Autonomous vs. Ethical Behavior

When I was a youth, a preacher at a revival in Bowling Green said that it’s not a sin to be tempted, but to give in to temptation is sin.  How awesomely important and profound are these words!  We have been recently made aware of a coach at Penn State accused of sexual child abuse.  Would he be disgraced today if he had the words of that visiting preacher to guide him?  The functioning of one’s autonomic nervous system should not be mistaken as a guide to ethical behavior.  The sources of autonomic reactions are in sexual matters deep seated and somewhat mysterious.  We don’t know the full panoply of causes why certain reactions are elicited.  What we do know is that it cannot be God’s will—who guides us to consider the best interest of others—to abuse children.  This distinction between temptation and sin applies equally to a broad swath of life.  The opportunity and possibility of action for short-sighted personal advantage (the temptation) is simply not a reliable guide to ethical behavior.  There must be an explicit disconnect between temptation and behavior.  To not have this insight dooms one to profoundly unethical, antisocial behavior.  It’s worth reiterating the words of the preacher “It’s not a sin to be tempted, but to give in to temptation is sin.”

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Noise and Interference in Effecting Goodwill

Luke 2:8-14 (KJ 2000)

Announcement to Shepherds

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were much afraid.  And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you; You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men (emphasis mine).

In human affairs, nothing is truer than that goodwill is not reciprocated unless specific conditions exist.  Take the goodwill from customers coveted by a company.  Several conditions are necessary:

·         The customer pool has a capacity for goodwill arising from its recognition of outstanding service.  Extant in the customers must be a generous spirit that is congruent with the development goodwill.

·          The customers through cynicism do not foreclose the possibility of goodwill.

·            Some sort of transaction with or exposure to the company takes place.

·        The company itself keeps as a priority the creation and maintenance of customer goodwill.        In short, the company must itself demonstrate goodwill.

·           Development of a corporate culture in which conditions for goodwill are met by most employees most of the time.

·           An appreciation on the part of the company of the practical value of abstract, hard to precisely quantify assets.

·       The ability of the company and customer to take risks in relationships.  Even after lawyers hammer down a 30 page contract, it remains a plain fact that spirit not legalize seals deals.

·          Efforts to track customer satisfaction after a transaction.

·           The absence of the noise and interference of religious, racial, class, institutional, etc. prejudices and discrimination.  The anger of resentment destroys goodwill.

·            A commitment to the hard disciplines of tough love—it’s performance that counts.

·        A tolerance for acceptable imperfection.  An understanding that sometimes situational factors can intervene to make performance less than ideal.  In these situations, one must be willing to empathize if goodwill is to be maintained.

·          An absence of spin and a rich supply of information foster goodwill.

·           Adequate resources on both sides are required to maintain a good business relationship.

·           An appreciation of time and space requirements is necessary.

·           An attitude of mutuality during transactions.

The angels at Jesus’ birth declared “good will toward men.”  Since the customer pool in this case was all humanity, it is clear that complete mutuality in this relationship was hampered by the nature of the customer pool.  For some, reciprocal goodwill was and remains simply beyond comprehension—a mystery not worth the effort to puzzle out. 

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Not a Safe Place to Be

James 2:14, 26 (NKJV)

What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?

…For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

While it is clear that self-righteousness can arise from pride in what one has accomplished, it is nevertheless true that self-righteousness can also arise from grace.  As a child can be self-righteous about the wealthy home he was born into without any credit of achievement on his own, so also can believers be self-righteous about being members of the family of God.  Would that there were some intellectual or spiritual contrivance to insure against the sin of self-centered pride, but there is none.  Essentially righteousness is a matter of honesty.  It is based on a frank admission that each individual has fatal flaws and imperfections.  Jesus asked “Why do you call me good?...No one is good--except God alone” (Mark 10:18 NIV).  The thirst for perfection turns ugly the moment we assume we have attained it, which is on the whole a very disingenuous if not stupid thing to do.  A world populated by self-appointed gods is not a safe place to be.  We have to conclude that it is only by the grace of God and under the exigencies of the spirit that we can be ruthlessly yet charitably honest with ourselves; else our most coveted merit becomes our greatest flaw.

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Reboot Remnants

The term “reboot” referring to the restart of a computer is used as metaphor for many other occurrences in which we wish to perform a restart.  On rebooting a computer, sometimes difficult to specify and define glitches can be made to disappear as good performance returns following the restart.  Unfortunately, “reboots” in other realms do not share the ability to dump memory so easily and start afresh.  Especially in human affairs (as in US – Russian relations) memory is long and retains its presence and influence well beyond any symbolic reboot.  “Feel good” seminars of many types face this same challenge.  Designed to reboot our attitude and outlook, enthusiasms of the moment cannot be sustained as entrenched memory and habits reassert themselves.  Elections are sometimes thought of as reboots in which an instant and reliable society-wide refresh is deeply yearned for.  But we inevitably find that society’s problems are ingrained and are in part deeply psychological.  They do not simply disappear with dispatch following election of new leadership.  In religious terms salvation is a reboot.  But many find after salvation the tendency to sin does not vanish but recurs to present daily diverse challenges.  Much in human behavior is deeply imprinted in the mind and shares in many respects the characteristics of addiction.  To break free of low self-esteem on the one hand or a strident self-confidence on the other can present a challenge easily extending beyond the ready purview of the will.  We are forced to conclude that reboots of the mind in a computer sense are more than rare; they are in all likelihood impossible.

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A Politician with an Aversion to Public Speaking

Thomas Jefferson is said to have had an aversion to public speaking.  For example, he never appeared before Congress for an annual message, but always sent it in writing.  He gave as one reason the following:

On December 20, 1801, he wrote to Benjamin Rush, "Our winter campaign [the winter session of Congress] has opened with more good humor than I expected. By sending a message, instead of making a speech at the opening of the session, I have prevented the bloody conflict to which the making an answer would have committed them. They consequently were able to set into real business at once, without losing 10. or 12. days in combating an answer…."  Again defending his reason for sending a written message, Jefferson wrote to Thomas Mann Randolph, January 1, 1802, "Congress have not yet done anything, nor passed a vote which has produced a division. The sending a message instead of making a speech to be answered is acknowledged to have had the best effect towards preserving harmony....” (Source) 

One cannot help but wonder how the present day bias for showmanship might be influencing the ability of our country to arrive at effective policy.  The task to accomplish can be lost in theatrics and public antics.  Take any job where skill, knowledge, and precision are involved.  We can ask ourselves how would public theatrics help or hinder that endeavor.  I like to take the extreme example of brain surgery.  Who in their right minds would submit to brain surgery to be performed in a circus atmosphere where the contending surgeons had to continuously play to an audience and please that audience with heroics, controversy, posturing, and bravado?  Talk about a situation that would bring out the worst rather than conforming to the best interest of the patient!

Of course, controversy is in the nature of politics as various interests vie for recognition.  Even so, we should surely consider what might be done to maintain “the best effect towards preserving harmony.”  Essentially this would entail lowering the level of aggressiveness on the one hand and defensiveness on the other.  We must ask ourselves, are we really ready or able to give up free-for-all entertainment for quiet and low key accomplishment.

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Embracing Realty?

A much easier question than “Can aggression be based in love?” is “Can aggression be based in hate?”  The answer to the latter question is obvious.  Aggression frequently derives from hate.  But aggression can also derive from love.  When we think of a family situation, certainly aggression can arise from the protective or provider efforts both readily sourced in love.  Typically when aggression is based in love, the imagination freely images the desired results.  We can visualize, for example, our family deriving benefits from us being a good provider.  On the other hand, aggression based in hate typically cloaks the final effects of hate in abstractions.  For example, in contributing to feed the hungry, we can readily imagine a youngster enjoying a meal as a result of our contribution. In fact, we might dwell on such images.  On the other hand, when we bomb a city in war, we had rather not picture the results of this action in our imagination.  We may in this case expand our consciousness to take in visuals of destroyed buildings, but generally seal it against visuals of dead or dismembered children.  We can conclude that hatred is best fueled by stereotypes and abstractions, not reality.  Love is best fueled by reality.  Love encourages an active imagination and makes the facts concrete to our minds; hate cloaks the imagination and seeks to cover facts with abstract veneers of unreality.  Therefore hate can be seen to be sourced in selfishness while love is sourced in selflessness.  Selfishness and hate typically seek out and embrace carefully crafted unreality while selflessness and love typically seek out and embrace reality.

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The Cleansing Effect of Power

Power tends to cleanse all actions regardless the scope of the atrocity.  Therefore, the self-justification of the powerful can typically be anticipated.  This can apply to powerful individuals, to powerful organizations (companies, institutions), to powerful countries, to powerful alliances.  I view this fact with some sorrow, for my country since my birth has been the “most powerful nation on earth.”  I have seen it do terrible things with relative contentment and conceit.  The mystical cleanser of power reliably serves to sanitize the events and imbue them with a sense of righteousness, self-justification, and even prestige.  Power is an elixir to render invisible cankers afflicting the body of the state.  What can be done about this other than the limitation of powers which proves to have imperfect effectiveness?  How can the golden rule be made operative and relevant within the metallic haze of regnant power?  The essential problem is that power is perceived as being tightly congruous with a taunt toughness.  The entity is strong and powerful, and this is proven by toughness, even ruthlessness—thus forming a compelling closed loop satisfying the vestigial reptilian legacy within our brains.  Brutality in action and attitude affirms and justifies power.  To show compassion is to be weak therefore not powerful.  To show ruthlessness is to be strong therefore appropriately powerful.  This is fundamentally axiomatic and is near universally evident wherever serious power exists.

The only cure for the ruthlessness-power identity is to appeal to the mammalian mind in which nurture is the key to survival.  The mission of the powerful then becomes the task of enabling others—to serve instead of to dominate.  I think of the saying from the Knights of Pythagoras “A man never stands as tall as when he kneels to help a child.”  But a goal of cultivation rather than domination requires a servant role whereas those desperately yearning for power are often striving to satisfy a deep psychological need to control—to rule from above.  The paradox of servant leadership is totally foreign to the configuration of their character.  We must look again at the nurturing of youth and learn how the obsession to control becomes fixed in the mind and relieve that obsession thus freeing people to truly serve in nurturing leadership roles.  Power and compassion can then be joined.  The “me-them” dynamic can be transformed into a relationship of mutuality.

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