The Doubter's Companion (17 page)

The best way for a society to escape this crisis would be to re-examine its severe attitude towards competence. The specialists—particularly the intellectual specialists—are among those least likely to achieve that re-examination in order to free themselves. Their best chance lies with the population as a whole, who can't help but notice the unreal absence of real error. They now spend a great deal of time looking for ways to convey their disbelief in an aggressive and practical manner. See:
IDEOLOGY and INTELLIGENCE.

ETHICS
   A matter of daily practical concern described glowingly in universal terms by those who intend to ignore them.

Even the most ordinary action contains an ethical question, which must either be respected or denied. This is different from the phenomenon of power, which even at its most banal is usually applied as part of a larger, all-inclusive design. Those who hold and exercise such power may not see themselves as part of a formalized intellectual movement, but the signs of its existence include an arbitrary definition of
INTELLIGENCE
and a system of rewards only marginally related to accomplishment. In contemporary society this typically takes the form of
APPLIED CORPORATISM.

And so power becomes an applied abstraction. That's why those who have it spend so much time trying to render ethics irrelevant by elevating them to the status of an ideal.

It takes less effort to push a little old lady off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic than it does to go around her. It is unlikely that anyone will notice, so there is little risk of punishment. In fact, it's more efficient to kill her than to step out of her way.

Some people do this. Others, afraid of being caught, do not. Both see the law as a means to control mankind's unruly or unethical nature.

A third group includes those in positions of power who consider the law and its enforcement to be the principal barrier between order and mayhem. They fear that without the law everyone might begin pushing little old ladies off sidewalks. Their distrust of the population must be an expression of their own unspoken fear that without effective restraints they and anybody else would do the same. Given the opportunity,
HOBBES
would probably have shoved a little old lady into the traffic.

A fourth group, which may include as much as 90 per cent of the population, perhaps 95 per cent, includes those who, even without witnesses, do not push little old ladies off sidewalks. They don't even consider it. They simply step aside.

The first two groups believe that ethics are a matter of measurement. The third do not believe in ethics and so replace them with a rationally organized antidote to
FEAR.
The fourth simply seems to understand that ethics are a matter of personal daily practical responsibility. They seem to know this irrespective of education, religion, whether reason is a conscious fact or not and whether or not they have access to sidewalks.

At the heart of modern power is a rational structuralism which reduces the essential human relationships to contracts.

As anyone who works in a sophisticated organization knows, to treat ethics as a practical reality is to invite punishment. To be ethical is to choose not to get ahead. A corporatist society cares about structures, corporate loyalty and systems of efficiency. All of this is bound together by contractual relationships, as is epitomized in the late twentieth century by the writings of John Rawls.
³

Our worship of secrecy as an attribute of power further rewards amorality. How can we treat ethics as an essential quality of the citizen if, for example, participation in public debate by those citizens with expert knowledge of the subject is effectively forbidden by employment contracts? (See:
DIALECTS
.)

Our problem is thus not one of teaching or enforcing ethics. Nor is sanctimonious idealism of any particular use.

Ethics being a matter of practicality, they need to be included in our systems so that citizens can treat them as they normally would—as a standard aspect of everyday life. See:
HUMANISM
.

EXECUTIVE
   The corporate executive is not a capitalist but a technocrat in drag.

The members of the massive class which manages our joint stock companies have fallen into the delusion that they are capitalists, not employees. Yet they own no shares or only a small quantity bought with money borrowed from the company at low or deferred interest rates. The delusion grows stronger every year. In 1960 the average pay after tax of the CEOs of the biggest corporations in the United States was twelve times the average wage of a worker. By 1990 it was seventy times. Executives also benefit from impressive benefit packages, paid for by the shareholder, which in politics would be termed corruption. And they hector the public and their workers in particular about the capitalist ethic. They seem to feel that these workers are too expensive, lazy and non-competitive. This must be true or the managers would not be paying themselves so much more than their poorer employees. See:
MANAGER.

EXISTENTIALISM
   When you strip away the details, existentialism simply means that we are judged by our actions. We are what we do, not what we intend. This is a humanist philosophy. A philosophy of ethics. Individual responsibility is assumed and therefore demanded. This is the exact opposite of the great rational ideologies in which the structure assumes responsibility and the individual is rewarded for passivity.

What began as a relatively straightforward argument, when introduced in its modern form by Kierkegaard in the middle of the nineteenth century, became confused after World War II at its moment of greatest popularity and then sank into disrepute.

There were several problems. Two of the worst were created by Jean-Paul Sartre, the theory's best-known spokesman. First he tried to mix the idea of personal ethical responsibility with Marxist determinism, which included obligatory political violence. It made no sense at all. Then, in an amusing but lunatic extension of this contradiction, he pushed forward the writer and convicted criminal, Jean Genet, as an example of extreme existentialism. This created the impression that in existentialism the intensity of an act was in itself a value—murder, for example. Intentionally or unintentionally Sartre had confused ethical responsibility with
NIHILISM
. Worse still, he had slipped into a view of existentialism as pure action. It was the sort of approach guaranteed to attract adolescent boys contemplating suicide and other false friends.

What was lost in all of this excitement and drama was that existentialism by any other name was a continuation of the Christian argument in favour of salvation by good works as against salvation by divine grace. In Buddhism and Islam this is even more clearly put. Everyone in a Buddhist society except monks is judged by the universe (not by others) on the basis of the merit they have earned in doing good works.

Existentialism is not therefore Kierkegaard's invention. And that is the real reason for its difficulties in Western society. We, after all, have organized ourselves so that individuals are judged not by their acts but by their access to information and control over structures. Our place in the system determines what we are. If we undertake actions which can be attributed directly to us, our power is likely to suffer. This has nothing to do with whether we are right or successful. In a world of technocrats and courtiers, actions which are visibly successful in their own terms have about them an egotistical ring for which the individual will eventually be made to pay.

Also lost was Sartre's real argument. His genius was poorly served by his tangents. And yet he was a genius and for those who wanted to see, he was demonstrating that existentialism is an argument—that language is argument and argument is action. That is why freedom of speech is central to democracy. Speech is a more concrete action than any specific governmental policy. In fact all of the basic guarantees necessary for democratic government—freedom of thought, speech, assembly, personal security whether it be tied to dignity, safety or well-being—are existential values.

F

FACTORIES
   Children love factories.

They don't have to go to school. They sometimes earn as much as two or three dollars every day and are often allowed to work as much as seven days a week. What wonderful pocket-money to buy toys or empty cardboard cartons, which make ideal roofs for the family home. In most factories there are also games of risk to play—not falling into machinery, not getting your fingers squashed. What with the doors locked shut and the solid, windowless walls, it's snug and warm inside, particularly in the hot season.

A lot of paternalistic well-to-do adults, usually foreigners, would like to stop children working in factories. That's because these lazy grown-ups can't compete. They're afraid of the global economy. They keep their own children locked up in schools. It's far more fun to be allowed to play in a factory. See:
LAGOS.

FACTS
Tools of authority
.

Facts are supposed to make truth out of a proposition. They are the proof. The trouble is that there are enough facts around to prove most things. They have become the comfort and prop of conventional wisdom; the music of the rational technocracy; the justification for any sort of policy, particularly as advanced by special-interest groups, expert guilds and other modern corporations. Confused armies of contradictory facts struggle in growing darkness. Support ideological fantasies. Stuff bureaucratic briefing books.

It was
GIAMBATTISTA VICO
   who first identified this problem. He argued that any obsession with proof would misfire unless it was examined in a far larger context which took into account experience and the surrounding circumstances. Diderot was just as careful when he wrote the entry on facts for the
Encyclopédie
:

You can divide facts into three types: the divine, the natural and man-made. The first belongs to theology; the second to philosophy and the third to history. All are equally open to question.
¹

There is little room for such care in a corporatist society. Facts are the currency of power for each specialized group. But how can so much be expected from these innocent fragments of knowledge? They are not able to think and so cannot be used to replace thought. They have no memory. No imagination. No judgement. They're really not much more than interesting landmarks which may illuminate our way as we attempt to think. If properly respected they are never proof, always illustration. See:
JURY.

FAITH
   The opposite of dogmatism. Individual responsibility and persistent inquiry have been founded upon faith since
SOCRATES:

If I say that it would be disobedience to God to “mind my own business,” you will not believe that I am serious. If on the other hand I tell you to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking, and that examining both myself and others is really the very best thing that a man can do, and that life without this sort of examination is not worth living, you will be even less inclined to believe me. Nevertheless, that is how it is.
²

Socrates' defence before the jurors trying him for his life is thus that the maintenance of faith in any system requires an enormous and constant individual effort. It can't help but be conscious,
EXISTENTIAL
and subject to anguishing
DOUBT.
Modern scientific inquiry is equally dependent on the marriage of uncertainty with faith in the value of knowledge.

Dogmatism replaces faith with the power of structure. We are spared the effort of consciousness and the strain of living with doubt. We can relax into the certainty of a church structure, a corporate interest or an ideological package, each with its fixed dogma.

The defenders of dogmatism, in an approach which has not varied over the centuries—from the Jesuits through to the technocrats—have made great use of scepticism and cynicism. They attempt to assimilate this with Socrates' examined life, but its purpose is the exact opposite. While Socrates sought to provoke each individual into believing that it was worth questioning everything, the sceptics seek to silence the individual by denigrating her faith in inquiry.

FALSE HERO
   The only thing worse than a
HERO.

False Heroes are now endemic to public life. They are the public-relations version of
CARLYLE
's Hero, before whom we were to abase ourselves in orgasmic adoration. Whatever relationship there was between heroism and the hero is replaced by a marriage between politics and popular entertainment. Even serious public figures feel obliged to disguise themselves in this way.

The most accomplished False Hero yet produced has been Ronald Reagan. He did not “Win one for the Gipper,” he acted out the role. He did not fight for freedom as a World War II bomber pilot, he made training films for pilots. He didn't ride out onto the prairies to struggle against the elements for individualism. He put on make-up and waited on his studio nag for cameras to turn. He fought alongside no troops. His life did not include acts of personal courage intended to benefit others. There may have been acts of private courage. We cannot know this.

Many decent unheroic leaders have been obliged to send others into risk or to their deaths. If they are honest with themselves they use this power with care and take care that their language remains moderate. President Reagan spoke from film scripts. Sometimes they had actually been used in films, sometimes they came from the cinema of his imagination. He spoke of war and courage as if he had done what he asked his soldiers to do. It seemed that if necessary he would personally lead them into battle.

The False Hero is dependent on an impenetrable wall separating illusion from reality. That separation is part technology, part advanced propaganda-cum-public relations. Thus Ronald Reagan was able to base his presidency upon fiscal responsibility, while he was one of the most profligate chief executives the United States has ever had. He preached law and order while his policies produced ever-higher levels of civil violence. He claimed to rule for individualism while his laws, above all, served small sections of the community.