On Being a Moral Person I

I: A Personal Ethical Framework in an Impersonal Culture

Am I, as a citizen of the United States of America, culpable in the excesses of Amero-globalism even though I feel utterly impotent to effect any change? It is a moral question which I have long debated personally, which has caused me many sleepless nights due to the gnawing of conscience. I don’t have any thrilling answers, but I have come up with some constructions which give me some peace of mind.

The first principle I act upon is this: If I conscientiously keep myself informed and, in those cases where my decisions result in actions that have an impact on the world at large, however small, strive to make those decisions in such a way that net benefit to all concerned is maximized and net harm to all concerned is minimized, I am acting as a moral person, and my conscience is clear.

The second principle I act upon is this: When I am a participant in a collective action or process over which I have no immediate control, I am still responsible for the outcome by virtue of being a participant. The actions of the state of which I am a citizen are my actions, regardless of my personal intent, and unless I abrogate my citizenship, I can expect to be held accountable for the actions of the collective. Regardless of how I voted, regardless of how the electoral process may have been manipulated by corrupt processes and persons, Barack Obama is still President, and still represents me.

The alternative is radical rejection of the society, either by becoming an active guerilla like Theodore Kaczynski (the “Unabomber”), or by becoming a complete hermit, or by embracing the ultimate in Manichaeism by going out and shooting myself because the world is inherently evil and there is no way to live in it without participating in that evil. If I opt for alternatives 2 and 3, I may be minimizing the net harm my actions might cause to society, but I am not maximizing the net benefit unless nothing I might potentially do has a positive impact on the world at large. This is manifestly not the case. I am a conscientious parent, an active volunteer for social justice, a well educated and articulate commentator on the world around me, and an artist of no mean ability. When my efforts to avoid participating in evil enterprises cripple my ability to be a participant in virtuous enterprises, I limit my effectiveness as a servant of the Deity in whose image I was created.

Most people understandably feel impotent on a national or global level. The sense of anger and frustration that this engenders is probably more acute among educated people in ostensibly democratic states than among people who have grown up under systems where participation by individuals in areas outside of their immediate lives has always been understood to be minimal. It is easier to cope with this frustration if one understands the third principle in my repertoire, the principle of scale.

Human beings are biologically programmed to interact, first, in family units, and secondly in tightly-knit groups of 50-150 individuals (including juveniles) most of whom are related by blood. This is as true today as it was in the Pleistocene – that is, that the actual influence of the average person does not extend much beyond the number of people with whom he can interact on a personal level on a regular basis. Unfortunately, for people living in modern urban environments, there is often no identifiable group to which he can hitch his tribal identity, while he is formally connected to and dependent upon several entities – his nation, his state or province, his large corporate workplace – containing thousands or millions of individuals, in which his voice means nothing, because even the delegated authorities (congressmen, CEOs) are strangers. Unless one has considerable wealth or has managed to become a member of the power structure, the only way to get the attention of these people is through violence, which more often than not has the opposite of the intended effect.

I have identified a number of strategies that really do have a positive influence, although on an individual basis, these are small, and their effect often not immediate. They are enumerated in Part 2.

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Photo by Martha Sherwood. All rights reserved.

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