context. Especially in regard to personal issues, most of us are moral relativists, though few admit it.

Here’s a passage from historian and critic Jacques Barzun’s work From Dawn to Decadence where he deals with the issue directly:

In the realm of ethics, the most blatant absurdity of the day is wrapped up in the bogey word Relativism. Its current misapplication is a serious error, because it affects one’s understanding of physical and social science and derails any reasoning about the morals of the day. Nine times out of ten, the outcry against Relativism is mechanical, not to say absentminded. Everybody is supposed to know what the term means; it has become a cliche that stands for every laxity; corrupt or scandalous conduct is supposed to be the product of a relativist outlook. When linked with Liberal politics, it implies complacent irresponsibility.

The Relativist denies (so runs the charge) that there is a fixed Right and Wrong, better or worse. This makes for a readiness to follow fashion in behavior — “anything goes,” everybody does it.” Relativism and conscience are diametrical opposites. What in all this is the meaning of relative? It means flexible, adaptible, a sliding scale that gives a different reading in similar situations. Morality says: “Do not lie.” The relativist says: “In view of this or that fact, I shall lie without hesitation or remorse” — to head off a criminal, to spare anxiety, or any other good reason. The anti-relativist then infers that the same person will cheat, steal, and so on up the ladder of immorality, always justified “relatively” to some particular; or — even more likely — with no excuse, because Relativism turns habitual and supports no idea but that of self-indulgence.

Another count in the indictment is that Relativists make no distinctions among moral codes, religions, or cultures. All these, relatively to their place and time, their history, their means of subsistence are equal in value: as 5 is to 10, so 10 is to 20 — multiply and you get 100 = 100. This grievance has in view the stance of the historian and the anthropologist, who in their descriptions believe that to understand one must sympathize. To illustrate: the anthropologist asserts that the man who can count up to five in a tribe ignorant of numbers is a mathematical genius. The historian who finds a 16C ruler granting toleration to all Christian sects calls him a pioneer moralist and humanitarian. The denouncer of Relativism infers from these relative judgments that the five-digit man and Einstein are equals and the tolerant ruler on a par with the framers of the United States Constitution. This is a gross error in logic. The relative judgment implies no ultimate estimation or preference.

It is here we begin to see the Absurd concealed in the misuse of the term. Western civilization justly boasts of having developed the idea and the machinery of Pluralism. It accommodates in one polity contradictory religions, moral codes, and political doctrines, all equals in status. Nothing is said about their respective merit or value, let alone their being equal, which would be meaningless. From this social and cultural tolerance those who assail Relativism do not dissect the benefit from it; they never mention it. Now the opposite of the Relative is the Absolute, and the Absolute means one principle only, a single standard of thought and behavior. One must therefore ask the anti-relativist: “Whose Absolute are we to adopt and impose?” The plural state is full of them, down to the several sects of any one religion. How far a society can allow diversity under Pluralism is a real issue. The rival claims of two large language groups can split a nation badly — witness Belgium and Canada. But blaming Relativism whenever diversity creates disorder beclouds a type of situation that must be settled politically. Meantime, the absurdity remains of espousing Pluralism and groaning about the absence of an absolute that would cure moral ills.

Reflection shows further that anybody who thinks at all uses the relative standard continually; it is the operation the mind goes through in all judgments. To compare to lengths, one relates each to a yardstick. A judge or jury relates the facts of the case to the law. Under an absolute code the same relativing procedure would still be needed to judge offense and punishment. No standard works like an automatic machine, nor can a civilized society do without variable standards that call for relativist application: the law is the law, but the judge sentences the first offender less heavily that the second or third. Unequal treatment within typical situations is the rule of intelligent action: the child’s meal or medical dose is related to his size and age.

But are there not at least a few fundamental principles of conduct that the whole world acknowledges as binding and not subject to change? Apparently not. Not even “Thou shalt not kill.” At the start of the admirable common law, in the 11C, wergeld was the rule; that is, paying for murder done; murther originally denotes a fine (<228). Among the Eskimos, in the past also, a murderer was asked to leave, he did so and was received without a word by the neighboring tribe. In the most advance countries self-defense allows killing. So does war, which qualifies as remote self-defense. The Christian clergy in the Great War read the Sixth Commandment in that relative way (<701). The absolutely uniform human conscience does not seem to exist.

It is true that for civil peace and comfort most societies reprove and punish killing and all kinds of injury to the person, lying and breaking promises in serious matters, and cheating and stealing — if property is part of the system. But the particular laws vary infinitely and stand in contradiction from time to time. In the one realm of property, the western businessman’s moral conscience in the year 1880 differed radically from that of his descendant in 1980. The same disparity occurs from place to place: what is (criminal) bigamy in the Occident is the first step in gaining status in parts of Africa. When the anti-relativist deplores the present state of morals he is judging it relatively to a previous state, which he believes was fixed and eternal.

Perhaps to clear the mind of the stubborn cliche, one should speak of Relationism. One would then notice that science is Relationism first and last. The whole effort is to establish relations between phenomena, ultimately between pairs of well-defined sense impressions, by the medium of a material or numerical yardstick. This done, all proportions can be derived for practical uses. Form in art — fitness in anything — consists in a subtle or vivid relation between parts that cannot be arrived at by means of an absolute formula. In society tact is the great art that makes for civility, for civilization, and tact is nothing but the subtlest relationism in action.

And I agree. It is measurably more work to apply moral standards to non-standard situations; and approaching the criminal for a thinking person in a gray and unfair world to hold otherwise.