Morality

Here is a bit from an op-ed by David Brooks in the NY Times:

When George Washington was a young man, he copied out a list of 110 “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” Some of the rules in his list dealt with the niceties of going to a dinner party or meeting somebody on the street.

“Lean not upon anyone,” was one of the rules. “Read no letter, books or papers in company,” was another. “If any one come to speak to you while you are sitting, stand up,” was a third.

But, as the biographer Richard Brookhiser has noted, these rules, which Washington derived from a 16th-century guidebook, were not just etiquette tips. They were designed to improve inner morals by shaping the outward man. Washington took them very seriously. He worked hard to follow them. Throughout his life, he remained acutely conscious of his own rectitude.

In so doing, he turned himself into a new kind of hero. He wasn’t primarily a military hero or a political hero. As the historian Gordon Wood has written, “Washington became a great man and was acclaimed as a classical hero because of the way he conducted himself during times of temptation. It was his moral character that set him off from other men.”

Washington absorbed, and later came to personify what you might call the dignity code. The code was based on the same premise as the nation’s Constitution — that human beings are flawed creatures who live in constant peril of falling into disasters caused by their own passions. Artificial systems have to be created to balance and restrain their desires.

The dignity code commanded its followers to be disinterested — to endeavor to put national interests above personal interests. It commanded its followers to be reticent — to never degrade intimate emotions by parading them in public. It also commanded its followers to be dispassionate — to distrust rashness, zealotry, fury and political enthusiasm.

Remnants of the dignity code lasted for decades. For most of American history, politicians did not publicly campaign for president. It was thought that the act of publicly promoting oneself was ruinously corrupting. For most of American history, memoirists passed over the intimacies of private life. Even in the 19th century, people were appalled that journalists might pollute a wedding by covering it in the press.

Today, Americans still lavishly admire people who are naturally dignified, whether they are in sports (Joe DiMaggio and Tom Landry), entertainment (Lauren Bacall and Tom Hanks) or politics (Ronald Reagan and Martin Luther King Jr.).

But the dignity code itself has been completely obliterated. The rules that guided Washington and generations of people after him are simply gone.

We can all list the causes of its demise. First, there is capitalism. We are all encouraged to become managers of our own brand, to do self-promoting end zone dances to broadcast our own talents. Second, there is the cult of naturalism. We are all encouraged to discard artifice and repression and to instead liberate our own feelings. Third, there is charismatic evangelism with its penchant for public confession. Fourth, there is radical egalitarianism and its hostility to aristocratic manners.

This is seductively simple. It is the hue and cry of conservatives from the dawn of time: "In the golden age of the past times were good, we were good, but modernity has corrupted us." Brooks is peddling a lie.

I lived through the cultural change from the 1950s conformity to the 1960s rebellion. Brooks is right with his fourth "cause". Yes, radical egalitarianism played a role in breaking down traditional morality. But the biggest cause is missing from his list. The 1960s radicalized a whole generation of youth because their noses were rubbed, violently rubbed, in the hypocrisy of the smug generation of the 1950s. The Father Knows Best generation, the Leave it to Beaver generation ignored the rampant racism and the violent ugliness of the struggle for civil rights. The Kennedy call to "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" was kllled in the bloody mess of Vietnam, a war fought by both Democratic and Republican presidents for a lie. They pretended it was to "contain Communism" but this was a lie as seen in the Pentagon Papers. They kept the war going because of pride and arrogance. Neither Johnson nor Nixon wanted to be "the first President to lose a war". For this, 58,000 American soldiers died. Not to "save a democracy". Not to "stop Communism". (If you don't believe me, then why did Kennedy stand behind the assassination of Ngo Dihn Diem? If this was to stop Communism, why did the fall of South Vietnam result in all SE Asia going Communist? On the other hand the interference of the US in Cambodia led to the fall of Sihanouk's government and the rise of Pol Pot and his killing fields.

David Brooks is doing what ideologues do: rewrite history to conform to their fantasy.

George Washington was a "paragon" of virtue? I don't think so. He helped destroy native Indians. He was a slaveowner. He led a revolt that narrowly missed being a disaster. He helped put in place a country with self congratualtory ideals but whose practices were less glamorous than their billing. Think of the Whiskey Rebellion. The elite buying up worthless Revolutionary War debt then lobbying the government to redeem the debt. (Shades of today's GM bondholders demanding that the bankruptcy court "honour" their debt!)

As a child I loved the school readers with their stories that ended a nice moral. It seemed a wonderful way to wrap up the story. But as an adult, I realize that morals are tricky things. Too often they are a simplistic viewpoint that clouds the complexities of the underlying issues. Life is not simple. A "one size fits all" rarely works in clothing or in maxims.

When I was a kid "situational ethics" and then "moral relativism" were the new viewpoints. I never accepted either but I was sympathetic. These viewpoints were key in showing that moral judgement is not simple, quick, or even final. Life is just too complex. We grope all through life learning as we go.

Brooks is too simplistic and too ahistorical. His claim:

The old dignity code has not survived modern life. The costs of its demise are there for all to see. Every week there are new scandals featuring people who simply do not know how to act.

shows he doesn't know any history. If he had read Robert Graves' I, Claudius about the depravity of the Julian clan in Rome, he wouldn't be claiming that "modern life" has somehow undermined morals. If he had read the Bible or the Koran and looked at how fundamentalists in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition have treated "morality" with cruel punishments (despite Jesus' admonition of "let he who is without sin cast the first stone"), he wouldn't be so sure that moderns are "fallen" from some golden era of high morality.

What the 1960s generation learned was to turn a cold shoulder to self-serving moralists like David Brooks. Their simplistic idea of morality is an evil that nobody should have to endure. Life is too short, goodness in too rare, and situations to complex to allow a blowhard like Brooks to pontificate.