Morals, Virtues, and Equality

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There's a lot of self-righteous condemnation of Christians this week, the paradox of which is apparently completely lost on the celebrants. Usually, when someone says someone else is judgmental they are projecting. It's extremely difficult and demanding to stick to a high moral standard, so much so that very few people accomplish it if any. By the same token, it's easy to go with the flow, follow the lowest common denominator and do whatever you like whenever you like for whatever reason seems good. Low moral standards are easy to keep because they do not demand much, but that doesn't make them good standards. Those same people often declare that people who aspire to higher moral standards "think they are better" when that isn't the case of people who really mean it. If I insisted on being friends only with people who shared my morals and virtues, I probably wouldn't have any friends at all, even in my own Faith. I am the one who has friends from all walks. I am the one who is tolerant. They demand that I abandon my morals and embrace theirs, or else they declare me a bigot and abandon me. We are different. We have different views of the world. We are not compatible.

Perhaps the saddest fruit of this difference of opinion plays out in interpersonal relationships. My late friend years ago once told me that I would be perfect for her except for my moral standards. Whose morals am I supposed to follow? I became the person I am because I live what I believe, as close as any man can. If I changed to please the jury, I would become someone else, and then they wouldn't like me. The sad paradox is that people who find themselves drawn to me like me because of my morals and then leave me when they discover what those morals are (or how I attained to them). They don't like other people because of disparate morals, but they think that they can find a good relationship, however platonic, by encouraging another person to step down from his morals to join them in theirs. Morals, virtues, and equality mean very different things from what most people take them to mean, but they make us who we are and they shape the world view we have. Ultimately they dictate our interactions with others, and so it's important to differentiate properly what they mean and what consequences they have on human action.

Morality is quite simply an individual's standard of what differentiates right from wrong. It encompasses the things that one finds acceptable, tolerable, and amiable. A moral standard makes us what we are. Our character, disposition, discipline, and confidence are linked to our morals. This is more than what we do; it's what we really are. Someone said we have three faces- the one we show the world, the one we show our friends, and the one we keep hidden from everyone. The hidden one is what you truly believe as morality. It's what you believe, what you think the world and life and words actually mean. It dictates how you treat people including yourself. As your knowledge, opinions, and judgments mature, morals lead to ethics, feelings, the contemplations that lead you to act.

Everyone has their own unique morality because everyone lives a different life. In order to share perfectly the same things in the same order, we would first need to experience the same things and then react to them the same way. We can share morals with others who arrived at them via other paths. Most lasting relationships rely on similar principles of right and wrong. The more compatible you are, the more you will bond together in joint ventures, particularly of social consequence. Adam Smith spoke of this as the highest form of friendship, friendship for similar virtues (Theory of Moral Sentiments). In "Human Action", Ludwig von Mises explains why people choose different things, because they value different ends. We essentially value things as better for us to be right, and our understanding of right varies with our understanding of our relative value to and position in the cosmos. For this reason, most modern moralists tend to be people of faith, because most religions strive to nurture the innate sense of right and wrong with which we are born and keep it consistent with a particular view of human existence. It's not limited to religions. Even Marcus Aurelius admonished men to live well, according to the best standard of which they are capable, whether there is a god or not. That tends to civilized society.

Members of civil society differ in their morality. Since we do not share perspective on what constitutes the best and highest choice, we experience "wonderful contentions" with one another. The most common consequence of this variance is that people are judgmental, arrogant, and self righteous. We consider only the best parts of our morality and paint the morality of other people in charicature. We mock them because we disagree with them, because we don't understand them, and sometimes because we discord with them. Usually this comes from enmity, a sense of competition. It is not supposed to be a fruit of Christian living, but many "Christians" practice it too. More often than not, however, Christians are the targets of slander, ridicule, and condescension because they declare their standard. Since we strive for a better way, we always fall short, which invites the judgment of others. Beware the temptation to judge me for an inability to perfectly live a standard you won't even attempt. Just because you don't share my morality doesn't mean you get to mock me for it. It's easy to do whatever. It's hard to stick to principles.

Most of the people who mock you are confusing virtues and morals. I have different morals than you do. In your argument, you think I should live as you do when my idea of morality differs from you. We have different morals. You can have the same morals and have different virtues, but having the same values doesn't mean we share morals. Unless I believe what you believe, that makes me a bigot? If you can't be impartial, you drag morality into your arguments. I am impartial. I don't care until they bring it up.

Members of civil society also differ in their virtues. Your virtues are what you do about your morals. Virtues are manifest in our daily actions. They arise usually from our morals, or in other words what we do results from what we are. A life that confirms to moral principles manifests its virtues in how one conducts oneself. A man of virtue voluntarily conforms his life and conduct to principles of moral law, standards of right conduct, however inexpertly. In modernity, this appears to be rare. Virtues are the means to our ends. They represent how we do things. How we do a thing, why we do a thing (morality), matters at least as much as what we do.

Jesus warned us of doing without being. He taught that a man who gives a gift grudgingly is treated by the universe as if he retained the gift. He also taught that people who love God will live similar lives, because they will keep His commandments. For this reason, a moral man rejects the notion that the ends justify the means. Different means may share the same ends, but only if they share the same view of the ends. Two people can have the same virtues with different morals, but they cannot have different virtues if they share morals.

People who do not share your morals will attack you for resisting their virtues. Mostly, this comes because they see virtues in themselves that do not really exist. Disagreeing with you doesn't make me a bigot. It means I have different morality than you. Calling me a bigot makes you a bigot. Don't confuse virtues and morals. Virtues are the exercise of morals. Don't force me to exercise your morality. Don't force me to act as you do, particularly if I think those actions do not lead to the same ends or for the same reasons. There is no virtue in using the adversary's methods to achieve the Father's plan. Why should I conform to the morals of other people? I don't hold other people to mine. Please don't obligate me to yours.

Over twenty years ago, I was introduced to a psychological exercise on the powers of negative peer pressure. In a particular religion class, one teacher had the great convenience to have all of the power players in the high school, the people like whom all the other students aspired to be as his students. These included for example the varsity football captain, the head cheerleader, the student body president, and the eventual valedictorian. The teacher drew four symbols on the board: circle, star, oval, and square and gave the students specific instruction. He then invited another teacher to send over one of his freshman.

The freshman timidly knocked and entered the room. The teacher invited him to occupy a single vacant seat at the head of the class in the front row. The freshman could not believe himself when he discovered himself in a class with all the most prominent members of his high school. Even more amazing, they accepted him as one of their own, inviting him to sit with them, joking and laughing with him, and making him feel quite at home.

Then the teacher began the test. He turned to the varsity football captain and asked him to help with a visual experiment and to describe the four objects on the board. He began naming them, according to the instructions: "circle, star, oval, triangle". The freshman, who couldn't believe someone he so admired could have made such an obvious mistake, laughed aloud. Quickly, he noticed he was the only one laughing, and the students turned to him with that look of disdain that only seniors can muster towards freshman. He slunk a little in his chair.

The teacher continued. Each of the others in the front row continued to name the objects "circle, star, oval, triangle", and every time, the freshman sank lower in his chair. Beads of sweat formed on his brow. He knew as he looked around that soon the time would be his to go through the exercise and he was nervous.

At length, it was his turn. Everyone's eyes were upon him. Tepidly, he began, each word phrased as if it were a question.

"Circle?" he began.

"Good..." said the teacher.

"Uh, star?"

Silence. You could have heard a pin drop.

"...er...oval..."

At this point, the freshman paused and looked around. He knew that it was a square. Would his admiration for all of these power players corrupt his judgment of what he knew? One of the others in the class prodded him, "What's the last one?" The time for decision had come.

We live in a world full of negative peer pressure. There are people all around you who will try to convince you that good is evil and evil good. They will try to get you to join in with them to justify their aberrant and abhorrent behaviors and beliefs. They are looking for people to bring down, and if they can get you to join in with them, they will use it to rationalize themselves. Remember that not everyone is doing it.

We differ in our morality. We cannot see eye to eye, because you have a different idea of what constitutes right and wrong. I will not call a square a triangle in order to conform or survive. They say they won't force it on us. However, someone will. Daniel Webster warned of those who mean well, because even if they mean to rule well, they do mean to rule. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The next push will be to punish people who do not share the virtues they espouse, to claim that we reject equality, equity. They will say you do not love people, society, justice, truth, etc., but they will never bother to define those things. You probably don't define them the same way.  You will become the problem.  You will be the bigot.

True equality requires impartiality. These people cannot be impartial and claim it's about equality because they are emotionally involved in a particular outcome. Aristotle wrote that "the law is reason free from passion". This is why Lady Justice is blind, so that she can look without an air of subjectivity. This is why an impartial third party (a judge) is supposed to look at it, because presumably he doesn't really care emotionally how it goes. This is why we hire a lawyer to represent us because, although he has a vested interest in the outcome sometimes, he has already been paid on retainer no matter the outcome, so he can be objective to balance out our emotional attachment to the subject. That is not what usually happens. Usually, we get activism. Far too many people become lawyers to "right wrongs" which is emotive, and then they become judges with an agenda, activist judges who play their bias on plaintiff and respondent alike.

Solomon shows us true objectivity. When two women bring a baby before him because one of them claims erroneously that it belongs to her, he displays equality and justice. Since he has no emotional involvement in the matter, he can truly be objective. He does not personally care what happens. However, he knows how to tell who does have an emotional involvement, which is revealed when a truly equitable and just outcome is proposed. Rather than allow Solomon to cut the baby in half, thereby giving both of them half the child in question (equality) and rendering them both childless (justice), one mother who is emotionally involved rejects the offer to save the child (activism), and Solomon knows who the mother really is. The mother is not rational or objective; she is incapable of being so because she is emotionally attached to the outcome.

Impartial people reprove with equity because to them the matter is of no lasting moment. Those who clamour for justice in the streets are usually partisans. They argue until they get what they want. Notice that Christians do not usually riot in the streets when they do not get their way. Civilization does not exist to validate your worth, particularly if you do not share the morals and virtues of the civilization you inhabit. Rather than change that civilization in the name of "equality" better you join one that already shares your views. You only really truly believe in a cause when you protest and plea on behalf of people you do not know and in particular those you do not like. If you can fight for justice and equality for your enemies, you are exercising ration and logic; if it's only for your pet cause, it's activism and emotion, and those do not lead to equity, equality, or justice.

Cowardice asks the question - is it safe?

Expediency asks the question - is it politic?

Vanity asks the question - is it popular?

But conscience asks the question - is it right?

And there comes a time when one must take a position

that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular;

but one must take it because it is right.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Until and unless you establish an honest, earnest, and accurate definition of morality, your virtues will not lead to justice and equality. They will be partisan efforts, distorted efforts, mutated efforts that will favor a few at the expense of the many. I find it paradoxical that people who claim to be rational and adhere to vulcan philosophy claim they believe the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one until they are the one, or someone to whom they share an emotional connection is the one, at which point they reject their own premise. At some point, you must ask the question of what is right and decide to reject your conscience or follow its direction and correction. I believe that all people, somewhere, however hidden the rudiments of that divine spark may be hidden, knows what matters most, what things really are. I do not believe there are bad men, only deceived men. I think like CS Lewis that if you remove what is good about man, you are not left with a bad man; you will be left with nothing at all. That's the message of the Christ- that men are and can be whatever they like. The challenge for us is to choose morals, to follow the virtues those morals dictate to our conscience, and do what is right at all times, in all things, and in all places, even if it costs us personally.

I know this sounds daunting and possibly impossible, and I will not pretend I practice it perfectly. However, every time I have abandoned my morals, I have been miserable. I keep my morals because they keep me. Eventually every man must face his true face, who he really is, when all the pagentry and prose and poise and pose vanishes and only truth remains. We can pretend all we like and ignore whatever we like for now, but eventually, no matter what you believe, the truth remains. It is like a Lion. It wins. If you would truly have the lion and lamb lie together without ire, then consider how the morals you espouse dictate your interactions with other people, and look in the mirror. If they don't create the world you claim to seek, then don't force me to change. If you don't like the ends, change the means.