Where Do We Ground Our Ethical beliefs? A Personal View

The Case for Grounding Ethics in Human Nature and Experience rather than Religion and Divine Commands???

 

Over the years, I have thought deeply about the basis for my ethical beliefs.  To what extent is it based on my alignment with what Jesus preached and what Christianity is at its best (loving God and treating your neighbor as yourself) relative to the alternative of basing my ethical behavior on the realization that we as humans are “continuous with nature” and that as argued by the German philosopher, writer and anthropologist Ludwig Feuerbach, rooting our behavior in physical and social realities and observance of the importance of human relationships and dialogue. 

 

Feuerbach in his work, The Essence of Christianity (1841) advocated for a shift from God-centered to human-centered ethics.  He promoted a new philosophy that made man, with the inclusion of nature as the foundation of man, “unique, universal and the highest object of philosophy.”  He wanted to ground ethics in human nature and experience rather than divine commands. 

 

He argues that the concept of God is a projection of human qualities, something we have created. 

 

He advocated the pursuit of happiness but argued that, in pursuing that goal, it was necessary to recognize the importance of the happiness of others.

 

This all raises the question.  Is a secular, human-centered approach to ethics and morality one that can result in a more peaceful world and coexistence among peoples?  We know that the pursuit of religion has often resulted in wars and there is no reason to feel that will end.

 

Where do I come out on all of this?  What have I personally found to be true?

 

First, I take nourishment from viewing all of us as human beings as part of nature.  It would be unrealistic to do otherwise.  It’s a reality.  But I also see no evidence that a nature-based human rights philosophy will, in fact, lead to a more peaceful world.

 

What I have concluded is that there is no getting around the inherent human tendency to pit ourselves against and elevate ourselves relative to other people.  It’s ego-driven selfishness; it’s inextricable.  This tendency co-exists with beneficent instincts too.  Our task is, in proverbial terms, to live by the better angels of our nature.

 

What helps one do that?  It will vary by individual, of course.  For me, religion or, more precisely, the preaching of Jesus and what He stood for, which I find co-terminus with the foundational principles of other religions, has been of enormous help.  I recognize that this foundation of belief may well be something I’ve created to serve as a proverbial crutch to improve my behavior.  I accept that.  I have no problem with it.  But for me it is more than that. It is an inspiration to pursue what is good in life. 

 

As beguiling and perhaps intellectually correct as the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach may be I do not retreat for a moment from my commitment to try to follow as best I can the preaching and actions of Jesus.

 

The Glory of a Relationship Where Your Mutual Affection and Respect Are Unconditional and Unquestioned

 

I was moved to write this reflection twenty years ago because of a coming together of conversations with my wife, Francie, and children and in particular at that time with my daughter, Susie.

 

"I have found that you reach a point in a relationship where your affection and respect for another person grows to a point that it becomes unconditional and unquestioned.

 

You reach this point by seeing a person’s integrity revealed again and again.  You reach it by experiencing a feeling of caring and trust that is deep and jointly shared.  You reach it as you experience a greater sense of wholeness, of pleasure, and of personal fulfillment in the company of the other person.

 

You reach it as you enter a relationship that allows you to share not only the everyday issues and concerns, but those that matter the most to you.

 

You reach that point and never lose it, one hopes with your spouse and with your children and, if you’re lucky, over the course of a lifetime, you reach it with a few business associates and friends.

 

When you reach this point there is nothing you won’t do to help another person.  You only hope that they realize this to the point of being willing to reach out for that help in the instance when you may not be aware of the need".

Revealing the Essential Qualities of George Washington

 Joseph Ellis’ biography of George Washington, His Excellency is a good example, at about 270 pages, how less can be better.  I compare it to the biography of Ronald Chernow, twice the size, but frankly not helping me understand Washington any better and, in some ways, less than I did reading Ellis’ book.

 

Ellis managed to convert Washington from the impenetrable marble bust that we see, or the unbeatable general crossing the Delaware, to a human being of great strengths but flaws like every person and every “great man,” too.

 

You come to the end of the book, the final 10 pages, and Ellis shines a bright light on what made Washington tick.  It was clear from the beginning that his height (6’3”), large body size and regal appearance made him stand out as a leader.  And he carried himself as a leader, with confidence and few uncertainties, at least ones he ever displayed or revealed in his diaries.

 

He was at the center of the two distinctive creative moments in American founding, Ellis writes:  “The winning of independence and the invention of nationhood.  No one else in the founding generation could match these revolutionary credentials, so no one else could plausibly challenge his place atop the American version of Mount Olympus.”

 

Ellis makes clear the errors in judgment and the missteps Washington made along the way.  Participating in the massacre of Indians.  Losing more battles in the Revolutionary War than he won.  Recognizing that the biggest win, Yorktown, was really a French victory.  But somehow or other, it is fair to say, as Ellis writes, that he was “invariably proved prescient as if he had known where history was headed; or perhaps as if the future had felt compelled to align itself with his choices.”  That overstates the reality, I believe, of the situation, but there is truth to it.

 

Washington was a supremely realistic visionary.  Ellis rightly observes that “Washington’s power of judgment derived in part from the fact that his mind was uncluttered with sophisticated intellectual preconceptions.”  Washington’s education was elemental.  From his very first experience on the Virginia frontier, he had “internalized a visceral understanding of the arbitrary and capricious ways of the world...he had concluded that men and nations were driven by interests rather than ideals, and surrendering control to another was invariably harmful, often fateful.  Armed with these basic convictions, he was capable of a remarkably unblinkered and unburdened response to the increasingly consequential decisions that history placed before him.”

 

I think it’s fair to say, as Ellis writes, that Washington had no part of “the grand illusion of the age that there was a natural order in human affairs that would generate perfect harmony.  The Revolution was not about destroying political power as it was for Jefferson, but rather seizing it and using it wisely.”

From the beginning, recognizing the need for a Federally-supported Army, he was with Hamilton in wanting to have a strong national state.  

 

I find a similarity in Washington to Lyndon Johnson.  Like Johnson, “his life was all about power:  facing it, attaining it, channeling it, and projecting it.” 

 

Self-interest was never far from Washington’s mind.  We see that in his accumulating of land from his very earliest days.  We see it in how he handled the slavery issue:  condemning it as a moral aberration but being tentative all the way to his death in actually providing freedom to his slaves.  To be sure, he could not allow for him having an enslaved family broken up.  But he stopped short of freeing his slaves.  After all, for him they were assets. 

 

Washington’s deeply realistic approach to foreign affairs is well-illustrated by his attitude toward France following the onset of the French Revolution.  Although he knew that we probably would not have won the Revolutionary War if it were not for France, he was determined to prevent his affection for Lafayette or his memories of all that the French armies and sailors did to help achieve independence influence his judgment about not forming a long-term supportive relationship with France.  He was focused, like Jefferson, with laser-like intensity, on expanding the nation to the west.

 

His attitude toward foreign relations is well-captured in these key words he uttered, “There can be no greater error to expect, or calculate upon real favors from Nation to Nation.”  He asserted that the relationship between nations was not like the relationship between individuals, which could periodically be conducted on the basis of mutual trust.  Nations always had and always would behave, he believed, solely on the basis of their own interest.

 

A strength of Washington was his willingness to change his mind.  His willingness to do so in the case of the Revolutionary War saved the country from disaster.  In the beginning, every instinct of Washington was to undertake a frontal attack on the British.  In fact, he had tried that in New York with great losses.  General Greene opposed this.  He advocated a “Fabian strategy”: preserve your Army, be selective in attacking the enemy.  After a lot of pleading and cajoling, Washington followed Greene's conviction.

 

Another strength of Washington—he knew when one of his associates like Madison and Hamilton were better equipped than he was to accomplish a job.  A great example of this concerns the Bill of Rights.  He left the writing of that entirely to Madison.  Washington followed the same path when it came to the economy, establishing the Federal Bank and other financial matters.  Here, he followed Hamilton.

 

 

Washington had a very hierarchical view of people.  There was no love lost between him, his fellow senior officers, and the soldiers who spent that brutal winter in Valley Forge.  He enforced very harsh discipline.  Drunkenness received up to a thousand lashes, and deserters faced death by hanging. 

 

He was a tight manager, too.  A stickler for details of how Mount Vernon and his other farms operated.  A supreme and hard-nosed realist in this area, as in all others.

It Is Never Too Late To Do the Right Thing--Biden Should Step Down

 I wrote this on Monday, 7/1, four days after the disastrous debate.

A lot of reflection and a lot of emerging debate on the aftermath of Joe Biden’s disastrous debate on Thursday night.  Should he step aside?  A lot of people have called for it, the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, David Ignatius, Nick Kristof.  I ponder the question.  I believe the only circumstance that could justify in good conscience his proceeding is the absolute conviction on his own part, and that of Jill, his wife, and those closest to him that the Thursday night debacle was a total aberration and that indeed he is fit, not just some days but almost every day, to carry the responsibilities of the presidency and, as one can best predict, continue to for another five years, by which time he will be 86.

I have been convinced and argued for the past two years that Biden should not run for a second term.  Indeed, he started out indicating that he would be a one-term president, and that’s exactly what he should have been, not because he hasn’t done a good job (in many respects he has done a superb job:  foreign affairs, infrastructure bill) but because of his age.  

I inevitably view this through the lens of my own experience, my own age.  I know everybody ages differently.  Biden is probably aging more slowly than I did, but he’s aging and he will continue to.  That is inarguable.  

I also put this in terms of running a major corporation like Procter & Gamble (much less of a responsibility, obviously, than the presidency).  We wouldn’t conceive of having a CEO taking office at the age of 81; we wouldn’t even conceive of it.  Growing up, we had a retirement age of 60. It became 65 nominally.  That’s 16 years less than Biden’s age today.  

Good arguments can be raised against Biden dropping out.  There won’t be a lot of time to find another candidate (two months before the convention; four months before the election).  But I would argue there is enough time for good people to make their case, and they would.

The one argument that falls absolutely flat is that there would be nobody else as good as Biden to compete against Trump.  I don’t buy that for a minute.  In fact, even before the debate, Biden was running slightly behind Trump and decisively in most of the battleground states.  I don’t know what polls will show in the next week.  Whatever they show, it will be temporal.  After a very bad debate performance in 1984, Ronald Reagan’s rating dropped seven points, but he went on to win.  No doubt:  memories are short.  If Biden has a good final debate in September, attitudes will shift.  But one thing won’t shift, and that is the reality of Biden’s age and the concern about it by the voters.

I believe that the absolute imperative is to have a candidate who will keep Trump from having another term.  The other imperative, and being that first imperative, is to ensure ourselves that we have a leader who will provide the best leadership for this country over the next four years.  I do not believe that is Joe Biden.  Therefore, I believe he should step down.

To be sure, if he doesn’t, I will go all out for Biden.  I cannot stand the idea of a man of Trump’s perfidy being president of our great nation again.

Trump as a Vessel for Some of the Worst Instincts in Human Beings

 

 

This is a bold assertion.  And I would hasten to add that Trump is also the vessel for some of the good instincts in people. 

 

The bad quality I refer to is our immutable tendency to pit ourselves against other people, to hold ourselves up as being different and better; to picture and present ourselves as "victims".

 

We have seen this throughout history.  Without suggesting equivalency, it drove the Nazi and Fascist movements in the last century.  It drove the foundation for slavery in our country and others too.  And for purposes of this essay, it drove the creation of the Second Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. 

 

This movement eventually drew 5-8 million members, including senators and governors from many states and mayors from many cities.  The movement even pushed to get a Ku Klux Klan member as vice-president on the 1924 Democratic ticket.

 

The movement was animated by hatred of Jews, Blacks, Catholics and immigrants.  The early part of the 20^th century had seen a huge influx of Southern Europeans.

 

The language of the leaders of the Klan denunciating immigrants as "poison" mirrors what Trump is saying today and others opposed to immigration before him have said before.

 

The Klan drove immigration reform as one of its top priorities.  They got their wish in 1924 with the National Origins Act, which passed the House and the Senate with overwhelming margins.  The law’s quota system was based on assigning future immigration quotas based on the census of 1890 before most Southern European and Polish Catholics and Jewish refugees had crossed the Atlantic.  The objective of restricting entry of the purloined groups was to turn back the clock.  America would be replenished with people who looked like the ethnic face of the places where the Klan lived.  The effect was immediate and dramatic.  While in 1921, nearly one-quarter million Italians immigrated to the United States, that number had fallen by 90% by 1925.  Similarly, while 200,000 Russian Jews arrived on American shores in 1921, a year after the passage of the Immigration Act, only 2,000 were let into the country.  Left behind in Poland were three-and-a-half million Jews who would be targeted with mass execution in little more than a decade.  Voting with Klan was the easy thing to do, for the backlash against immigration had reached a point where a majority in office were ready to close the gates.”

 

*****

 

Why, can we ask, did this movement, which had 5-8 million members in the mid-1920s collapse to only about 100,000 members by the end of the 1920s? 

 

A principal reason was the result of a trial which turned around the indictment and verdict to convict one of the handful of top leaders of the Second Ku Klux Klan, T.C. Stephenson, of having poisoned a woman, Madge Oberholtzer, this leading to her death.   There were other factors that drove the decline of the Klan’s reputation and membership.  Economic conditions had improved as the decade went on, the pressure of immigration had been relieved by the notorious 1924 Immigration Act, and there was corruption among other members of the Klan leadership.  But the results of this trial were decisive.  The reputation of the Klan was destroyed as it was clear that the pursuit of the values most Americans believed in were violated. 

 

I can’t help but contrast this to the very different reaction to the conviction of Donald Trump in the" hush money" trial but, more than that, to the other allegations and actions attributed to  him that make clear his utter lack of character.

 

What has changed in our nation over the 100 years since that trial?  Has the inner day-to=day goodness of the minds and actions of people changed all that much?  I rather doubt it.  But what has changed is the public acceptance of behavior that is, on the face of it, unethical and lacking in decency.  A cynicism about how people in government and elites in general live has crept across the nation for many, many people.  Our judgment of what is right and wrong has been dulled.  Our willingness to accept abhorrent behavior has increased. 

 

What can change this?  It has to start with the home, what young people learn from their parents as to what constitutes good behavior; what examples they see.  And it has to be underpinned by education:  the telling of stories that show us at our best and at our worst.  We need more of these stories in our schools. 

 

There is another question that emerges from my examination of the relationship of what drove the Second Ku Klux Klan and what drives the MAGA movement today.  It is, what creates the environmental condition where a MAGA movement can take life, for the presence of the instincts motivating it will always be there?  My answer is that this is more likely to happen when the existing economic order is failing to support the individual, when the system is not working for the common man.  What drives this importantly is opening inequality in wealth and opportunity and the corrosive effect of government incompetence and corruption.  These negative features today are far more transparent due to the ever-present information coming from social media and the bifurcated media platforms that exist far more than in the past.

 

Seeing ourselves as victims is something that has always been present and probably always will be.  It can be reduced by leadership which has the wisdom and courage to put in place policies which, to the extent possible, provide opportunity for all and persuade people that we really are in this together, that we are stronger together than we are alone or fighting one another.  This is what leaders like Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel and Abraham Lincoln were able to do.  It is why I so regret that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, because I believe he had the ability to do that for our country in the late 1960s.

 

 

Abraham Lincoln--A Call to Honor the Rule of Law and the Principles of the Declaration of Independence--Why Joe Biden Needs to be Reelected

I found this to a compelling reminder on the day of the first Presidential Debate.

Abraham Lincoln, in a talk he gave at only the age of 29,  delivers on the day of the first Presidential Debate, perpetual and fitting foundation for why President Biden must be elected in the November election. His opponent, former president, Donald Trump, defies the call which Lincoln ordered at that time.

To wit:

"We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which the history of former times tell us. As the patriots of 1776 did to the support of the constitution and laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor – – let every man remember that to violate the law is to tramp on the blood of his father and tear the (charter)of his own and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws be  breathed by every American mother , to the lisping babe,that prattles on her lap, let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the "political religion" of the nation. And let the old, the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars"

Insights from the Demise of Ancient Civilizations

  

I thoroughly enjoyed Victor Davis Hanson’s The End of Everything:  How Wars Descend into Annihilation. 

 

It gave me a thumbnail description of parts of history I had read about in the past but most of which I had not penetrated in detail:  classical Thebes, which saw the Macedonians eliminate the independent Greek city-state; Carthage, with the Romans obliterating the city at the end of the Third Punic War; Constantinople, with Mahmet II finally destroying a much depleted Byzantine culture; and, finally, Aztec Tenochtitlan, where Cortez, with less than 1,000 conquistadors, obliterated the Aztec civilization and its warriors numbering (and death of) over 100,000.

 

In four fascinating chapters, he examines each of these in some detail.  His thesis is that there are lessons of which we should be aware of how things came to pass, usually through naiveté, hubris and misunderstanding, as well as a deliberate dependence on real or presumed allies exacerbated by a willful refusal to recognize the power and intent of their enemies.  They underestimated both the capabilities and the intent of their enemies. 

 

I found the story of the motivation of Romans to obliterate the Carthaginians as eerily similar to what is motivating some Israelis now to obliterate Palestine and Hamas and which motivated America and the Allies to obliterate German cities and Japanese cities in World War II.  As Hanson writes, “Generations of Romans were convinced, rightly or wrongly, that the resources of their Carthaginian enemy were timeless and endless.  So there could be no such thing as a sufficiently diminished and quiescent Carthage.”  They had to go. 

 

Similarly, while Cortez did not start out with the conviction that he has to wipe out the entire culture of the people (Aztecs) he was righting, he came to the realization that, in order to rebuild what became Mexico City, he had to obliterate the Aztecs.  He was led to this importantly because of the diametrically opposed culture of the Aztecs, highlighted by their incredible practice of human sacrifice and cannibalism. 

 

Similarly, I don’t believe the Ottomans intended to destroy all of the citizens of Constantinople but the conflict developed with such intensity that that became the result.  I’ll return to this point later.

 

Hansen draws the excellent point that the accusation of war guilt and harsh reparations accompanied by feeble enforcement as occurred at the end of World War I can ensure another war with an insulted but newly resurgent enemy.  In contrast, Hanson writes, “Quiet magnanimity backed by unyielding force and confidence in enforcing it does bode for a settlement, as occurred after World War II, and can guarantee lasting peace.”

 

This lesson is applied to Romans’ lack of strong enforcement of holding back a resurging Carthage after the Second Punic War.  So, the Third Punic War arose.  Now, Rome was in a state of mind that there will not be any more wars.  We will obliterate Carthage and the civilization which supports it.  This is the attitude of Israelis toward Hamas.  It was the intention of the U.S. as we tackled Al Qaeda.  The problem is that these movements cannot be totally obliterated. 

 

A very interesting insight I gained in Cortez’s success is the degree to which he was able to draft into his army tens of thousands of fierce neighboring warriors who were opposed to the Aztecs.  The Aztecs had treated them cruelly.  I believe the Nazis’ treatment of the people in the countries in which they invaded accounts for not only their failure of the citizens to join the Nazi cause, but to the strength of the resistance which developed. 

 

I’m also struck by how a combination of religion and greed motivated Cortez, just as it motivated so many other movements during the course of history.  As Cortez himself wrote:  “The principal reason for our coming to these parts (of the world) is to glorify and preach the faith of Jesus Christ, even though at the same time it brings us honor and profit, which infrequently come in the same package.”

 

One of the most memorable insights I took from the book is how the intent and effort to destroy rather than merely defeat a trapped enemy ensures unprecedented savagery and, as Hanson writes, “The zeal necessary to resist overwhelming odds (by those being attacked) eventually ensures a level of counter-violence that seals the fate of the defeated.  Surely this is what accounts for and drove the blitz bombing of civilian populations by the Allies in both Japan and Germany during World War II.  It is driving the motivation and actions of the Israelis as they pummel Gaza and its citizens with bombs.  Hanson recites the learning during the course of World War II by General Lemay that there was no recourse but to blanket-bombing to win the war. 

 

Looking back, Hanson notes that, “Once the victors are unleashed—and they always are—their commanders post-facto expressed regret over their nihilistic cruelty, without any sense that they would do anything differently in the future.”  This, of course, is what happened following the use of the atomic bomb.  Retrospective debate as to whether it should have been used.  Retrospective debate today about blanket-bombing and, yet in hindsight, would one have done anything differently at the time?  Almost certainly not.  The forces and pressure of the situation led to this outcome almost inevitably.