Moral Fool

 

Columbia University Press blog carries an article on Professor of Philosophy, Hans-Georg Moeller, professor at Macau University. I am interested in Moeller for his support of amorality over morality, and I will type out what interests me from this interviewer (unnamed) that interviews Moeller, and comment on copied content. The interview was published on 6/12/2009. The article is titled: “Interview with Hans-Georg Moeller; Author of The Moral Fool.

 

Can morality become a dangerous pathology?”

 

My response: A morality can become a dangerous pathology in two ways. First, if it is an altruisti-collectivist morality, in the hands of fanatics, especially if the population involved is immersed in a totalitarian empire, the dictator or Party elite can crate gulags and killing fieds in the name of their cherished ideals.

 

Second, when a morality is converted into a fetishized abstraction, a holy cause, then great evil can and will be done in the name of growing the cause, by any means, no matter the price, no matter how low into cruelty and darkness, the followers need to sink to win and grow the cause.

 

Of course, any morality can become a dangerous pathology—but it is less likely to become such than a code of immorality (the worst and most corruptible) or a code of amorality (not as corruptible as a code of immorality).

 

Yes, any ideal, abstraction or cause can be radically, transmogrified into a holy cause, and it and its adherents then become or could become aggressively intolerant towards sinners, dissidents, unbelievers, and non-followers of the beloved cult in question. Holy war, violence, and coercion are ways of bringing mob terror and state terror to bear, foisted off onto the citizens by the backers of this holy cause. These perpetrators of the malicious, terrifying acts are committed against resistant audiences, be they innocent or sinful.

 

And any set of values, be they a morality, an immorality, or an amorality, can be converted to a fetishized, worshipped abstraction, and any abstraction, once radicalized and fanatical, is filled with haters and tyrants, and it is now wicked, no matter how noble sounding are its tenets that such cruel practices of enforcement are justified as being the means to forcing all to live by the vaunted tenets proclaimed.

 

This is when and how wickedness and radicalized ideology pervert morality, but this scenario, where moralities can go bad, is no defense or support for the rejection of morality by amoralists, such as Moeller is likely to raise below, against advocating a moral code.

 

People are born depraved, with intelligence and agency, without benevolent instincts to make the socialized and cooperative. Without a moral code, rules, commandments, and training, with clear, verbalized, identified ethical distinctions between right and wrong applied and taught to the young, evil will soon swamp any people on earth.

 

Without the ethics of moderation, plus egoism, with the objective value judgements emanating from them given a people, and sanctioned, a people cannot live well in a peaceful, civil society and prosper.

 

Moeller below is going to offer amorality as a substitute for providing a people with a moral code, but that necessarily leads to wickedness and vice. Where the children of darkness openly parade their immorality as the law of the land and the social agenda, then all is lost.

 

Interviewer (I after this): “In his new book, The Moral Fool: A Case for Amorality, Hans-Georg Moeller critiques the ethical ‘fanaticism’ of Western moralists, such as Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, and the utilitarians. Moeller points out the absurd fundamentalisms and impracticable prescriptions arising from definitions of good. Instead he advances a theory of ‘moral foolishness’ extracted from the ‘amoral’ philosophers of East Asia and such thinkers as Ludwig Wittgenstein. The moral fool doesn’t understand why ethics are necessarily good, and he isn’t convinced that the moral perspective is always possible. In this way he is like most people, and Moeller defends this foolishness against ethical pathologies that support the death penalty, just wars, and even Jerry Springer’s crude moral theater.

 

Here is an interview with Hans-Georg Moeller about his new book:”

 

My response: There are two sources of tragedy that blight moral progress among humans. First, egoism and individualism are good, and altruism and collectivism are bad, but most peoples on earth, and most religions do not accept this. Altruistic moralities are the norm. People are born altruistic, group-oriented and group-live, so their bad natures are rewarded in action by a cruel, immoral, and amoral code of selflessness and groupism that keeps people from advancing.

 

The second source of moral tragedy arises out of unwitting ignorance; even these brilliant moralists or amoralists like Moeller do not know how to set up the moral dilemma. Since they know there is a problem but do not know how to frame it, the solutions they offer, fail to work. I think Mavellonialism can work better to define the problem. Right definitional problem clarification will lead to the best moral answer: moderate, Mavellonialist, rational egoism.

 

Moeller has learned from Eastern religion, metaphysics and ethics that there is something very special about moderation. He seems to understand that the good is moderate and the bad is fanatical, ideological, and pathological. From there he gets it inversely incorrect.

 

He seems to discount Westerners as more corrupt and Easterners as morally ideal by living primarily as moral fools. Easterners are pure collectivists, so their ethics will prize the group over the individual, so such ethos is a moral code of altruism-collectivism, not some amoral code that does not label people, their character, their motives, their actions as good or evil. Such terms capture truth but the refusal to linguistically judge, label and attribute does not help people know what is good or bad, who is good or bad, and what to do and what to avoid accordingly.

 

The moral agent uses reason, language, words, and judgment rendered to provide a masterful moral perspective to guide his behavior. He does not assume that labels are always accurate, or unable to change with personal self-reform, or that good people spread their morality with the sword.

 

Morality is a moral stance between amorality, no values assigned, and immorality or championing stated values of cruelty and malevolence openly.

 

I: “Q: What is wrong with morality?

 

Han-Georg Moeller (HGM after this): “People assume morality is a good thing. It is generally believed that a moral person is somehow better than a person who is not moral and that a society which holds moral values in high esteem is better than one which does not. I do not think this is the case—and that is what the whole book is about. It is about pointing out the ‘sick’ aspect of morality, about the ‘pathology of morality,’ so to speak. I think that morality does not deserve to be valued as much as it is today.”

 

My response: I assume that morality is a good thing for each agent and for society—especially if it is growing out of a religion of moderate, temperate worshipers of a benevolent deity, a religious community that adopt egoist morality as their primary code, and supplement it with considerations from altruism as their secondary moral code. Altruist ethics among group-livers is better than no morality but it is not ideal or progressive. And, any moral code is better than none, but the majority of people have to live by it and practice what they preach.

 

I think morality needs to be emphasized once more since moral decay has sunk in so deep in the West and in America.

 

I: “Q: What is morality?

 

HGM: I think it is a way of thinking and talking about people, groups of people, actions, and events in terms of good or bad. Once we talk or think morally, we create a distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ our values will seem good to us and others who do not share them will seem ‘bad’ or even ‘evil.’ This can create a lot of problems, both socially and individually. In wartime, for instance, moral talk and moral thought may flourish. Likewise, thinking of people around us in a moral way is rather stressful and will create a lot of tensions. Imagine a family in which moral values dominate everything else, including the affection family members feel for each other: life in such a family will probably be quite miserable and thus somehow ‘sick.’ In short, I argue that a high degree of moral language and a highly moral mindset is not an indicator of the ‘health’ of a person or society, but, to the contrary, a worrisome symptom of tension and uneasiness.”

 

My response: Honest, accurate labels of good or bad apply mostly to individuals not groups Western, objective Judeo-Christian morality generally is individual and apply to the individual. This objective morality applies to the character, motives and behavior of any person from any nation, and it is based on their merit, how they are actually conducting themselves, nothing else, and the labler is trying to be as impartial, fair and accurate every time he applies a label to someone, based on how they act good or bad, in comparison and contrast to his value system.

 

Where group rights, group identity, and group values hold sway, these rival moralities are more likely to subjective, relative, and fanatically held by their adherents and fanatically, sickly, or sinfully lived among their own people and as exported to neighboring tribes or nations.

 

We make moral judgements and apply moral terms linguistically and these labels, and the abstractions they reflect do correspond to reality and human behavior, so they are what makes humans as well as they are, and the failure, to use ethical abstractions and terms to define, describe and prescribe concerning our  own or the neighbors’ behavior, is a sick failure to introduced moral sensibility to everyone, so all are sickened by the low level of moral intelligence among a people.

 

I: “Q: What is a ‘Moral Fool?’

HGM: The ‘Moral Fool’ is a figure that I take from Asian philosophy, from Daoism and Zen Buddhism in particular. As opposed to the moral heroes from Greek antiquity up to today’s Hollywood films, the Moral Fool is an entirely average person. He or she, like most of us most of the time, simply does not immediately conceive of the people he or she meets or the situation he or she encounters in moral terms. Even though morality has such prestige in our society today, in most of our dealings we function quite well and are able to more or less enjoy our lives without the necessity to make moral judgments. Rather than seeing anything wrong with this, I think it is a paradoxical amoral virtue. I do not argue for immorality, but, as much as possible, for moral abstinence, I argue for amorality, not for immorality. In many situations, amoral approaches may work more effectively and less pathologically than morality, for example, law in a courtroom and the aforementioned affection in a family. These are two important antidotes against morality that we already make frequent use of. In fact, I think people do already act as moral fools most of the time. And I think there’s nothing wrong with this and that society—and philosophy—should embrace it.”

 

My response: Jordan Peterson wants each agent to self-realize and be as virtuous as he dare be, as truthful and articulate as he can be, as he or she plays the moral hero in her own life adventure, and slays the dragon and gets the treasure. The treasure is then shared with the community, so the noble, heroic egoist develops himself ethically by aiming high, and his soul benefits in the next world. By these efforts, he helps reduce needless suffering for the community at this time for his neighbors and community, thus fulfilling his altruist instincts and serving the common weal.

 

If there are few or no moral heroes in the East, on average, because the moral standard for all is to be an amoral moral fool rather than a moral hero that stands out and apart from the herd, then collectivism is the ethos of individual, community, tribe, or nation. That is an immoral standard.

 

One thing Jordan Peterson and others point out, is that without objective standards, individuality, free will and meaning in their lives—as the Postmodernist Marxist are promoting for Western youth, people will fill their lives with fetishized abstractions, holy causes, and wicked mass movements built on fallacious but passionately believed values. Such pathological, ideologically revered abstractions sicken a people, and it is a straight line from there to settle for being moral fools just accepting whatever the government or village elders lay on them.

 

Moeller may be making to strong, legitimate criticisms of Western moral thinking. First, if moral or religious believers, wear their ethical or religious values on their sleeve in some artificial, exhibitionistic role playing and virtual signaling for public consumption and approval, such extroverted displays of self-righteous strutting that they are God’s elite on earth—this automatically makes them immoral. People need to be humble, modest, and not mouthy and opinionated about how they see others in comparison to themselves, this is what God commands.

God wants them to have moral values, and live them, but not to play-act them for manipulation and display in public—that is insulting to the audience, phony and dishonest.

 

Moeller is also right if urging that if someone was to be an Eastern or Western moral hero, he should do it as a moral fool in his everyday life, in his dealings with other people, living as an average person that works, lives, and cleans his own house and mows his own yard.

 

It is delightful that someone should self-realize as a moral hero, spiritually or ethically or both, but he must not live like a twisted, ethically diseased Hollywood celebrity, whose weird, exhibitionistic, constantly stated case that he is naturally superior to the masses, a

self-consciously exceptional person to be incessantly, endlessly adulated and bowed down to.

 

Moral normalcy is living like the average nobody going about his daily life while reaching for the starts. This is how a moral hero is not ensnared by his own newspaper clippings and flattering press releases. He must be exceptional, but does not become a virtuous, fake role-player for headlines and accolades, but just does his hero bit quietly as he goes about this daily life. He lives his spiritual and ethical heroic exceptionalism by doing it quietly and without displayed passion, theater, and melodrama. He does it calmly and efficiently without raising a fuss; he does not talk about it but does it. He does not take himself too seriously, whether praised or scorned by the public.

 

I: “Q: Can you give some concrete examples for how morality can be ‘sick?’

 

HGM: Yes, I think moral ‘sickness’ is different in different societies. In my book, I focus on moral pathologies in today’s ‘Western’ countries like USA, Canada and Europe. The most obvious example, which I alluded to already, is war rhetoric. How could mass support for the ‘war on terror’ and obedience to the government—against actual facts and reason—be produced? Mainly through an intense use of moral language and the creation of moral outrage against an ‘evil’ foe. It is a very common strategy to stir up mass moral hysteria in war times . . .”

 

I: “Q: Didn’t a lot of things in society get better because of moral engagement, the civil right movement, for instance?

 

HGM: I discuss this in detail in my book, and my view is this: Yes, moral awareness and moral activism has played a historical role in improving the situation of oppressed groups such as African Americans or women. However, the civil rights movement are called civil rights movements for a reason. What is much more important for these groups than being morally emancipated is to get certain rights that they lack. Just look at the current debate about gay rights in the U.S.A. In every single state where there was a popular referendum on gay marriage it was defeated by the ‘moral majority.’ Minorities will always have a hard time achieving moral esteem, but in a society where there is not only a separation between religion and the state but also a separation between morality and the law minorities might win some important legal victories.”

 

My response: Moeller wants legal decisions to gain moral and legal rights for minorities and gays. Most of us are Christians in America, and we did not think gay marriage was a legal, moral, constitutional, or religiously grounded (approved of by the good deities), but activist judges invented a right to legal marriage for gays federally from the top down, overruling states’ rights and the will of the people that voted on this issue. Immorality was forced onto our nation by the Progressive deep state and their secular agenda. They were and are elitist,fanatics using Presidential decree, activist judges and unelected public bureaucrats legislating law without being elected, ignoring the wishes of the people, and imposing unwelcome unpopular laws and customs upon a reluctant, resistant population. That is creeping authoritarianism and there is nothing moral about that.

 

 

I: “Q: What about efforts of so many philosophical and religious thinkers to find out what is good and to distinguish it from what is evil?

 

HGM: Interestingly, enough, there have always been a number of philosophers who were highly suspicious of ethics: Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, for example. I follow these thinkers rather than the like of Kant or contemporary ethical theorists who believe they are able to identify what is ‘really’ good. The attempt to define criteria for moral goodness has often ended in grotesque failures. I cite a number of examples of ‘shocking’ or ridiculous ethical demands by some of the great heroes of today’s academic ethics, such as Kant’s moral defense of murdering ‘illegitimate’ children or Bentham’s ‘scientific’ suggestion of measuring weightlifting abilities in order to establish people’s strength for tolerating pain so that the moral quality of certain policies that might inflict pain on them could be objectively assessed. I argue that the history of ‘philosophical’ ethics accounts for not much more than a series of unwarranted academic presumptions.”

 

My response: there are ethical practices and scientific suggestions that are horrifying, but we must not throw out the baby with the bath water. Objective ethics are useful, needed by people, and should be utilized for the good of individual children, and to save society.

 

HGM is a supportive of ethical relativism of some skeptical kind, but I fear his  ethics amount to nihilism for a people without ethical values are a people that will live in hell on earth.