What Did Virtues Give Rise To? from “The End of Virtue”
See How Virtues Came To Rule — Everything Comes — Medium http://buff.ly/1PkPOcg
Under the influence of Charles Sanders Peirce, I have launched an idea called Triadic Philosophy. It is summarized in the Kindle book Triadic Philosophy 100 Aphorisms . A free sample can be accessed by clicking Look Inside.
Triadic Philosophy grew into several more books outlining specific methods of triadic meditation and thinking. “The Death of ‘Nature’ “ is among several follow-up texts that examine expressions of, and propose actions related to, triadic thought.
What Did Virtues Give Rise To?
Here is a short list:
War
The most serious result of a dominant virtue ethic is its acceptance of war. War the ultimate harm because it kills. Killing is its objective. Killing is seen as an acceptable means of human commerce. A virtue ethic rests on an either-or mentality. It can see no third way. It is not triadic.
War is the world’s most potent bearer of harm. By holding “virtues” like patriotism and honor dear, war wins support.
But such virtues are clearly not universal. If they were, there could be no war. We would be one human family.
As it is, we are divided.
Division and virtue ethics go hand in hand.
Tribalism
Tribalism is built on the appropriation of virtue as unique to the tribe. Distinction among tribes makes them hostage to their own false self-evaluation.
A universal ethic accepts all as equal and sees values as universal. Its goal is to prevent harm.
Tribalism should become a source of cultural memory.
The notion that revenge should dictate behavior is false but it rules tribal disputes.
Nationalism
Nationalism is a most potent client for a virtue ethic. Such an ethic spares nations the need to suppress their interests. They are supposed to act for themselves and their people. This enables all manner of posturing. It defies reason.
Clearly there can be no peace in the world as long as nations rule the roost.
Nations are partial and so is a virtues ethic.
Mob Behavior
One of the defects in democracies, and in nations generally, is the tendency of protest to degenerate into mob behavior. Sometimes this is sheer hate in motion. Sometimes it is a transition from peacefulness and nonviolence to provocation by militants who hope to create something that will serve their narrative.
Mob behavior is a reversion to ganging up. It is evil because it leads to actual harm.
It seeks to burnish itself by appealing to virtues like honor and bravery and courage. But underlying virtue ethics is the quest for power. The virtues are used to help achieve control. Virtues this justify bad behavior.
Here is a universal ethical spectrum based on values. Read it. See how it renders impossible the justifications that are always present when virtues are appealed to.
Religious Bigotry
By definition, religious bigots divide. They claim universal relevance based on suppositions which have no basis in fact. They declare or support war based on limited, virtue-based justifications.
They stir up a warlike mentality in populations where they have influence.
The most potent form of bigotry rises from fundamentalism which sees every word of a religion’s sacred text as literal truth. The absurdity of this is palpable by the simple application of a finger on print test. First, you get Judas hanged himself. Next, you get Go thou and do likewise.
This may seem overdrawn but the more sophisticated bigotry becomes, the more dangerous it is.
It is perhaps enough to observe that religions themselves are in their death throes. They are giving way to a universal sense that we all need to affirm a spiritual core within ourselves. This coreis common to all and inclines to the values on the chart above.
Snobbery
Among the major forces of snobbery in the world is the portion of media that deal with wealth and high fashion. Magazines like Vogue. Newspapers like The New York Times. A virtue ethic is right at home in their pages. They celebrate great wealth as though it was a standard to which everyone should aspire. Their concept of goodness is subsumed in the products and pursuits that are not available the bulk of humankind. Their criticism tends to appropriate the language of virtue to refer to what is costly. The result is a culture that looks like the following:
The Snob Press
The Top of the Line Products
These days we mention cars and their ads and the Apple Watch. Plus the offerings of the luxury ads in the Snob Press.
The Emulative Knock-off Realm
These go into the high end stores which are themselves graded economically. They are the staple of gentrified malls.
and
The Mass Consumption Realm
The mega factory store realm of sprawl world.
At the very bottom there is the
Left Over Charity Territory
A shrinking constellation of second-hand shops.
and finally the
Statistical Victims of Benign Genocide
Literally the dead and woefully injured who have no income and no hope and end up abandoned or die at birth. You find them in the annual UNICEF statistics.
False Accusations
We live within an increasingly propagandised world. This is because the values of the future which I have charted above are becoming ever more relevant. And if they are accepted the entire structure of virtue ethics, the entire world of privilege and hypocrisy will come tumbling down and a wave of true democracy will begin to water the parched ground of today’s polarizing world. You will find in the current theater of discourse, our social media, a strident chorus on all sides of all issues. The progressive side is generally correct but may lack the will to affirm democracy, tolerance and helpfulness, preferring instead to believe that we can win by sheer force. We cannot do that. We can win only by nonviolent means that explicitly affirm a limited and unassailable cluster of objectives.
basic income,
the halving of military expenses,
the transition from policing to security
and
the establishment of local democracies as the universal standard of governance.
