Where is the moral fiber?

George Rebane

Where indeed?  In responding to my Christmas post, a reader emailed me about a grocery store incident in which a man, with daughter watching, helped himself to some mixed nuts from a bin.  She reminded him that that was stealing, and he reminded her that it wasn’t stealing at all since he was a regular customer of that store.  There was more to the conversation, but that was the gist of it.

In her email she asked where is the moral fiber today that permits us to ignore or define away stealing.  This may be a question of our age, and it applies to a broader category of social infractions.

We are now an enforced, non-assimilating, multi-cultural society.  A mono-cultural society teaches its young rules of social behavior much of which need not be codified into law since they are understood by almost all the population.  And if that culture also teaches the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent god, then correct social behavior stands on the divine dictates of morality.  You don’t mess with a god who knows your heart and can hold you to account if you persist in going against the rules he has laid down.

But in a multi-cultural society, where behavior is enforced by the state’s ‘power of the bayonet’, things are very different, especially if the state religion turns out to be secular humanism.  The secular humanist worships complex combinations of atoms.  And since the constituent atoms are the fundamental material elements of this universe, they cannot represent any absolute good or bad, no matter in what combinations they may occur.  What can one say in an absolute sense about the progress of one particular dynamic path of such a collection of atoms versus, say, another dynamic path?  Can one such path be intrinsically ‘better’ than any other?

Now add to this society the small common ground available from the confluence of many cultures.  Such a society cannot count on any effective or reliable ‘kinderstube’ to instill broadly accepted and mutually beneficient behavioral norms to their young.  The visible and obvious result is that every multi-cultural society must be governed through very thick law books and reams of regulations, all enforced by a substantial and expensive constabulary.

It is understood here that a mono-cultural society is not immune from behavioral breakdowns.  We just acknowledge that a mono-cultural society has an easier time communicating and enforcing its beliefs, values, and mores, whatever they may be.

Finally, the secular humanist sees a person as simply an evolved complex assemblage of atoms.  Now, to what would such a complex assemblage of atoms answer, and for what would it answer?  Here there is only one reasonable criterion to be satisfied, and that is to maximize its constrained, subjective pleasure in the here and now.  At times the constraints may require assuring the survival of its young, for which the available maximum evolved ‘pleasure’ may even be a minimized pain, often mistaken for moral behavior.

In any case, such an assemblage of atoms knows its fate – it is oblivion, the ultimate release from ties imposed by any fiber, moral or otherwise.  This is now the law of our land.

Comments

[Steven Frisch]

Wow George...what a post after your Christmas, Christian post about love, and your post about Stettin.

The problem is clear: we now live in a multicultural world due to advances in technology, travel, communications, economic interconnectedness, and dependence on each other for resources.

We will never be the world of isolated monocultures again, at least not until all social order breaks down and 90% of our species dies from some cataclysmic event or judgement.

Much as you might try you can't go home again.

[George Rebane]

Agreed Steve that we now live in a world where almost all of the rich countries have become homes to unassimilated cultures. And it's hard to see how we can go back, although the world is now full of mini-conflicts of people trying to return to mono-cultural environments.

The USSR and Yugoslavia had solutions for keeping multi-cultural peace in their nations. Do you see the future returning to such solutions, or can you describe a better vision for tomorrow?

[bill tozer]

The bin of nuts struck a cord. How we justify and rationalize away behavior is a core issue. The day before Christmas I was at a bank parking lot in downtown GV. The elderly security guard wrote a friendly warning ticket on a car that had been parked over an hour (15 minute limit due to limited space) The driver of the car arrived and was furious. She loaded her Christmas purchases, berated the gentleman, and said that since she was a bank customer she could park there as long as she wanted to. I heard it said that capitalism needs a system of high ethics to work. As our culture becomes more multi-cultural, many of newcomers come from other cultures that see things differently. Stealing and corruption is the norm, so that is why I do not believe capitalism will really work in Russia, among others. There are those who espouse relative truth i.e. "there are no absolutes". When I point out that the statement "there are no absolutes" is in fact an absolute statement and thus the foundation of their beliefs is on a false premise. well, that is not how to make friends. Yes, all cultures have breakdowns as humans are flawed. But, then I look at history of Christian nations verses secular humanists, one thing is apparent. The mass murder of the state upon its citizens is appauling. Add up the millions of massacured by Mao, Stalin, Hilter, Cambodia, and add all the minor dictators, it is clear that the much decried 600,000 souls killed by Christians during the period of the Crusades dwarfs in comparison to the crimes of the human secularists.

[George Rebane]

Excellent points Bill. In ‘Death by Government’ (1995) Professor R.J. Rummel documents a monumental academic research effort tallying up the non-war related deaths caused by governments in the 20th century. An astounding statistic is that authoritarian/totalitarian governments killed over 170 million of their own citizens while implementing internal policies based on class, race, religion, political affiliation, etc. This number is almost six times the total deaths caused by that century’s wars. The 170 million number does not include the wholesale slaughter of more than a tenth of China’s population during its Cultural Revolution. Given our relationship with China, pinning down this number (that is of the order of another 100 million) is proving politically embarrassing, and the work is on indefinite hold. On the other side of the ledger, liberal democracies killed only about 800,000 of their own people during the same period. These were made up mostly of law enforcement police actions and court sentenced executions. Rummel calls such non-war deaths by government democide, and notes that “power kills, and absolute power kills absolutely.”

[Steven Frisch]

Yes George the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia did have responses to multicultural influences. Those responses were repression, isolation, and eventually ethnic cleansing and genocide.

I would say the better solution is --accept multi-culturalism as a positive influence. I think that your original premise--that a mono-cultural society is morally superior to a multi-cultural society--is fundamentally flawed. It is that premise that is the underpinning of the repression you deplore.

[George Rebane]

Steve, we seem to be mis-communicating again. I advanced no premise, “original” or otherwise, about the moral superiority of mono-cultures on any absolute or comparative scale. Since morals are culture-specific, it requires no great leap of logic to accept that mono-cultures have an easier time maintaining higher morals according to THEIR own standards of morality. (For example, in some cultures it is a moral imperative for a father to execute his daughter accused of dishonoring the family. Within the culture such a killing is viewed as a high moral act, and in other cultures as primitive murder.) On the other hand, multi-cultural societies must codify and impose one set of rules on all members, with many/most of the rules being extra-cultural to a good fraction of the participating cultures. How that common set of rules is chosen is another matter. All we know is that it cannot be fair to all concerned (Arrow’s Paradox) and therefore must be enforced by the gun. The solution, of course, is assimilation into an amalgam culture that then becomes the public mono-culture in the daily round. I hope this helps.

[Steven Frisch]

"A mono-cultural society teaches its young rules of social behavior much of which need not be codified into law since they are understood by almost all the population."

"We are now an enforced, non-assimilating, multi-cultural society."

"But in a multi-cultural society, where behavior is enforced by the state’s ‘power of the bayonet’, things are very different, especially if the state religion turns out to be secular humanism."

"Now add to this society the small common ground available from the confluence of many cultures."

Above is your set of statements implying the moral superiority of a mono-cultural society.

What's next, white supremacy?

[George Rebane]

Steve, with that devastating logic you have now left the rest of us in the dust.

[Steve Enos]

George... you posted "if that culture also teaches the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent god, then correct social behavior stands on the divine dictates of morality. You don’t mess with a god who knows your heart and can hold you to account if you persist in going against the rules he has laid down".

Geoerge, do I even need to post about the history of the Catholic Church? Things like their pay your way out of sin plan or what has happened with child sexual abuse by the Church and their on going cover ups?

How's that mono culture system working? what we need is accountability under the law for thier actions via "very thick law books and reams of regulations, all enforced by a substantial and expensive constabulary".

[George Rebane]

"It is understood here that a mono-cultural society is not immune from behavioral breakdowns. ..."

Re Catholics - yes, this is why they had the Reformation and now Catholic numbers are going down in formerly solid Catholic countries (e.g. all over Latin America).

Not sure SteveE that my point here got through to you. In any event, you can rejoice because the very thick law books are already here and getting thicker. However, when they crank up Reconquista ... .

[Steven Frisch]

You seem to constantly be having a problem getting your point across.

Perhaps you are not quite as omnipotent as you profess to be.

[Mikey McD]

SteveF (a.k.a the guy that swore never to come back to this blog), liberals are not known for letting reason and facts interfere with their opinions...knowledge base...ideology. I think I can speak for George when I say that he doesn't (I don't) expect his facts/reason/rational to convert a "true believer" progressive to a liberty loving American. It is futile to "get points across" to progressives; as facts and reason debase their ideology they continue to claim brilliance through ignorance ("I don't understand THE facts/reason...my socialist agenda is bullet proof").