Taking the Long Road . . .

Human beings are social animals. It is not something unique to them. It is a trait they share with many other animal species, so that one must suspect that it is an instinct lodged way back the evolutionary stem. When people gather in groups, or engage in the social behaviours of inclusion or exclusion or social climbing, it is not an expression of some higher evolutionary status, but rather it is the more primitive aspects of their nature that are involved.

Being instinctive, the roots of such behaviours are fundamentally unconscious, and our rationalizations of our actions—I did it because . . . etc.—are really rationalizations after the event, justifications made to persuade ourselves that we are really in control and do things from conscious motivations.

But the fact is that neurological science has by now shown exhaustively that it is possible to trace the evolution and existence of a thought before we become consciously aware of it.

Now ethics, whether as a result of divine revelation or human design, represent something different. Ethics open up human behaviour to the field of reason, and offer the individual the possibility of armouring himself in advance against the depredations of the instincts. For any situation, we can have a strategy practiced ahead of time that will stymie the knee-jerk propensities of the unconscious drives.

More than that, ethics and the various ethical systems can tell us a lot about human nature. Take the Ten Commandments: what they tell us about the Jews who came out of Egypt with Moses, the Chosen People, is that they had no inherent belief in or respect for God, were indifferent to family ties, were murderous, adulterous, prone to stealing, malicious liars and gossips, and prey to begrudgery and envy . . . it all has a very modern ring to it.

Above I mentioned ethics in the context of the individual, to the extent that he can convince himself of their relevance. But there also exists a social ethic, in the sense of a composite picture of what a respectable member of a community (to the extent nowadays that it is possible to still talk of community) should be. In terms of modern society, the necessary virtues would, one imagines, still include honesty, the refusal to speak ill of others, an eschewal of violence and pettiness and revenge, a submission to sexual morality, even within the loosened restrictions of the times etc. etc.

Fifty years ago, say, the conditions would have been tougher and much harder to abide by. But then, of course, the social ethic isn’t intended to be literally true of the individual members of a society. It is more an aspiration. Actually, it is more akin to a passport—a passport which is issued to each and every member of the community at birth, so that one doesn’t have to earn one’s reputation, one has it automatically, and can only be deprived of it through one’s own misdemeanours or enemy action, or a combination of both.

[This, of course, is at best broadly true. The process involved is much more complex and contradictory than the one outlined. What is represented here, on my part, is a selective vision—and even as I write it I’m aware of the fact. But sometimes you have to put your thumb into the inkwell and draw a thick black smear through things, one that conveniently blots out all the complexities, if you are to have the possibility of saying anything at all.]

The social ethic is a fiction that people collude in—generally from the best of motives. It is a rare and, one has to say, somewhat unreal human being that would be capable of embodying it completely. For it tends to run contrary to the wellsprings of human nature, as described in terms of the Jews of the Exodus, above.

The Catholic Church, perhaps, encapsulated the reality of the human condition best, with its theology of sin and forgiveness and the inherent frailty of human nature, notwithstanding a general popular commitment, or at least lip service, to doing the right thing. The phrase that perhaps best sums up the traditional approach, in all its humility and wisdom, is ‘There but for the Grace of God go I’.

By contrast, and contrary to what one might expect, the liberals are much more hardline in this regard—and usually much more vicious, too.

Of course, the idea of sinners and sin is now somewhat passé. Sin, to the extent it still exists, is now a behavioural category, involving degenerates and unregenerates—‘not people like us’—so far removed as to constitute almost a separate species.

By the same dispensation, people are no longer compelled to regard themselves universally as sinners. The liberal agenda has narrowed the basis of wrongdoing to such an extent that it is now possible for people to feel positively righteous about themselves—to the extent that, if they had lived two thousand years ago, they would have felt quite within their rights to ‘skull’ the woman taken in adultery (allowing, of course, that relatively speaking adultery is no longer a sin and . . . blah, blah, blah!)

If the wagons of the social consensus (certainly, the social consensus the liberals would have us believe in) were nowadays to be circled, then there would be any number of people inside firing out, who only a couple of decades ago would have been outside firing in. And a few people outside firing in, who . . . well, you get the picture!

If one were to take an inventory of the twelve commandments, in terms of current liberal social practice, one would find that there is not one of them that has not been changed to a greater or lesser degree. The first three, for example, have completely disappeared. Belief in or respect for God are no longer essentials; indeed, we are reaching towards a stage where, like in the warning on the cigarette packet, such things could be positively damaging to your health, or at least your career prospects.

Likewise the prescriptions against adultery and coveting another’s wife, hypocritical protests aside, have also disappeared—as it was necessary that they disappear in order to justify accepted modern social mores.

But this is all by way of a digression—and an illustration of how easy it is to get sidetracked at this game . . .

To get back to where I was: the social ethic doesn’t represent something to be striven for and achieved. Rather it represents a default position—something accorded to individuals almost as a right, and to be protected at all costs. It is not about making one’s reputation, but primarily about saving it. And the process comes less under the first twelve of the commandments than under the thirteenth: Don’t be caught.

The behaviour of the social individual, prey to the demands of unregenerate human nature and, at the same time, the need to keep onside of the social consensus, is akin to that of a snooker player who has the freedom to bend himself into any shape he likes so long as he keeps a foot on the floor.

There are further implications to this . . . but the no-doubt exhausted patience of my readers compels me to put them on hold. This mailing has gone on far longer than I intended—not at all helped by the digression in the middle of it, which logically should comprise a separate posting. As it stands, nothing is satisfactorily resolved. I will return to both strands of the argument at another time

As well, it is probably now time to formalize the disclaimer that has already appeared in various guises in the course of these mailings:

All opinions and commentary in this publication are purely those of a neutral observer and any resemblance to prejudices or hypocrisies on the part of the author, living or dead, are purely coincidental.