Preface
This entry is the core of a larger work. It’s sketchy and incomplete but possibly worth the read.
Introduction
In the Gospel of St. John, we read:
As [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” [John 9:1-5]
And the story continues to tell us that Jesus gave sight to this man who’d been blind from birth.
Sin is strange. The Bible, in various places, misdefines sin and this is the reason for the occasional but strong corrections made by Jesus Christ. Medical problems are sometimes described as the result of ‘sin’. These medical problems include the likes of what is called ‘leprosy’, probably a skin-problem such as eczema, and blindness and epilepsy. The disorder, deep and ephemeral, of a world in which evolutionary and developmental processes take place is often described as sin in some sense, the result of a world imagined as having been created as a paradise and then some sort of great fall has taken place.
It’s even possible to speak loosely but truly in saying the writers of the Bible, well back to the time of David and perhaps before, were dealing with the question of “nature vs. nurture.” They were also dealing with the limits placed upon our moral freedom by the events of God’s story.
I’ll propose that sin or moral disorder in general is a result of a mismatch between a human being and the world — a deliberately vague way of speaking. In some of my prior writings, I’ve spoken in more specifically Christian terms but I wish to step back and maybe develop a way of speaking that allows non-Christians to engage in this conversation. I also wish to speak in terms general enough that I can more easily adopt new ways of speaking about human moral nature and about our moral journeys through this world. These new ways of speaking will draw upon richer and more complex understandings of being largely made possible by modern science including mathematics.
But what is morality? From 1913 Webster’s dictionary as provided by The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48, we get the definition:
Morality:
1. The relation of conformity or nonconformity to the moral standard or rule; quality of an intention, a character, an action, a principle, or a sentiment, when tried by the standard of right. [1913 Webster]
2. The quality of an action which renders it good; the conformity of an act to the accepted standard of right. [1913 Webster]
Where do these rules come from? In discussing truths, even those of mathematics, I’ve claimed it makes best sense of what we now know to speak of being in terms of a spectrum running from very abstract forms to very concrete forms. So far as Creation goes, all that can be explored or accessed in any way by a creature, the most abstract form of being is what I’ve called the Primordial Universe, the truths manifested by God as the basic stuff of Creation, the stuff from which successively more concrete forms of being is shaped.
Moral nature is a set of traits in a living creature, one formed in a very concrete level of being. We can almost speak, in an analogical way, of our moral nature as being itself a separate entity but the truth is that it’s a combination of memories, behaviors in the present and in the near-term future, and planning and other cognitive and emotional activities in the more distant future. As I’ve noted before, our moral freedom in particular lies in the future. Next year, I’ll realize my moral freedom in better formed habits that give me a healthier diet. Or so I hope. Few are born with the strong inclination to sacrifice themselves for their children, to die for the cause of liberty, to die for Church and God. For most of us, we anticipate sacrifices, visualizing tough situations and developing the little habits which will allow us to handle those situations — as some top-level athletes are said to do.
Morality can also be seen as the more abstract region of the spectrum which includes what we call ‘ethics’:
The science of human duty; the body of rules of duty drawn from this science; a particular system of principles and rules concerting duty, whether true or false; rules of practice in respect to a single class of human actions; as, political or social ethics; medical ethics. [1913 Webster]
Careful planning, moral anticipation, allows us to form our ethical habits.
In an earlier entry, The Liberal Mind: The Essence of Liberalism I provided a diagram to help me present my claims that our understanding of our own moral natures can be enriched by borrowing, in a special way, from general relativity. Specifically, I had noticed that we speak of our moral paths through life in Euclidean terms but those terms seem inadequate for human beings who live in societies grown tremendously complex and rich. I had stated that “I hope this makes my claim clearer and more plausible”:
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| Primordial Universe |
| (truths manifested by God) |
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| |
| |
-------------------- -----------------------
| (X) Abstractions | | Other Abstractions |
| Leading to | | |
| Complex Paths | | |
-------------------- -----------------------
| | |
| | |
---------------- ------------------ ------------------
| (Y1) More | | (Z1) More | | Various |
| Concrete | | Concrete | | Concrete |
| Abstractions | | Abstractions | | Abstractions, |
| of General | | of Moral | | Feeding into |
| Relativity | | Understanding | | Human Nature |
---------------- ------------------ ------------------
| | | |
| | -------------- |
| | | |
------------- -------------- ------------
| (Y2) Our | | (Z2) Human | | Various |
| Universe | | Nature | | Things |
------------- -------------- ------------
I’ll continue to emphasize this issue of the spectrum of being, abstract to concrete, in my writings. Empirical being is one end of a spectrum, the other end being — roughly — what we might call metaphysical truths, the truths manifested by the Creator as the raw stuff of Creation.
The diagram above is misleading in one way. I explained this in an earlier entry, From Abstract Being to Concrete Being and Narratives, by comparing my way of thought to that of Plato where complex entities had what might be called Ideal Prototypes in a realm of the Real (Ideal in terms of most modern thinkers, philosophical or other types). The diagram for Platonic concepts of being from that entry is:
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| Platonic Realm of Real Being (Ideal Entities) |
| |
| ----------------- |
| | Man | |
| ----------------- |
| | | | (etc.) |
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| | |
| | |
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| | | | |
| ------- | | |
| | Joe | | | |
| ------- | | Mortal Realm |
| ------- | |
| | Tom | | |
| ------- | |
| ------- |
| | Bob | |
| ------- |
| |
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Human beings are more complex than this would indicate and also share aspects of being with other living creatures and even with non-living entities. We can go back to the earlier diagram which shows my way of thinking about being and talking about being. This points to the richer and more complex truth but misleads only because it doesn’t show — I don’t know how to show for now — the tangles of aspects of being which move from one layer of abstract being to help form the next layer of somewhat more concrete being.
Our moral natures are part of our human natures on the whole, but in a very complex way that can be made clear only when we learn to speak in those richer and more complex terms. For now, try to imagine the clean, simple lines from one layer of being, relatively more abstract, down to the next layer of being, relatively more concrete, as being more like twisted cables which don’t really match up from one layer of being to the next in any simple manner. A qualitative mathematical description would be a very good thing, but such a description remains to be developed. Mathematical discussions usually don’t involve badly behaved many-to-many functions. I most certainly don’t regard man in terms of a ‘mapping’ similar to those of Platonists — see From Abstract Being to Concrete Being and Narratives for a short discussion of my way of looking at being compared to the ways in which being is implicitly described in modern physics as well as the way that Plato and his followers described it.
Let me shift a little to discuss this issue from a slightly different angle, one which will allow a richer discussion of the nature-nurture controversy in a more complete version of this entry.
Man as a Creature and Not a Metaphysical Entity
I’ve argued this point before: we can only speak about and generalize from layers of being we can perceive and explore directly. (Take ‘perceive’ in a very general way to include the use of much instrumentation and also indirect observations, even statistical analyses.) We should respect God’s Creation by taking seriously those layers of being we can perceive and explore directly, by taking seriously analyses and conjectures based upon those layers, and by not committing ourselves to speculations inconsistent with those layers of empirical being. We should also be generally skeptical about making metaphysical speculations not plausible in terms of our best current understanding of realms of being which are directly observable and explorable — where we also recognize that many immaterial relationships and some immaterial entities (such as social groups) do show up in the realms of empirical being.
This doesn’t argue that we shouldn’t hold religious faith or theological claims, only that we should explain that faith and those claims in terms consistent with our best current understanding of the observable and explorable realms of Creation. Or else: we should remain respectfully silent if we can develop no coherent and rational explanation in such terms.
Man the Moral Organism
I’ve claimed that the human mind is formed on two levels: the species and the individual. In some of my writings, I’ve made a claim consistent with a fairly radical understanding of quantum mechanics:
Relationships are primary over substance. This is to say that relationships come from more abstract realms of being and are the shapers and raw stuff of concrete substance.
We are shaped by relationships and can shape other living creatures by proper relationships. In particular, we can perform miracles of a sort by loving even those who seem so unlovable. By way of love, in its greater or lesser forms — my favorite lesser form of love is wonder, we can shape ourselves and others into members of the Body of Christ. The relationships are real, more abstract than those studied by physics but the various sorts of relationship merge into each other at some higher level of abstraction.
In other writings, I’ve also begun to separate out social formation, believing the Body of Christ to be a real entity which unites individual human beings. As God is three Persons in one God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit retaining their individuality, so those who become part of the Body of Christ will retain their individuality while being true members of an entity which is such — not just a nominal designation for a collection of individuals. This shows in the claim:
The truth unfolds in time through a communal process,
or, equivalently,
The human mind forms in time through a communal process,
I could even add:
Human moral nature forms in time through a communal process,
Through a communal process do we even become truer individuals for we shape a true human nature by becoming part of the process of forming the pilgrim Body of Christ, the Body of Christ as it exists in this mortal realm. We learn how to share the only true freedom, that of God, by learning how to live leaning forward into the future. I’ll speak lightly of these communal processes for a while as I learn ways of speaking more truly. As I’ve noted a number of times, I’m convinced that the proper ways are in terms of the same abstractions from which mathematicians and physicists draw their qualitative and quantitative tools for speaking of the structures of space-time.
The formation of the species mind is what we call evolution and has actually been ongoing since the first self-reproducing organisms appeared on the earth. We could even say that the evolution began with the formation of concrete being as the universe expanded, beginning with the short and spectacular expansion we call the Big Bang.
In any case, there is what might be called a set of family-lines, lines of creatures of direct genetic relation. This set is the human race.
Geneticists and various sorts of other biologists are working to unwind the complexities of how genes and soma transmit possibilities, constraints, and — how often? — well-defined traits and behaviors. Those aren’t proving to be simple problems and there will be plenty of job opportunities for a number of generations to come.
Man the Responder to Moral Environments
Individual human beings start life with capabilities which are set in a complex way still being unraveled by biologists of various sorts, including anthropologists, and also those who study how we develop in specific social settings. We are born with a set of genes which are a mixture of those from the ovum produced by our mother and the sperm-cell produced by our father, but the way in which our particular possibilities and limitations are determined is more complex than that. See Epigenetics which gives some basics on “epigenetics [which] is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence.” For example, in recent years, it’s been shown that bad eating habits can have an effect not just on babies in the womb but even on grandchildren and perhaps beyond, even though the underlying genes are not changed in ways other than their level of activity. This is true even if the intermediary generations had better habits.
The individual is constrained. Few of us are Albert Einstein and few Vladimir Horowitz. Not many can dance as did Fred Astaire and not many can impress followers and enemies in the way of George Washington. At the same time, we have to remember that each of these men developed their unique characteristics and talents to a high level by aggressively appropriate responses to their environments, to their opportunities and problems.
Given some rough idea of a human nature with its relatively weak specific characteristics, we can move on to that idea of an individual shaping himself, perhaps even to become a true morally well-ordered person rather than just a human animal.
Man the Character in a Story Told by God
Created being gives the stuff of the story but the story is a dynamic movement through time, inherently unpredictable (that is — factual) and — in my opinion as a Christian — under the direction and control of God.
We can think of the universe, the object studied by physicists and chemists, as one realm of created being. When we see the events in and of this universe as a narrative morally ordered to the purposes of God, it becomes what I call a ‘world’.
Morality is a complex and multi-layered concept in my way of thought. It involves a certain ordering of the created being, the very flesh of the human moral actor and the relationships he has formed with other human beings and non-human creatures and with the physical world and with God.
But the actor has to act. He has to respond to the world, learning his role by an interaction of what he is in his created being and what seems to be expected of him by the activity around him. He forms himself as a person, or fails to do so, and can intend — that is, grow as an organism — toward the state of moral person, a human being shaped as a true brother or sister of the Son of God in His human nature.
I’ve not fully developed any of this. It’s still very sketchy in part but it’s necessary, at least to my way of thought, to lay it out this way before filling in the gaps or fleshing out the skeletal parts. To my way of thinking, this is the point where stories are needed to describe this story, the smaller narratives which are our lives with their moral difficulties and moral accomplishments and moral vagaries and the larger narratives — right up to the entirety of Creation — which our lives are part of.
The Body of Christ Becomes Perceptible
Biology teaches about entities within family lines, the entities developing as individuals and the family lines evolving in what might be called a neo-neo-Darwinist way. So much has been discovered or hinted at since the emergence of the synthesis of genetic knowledge into evolutionary theory. In particular, we’re learning that there are effects such as those labeled ‘epigenetic’ which tie us into our communities, especially to our parents and grandparents, in very direct and observable ways.
In any case, the human race is such a family line, that is, a line of organisms with a shared history as manifested in both DNA and also flesh-and-blood. But something else has come to exist, something which is the home of human beings in most ways. As a Christian, I believe that mysterious something to be the Body of Christ which came into existence in a frail and mortal form with the Resurrection of Christ or perhaps the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the followers of Christ on Pentecost. Non-Christians can think of this something else as the human race becoming a self-conscious entity of a very vague and complex sort.
History since the Body of Christ formed can be described as the biography of that Body. The Body of Christ as it currently exists has been shaped partially by its often disedifying history though it works also, vaguely and indirectly, towards the purposes God has intended for it from its creation. In this way, the Body of Christ is not different from other mortal organisms forming in this world, even saints bound for Heaven.
So it is that the Body of Christ is disease-ridden, drained by parasites, and loaded with cancerous organs. Not a pretty sight, but, it remains alive as do so many human beings, for their allotted time, however much they are also moral and physical messes. We must remember that the opposite of love isn’t hate but indifference. I’d add that the opposite of purity isn’t lust but rather passiveness in the face of what can be loved properly or improperly. In the end, it’s life and not moral purity which drives us or leads us to the Body of Christ and to God.
A More Concrete Take on the Nature of Morality
Morality is a word which covers some aspects of human nature when it’s well-shaped in response to Creation understood in terms of God’s purposes. As such, morality itself has some aspects which draw more or less directly upon abstract forms of being and others which draw upon concrete forms of being. Perhaps most importantly, morality has aspects which draw upon the story God is telling in and with this universe, the story which is the world, that is again, the universe seen in light of God’s purposes.
We should realize that good men can shape themselves to those purposes even if they don’t believe in a personal God who is all-loving and all-powerful. It’s also true that those who believe in such a God can be badly malformed in moral character — as a result of their own responses to this world mispercieved and misunderstood. Melville came to the conclusion that Americans were willfully so malformed, trying to live in a world they preferred to the one the Creator has given us.
Americans are a nice people, morally well-ordered for a world different from the one in which we happen to live. We are shaped for the world which has been shown in Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, and countless movies from Hollywood. As such, we are a dangerous and destructive people when we come into certain types of conflicts. We destroy countries and kill large numbers of people and — just like Hitler’s logistical genius, Adolf Eichmann — can’t understand why anyone could hate us when we feel so good about ourselves. We go in heavily armed and assuming that good people there will be just like those in television shows about American families living in Plastictown. When those people don’t appreciate our efforts on their behalf, we know there are no good ones amongst them and we fire.
I use this example often, not because I hate my own people, though I’m not exactly a fan of the vast majority of American leaders since the generation of the Founding Fathers. I use this example of my own American people being morally malformed, morally insane as Melville put matters, because we’re a good example of a people who seem so morally good when in certain circumstances and are, in fact, quite willing to make a number of sacrifices for others, but are monsters of a unique type when unleashed upon the world with more power than we can even understand.
I think other peoples in the West, including the Germans of the 1930s and 1940s and the British over the past few centuries, are much like us Americans. We stubbornly stick to several wrong ideas, such as the (often implicit) belief that moral goodness is realized or at least confirmed when we feel good about ourselves. In The Quiet American, Graham Greene said that we Americans feel the world exists to give us opportunities to feel good about ourselves. Even as those middle-class Germans, so horrified by Hitler’s goals as they were revealed, could feel good that they were doing their duty by their families and their communities, holding down respectable jobs and paying their bills and going to church each Sunday.
One major theme in my various writings is the need to make peace with empirical reality. In this context of moral nature, we need to realize that a moral nature formed in response to willfully held illusions of reality will be a psychotic nature of a special sort.