George Rebane
Where indeed? In responding to my Christmas post, a reader emailed me about a grocery store incident in which a man, with daughter watching, helped himself to some mixed nuts from a bin. She reminded him that that was stealing, and he reminded her that it wasn’t stealing at all since he was a regular customer of that store. There was more to the conversation, but that was the gist of it.
In her email she asked where is the moral fiber today that permits us to ignore or define away stealing. This may be a question of our age, and it applies to a broader category of social infractions.
We are now an enforced, non-assimilating, multi-cultural society. A mono-cultural society teaches its young rules of social behavior much of which need not be codified into law since they are understood by almost all the population. And if that culture also teaches the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent god, then correct social behavior stands on the divine dictates of morality. You don’t mess with a god who knows your heart and can hold you to account if you persist in going against the rules he has laid down.
But in a multi-cultural society, where behavior is enforced by the state’s ‘power of the bayonet’, things are very different, especially if the state religion turns out to be secular humanism. The secular humanist worships complex combinations of atoms. And since the constituent atoms are the fundamental material elements of this universe, they cannot represent any absolute good or bad, no matter in what combinations they may occur. What can one say in an absolute sense about the progress of one particular dynamic path of such a collection of atoms versus, say, another dynamic path? Can one such path be intrinsically ‘better’ than any other?
Now add to this society the small common ground available from the confluence of many cultures. Such a society cannot count on any effective or reliable ‘kinderstube’ to instill broadly accepted and mutually beneficient behavioral norms to their young. The visible and obvious result is that every multi-cultural society must be governed through very thick law books and reams of regulations, all enforced by a substantial and expensive constabulary.
It is understood here that a mono-cultural society is not immune from behavioral breakdowns. We just acknowledge that a mono-cultural society has an easier time communicating and enforcing its beliefs, values, and mores, whatever they may be.
Finally, the secular humanist sees a person as simply an evolved complex assemblage of atoms. Now, to what would such a complex assemblage of atoms answer, and for what would it answer? Here there is only one reasonable criterion to be satisfied, and that is to maximize its constrained, subjective pleasure in the here and now. At times the constraints may require assuring the survival of its young, for which the available maximum evolved ‘pleasure’ may even be a minimized pain, often mistaken for moral behavior.
In any case, such an assemblage of atoms knows its fate – it is oblivion, the ultimate release from ties imposed by any fiber, moral or otherwise. This is now the law of our land.
rebanesruminations.com 
Leave a comment