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See the YouTube
comments on this topic (Why the Hell be good?) on the Out-Lawyer Channel at
these links:
Part ONE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKPblvZ2slI&feature=channel_page
Part TWO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nULvURUhRSw&feature=channel_page
Part
Three
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EECdQSOVWcQ&feature=channel_page
THUGS,
SAINTS, & OLD FASHIONED CRIMINALS
Or
… Why the Hell Be
good?
I
love the old fashioned criminals. Those crooks are us -- without the rap
sheets and arrests; they are flawed screw-ups with a conscience, folks who
harbor, deep down, a hope for better days.
Ah,
but those crooks are being swiftly outnumbered by the New Breed…
“We
got trouble, oh we got trouble, right here in This
Fair City! With a capital ‘T’ That and stands
for Thug”. [Professor Harold
Hill returns later in this narrative.]
Our
intellectual leaders, the opinion and moral elites, seem to be trapped in
Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Here is the chilling
Dostoevsky paraphrase as coined by that cynical, dyspeptic atheist J. P.
Sartre:
“Without
God, everything is permitted.”
Regrettably,
Sartre was on to something.
The
Brothers is a great and compelling novel, far, far too
long and cluttered with characters for modern tastes. The story, set in late
Tsarist Russia, presages the looming Marxist disruption. The novel remains
acutely relevant to the modern situation.
Dostoevsky’s
character, Mitya, is in jail, accused of murdering
his father. He is “sorry for God” because, as he puts it -“Your Reverence, you
must move over a little, chemistry is coming!” Then he adds: “How...is man
to fare after that? Without God and a life to come?
After all, that would mean that now all things are lawful, that one may do
anything that one likes.”
How,
indeed, is humankind to fare after that? Dostoevski/Mitya
was asking us the question of the day, “Why the hell be good?”
We
still don’t have a very convincing answer, it seems. And we are all
paying the price.
This
is how I came to understand what is going on….
My
own real world education began in when, a freshly minted lawyer, I began with
the Alameda County Public Defender, an office I would be appointed to lead
years later. Headquartered in Oakland, this venerable institution was
started by Earl Warren when he was the Alameda County District Attorney in
1927.
My
first boss, a tough, pipe smoking trial lawyer, introduced me to the
fascinating world of crime with a trenchant warning on day one. Lest the
“everybody is an innocent victim” nonsense would carry us all away on a naïve
tide of daftness, he warned each of us:
“This
job is like touring a sewer in a glass bottomed boat.”
And
that was just before drugs and the decay of the moral order began to
change everything for the worse.
My
Speech to Newly Minted Law Enforcement Officers
Flash
forward.
I
am a seasoned veteran public defender, in charge of the entire
department. I am standing at the speaker’s dais in the Command Center of
the modern Jail complex near Pleasanton, California. This was the replacement
for the infamous old Santa Rita Jail described by Tom Wolfe in his novel, A
Man in Full.
A
famous County Sheriff, one of those legendary law enforcement figures, a tough
guy with a heart, has invited me to speak to the graduating class of address
the Sheriff’s 102nd Police Academy. He introduces me as “the best public
defender in the country.” He adds, “When I see him on the elevator, I tell him
‘Have a bad day.’” We all laugh. He wasn’t kidding.
But
the sheriff is a good man. I am proud, after all this time, to count him
a friend.
I
describe the scene many years earlier as I and other public defender lawyers
were allowed to mingle with the prisoners for interviews in the old Santa Rita.
We stood in the open by wooden barracks, interviewing clients in the Compound,
the wind ruffling our files and papers while the prisoners – potential clients
- lined up in orderly queues.
Rarely
was a deputy in sight, yet we moved in complete safety, surrounded by polite
crooks. If you saw the film, the Shaw Shank Redemption, you have a
sense of the kinds of guys that made up the prison population when I first
started as a young lawyer. I was still in my 20’s. These crooks
were screw-ups to be sure, but men (almost all the prisoners everywhere are
men) who had some real sense of having done wrong and mixed feelings about
whether they really deserved the break that they all wanted.
Those
days are gone.
There
are knowing looks among the senior deputies as I tell the graduating class
about the change in the custody population.
We’ve
all seen it in the typical modern and postmodern prisoner’s hard, wary eyes,
and the coiled-spring body language. There are complex reasons for this human
deterioration, for the sadly necessary bulletproof lexan
barriers between lawyer and client, the difficulties getting approval for a
“contact” interview – meaning a real face-to-talk - and for all the other
security precautions.
These
dudes are dangerous.
No
longer do public defender lawyers show up in the morning with a stack of blank
interview files, admitted to an open Compound where the prisoners politely line
up outside their living units. This practice is not acceptable today. The very
nature and composition of our jail and prison populations has changed. On
a much more volatile and unpredictable group of people is now behind
bars. What in the world is going on? Why this deterioration?
Two
factors tower over the rest: The drug culture, and the cultural drop out of the
moral foundations formerly supplied by religions, have conspired to brutalize
the entire male criminal subpopulation.
But
even now, we see many of these jailed defendants as interesting and sometimes
complicated people. Those who work with them day to day (sheriff’s
deputies, public defenders, medical and probation professionals) are hassled,
cajoled, assaulted, complemented, bullshitted, begged, amused, aggravated by
them.
Many
of us will find still many of them to be appealing characters, just regular men
(and women) who are caught up in a large impersonal machine. Yet there others
who are classic assholes for whom flunking the attitude test was just the first
in a series of life’s lessons ignored.
And
there is that chilling, manipulative, cold hearted group, the budding
sociopaths. I’ve interviewed juveniles for whom the act of killing
someone had all the moral and psychological freight of turning off a bad
television program to go to the bathroom. These soul damaged ones have a
huge influence on the rest of the population. They are the New Breed.
I
am describing all of this from personal experience. Been
there. Done that.
Imagine,
if you will, having thousands and thousands of confidential conversations with
these men and their occasional family members or home boys. This was the
kind of field research that can’t be replicated by a naïve social worker, an
eager graduate student or a typical mental health professional.
I’ve
defended them all, the druggie, the killers, the petty nuisance, the third time
drunk driver with a job and a family to support, the combat veteran with a
massive addiction, the pregnant prostitute, the nineteen year old kid who got
caught in something that got out of hand, and the hardened sociopathic
crazy who put me, you, and everyone else at grave risk. Almost everybody you
meet in custody has a story. Some of these people can be saved, and some
of them will never find their way out.
I
have come to grasp on a deep gut level that the value of punishment and the
possibility of redemption are inextricably linked to each other.
I
tell the graduating class my favorite vignette. One day, when I was still an
“out-lawyer”, I was walking back from the North County Jail (the downtown
Oakland temporary detention center for felony arrestees) where I had just
checked in with one of my murder clients.
Right
behind me on the sidewalk I noticed a woman in her twenties and her child, a
girl about nine or ten. The pair had obviously just visited a prisoner
charged with felony assault. “See,” the mother was saying to her girl,
“if you cut somebody, you can end up in there.”
Now
I need you to stop and think about that exchange, as I did. I glanced
back, took in the whole scene with a careful eye. It spoke volumes to me
about the deteriorating condition of our society.
The
tone of the mother’s remark was flat and conversational. There was no
sense at all that the woman was communicating an event of moral
significance. It was as if she had said, “See those weeds, if you don’t
cut the grass, that’s what your lawn will look like.” The content of the
remark was coolly practical, without moral judgment, something of the order –
“If you go 45 on that street you will get a ticket.”
I
invite you to put yourself in that conversation. You are talking to your
own child, niece or nephew. Someone you both know has “knifed” somebody
and is in jail for felony assault. Imagine what you would say and how you would
probably say it.
First,
consider your tone. You would feel a gut reaction to the event, a sense
perhaps captured in the “My God, how could [he/she] have done that?” or “I hope
you never hang out with [x]!” Every part of you would tend to communicate
to the child walking with you and depending on you for moral instruction that
the act of assault itself was wrong. Whatever your words, you would be
speaking in a context in which the given was - We don’t
do that. It is wrong.
I
think that’s what most disturbed me about that mother’s remark. It was the
context that it revealed, a context in which basic morality was simply absent, just
as if you were talking about color to a blind person.
My
vignette is not an isolated sample from an atypical population. It was
like finding dry rot and a termite in your kitchen floor, then finding telltale
powder along the bedroom walls, and in the bathroom. There never is just
one termite.
And
make no mistake -- this is our house we’re talking about.
The foundations of civilization are being eaten away by something very sinister,
something that, in modern terms, is very much like a computer virus.
Surely,
the continued existence of civilization depends on the rule of law. That is
true enough. It is like saying that a house requires a foundation.
But that is not the whole story. The rule of law itself stands on two pillars –
ultimate right and wrong, and justice integrity. If either of these
pillars is seriously weakened, then the whole structure tends to collapse. Here
they are:
(1)
Ultimate right and wrong: This is the idea that there is a higher
source of morality, of right and wrong, that comes from an ultimate authority,
a more objective, more powerful and more permanent basis for morality than mere
human convention or invention.
(2)
Justice integrity: This is the idea that the law, however imperfect it
may be in detail and application, is based - at least in its core content
- on the ultimate right and wrong, and thaat the law, as such, is as
binding on the people who administer it as it is on the population at
large. This is the notion of moral law and statute law working in concert
to protect the innocent victims no matter how high and mighty the criminal.
Ultimate
right and wrong and justice integrity: These
are the two pillars of law and civilization. If they fully ever give way,
civilization soon falls back into a gang culture.
In
large parts of this society, the moral compass is broken and in others, people
wouldn’t know north from south because their compasses point only in one
direction -- immediate, predatory self advantage.
I
believe that we are now and have at grave risk since the first fool who claimed
to be a philosopher declared that morality was just an invention. That idea has
eaten its way though the social fabric with the same effect as a computer virus
corrupting an irreplaceable data base.
Those
who believe in and support the pillars on which law and civilization rest are
surrounded by millions of gnawing rats, of misguided intellectuals, and
reckless idiots who are like the drunken sailors who build a bonfire in the
hold of a wooden boat. Let me give you eight examples of how one can
light a fire in the bottom of a wooden boat:
Everybody
does it.
She
had it coming.
Hey,
it was cool - they’ll never miss it.
Nobody’s
going to find out.
Money
can buy anything.
Only
an idiot would tell the truth about that.
I
had no choice.
Right and wrong? Get real!
Obviously
this is an incomplete list, but you get the idea.
We
have depended in the great cultural transmission belt that carries the essence
of the moral law from one generation to the next, but that belt is broken in
too many places. Among my clients, the most recent generation of
criminals are now more than three generations away from anyone who has ever set
foot in a church or has otherwise received any formal moral instruction.
A
gradual moral deterioration is especially dangerous when there is nothing
strong enough to stop the slide. How many of the people under 25 in high
crime areas actually believe that there is an ultimate right and wrong?
How many well-off latch key kids living in the suburbs do? Go over the
list of eight excuses, imagining you are conducting a poll. The suburbs
are a war zone, too.
But
apprehended and un-apprehended criminals themselves are just the
sideshow. Like the fever in the early stages of a septic infection,
criminals are a consequence of the deeper sickness. You take an aspirin,
you fail to treat the disease, you feel better for a little while… then you
die. This is a struggle about the gradual drop out of an entire moral
framework. I’m not talking about “moral compromise” here. That
implies - even requires - the existence of a moral framework in the first
place, something to compromise from.
When
talk about the possibility of redemption, I tend use the term very
carefully. Redemption requires recognition that you have committed a
wrong and a commitment to turn away from that. I love the Hebrew term for
that, teshuvah.
It means turning away from wrong and a turning toward the author of all good.
If you lack the moral framework to recognize that you have committed a wrong,
then redemption is technically impossible.
“Thugology” 101.
Crime
control is a necessary precondition for the civilized life. Street crime
control is thug control. Thug control requires robust moral boundaries.
We
aren’t doing the young men who run afoul of the law any favors when we buy into
the notion that “social conditions are responsible” or adopt any of the other
pseudo-sophisticated excuses. In the real world, rehabilitation can only follow
accountability and consequences. Criminal justice policy, social policy and
moral/ethical education need to be on the same, realistic page. And the
realistic page starts with the acknowledgement of the breakdown in the cultural
transmission belt that carries the moral law to each generation. I am your
witness. That is a real breakdown, one that is slowly spreading to all the rest
of us.
The
police enforce the Penal Code. Who enforces the moral law? One would
think that the great intergenerational cultural transmission belt would
naturally include the essential moral injunctions of the bible, the torah and
the Gospels, at a minimum. Unfortunately, the doctrine of separation of church
and state has been allowed to mutate: We now have the doctrine of the
separation of moral law and moral wisdom from all state ceremonies and
institutions. This is pathology. It is as self defeating as refusing the
teach Newton’s laws of mechanics because he believed he was understanding the mind
of God, or refusing to teach the golden rule as if it were just Christian
doctrine, or refusing to celebrate the American revolution because its
architects taught that human freedom was a gift from the Creator.
So
who is actually allowed to teach the moral law? And to whom
and where? How well? for that matter, who, in
this postmodern culture, is paying attention? Without real moral
boundaries, taken seriously, the social order quickly devolves to a war zone. I
can’t make it any plainer than that.
Yet
there is a particularly popular disabling condition; it is a mindset that has
been allowed to actively erode our essential moral boundaries. This condition
affects both religious and secular communities. It is unbalanced cultural
liberalism, a term I’m using here without political implications.
Of
course, liberalism, writ large, is a benign pattern of social evolution
characterized by its relentless challenging of boundaries. The liberal project
worked wonderfully when it broke down social boundaries between royals and
commoners, slaves and free, and dissolved the political boundaries between
feudal lords and their vassals, between male voters and all adults. On this
level, we’re all liberals these days.
But
in the early 20th century the liberal project began to undermine
moral boundaries themselves. This paved the way for the reemergence of
barbarism. We saw it in the crimes of Hitler and Stalin and we’re reaping that
barbarian harvest in the inner city.
The
conservative project is about preserving boundaries. All morally aware
people –and I’m not talking just about the prudish, judgmental subset – all
morally aware people respect moral boundaries. On this level, we’re all
conservatives these days.
But
within the sophisticated intelligentsia, moral boundaries tend to be blurred -
even those that separate right and wrong, evil and the sacred, evasion and
accountability.
This
began to happen when some influential moral leaders, secular and religious,
adopted a brand new savior - the Great Therapy Solution. I can hear them
now, singing a camp song together and following it up with a moral gesture or
two. Forgive my parody because it comes so close to the truth.
We
all need to be much more clear-headed about the weaknesses of the therapeutic
model. When we toss out our moral boundaries - whether in the service of
therapy or diversity or misplaced compassion, we get trouble. And that
starts with T, and T stands for Thug
I’ve
often said that religions are uniquely equipped to answer that “Why the hell be
good?” question. You’d think they would be a powerful bulwark against the
breakdown. Why is this not happening? There are some lessons here:
Lesson
One: Males especially need bright line boundaries
and clear, consistent consequences. Females do as well but – truth to be
told – they respond more readily than males to nurture and the appeal to one’s
better angels. Modern, liberal religion is talking past the men to the women.
Lesson
Two: The time honored ‘Rule-consequences’
model actually works. It is as basic to the human condition as Newton’s Laws
are to mechanics. It is the very architecture of a working
civilization. Newcomers to Ancient Rome or new drivers on the highways of
modern Europe have three questions: What are the rules? How are they
enforced? What happens when you get caught? The rule-consequences
model is rational because people respond to incentives and disincentives.
But it works better when the rules are closely aligned with the moral law and when the moral law has independent authority.
Lesson
Three: Love, without robust action to
protect the innocent, is a thug invitation. In church or synagogue or in
an academic setting, we may hear “love conquers all” without being taught or
reminded of the underlying moral foundations that protect us all and enable
safety of the weak.
A
good friend of mine, a devout Roman Catholic, and high ranking law enforcement
officer, told me about a meeting after mass. It went something like this:
“Father,
you talk about peace every Sunday. God bless you for being a man of peace. But
I keep thinking that we are safe in this building only because my men and women
in uniform carry arms every day into the rough neighborhoods a few blocks from
here. They are risking their lives at this very moment to keep the peace. When
you pray for peace, I wish you’d pray for them, too.”
Other
modern cultural trends have conspired to erode the rule-consequences model.
Moral
systems are weakened by power and privilege based exceptions to its
reach. This is why the close alignment of societal rules and laws with
the underlying moral law is so important: One set of rules for the well
connected “ins” and another for the “outs” profoundly undermines the perception
of a common, underlying moral foundation. Post modern tribalism and misplaced
diversity models play into this trend to make “in vs. out” exceptions seem legimate.
Lesson
Four: Keep to the essentials. Moral boundaries
are weakened when we are distracted and
confuse by too many petty rules. What are the really important moral
boundaries? Here are the big five:
(1)
Faithfulness to one’s oaths and promises vs. untrustworthiness and
unfaithfulness.
(2)
Veracity and honor vs. deceit and fraud.
(3)
Respect for the property of others vs. theft, embezzlement and trespass.
(4)
Respect for the personal boundaries of others vs. rape, assault and murder.
(5)
Respect for family obligations vs. neglect of spouses, parents and children.
Each
of these boundaries is set out in one form or another in the Decalogue, in the
English Common law, and in the statutes of most nations. There is one overall
design: to protect human dignity.
Because
my focus here is on the preservation of civilization, I have omitted the set of
norms, however laudable, that belong to the high virtue and purity
set. We need to unite to get our thugs in order. Arguments over
purity are divisive. We need a more robust and realistic notion of love,
the kind that trumps gesture, false purity, and is willing to settle for the
real world optimum instead of the utopian dream. Authentic love requires us do
what actually works in the real world to protect human dignity. This means
that we take the careful, courageous actions that are always more difficult and
messy than a sentimental gesture.
Enter
Harold Hill
I
am reminded of the famous soliloquy of Professor Harold Hill in Meredith
Wilson’s, The Music Man. I have altered his rant here (without permission) to
make the larger point.
“We
got trouble, oh we got trouble, right here in This
Fair City! With a capital “T” That rhymes with “C” and that’s not cool.
“Well,
either you’re closing your eyes to a situation you do now wish to acknowledge,
or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the indifference
to religion in your city – or its functional equivalent.
“Folks
are walkin’ round town lookin’
depressed. They got a God shaped hole in the chest. “They’re lookin’ for somethin’ they just
can’t find: a com-mun-ity where folks are just plain
kind.
“Ya got trouble, my friends, right here, I say, trouble
right here in This Fair City.
“Now,
I know all you folks are the right kinda’ parents,
grandparents, god parents, aunts ‘n uncles, I’m gonna’
be perfectly frank. Heed the warning before it’s too late! Watch for the tell-tale
signs of Dee-spare and coooo-ruption!
“Does
little Jimmie think he’s bettern’ his buddies ‘cause
he has cool clothes?
“Does
little Julie feel inferior ‘cause she has troubles nobody knows?
“I’m
thinkin’ of the kids in the low hangin’
pants, talkin’ gangsta’
rap, doin’ gangsta’rants,
“Right
here in This Fair City.
Beware
the exceptions that swallow the rules, when right and wrong are just games for
fools. When Moral boundaries, legal boundaries and responsibilities are
not, This Fair City won’t amount to squat. Ya got
trouble, my friends, ‘cause there’s a new virus in
town - the anything goes flu. You don’t catch it ‘cause
it catches you.
“Ya got trouble, my friends, right here, I say, trouble
right here in This Fair City
“Trouble,
oh we got trouble in This Fair City! With a capital “T” That rhymes with
“C”
“And
that’s not cool. No, that’s not cool. Remember the Maine, Plymouth Rock and the
Golden Rule! Now go home and study and don’t act the fool. The Gospel is great
and the Torah is cool!”
Now,
I’ve played in a marching band. It kept me out of jail, I suppose, but
the present crisis calls for more than marching in time while playing a horn.
The
Foxhole Believer
It
is said that there are no atheists in foxholes. That’s a trivial example.
I
want you to imagine a moment when you are alone at night in a bad neighborhood.
Your car has stalled. You are about to call for a tow, when a man comes up
behind you and presses a pistol barrel against your head. That feeling is as
unmistakable as the next words from the thug’s mouth. Imagine, also, that you
have heard about three killings in the same neighborhood within the last few
weeks.
It
doesn’t really matter at that moment whether YOU believe in God or a higher
moral authority, but you sure as hell wish that the thug holding the gun on you
does. You will be able to appeal to his better angels? NOT. Now
imagine being forced to lie down on your face. Feel the gun barrel against your
temple. The sharp crack of a single 38 round could be your last living
memory.
We
don’t have to believe in a theology of the afterlife, or heaven or hell to
entertain a gut level belief in ultimate accountability for wrongdoing.
We all tend to believe in something, deep down. The persistent inner perception
of accountability for our serious wrongdoings is hard wired into the hindbrain.
The 17th century mathematician, Pascal, had this in mind when he proposed a
simple wager: We can’t prove one way or the other whether we will face
divine punishment. So the smartest course is to be good, just in
case.
Pascal’s
wager is lost on the thug population. For them advance planning and
rational self interest are novel ideas, still untried.
Character,
Courage and Faith
Our
challenge boils down to addressing the presence or absence of character, faith
and deep conscience. When these things begin to die in a culture, we’ve got
trouble, right here in This Fair City.
Character
is integrity merged with personality. Character begins with a functional
understanding of the contours and boundaries within which honor is measured.
All character - saintly or the common variety - is held together by honor.
Character
is inspired by example, not simply installed like a computer program. Character
is nurtured by trial, not played like a video game. And character is sustained
by faith. Yes, faith. All friendships and marriages are acts of
faith. Every trust relationship is founded in faith. And religions do not
own the patent on faith.
Nihilism
is the dark mirror image of honor and character. On a philosophical and
ideological level, nihilism is the outright rejection of honor and morality as
“absurd” or “mere” social constructs. The anti-heroic trend in literature –
popular and otherwise – is crypto nihilism, as is the more extravagant misogyny
of gangsta’ rap.
Nihilism
is more dangerous than common thuggery because it
represents an attempt to screw up the very source code of the human operating
system – disable the module called “conscience” and the system begins a ‘self
destruct” sequence. The collateral damage can be huge.
Nihilists
can be recruited, but once that mindset gets rooted in character, it cannot be
merely “converted’ or “reformed” out again. Something more like a latter day
exorcism is needed.
Nihilism
is a pathogen of the soul. A nihilist ‘infection” usually ends in death
or (sometimes) a cure. It flames out, it bottoms out or its carrier dies.
In the first two instances, conversion to a moral character is still possible,
but this typically happens only when moral boundaries and honor are recovered
and allegiance to them is firmly rooted in character. Evil’s half life is
nasty, short and brutal.
Fortunately,
nihilism is a disease mostly of the intelligentsia. Some of the elites play
with nihilist ideas as if they were harmless. I notice that very few professors
(who spout crypto nihilist rhetoric) are running around raping and pillaging
neighborhoods. That is small consolation. They are the Typhoid Maries of the
culture. The clever notion that there really is no morality is just a
parlor game for them.
But
the ideological children of nihilism, especially cultural and moral relativism,
are pathogens; they feed and accelerate the breakdown of the moral
underpinnings of the culture of civilization; they strike those suffering
perceived injustice, the psychologically vulnerable and those who have not been
exposed to good examples of moral character the hardest. Eventually, these
“malogens” (my term) degrade everyone but the Saints and heroes among us.
Thieves’
Honor
Now,
here is an interesting feature of the common criminal mind. The most successful
thugs – those who act in concert – are actually practicing a version of moral
rules. Recall the notion of “honor among thieves”? It reflects a reality.
There are reasonably consistent “moral” rules that apply within a working
cohort of thieves.
In
this sense, thieving cohorts are really modern versions of Neolithic hunting
teams, predator bands that cooperate in a common endeavor to acquire resources
by a combination of force and stealth. Because of the inherent dangers
attendant any criminal predator operation, mutual trust must be established.
And to provide the overall incentive for cooperation, a division of spoils must
be agreed to - requiring rules supporting promise fidelity.
Only
five rules are rationally necessary to the success of any criminal predator
enterprise:
Without
some minimum truth fidelity and avoidance of significant deception, the
baseline cooperation for the enterprise would quickly disintegrate. In
fact there is a kind of Darwinian selection: the criminals who fail to follow
such norms are usually the first ones caught.
No
deception of fellow thieves
No
theft from fellow thieves.
No
serious assault on fellow thieves
Promise
fidelity to one’s fellow thieves
Obedience to leadership, especially to the alpha pack leader.
These
“thieves’ honor” rules are almost identical to the moral systems that support
civilization. Think about it. Substitute “fellow citizens”
for “fellow thieves” and “lawfully constituted government” for “pack
leader”.
The
norms needed for the close cooperation of a predator-hunter team or for a
criminal gang or a nation state are essentially the same.
The
converse values are lying, stealing, mugging, cheating and treachery.
These are forbidden within the small in-group, but the rest of us are
fair game - we are the prey.
Within
the predator cohort, these norms apply equally, subject to an agreed or imposed
leadership principle (normally the alpha - follower model, but there can be
other more sophisticated models as well). A working civilization
represents, at a minimum, the extension of the predator-cohort norms to the
entire civilization’s scope of authority.
The
moral foundations of civilization represent a partial universalization and
refinement of the set of theft-cohort norms. This creates an expectation
of equality of norm application within the various cohorts protected by a
particular civilization.
NOTE:
The post modern ethos and that set of victim tribal taboos we associate with
the term “political correctness” represent a distortion of that expectation of
equality.
Put
another way, the differences among the moral systems adopted by a criminal gang
and a tribe or even a nation are more matters of scale and sophistication than
of kind. Each is based on a version of thieves’ honor, in which the
out-group is prey – or at least an ‘exploitable other’ – and the in group is
bound together by a share-the-spoils ethos.
Criminal
cohorts succeed or fail not so much by their cleverness in avoiding
apprehension as by their functional adherence to trust norms, i.e.,
honor.
The
actual civilization-supporting norms are very similar, but not identical.
I have described the primary moral principles on which civilizations are
founded as these five: Faithfulness to oaths and promises; Veracity; Respect
for the property of others; Respect for the personal boundaries of others; and
Respect for family obligations. The last one (family values) is conspicuously
missing from the thieves’ honor set. The first four are sharply limited to the
criminal gang or enterprise, and remain subject to the authority of the alpha
leader.
But
there is one other essential distinction: Thieves’ honor is a set
of alliance rules, a sort of “good for the day” or “good for the gig”
morality, a kind of “get ahead in the gang” rulebook without any pretensions to
greater reach and applicability. Civilizations, however, must be far more
durable. They require much more stability and universal authority than a
gang. Indeed, when the sense of a universal moral law underpinning a
civilization’s laws and rules becomes eroded, the social order quickly devolves
to the competing gang level.
This
in fact is what is happening right now.
“Why
the hell be good?’
We
are men and women, not hollow automatons. We were equipped by nature or
nature’s God with the capacity for conscience. That was only fair. We have been
endowed with conscience capacity for the same utilitarian reason that we have
eyes or the capacity for foresight. We need the capacity for conscience because
we will all face a moment of ultimate judgment.
Every
undamaged human mind knows this deep secret and fears judgment on some level.
This is the secret of the appeal of drugs and the other escapes. But an
anesthetized conscience is like self inflicted blindness – it does not
eliminate the light.
Even
a nanosecond of contact with the disappointment of eternal being brings more
shame than any life can endure.
This
is why every religion that entertains even the possibility of such a
judgment always allows for mercy. Without mercy, honest, absolute
judgment is unbearable. But without the clear boundaries of moral
judgment, mercy becomes permission to prey on others.
To
my atheist friends, let me say that parts of religion are put together, like
those beautiful stained glass windows or a glorious oratorio, but other parts –
especially the judgment part – are discovered. Deal with it provisionally
if you must, but I warn you that you are dealing with a fact of nature.
So
what can we do? Sermonize? Not such a bad idea by itself, but I
wish it were so easy. Example is much more powerful.
As
a threshold step, we need to be very clear about the nature of the
problem. We need to understand the nature of the struggle. We need
to be sure of our own ground. If we conduct our lives with integrity, if
we believe in right and wrong, and in the essential value and soundness of our
laws and legal institutions, if we are not ashamed or embarrassed by your beliefs,
that will come through in a hundred ways we are not even conscious of. If
we accomplish nothing else but to do our jobs well and allow ourselves to
reveal that there is moral ground in our lives and we are standing on it, we
will advance the cause.
You
can’t throw a lifeline if you are drowning yourself.
We
are in a war for the survival of civilization and we’ve all been enlisted,
willing or not, ready or not. Our only weapons are our beliefs, our
integrity, the quality of our lives, and the quality of the relationships of
the people we deal with… and our ability to restore that great cultural
transmission belt.
With
the children at our side, we will prevail. Without them we will fail.
By
the way, our children can’t be fooled for long. They know whether we actually feel
the moral law in our bones even when we are hypocritical and flawed.
Children can forgive a parent or mentor who is sincerely trying, but they
can sense adult moral irresolution like a dog can smell fear.
We
act on faith whenever we act on incomplete information. Without it, we
trust no one and love no one.
Character
depends on the courage to trust again.
Faith
and courage are practical necessities in a world that never yields perfect
knowledge but often demands right action and often returns the experience of
disappointment.
Our
real choice is the same that tormented Hamlet: Are we to be
in the world or not? “Why the hell should we be good?”
Why
indeed….because we choose life.
JBG
