In his book, The Diamond Age, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, author Neal Stephenson presents a gripping and epic story full of nanotechnological marvels. It's one of my favorite books, an old friend now that I've read multiple times. Like all fine literature, it grows with you. At one time of life you read it and it conveys a message that you're primed to absorb at that time. At a different time of life, you read it and it might as well be a different book.
"You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices," Finkle-McGraw said. "It was all because of moral relativism. you see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to critcise others -- after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for criticism?"
Finkle-McGraw paused, knowing that he had the full attention of his audience, and began to withdraw a calabash pipe and various related supplies and implements from his pockets. As he continued, he charged the calabash with a blend of leather-brown tobacco so redolent that it made Hackworth's mouth water. He was tempted to spoon some of it into his mouth.
"Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticise others' shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypcrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticise another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behaviour -- you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy.
"You wouldn't believe the things they said about the original Victorians. Calling someone a Victorian in those days was almost like calling them a fascist or a Nazi."
Both Hackworth and Major Napier were dumbfounded. "Your Grace!" Napier exclaimed. "I was naturally aware that their moral stance was radically different from ours -- but I am astonished to be informed that they actually condemned the first Victorians."
Finkle-McGraw beamed upon Hackworth like a master upon his favored pupil. "As you can see, Major Napier, my estimate of Mr. Hackworth's mental acuity was not ill-founded."
"While I would never have supposed otherwise, Your Grace," Major Napier said, "it is nonetheless gratifying to have seen a demonstration." Napier raised his glass in Hackworth's direction.
"Because they were hypocrites," Finkle-McGraw said, after igniting his calabash and shooting a few tremendous fountains of smoke into the air, "the Victorians were despised in the late twentieth century. Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefandous conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves -- they took no moral stances and lived by none."
"So they were morally superior to the Victorians--" Major Napier said, still a bit snowed under.
"--even though--in fact, because--they had no morals at all."
There was a moment of silent, bewildered head-shaking around the copper table.
"We take a somewhat different view of hypocrisy," Finkle-McGraw continued. "In the late-twentieth-century Weltanschauung, a hypocrite was someone who espoused high moral views as part of a planned campaign of deception--he never held these beliefs sincerely and routinely violated them in privacy. Of course, most hypocrites are not like that. Most of the time it's a spirit-is-willing, flesh-is-weak sort of thing."
"That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code," Major Napier said, working it through, "does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code."
I recently finished reading The Diamond Age, yet again, and its pertinence to the current state of our nation is very striking to me in a way that it has never been before. I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about the terrible political division that sometimes seems like it is tearing the country in half. Our two political parties' differences have become so irreconcilable that nothing constructive can ever be done. And if perchance anything ever happens to benefit one party, the other party immediately does everything it can to nullify and erase that benefit. The result is a house divided where we are sacrificing our shared national identity on the altar of tribalism.
I ask myself often what the cause of this division is. The party faithful on both sides of the aisle are usually unhesitant to tell you it's because the other side is stupid or evil. But that is unhelpful. People as a whole are no smarter or stupider, no better or worse, no more moral or immoral than they have ever been despite the ever present complaints from the elder generation that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. So what is going on?
Town and Country
Yesterday and Today
Rich and Poor
Black and White
Young and Old
A shared sense of right and wrong
A sense of meaning and purpose
What does relativism do?
Is it possible to have something that can provide traditions, life rituals, a shared body of liturgy, music, and art that can help bind people together into a community and promote a shared sense of transcendence?
In a pluralistic society, what can provide a strong cultural gravity capable of pulling the different elements of society together and holding them in orbit?
In an epoch of rapid and drastic change, what can give most everybody a sense of place and purpose, and a high likelihood of finding a life path within the reach of their set of endowments?
In a time of nothing being either right or wrong, but only different, how do we provide for the large scale adoption of a finite set of recipes that lead reliably toward sustainable societal success and provide individuals a fighting chance for a satisfactory life?
In an age of uncertainty and chaos, how do we provide a good chance for people to belong to a community that can help to smooth out the ups and downs of life? At one time excommunication was a punishment that had teeth because belonging to a community was often the only way to survive and banishment was death, or worse than death.
As I write these words, I can feel my religious friends quivering with the desire to share their Good News. But I'm wondering: is it possible to have a philosophy, a community, a strong belief system that can provide all these needed benefits and still withstand the scrutiny of Reason sufficiently well to mitigate Religion's fatal flaws: its terrible vulnerability to being hijacked by ambition and fundamentalism, to cloaking incompetence in authority, and ability to disguise evil in piety?
Hypocrisy
Finkle-McGraw paused, knowing that he had the full attention of his audience, and began to withdraw a calabash pipe and various related supplies and implements from his pockets. As he continued, he charged the calabash with a blend of leather-brown tobacco so redolent that it made Hackworth's mouth water. He was tempted to spoon some of it into his mouth.
"Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticise others' shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypcrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticise another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behaviour -- you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy.
"You wouldn't believe the things they said about the original Victorians. Calling someone a Victorian in those days was almost like calling them a fascist or a Nazi."
Both Hackworth and Major Napier were dumbfounded. "Your Grace!" Napier exclaimed. "I was naturally aware that their moral stance was radically different from ours -- but I am astonished to be informed that they actually condemned the first Victorians."
"Of course they did," Finkle-McGraw said
"Because the first Victorians were hypocrites," Hackworth said, getting it.
"While I would never have supposed otherwise, Your Grace," Major Napier said, "it is nonetheless gratifying to have seen a demonstration." Napier raised his glass in Hackworth's direction.
"Because they were hypocrites," Finkle-McGraw said, after igniting his calabash and shooting a few tremendous fountains of smoke into the air, "the Victorians were despised in the late twentieth century. Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefandous conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves -- they took no moral stances and lived by none."
"So they were morally superior to the Victorians--" Major Napier said, still a bit snowed under.
"--even though--in fact, because--they had no morals at all."
There was a moment of silent, bewildered head-shaking around the copper table.
"We take a somewhat different view of hypocrisy," Finkle-McGraw continued. "In the late-twentieth-century Weltanschauung, a hypocrite was someone who espoused high moral views as part of a planned campaign of deception--he never held these beliefs sincerely and routinely violated them in privacy. Of course, most hypocrites are not like that. Most of the time it's a spirit-is-willing, flesh-is-weak sort of thing."
"That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code," Major Napier said, working it through, "does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code."
"Of course not," Finkle-McGraw said. "It's perfectly obvious, really. No one ever said that it was easy to hew to a strict code of conduct. Really, the difficulties involved--the missteps we make along the way--are what make it interesting. The internal, and eternal, struggle, between our base impulses and the rigorous demands of our own moral system is quintessentially human. It is how we conduct ourselves in that struggle that determines how we may in time be judged by a higher power."
The Moral Foundations underlying our politics.
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