If generalizations are permitted, western individualists, ethically speaking, are ethical egoists. That is, their morality is simply self-serving. They behave to help themselves. That is a version of what the Bible calls ‘sin’.
But to make things worse, such a stance is simply regarded as normal. The world is our oyster; it is there, ripe for the picking. What’s in it for me? Why would I behave in any way that does not further my own interest?
And it gets worse. In her book Death, Sin and the Moral Life, Bonnie Miller-McLemore argued that western individualists almost automatically think psychologically but have lost the ability to think ethically. She points the finger, in particular, at the modern version of Stoicism proposed by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and her many disciples in the health professions. Kübler-Ross’s attempts to help people come to terms with their own death as a natural part of life have been influential beyond the field of death, dying and bereavement.
Kübler-Ross’s Stoicism is basically ethical egoism. Whether all the blame can be laid at her feet is, of course, an open question. But she has certainly contributed greatly.
What will make me feel better? What will make my life (or my death) a better experience? What will serve my needs? What will be most productive, enriching, fulfilling for me? The real test of how firmly such ideas have taken root is when we realize that many, if not most, western individualists will simply see such questions as normal—unexceptionable—completely the right questions to be asking.
Little wonder we don’t have a clue about building society. When our radio DJ says, “If people don’t agree with gay marriage, the solution is quite simple: don’t marry someone who is gay”, there is absolutely no sense that ethics ought to be public, good for, and constitutive of a good society. If ethics served more than the ego (i.e. an individual), then the issue of gay marriage (and many other issues) would be discussed in terms of its society-building potential, and so on, rather than as an issue of individual rights. That would make the discussion look markedly different.
But can we do it? Or have western individualists—by virtue of being ethical egoists deeply at core—any ability to think ethically at all?
This is a point worth reflecting on deeply.
It is at the core of what I repeatedly encountered when doing my study and writing on forgiveness. Biblically, forgiveness is something that happens between two parties.
But, in current western thought, forgiveness is a feeling. It is no longer seen ethically. Rather, forgiveness is needed so that we don’t feel bitter. In Embodying Forgiveness, Jones calls this “therapeutic forgiveness.”
Peter,
if this is the case (I am not disputing it) what are the implications for how we ‘converse’ with society?
Have read a few things this week which caused me to reflect.
In each example church was speaking publicly to its society:
1. Church advised its local community to be more gracious…
2. Marriage (male/female) is best for society……
3. Society please be less greedy so we don’t global over heat……
What is the place of christian ethics when speaking to a non-christian audience?
My perspective is that Western Society has moved from “moral code” ethics to an ethical philosophy where “right” is seen as “freedom, liberty and choice” and “wrong” as “slavery, oppression and restriction”. Therefore, I think our society <i>does</i> have an ethical code on which our society is being built, but it is an ethical code made up of radically different values.
If I’m right, there are a couple of interesting points that follow:
1) The Bible itself agrees that liberty is good and oppression is bad. These are not the <i>primary</i> factors that Christians understand to define “good” and “bad”, but they do provide a shared basis from which we can “converse with society” (albeit with limitations).
2) Young Christians have imbibed and live by these values also, hence the big push for social justice in many parts of the Church (not that there was none before). Where the values of freedom, liberty and choice do not line up with Biblical values, there is a huge tension that many don’t know what to do with, or even why it exists.
I’m not certain, but I’m fairly sure a similar shifts in ethics have happened historically in other societies. It’d be interesting to check out.