[This post may seem off-topic, but I'm going to use it to tie into future posts.]
I’m going to borrow the term “lust” and use it in a morally neutral sense, meaning hardwired human desire. Basically, we humans are endowed with lusts that help us survive, both as individuals and as groups. Obvious examples are sex drive and hunger. Lusts are simply the raw energy of humanity. If unchecked, they can cause destruction and pain, but without them we’d die off as a species. There are other kinds of lusts.
Moral lust is a desire to seek the benefit of those around us. It’s a survival tool because it fosters peaceful, self-reinforcing communities. Shooting arrows at your neighbor, just for the heck of it, results in arrows fired back at you, which state of affairs isn’t good for anyone’s survival. Helping your neighbor fix his house benefits his survival and yours, because when you find yourself in need of help he’ll probably return the favor.
This raises a question: to what extent are good deeds done in order to get return favors, versus for the joy of doing good deeds? To an extent, at least, moral lust makes good deeds enjoyable in and of themselves, hence the term lust.
Political lust is a desire to control others. It sounds sinister, and it often is, but it can also be mundane. If Jim wants neighbor Bob to stop slaughtering cows near his drinking well, that’s an example of political lust. The will to control others is a survival tool, because you can influence others to act in ways that benefit you, or at least don’t harm you.
Like moral lust, however, people don’t act on political lust only out of pragmatism. The drive for power, and the euphoria that comes from controlling other people’s lives, is intrinsic, hence the term lust.
Now here’s an important distinction: political lust is not politics, nor is moral lust morality. It might be better to say that the political and moral engines of society would run out of gas without their respective lusts.
Furthermore, politics and morality need to work in tandem to create successful societies. In many ways they counterbalance each other. Subtract the Protestant work ethic from western society, for example, and suddenly the society wouldn’t function as well, despite an unchanged political system. Subtract democracy, and chaos or worse would ensue, despite a Judeo-Christian morality.
February 21, 2007 at 3:54 pm
I would agree that both “politics and moral engines of society would run out of gas without their respective lusts” however, they do still run out of gas eventually by mere reaction to the inability to escape social evolution.
Though I would probably use different terms [not that mine would be any better] I think that ultimately you would find a cyclical practice-
Politics and morality bed themselves in order to produce a structure of government, whether it be over a country, state, city, community, church, family, etc. It works for a while, but then as ideas, practices, and projections develop then change ends up becoming inevitable. Ether for good or bad, both the political powers as well as the moral compasses usually end up ultimately deteriorating to the point that Government as it was once known for a people ceases to exist. [That's why I've got strong notions that the US will probably not be what we now know it to be in another 100 years]
But the issue of the Protestant work ethic is interesting, especially as to how it plays itself out in a capitalistic structure. The belief that “godliness = material gain” has crept into many mainline denominations of Christianity. However, this form of Christian belief only survives in capitalism. But at any rate, a spiritual concept can quickly and easily turn into a lust for more. More money, more cars, more houses, better social standing in the community. Popularity eventually also breeds contempt.
I’m losing my own train of thought here, but I think that ultimately even though it may take on different forms at various times in its existence that a society without democracy wouldn’t necessarily collapse. Supposedly a benevolent dictatorship is the “perfect” model of government and yet so few countries use it.
I believe that for the most part, people have an embedded code [which probably most resembles the "10 Commandments"] that will always prevail in some way for the survival of life and society. After all, there are more people alive on earth today than all previous generations put together before us. That says something about purpose.
But even though we can make it, I’m still convinced that even though we have our good moments and even strive to be our best that we are still ultimately self-serving, both individually and politically; it just depends on whose army is biggest.
February 21, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Continuing the engine analogy, you could also say that the engine sometimes blows up. In any case, like you say, history is turbulent, and the very fuel that benefits society one year brings raging destruction the next.
February 21, 2007 at 6:02 pm
If you can accept a theological/biblical angle or two, it’s always interested me that the section of Scripture that gives the qualifications of and elder, or church leader, begins w/ the statement, “If anyone desires (“lusts” – same word in the Greek text) the office of elder, he desires a good thing…”
Also, I’m quite certain the reason a “benevolent dictatorship” has never or rarely succeeded is that there are so few benevolent dictators. That’s the great Messianic promise – that one day there will finally come One who will be just that. The biblical description of the characteristics of His reign are “peace and righteousness.”
I’m sorry to disagree w/ RP, but I don’t believe there is an “embedded code” that directs people toward survival. The human story is that the embedded code is destructive, not constructive. Only an outside influence to restrain that tendency enables any degree of order.
February 21, 2007 at 8:38 pm
> I’m sorry to disagree w/ RP, but I don’t believe there is an “embedded code” that directs people toward survival. The human story is that the embedded code is destructive, not constructive. Only an outside influence to restrain that tendency enables any degree of order.
If an evolutionary legacy provides a basis for morality, then there would literally be an embedded code (genetic) that drives humanity toward basic, universal moral principles. Granted, not everybody here believes that.
A theological interpretation of the same thing would be, if I understand it correctly, common grace. Either way, morality must exist for a reason.
February 21, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Dave,
You are correct that on a whole scale that the human story is that the embedded code is destructive. That is looking at the big picture though. That is why neither government, society, nor religion constantly stay pure. However, there are fabrics within that whole that do have “positive morality” if you will.
If you wanted to look at it from a theological perspective, then you must remember that while the curse of man in the eyes of God is his “sin nature” that does not prohibit man from DOING any good…it just simply [from the eyes of classical Reformed Theology] means that man is incapable of pleasing God or “doing good” to find any merit before Him.
And I do agree with you that there is [in my opinion] an outside force restraining the ultimate evil that man is capable, namely God. I don’t understand how or why but the uniformity of everything [for me] points back to that obvious truth. However he created he has seemingly seen fit to sustain and multiply us all the same.
According to Christian theology [God put] his law {i.e. embedded} in the hearts of all men. Christian doctrine also teaches that the law bears witness with a man’s conscience as to whether it will justify or condemn him. So each person does have a “code of ethics” whether they know it or not….but in terms of everyday life I think that Einstein was also pretty correct in stating that he believed that 1/2 of a person’s morality was made up by the nurturing they were given as a child, whether good or bad. So some forms of morality are also just simply learned by society. Now that doesn’t justify any kind of accepted behaviour as being good, but popular consensus does play a role to some extent.
On the flip side, just as in computer programming, cancer, mental illness, that code can become corrupt and wreak havoc. Morality, or the understanding/adherence to it goes out the window which then produces murderers, rapists, molesters, and the likes….but they are such a small percentage of the whole. Sure each person’s “code” is built in such a way that anyone’s CAN go bad, but most often it does not.
You are right about how few benevolent dictators there have been. It is extremely rare to find such a leader whose heart/mind/will doesn’t become corrupt. After all, doesn’t “power corrupt; and absolute power corrupt absolutely?”
Greg, from what I remember in my studies you are correct in your reference to Common Grace.
February 21, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Lust (moral, political, or otherwise) is an expression “for self” (it says: I crave, I desire, I hunger, I itch, I thirst, etc.). It speaks from a personal need or want to be filled.
Love is selfless; it acts with no expectation of personal reward, compensation, or satisfaction of a personal need.
For example:
“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life FOR his friends.” (John 15:13)
February 21, 2007 at 9:31 pm
– quote (rp)
So each person does have a “code of ethics” whether they know it or not…
– end quote (rp)
Everyone, all humanity, is created in the image of God.
That image had a pure ethic until the fall, when it became polluted by sin.
So even among the most righteous of us, the best anyone can say is “when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.”
February 21, 2007 at 9:53 pm
– quote (g)
If an evolutionary legacy provides a basis for morality, then there would literally be an embedded code (genetic) that drives humanity toward basic, universal moral principles.
– end quote (g)
Yes, “universal moral principles” considering things like genocide and racism as virtuous, assuming the hypothesis of evolution to be true.
– quote (g)
Either way, morality must exist for a reason.
– end quote (g)
Didn’t get here “by chance”
February 21, 2007 at 10:52 pm
> Yes, “universal moral principles” considering things like genocide and racism as virtuous
Genocide and racism would presumably result from evolutionary tendencies that exist in tension with moral will, and that sometimes override it.
> assuming the hypothesis of evolution to be true.
I see you’ve demoted evolution from theory to hypothesis. Ouch!
February 22, 2007 at 5:57 pm
– quote (g)
Genocide and racism would presumably result from evolutionary tendencies that exist in tension with moral will, and that sometimes override it.
– end quote (g)
Genocide and racism and the like all derive naturally from the mechanisms that presumably support evolution.
– quote (g)
I see you’ve demoted evolution from theory to hypothesis. Ouch!
– end quote (g)
hypothesis: a tentative theory about the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena
It has demoted itself on its own merits.
Additionally, to believe evolution as true requires adherence to a handful of beliefs by “faith”.. beliefs that both fly in the face of scientific principles, and are more empirically absurd than believing in God.
March 1, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Hello. Couple thoughts:
Dave said:
“> I’m sorry to disagree w/ RP, but I don’t believe there is an ‘embedded code’ that directs people toward survival. The human story is that the embedded code is destructive, not constructive. Only an outside influence to restrain that tendency enables any degree of order.”
Greg replied:
“If an evolutionary legacy provides a basis for morality, then there would literally be an embedded code (genetic) that drives humanity toward basic, universal moral principles. Granted, not everybody here believes that.
“A theological interpretation of the same thing would be, if I understand it correctly, common grace. Either way, morality must exist for a reason.”
It doesn’t seem like what’s at stake here is whether or not “there is an ‘embedded code’ that directs people toward survival.” You might be able to explain “an evolutionary legacy” that “provides a basis for morality,” and do a bang up job at the same time, but that in no way precludes a metaphysical explanation. In other words, why assume that a natural explanation of events (in this case an evolutionary one) disproves the supernatural?
On the one hand, you have scientists who have replaced metaphysics (or, if you must, theology) with biological evolution, and on the other you have Christians (though very few theologians who are worth there salt) who have replaced science with “theology” by trying to derive modern scientific principles from ancient biblical texts.
Science may be able to explain evolutionary or psychosocial reasons for morality, but that goes nowhere towards a theological interpretation of those same events, which may very well be spiritually destructive according to the intent for humanity recorded in the Bible (cf. Gen 1-3; Rom 1).
We should be careful when we use the principles of natural science to explain metaphysics, or at least we should be sure that we’ve left the realm of science and entered into a philosophical (and thus theological) discussion. Conversely Christians, and those who style themselves as theologians, must be careful to remember that to read the Bible (and here I’ll make enemies with most everybody, probably) – including Gen. 1 – with empirical science (i.e. a biological theory of origins) in mind is to read modern presuppositions into the text, and probably to miss the entire point of what the text is saying.