Morality Is Required To Sustain A Culture

Morality, taken to its furthest extent, is merely judging whether a given course of behavior is healthy: healthy to the individual, healthy to society, and healthy to the planet. Not healthy merely in the short term, not healthy merely in terms of being easy or convenient, but what is best for the most for the longest amount of time.

To ask what is best for the most of us for the longest possible time is a most important and necessary endeavor. And to come to some sort of agreement over what that course should be and try to apply it is unavoidable if we are to attempt to make things better for the most of us for the longest possible length of time.

There are two bad ways of making difficult moral decisions. One, as conservatives tend to do, is to choose simplistic or primitive moral codes and try to make all people live by them. The other, as liberals tend to do, is to believe that everyone has the right to do whatever they want and that allowing people their personal freedom is the only morality we need. They might add something about not being mean to add a commandment to their creed. But neither liberals nor conservatives are really doing the difficult but necessary work of establishing norms upon which a healthy society might thrive. And along the way, as is obvious to anyone outside their respective camps, they are becoming tremendous hypocrites.

Both conservatives and liberals, in their own ways, avoid grappling with the complex issue of maintaining a functioning, just, and equitable society. Conservatives, by running everything off the dead laws of ancient people, rigidly adhering to the letter of the laws while dismissing the spirit in which they were written. Liberals (if the term is used in the modern sense) dismiss the moral pronouncements of the past, believing them to be nothing more than superstitious nonsense imposed upon the ignorant masses by a repressive patriarchy. They, too, focus on the letter of the law in order that they might not have to contemplate the spirit in which many laws were written.

To a great degree, both liberals and conservatives do a great disservice to religion, reducing it to its externalities and ignoring the deeper meaning that can be found in it. The Old Testament, on its surface, may appear to be nothing but the primitive beliefs of a primitive people. It is most true that they were a primitive group, but much of the writing within the Old Testament shows they were a people groping for answers beyond superstition and primitivism. As one small example, time and again the issues of empires are dealt with, and the flaws that lead to the demise of empire are explored. This was a people looking to answer how to best preserve the wellbeing of a nation and a people. They were looking to make things better for the most amount of people for the longest amount of time.

Grappling with complex moral issues is a necessity for any civilization if it wishes to survive and thrive. Establishing moral norms is as necessary as establishing legal precedents. One needs a certain degree of maturity to have discussions with others in order to come to some sort of consensus about how society might best be ordered. But the overwhelming desire of both liberals and conservatives is to dig their heels in on the simplistic and non-functioning beliefs of their respective tribes. So adamant are they on their core beliefs, they refuse to negotiate. They have placed their beliefs and values above discussion, and as such have transformed them into articles of faith. They have effectively divided themselves into two separate camps as a result. And to those of you who are at all familiar with The Bible, it is said a house divided against itself will surely fall.

I get it: conservatives hate liberals and liberals hate conservatives. Both feel that their truths and attitudes are the only and divine truths and attitudes. But in seeking to destroy the other, they will surely destroy themselves in the process. Like I said, it’s going to take mature minds to rise above the squabbling if we have any hope of doing the best for the most for the longest time possible.