Civil Commotion

Land of opportunity.

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
II: Criticism of Morality

§269   I shall try to regard all moralising, with one glance, as a phenomenon. Also as a riddle. Moral phenomena have preoccupied me like riddles. Today I should be able to give a reply to the question: why should my neighbour’s welfare be of greater value to me than my own? And why is it that my neighbour himself should value his welfare differently from the way in which I value it, that is to say, why should precisely my welfare be paramount in his mind? What is the meaning of this “Thou shalt”, which is regarded as “given” even by philosophers themselves?

The seemingly insane idea that a man should esteem the act he performs for a fellow-creature, higher than the one he performs for himself, and that the same fellow-creature should do so too (that only those acts should be held to be good which are performed with an eye to the neighbour and for his welfare) has its reasons, namely, as the result of the social instinct which rests upon the valuation, that single individuals are of little importance although collectively their importance is very great. This, of course, presupposes that they constitute a community with one feeling and one conscience pervading the whole. It is therefore a sort of exercise for keeping one’s eyes in a certain direction; it is the will to a kind of optics which renders a view of one’s self impossible.

My idea: goals are wanting and these must be individuals. We see the general drift: every individual gets sacrificed and serves as a tool. Let any one keep his eyes open in the streets: Is not every one he sees a slave? Whither? For What?

This points toward the irreparable defect in Christian ethical teaching, the expectation that we regard our neighbor’s well-being as more important than our own. There are two distinct flaws in this.

First, this makes looking after my own interests something that has to be smuggled-in, something shameful and done on the sly — and therefore likely to produce the guilty sensation that Holy Men so happily exploit. Second, my estimation of my neighbor’s well-being can be made only on my own terms and according to my own understanding, with the possibility that ‘helping’ my neighbor works an injury because what my neighbor wants isn’t what I think he should want.

Christian ethical teaching turns out to be license to be destructive busybodies who conspire to force everybody into the same mold.

The white man is a quiet man and a peaceful man, and right now the white man is very, very quiet, and very, very peaceful, and like many dictators before him, Barack Obama thinks the white man will remain quiet and subdued forever. Hitler made that mistake; Hitler boasted that his supermen, his Hitler Youth, would easily wipe the floor with the GI Joes that were being sent over. But it was the white man who defeated Superman in World War II. Let me tell you something else, you push the white man only so far, you’re going to have a reaction like you’ve never seen.

The Right has lost its mind. The party of Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan is no longer even part of the decent, educated world.

Q   Except we know now, in a way people writing the Bible couldn’t, that being gay isn’t a choice.

A   I take a different view of what they could have known. But yes, the evidence that homosexuality isn’t chosen — along with basic humanity — should inspire repentance for cruelties visited on gay people by their churches.

But at Christianity’s bedrock is the idea that we are all in the grip of an unchosen condition, an “original” problem that our wills alone cannot overcome. So homosexuality’s deep origin is not a trump card against Christian teaching.

Ross Douthat

Douthat is conducting here an interview with himself, in order to show that laws which permit discrimination against gays are different than laws which permit discrimination against minorities, and allright.

Ho-hum.

I want to draw attention here to that portion I highlighted — with which, incidentally, I agree; Original Sin is no mere metaphor, no allegorical way of saying we could all be nicer to one another, or some such. It is indispensable to the whole of Christian thought, the bedrock indeed.

Original Sin says it is an objective, metaphysical fact that to be human is to be inherently defective, broken, incapable of moral behavior and affirmatively hostile to moral behavior — with which I disagree. I think, rather, that the doctrine of Original Sin is amongst the most destructive, downright evil, ideas to ever soil the earth. It has no basis in objective, testable facts, relies upon a childish fairy tale, and has caused humankind endless misery. It is time to be done with it, and the malice it inspires and justifies on the part of those who imagine they have seen the light — that we are all no damn good (especially people who don’t belong to the club, who are the most no damn good of all).

Notice, too, Douthat’s offhand remark that the Bronze Age goat-herders who gave us Leviticus could have known that being gay isn’t a choice. Oh? How? Douthat doesn’t say, so we are left to suppose he believes that the Invisible Wizard could have given his scribes that important information but chose not to.

And Douthat is supposed to be a reasonable, not-insane Christian thinker. Bah.

Mother Jones publishes today a set of photographs from a pro-Vietnam War rally in 1970.

I well remember the public turmoil surrounding our Vietnam involvement, but not the religious component evidenced in these photographs.