Sandals at the Gate

It doesn't take a religionist or even a conservative to notice the moral decline of American culture. A simple glance at the current Administration and our national government is all that is needed to notice that immorality is rampant at the highest levels of our public life. Hypocrisy, an appalling lack of ethics, rampant, greed-driven economics that destroy the environment and create modern wage-slavery all point to a system that is deeply immoral and in which advantage is leveraged by individuals who are so corrupted by the system as to be unwilling to change it.

In these reflections I will talk about the noticeable moral corruption reflected in our society at present, it's core attributes and causes, and possible scenarios for changing course before it leads to not only further erosion but a complete meltdown of civil society. I will touch on the religionists and the conservatives and their attempts at imposition of morality through the political machinery of American government, and I will talk about the liberal progressives and secularists that attempt to do the same, albeit under a set of different assumptions and couched in different terminology. But essentially the same.

I should clarify from the outset that I am a member of the latter category, a decidedly and unapologetically progressive person who wears the label "liberal" with great pride in a long standing tradition of thinkers who believe that we have a responsibility to care for one another in a free society, especially those whom society casts aside and marginalizes. I should also clarify that while I am a deeply religious person, I believe that my personal revelation of faith and its assumptions can never be set as a standard for the public sphere. This is because the language and metaphors of that journey will not and can not ever resonate with more than just a few of my contemporaries who perhaps share them in some form or another... and as such do not qualify to offer societal solutions to our most pressing moral problems.

In this first part of this article, I will talk about what I view as a deeply rooted, continuing, and destructive moral collapse in our society and the various participations and responses of our political system in that collapse. My intention is to do so while wearing my social critic hat which is one of my personal favorites. As such, I suspect I will offend quite a number of readers, and while this is not my intention, I have had enough experience while wearing this hat to know that most people will assume that they and their particular social group are a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem. As such, I will probably manage to offend not a few but most.

Onward...

Being a product of Generation X, I have a built in response to be distrustful of everything, most especially institutions that try to impose rules from the outside. But, having been born in rural Pennsylvania and spent a great deal of my youth in that area, I did have the advantage of a small town upbringing by good decent folks. I was taught by my parents that certain things were true and necessary to a good life; treat others with kindness, respect your elders, don't lie, cheat or steal, and give everyone a fair shake no matter their race, color, creed or social status. It was this set of values, I was taught, that would make you a good person and set you up for success in your life.

Of course, reaching adulthood, society provided me with a different set of assumptions rooted in the cynicism of a consumer capitalist society; "nice guys finish last," and "you snooze... you lose." It's a dog eat dog world out there! And while I spent some time in the corporate world working as a wage-slave, I quickly ran into a wall that I couldn't manage to reconcile... the world was not as altruistic as the values I was raised with.

It has gotten worse the older I get. Over the last 20 years I have watched a noticeable decline in basic civility or common courtesy that has become increasingly uncommon. And I've watched an increase in immoral behaviors that has become startling. Now... when I speak of immorality... I'm not talking about the "sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll" kind of immorality so often spoken of by politicians who want labels on records and video games, or who fail to see the wisdom of legalizing marijuana or who want to legislate who can marry and who can't. I'm talking about the kind of immorality epitomized by someone like Karl Rove who sat on a talk show last week and spoke the most audacious, outrageous, unmitigated public lie I've ever had the misfortune of hearing from a politician in my life by stating that Congress forced the President's hand to go to war.

I'm talking about the kind of immorality that allows someone like Hillary Clinton to say out of one side of her mouth that she opposes continued military intervention on Iraq while she signs on to the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment that ensures we will stay there in order to deal with the "Iranian problem." All the while hundreds of thousands of dead human beings pile up for a war that is essentially about greed and domination. I'm talking about an Administration that denies funding for health insurance for kids, and that makes certain people amass debt and then, when over their heads, have no means of recourse.

I'm talking about war and rumors of war, and belligerence on the national stage epitomized by refusal to engage in basic diplomacy. I'm talking about spying and torture and illegal renditions, denial of habeas corpus and lies, lies and more lies.

There is a trickle down effect to this kind of immorality, one that seeps into our societal consciousness and grants license to commit smaller acts of immorality without impunity but not without consequence. Why should anyone obey the rules of basic civility when our public servants show us that there are no consequences for NOT doing so. I watch as seemingly normal individuals pursue what they want with such singular devotion as to not weigh the cost of doing so over and against the greater good of society and others. Our culture revels in watching the self-destruction of our celebrity idols, we create entertainment that exploits the demons of others (remember Whitney and Bobby Brown, or Anna Nicole?), and we look for most every opportunity to get over on the phone company, the local cashier, or the tax man. We explode in road rage, air rage, we excuse celebrities who engage in murderous dog fights, we apologize for athletes who use steroids and then lie about it. We listen to politicians who tell us to fear and hate immigrants and so we do by treating immigrants terribly. We know that oil dependence is killing our planet and yet we continue to find excuses for why we need that SUV. We pay $3000 for Hannah Montana tickets because we have learned not to say "No" to our kids. We say "No" however, to homeless shelters that open in our neighborhoods and housing projects for the economically disenfranchised. The list goes on.

The truth be told, there is no longer a single unifying moral vision embraced by our nation. There is no common mission embraced for righting wrongs, eliminating injustice, or holding politicians and CEOs accountable for unconscionable behaviors. We ignore or minimize or deny the effects of our consumer culture on the environment and on other societies upon whose labor and resources we strive for greater excess.

Some would have us believe that there is no unified set of moral rules that can apply to a society. The right often accuses the left of this kind of "moral relativism." Some actually do believe it, but it is a substantially small subset of our population.  I will say, however, that we live in an increasingly difficult age that makes moral absolutes... the kind for centuries that has been arbitrated in the religious realm... less workable for our larger culture.

The advent of globalism has presented what I believe to be the single greatest challenge for us in this new century. Change happens at such a fast pace that it seems near impossible to keep up. It is largely marked by a spiraling sense that things have moved far beyond our control. New ideas and ideologies spring up, compete with our own traditional and national systems of moral value, and they have opened up shades of gray in places we believed were long black and white. It is the influx and threat of competing visions for a definitive moral story that have led to many of the most polarizing topics in American culture today. We call this the "culture wars." Our fascination with them has been most recently demonstrated in a series of presidential debates that have spoken barely a whit about the most pressing issues we face in the world today, but instead have been focused largely on competing moral visions. Presidential candidates in most recent Republican YouTube debate were asked some of the most bizarre questions in a debate whose magnitude given our current political and social crises should have been much weightier. Real issues such as economy, the war in Iraq and pending military action in Iran, issues of American competitiveness, declining health care options were never discussed. Instead, the focus was on what defining moral stories were going to guide the next potential president in their decision-making. Such is the current import of those stories on what many feel to be our declining moral health as a nation.

Responses of the Right versus the Left

Much of the response of the religious right to "moral decline" in this country can fall into a category I call the "new tribalism." It is a retreat away from the new moral challenges and ambiguities into a small and protected subset of our population that now lashes out with anger, frustration, and fear at the pace of change. The religious right's use of the language of persecution shows how deeply threatening this new world is to old world views. In a way, I sympathize with them, even though I see the world very differently.

Their solution, however, has been to organize politically in order to impose a moral order onto the rest of American society from within the tribalist mentality of Christian fundamentalism. They toss away time tested interpretations of the constitution in an attempt to impose a single theocratic vision on American society that is not only at odds with our foundational history, it is at odds with our identity as a nation and our promise as a nation for all people. A single religious vision is hardly a workable solution for a society that epitomizes globalization probably more than any other in the world... a society made up of nearly every ethnic, religious and racial group in the world. Additionally, If morality is propagated by the living example of a community engaged in that moral vision, how can one take seriously the right's attempts to push a Christian morality on the nation when as individuals, it hardly makes any difference in their own behavior... many of the public faces of that vision continue to lie, cheat, steal, and swindle the poor to benefit the rich, ignore the impact of corporate capitalism on the environment, idolize profits over people, and threaten war and engage in war for the flimsiest of reasons. Obviously, the moral vision they try to promote as the only legitimate one for our nation doesn't even work well enough for them to reign in their own behavior.

The collapse of religious institutions in the United States marked by the decline of mainstream Protestantism, the scandals of the Catholic church, and the fundamentalist push to reject scientific knowledge for the sake of propping up an untenable worldview has left us without the very institutions which for thousands of years were responsible for guarding and communicating the moral vision of entire peoples. Governments were for laws, religious institutions were for morals. And with religious institutions seeing a decline in the public trust, the political sphere has sought to fill the vacuum by attempting to become the arbiter of a public moral vision. It is not surprising that they have sought to impose a religious moral vision in the absence of any other compelling moral story. Similarly, atheism is not the answer. Atheism as a world view is uniquely suited to corporate capitalism... if there is nothing in the after life to look forward to... if there is no reward and punishment... why not get what you can while you can?

Look all around the globe... what you see is a series of failures on behalf of religious stories and traditions to address the concerns of globalism by doing anything other than retreating into fundamentalist tribalism. Tellingly, these stories only offer identity over and against the "outsider" that is demonized. Morality is seen as something that defines us as apart from that "other" who represents everything that is wrong with the world.

Some humanists think it best to follow the lead of countries like France or Turkey by retreat into abject secularism which offers no better alternative. The secularlist would say that no "religious" morality belongs in the public sphere. While I am a deeply religious person, I agree with the secularist on this point. However, some morally generative story is utterly necessary to the good order and benefit of society. And the mere decision of individuals or collections of individuals to act morally is not enough. We've known this since the Holocaust revealed to us that human nature alone cannot be counted on the move in moral directions. Neither could a religious based morality effectively guide a nation's morality even if one could be found that would not alienate or offend entire portions of our society. Private revelation of religious faith is just that... private. It is fine to allow the moral gleanings of my religious faith to inform and supplement a general moral attitude that governs my actions in society, but contrary to the increasingly disturbing trends in American politics... what matters in the public realm is not my religious faith and what role that plays in my decision making... what matters is the agreed upon story of our common culture in a globalized society and the moral attitudes that I glean from participation in it.

The political left, instead of offering an alternative public vision, still seeks to compete with the right by simply offering an alternative "religious" moral vision based on a progressive interpretation of the same story offered by the right. Politicians compete with each other to prove they are just as faithful to the defining myths of Christianity as the right. Granted, while I share in their interpretation... I believe it is a huge mistake to try and offer a "religious" moral vision to the nation upon which, however compelling, no one will ever agree. Private revelation does not belong in the public sphere. Similarly, the left also tries to legislate from this moral vision and runs up against the same resistance from folks who, while they may share the desire for the end results, do not share in the initiating story that compels them to make the changes. The right often refers to this kind of legislation as "nanny" legislation... same kind of government intrusion into the private sphere, motivated by a religious vision, albeit with different goals. In other words, if you pass enough legislation, society will simply get better and morality will naturally stem from the results of a happier society. The truth is, morality will not result from legislation, nor will it result from imposition. It initiates from a shared story that demonstrates our commonality and need for cooperation in a grander vision than is capable of being offered by one or another subset of the population, and certainly can't come from attempts at pushing the private revelation of religious faith into the public sphere.

It is not sufficient that morality begins from the bottom (the individual) up, or in the family unit, or in the general community. These tribal units can nurture moral attitudes, but they will just as often clash with the greater culture if the unit is insular enough. What we need is a moral story that is powerful enough, compelling enough to lay a foundation of morality for society that is indisputably based on facts, not theories or myths or religious traditions that have become fossilized or largely irrelevant to large segments of society. The days of religion being the agency responsible for arbitrating public morality are, thankfully, coming to a close.

Let me clarify from the outset... the private revelation of religious faith and vision will never go away. And whatever takes it's place in the public sphere must be demonstrated to be compatible with these stories... in fact must act as a container for them within which individuals are still free to bring their personal revelations to vibrant moral life. But we must have a unifying vision that sets all of these private revelations in context, demonstrates their commonality, and opens the way for new interpretations of old stories. The new story must validate a public moral vision capable of unifying us as a people and foster new levels of cooperation to solve our pressing global problems.

So... what criteria needs to be used to determine what guides and informs a new public moral attitude? Whatever it is needs to be separated out from the myriad "private revelations" epitomized by our varied religious traditions. No totality of individuals in a society like ours is going to buy in to any one of these private revelations as normative. The other alternative, nationalism, has also been exploited by the political machinery in an attempt to cow public attitudes. We all, I think, are aware of just how dangerous this has now become in an era where nation-states around the globe are crumbling and devolving along ethnic lines and sectarian tensions. Even in our own society, the polarization is so pronounced that some have suggested that a sovereign and united American nation cannot much longer withstand the inevitable pressures of global economics, destructive imperial power struggles, and competition for resources resulting in the utter rape of the environment by global markets.

The new story should be capable of uniting all individuals and groups of individuals under the banner of a verifiable, fact-based, system of ethics capable of generating a moral vision for our globalized society. And it can be found in the very place that generates so much hostility in those who continue to seek to impose the alternative moral vision of religious revelation onto the rest of society... in science. Particularly in the area of environmental ethics. And that takes us logically to the starting point for any discussion of an alternative story that in the next generation will take primacy over any of our former religious stories... evolution!

Stay tuned for Part II...

Tags: morality, ethics, environment, politics, globalism, religion, socialcriticism