Near as I can tell, every social / moral / ethical system includes these two components: (1) this is the way we are by nature, but (2) this is the way we should be (according to a moral vision).
Nobody wants man to be “natural” man. Everybody (worth considering) wants to recognize our dark side but calls us to transcend it for the purpose of some higher calling.
For example, let’s say it was fairly well established that people are naturally tribalistic and will prefer people who are like them to people who are unlike them. Someone might admit that’s the way we are by nature, but believe we need to transcend that and accept everybody. Or, again, we could admit that people are selfish, but that we should learn charity. We realize that men want to play the field, but we’re calling them to chastity (which is not the same thing as celibacy).
In various leftist ideologies, this is “the new man.” Yes, men are greedy and want to accumulate wealth for themselves, but we’re calling them to work for the common good as a higher value.
This topic was brought home with particular force as I listened to Mythos by Stephen Fry on my long drives to and from Nashville.
Fry’s retelling of the Greek myths is very good, and his audio version is fantastic. He argues in an appendix that one compelling thing about the Greek myths is that they’re very human. We don’t see an idealized view of man, but man with all his faults.
Fry is homosexual, and IMO he’s a little too eager to promote the “not heteronormative” aspect of the Greek stories. But this raises an interesting question. You can’t promote a moral view by saying “this is natural.” We all believe we’re supposed to transcend nature, and that means repressing certain things and promoting other things. It means calling men to be more (better) than they are. If the Greek myths represent how we are, that’s not a moral vision.
But what things do we promote, and what things do we suppress? How do we decide between competing moral visions?
From the “everything I need to know I learned from Star Trek” point of view, we might reflect on the TOS episode called “Patterns of Force,” in which a revered Federation academic encouraged the Ekosians to adopt Naziism. As Spock explains, it makes a lot of sense from a purely utilitarian point of view. Professor John Gill was right. The Nazis provide an incredible example of reviving a nation that’s down in the dumps. They converted a downtrodden, beaten, poor, and demoralized Germany into a nation that almost achieved world domination.
Spock, the utilitarian / logician, is contrasted with Kirk, the hero / humanitarian, who doesn’t care about all that. “But why Nazi Germany?” he asks with revulsion.
The Nazi Ekosians show us that the bare fact that a system is efficient, or has good outcomes from one point of view, doesn’t justify it from all points of view.
This seems to be part of the crisis western civilization is going through.
Men are brutes. We need to give them a vision to call them to something better. But we (collectively, as a culture) have lost faith in the traditional (western/Christian) answer, and we’re all stabbing around for something else. We can’t agree on a moral framework or vision, so we certainly can’t agree on specific tactics or rules.
For one group, liberty and self expression is a higher moral value than family, which comes with traditions and restrictions. The first-tier value (liberty) might be best served by some second-tier value, like universal suffrage. But universal suffrage remains a second-tier value, and will be abandoned if it’s not perceived to promote the first-tier value.
Conservatives have foolishly believed that if we promote second-tier values, like freedom of speech or democracy, we’ll be okay.
No. People are more than willing to ditch freedom of speech or democracy (which are tactical, second-tier values) for the sake of some higher value.
Take the woke for example. They know perfectly well that they’re restricting freedom of speech, but they think it’s justified in the service of something else.
The over-arching moral vision creates a hierarchy of moral values (first tier) that are implemented by tactics (second tier). So, “all men are created equal” (first tier) results in certain tactics, like equality before the law (second tier).
Many conservatives think they can win the culture by promoting second-tier values, like freedom of speech, democracy, the rule of law, etc. This will fail. Radicals will continue to undermine the moral vision that undergirds those tactical values, and replace it with another set of values that require different tactics.
It’s likely this will happen all of a sudden. One day someone will question the previously unquestionable, and people will think, “Yeah, why did we care about free speech anyway?”
The moral vision has to be promoted and defended or else the tactics will be swept away in a revolution.
That’s where we are now — primed for a revolution. The moral vision of the west has been undermined for decades, and now the second-tier / tactical values that support it are being questioned. The only hope of conserving the western tradition is to get back to its moral and religious foundations.