Unpacking Postmodern Morality

 

An analysis of a longer passage by my friend Xerxes, elaborating on his claim that “No one does something knowing that it’s wrong.” It is important, because it sums up postmodern morality, and postmodern morality seems to be taking over even mainstream Christianity.

First, his position:

“You assume that the perp will recognize that something is wrong, because the rest of us think it's wrong. Conscience has nothing to do with it. The Mafia will murder because that's the way they settle things. For them, it's right. The Ponzi scheme organizer doesn't believe he's doing wrong -- his job is to make money, and the effect on others is immaterial. You yourself refer to the narcissist killing because other people are happy; if it makes him feel better, he will think it's right. You shouldn't assume that because YOU know it's wrong, someone else will also hold that belief.”

It is a little unclear to me whether he is advocating the full-on postmodernist view that there is no right and wrong, but truth is negotiated into being, “constructed,” by groups and society; or that groups can indeed be morally right or wrong, there is such a thing as objective morality, but individuals can never know what it is—their thinking is entirely conditioned by their social group.

The problem with the latter position is, of course, that he must be equally unable to know right from wrong.

But let’s look at each of his sentences in turn, and try to puzzle it out.

“Conscience has nothing to do with it.” “It” seems to mean “our actions.” So he does seem to be denying there is such a thing as conscience, no innate knowledge of right and wrong.  Notions of right and wrong seem to come from doing what those around you do—the Mafia example. But then, not necessarily. The lone individual also has the right to declare whatever “makes him feel better” an absolute moral good.

As to morality being “constructed” by the group, I refer to the Bible:

 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Non-Christians are free to reject the Bible, but if you accept its authority, so long as we are just doing what we see others do, we are on the road to destruction. We must make moral judgements for ourselves, not just follow the crowd, or we are objectively immoral. And I think in the end the truth of this is evident to pure reason. If you just do what others do, you are actually avoiding any moral choices.

“The Mafia will murder because that’s the way they settle things. For them, it’s right.”

Mafia types have no awareness that it is wrong to murder? That kills the premise of Godfather 3, in which Michael Corleone seeks redemption for his evil life. It also makes the Nuremberg trials illegitimate. The Nazis were just doing what they thought was right, and what was approved by their society. Indeed, as soon as you accept the phrase “for them, it’s right,” different rights for different people, there is no basis for judging any act more moral than any other. Morality is just whatever is imposed by those in power. There is no option but to bully or be bullied.

You could pull back and say: “No, morality is objective. Nevertheless, the Mafia sincerely if erroneously believed that murder, extortion, and theft were moral. So they cannot be blamed.” But if you accept even this weaker claim, now how can you know that it is them who are wrong, and you who are right? Perhaps you have it backwards.

“The Ponzi scheme organizer doesn’t believe he’s doing wrong—his job is to make money, and the effect on others is immaterial”

Surely this argues it is moral to pursue your own self-interest, and not care about others. Yet this is immoral by definition. The Golden Rule is found almost word for word in every moral tradition: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or frame it as Augustine did: “Love, and do what you will.” Kant demonstrated that the basis of morality is self-evidently true, a categorical imperative: we must treat others as an end, not a means; we must act only in ways we could wish all others to act. If you are looking out for your own self-interest and not caring what this does to others, you cannot pretend to be acting morally.

“You yourself refer to the narcissist killing because other people are happy; if it makes him feel better, he will think it's right.”

This seems to say that whatever makes you feel good is right. If you enjoy murdering strangers or raping women, what right has anyone else to judge? 

To the contrary, one is only acting morally when acting against your own self-interest or what makes you feel good.  Otherwise, as Jesus says, “you already have your reward.” There would never be a conflict, and there would be no possibility of sin in the world.

Eve looked at the apple, saw that it was good to eat, and desirable for bestowing wisdom. How could anyone suggest she did wrong?

Abel had provoked Cain by being happy. How could anyone blame Cain?

St. Paul understands life differently:

“For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” – Romans 7: 18-9.

Morality is a struggle between animal desires and raw selfishness, on the one hand, and the duty to love others.

“You shouldn't assume that because YOU know it's wrong, someone else will also hold that belief.”

This seems to assume that anything anyone believes to be true must be true. “True for them,” in the hackneyed postmodernist phrase.

If, then, someone does not believe in gravity, gravity does not apply to them. I would not try that at home.

For a thing to be sinful, the perpetrator must know it is wrong. Not to realize this is a legitimate possibility: a small child, for example, is not responsible for their actions.

But if, as noted, the core of morality is so simple as “do unto others,” there is very little scope for sincerely and with good intentions not grasping the concept. Even severely mentally retarded folks can grasp this. 

We are also morally obliged to educate ourselves and reason over our acts to avoid sin; for the same reason that “criminal negligence” is a crime, and “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” To not continually make the effort is immoral in itself.

Genuflecting to Antifa

The original "Black Bloc" marches on Rome.

Chris Matthews recently said on MSNBC that he cannot accept Trump until and unless the latter “genuflects to the fact that he lied” about Barack Obama not being born in the United States.

Strange use of the word "genuflect." And strange use of the word “lied.” Trump has never said Obama was not born in the United States. Of course Trump has no special knowledge of where Obama was born. He made no claim that he did. He expressed doubt that Obama was born in the US, based on the same evidence available to us all.

So, it seems, to some on the left—many on the left, for Matthews is hardly a fringe figure-- to “lie” means only to cast doubts upon their preferred view of things. They too, after all, cannot really know whether Obama was born in the US. It is an article of faith then--explaining, perhaps, the word "genuflect" here.

This provokes another obvious question: if “lying” is simply suspecting something the left does not want to believe, what is “truth”?

And here, I think, you have the key to much of what is going on in American politics and culture today.

This concept of “lying” is based on the idea that “truth is relative.” As we see and hear in postmodernism, cultural relativism, the human potential movement, Castaneda’s separate reality, all that Sixties stuff, which can in fact be traced back earlier, through the Frankfort School, Nietzsche, and, not incidentally, Fascism. It has been bubbling through the culture for some time now; it owns the academy; it is having its effect.

According to this intellectual tradition, there is no objective truth. That means truth is whatever you want to be true. “Reality is a function of belief.” “Truth is a social construct.” It follows that “reality” is a contest of wills. Whoever has the strongest will gets to impose his or her reality, his or her construct, on everyone else, making it so. The obvious and necessary tactic for one’s life and all one’s acts is to fight any dissent towards one’s preferred “narrative” aggressively. For example, calling the slightest doubt or dissent “lying.” Which is an assertion of the absolute truth of whatever you choose to believe.

This philosophy is exhilarating, liberating. Which is why it has had such success in the past century. Everything is possible! There are no limits! You get, in effect, to be God—or that is the possibility held out to you.

Antifa

It is, to use the Nazi phrase, the triumph of the will.

Of course, it must also inevitably crash and burn in the end. No, you cannot fly because you want to. You cannot force everyone else to submit to your will, and treat them like objects, once they realize what you are trying to do.

Antifa is a manifestation of this strand of contemporary thought, surely. Of course they are “anarchists.” All government is a restraint on one’s will. No restraint on one’s will is tolerable. One must smash it, whatever it is.

However, this is only a first step. Should one be in the position to do so, the same philosophy suggests that one must impose one’s own government on all others, one’s own reality on all others, and it must be totalitarian. Hitler had to overthrow the social order in the streets before he could impose his own. So did Mao, or Pol Pot. Once oneself in power, anyone who disagrees with your preferred reality is “lying.” There can be no “free speech,” because no expression of opposing views can be tolerated. Opposing views are fatal to a purely constructed reality. Anyone who dissents is labelled a “Nazi,” and must be met with violence. Since there is no objective standard by which to measure or evaluate views, there is no possibility of reasoned debate. Reasoned debate is “Fascist,” because it is a restriction on the will.

Of course, there can be no morality, no religion, for these too are a restraint on the will. This relativism is accordingly a doctrine attractive to sexual libertines, porn stars like “Moldylocks,” of recent “Battle of Berkeley” fame. It gives you license to do whatever you want, to anyone, so long as you can get away with it: smash windows, abort babies, hit peaceful people with bicycle locks, kill the Jews and take their stuff. And, obviously, it gives you full license to lie—reality, after all, is anything you want it to be. Lying is simply disagreeing with you, and anything you say is the truth because you say it. Moldylocks apparently lies like a trouper in interviews.

Fighting "Hate Speech" in Berlin.

In order to deal with this tendency, we need to understand it. I think too many good, decent, people don’t. Too many think that rules still apply, that truth matters to the other side, that we can all with good will still get along.

This was the mistake made at Munich.

And, Godwin to the contrary, I think this is exactly what we are dealing with.

The Recent Prophecies of Eliezer ben Nisan ha'Cohen

According to his son Adam, speaking at the Junos, Leonard Cohen confidently predicted that Donald Trump would win the recent US election and become president.

Cohen died the day before the election.

Publicly, at least, Cohen always stayed strictly politically neutral as a wise artist does. As he sang in “The Future,” “I’m neither left nor right.” And he’s not American; he had no dog in the race. But Cohen was a true prophet. Not that he literally saw the future, any more than any prophet can, but he saw beneath the surface of things, and so was able to draw the proper conclusions about what would happen next. It is a matter of reading the human soul. Perhaps also the will of God.

This is the job, actually, of any true artist. To the extent that they are true artists, they are inspired by God; they are prophets. And they tell us what is happening in the world of the spirit. But Cohen was especially aware of this.

Cohen’s prediction is that much more impressive because he made it while living among the entertainment industry, and intellectuals, in Southern California. A place and a milieu that was solidly for Clinton. California gave Clinton her plurality in the popular vote.

Yet Cohen was sensing what was going on in the wider culture, in the rest of the country—in the rust belt. It was not something he was picking up from the people around him, who, according to Adam, all thought Clinton would win.

So Cohen was a true prophet. We ought to listen to him.

As it happens, he did an album called “The Future.”

Cohen has said often that the world is undergoing a spiritual catastrophe.

On the album, he makes two prophecies that seem contradictory. One, “The Future,” is of disaster. The other, “Democracy is Coming,” is optimistic.

But Cohen has said that the former is far more likely.

Here it is:

Give me back my broken night
My mirrored room, my secret life
It's lonely here
There's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby
That's an order!

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
And stuff it up the hole
In your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder

Things are going to slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul

When they said repent, repent
I wonder what they meant
When they said repent, repent
I wonder what they meant
When they said repent, repent
I wonder what they meant

You don't know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I'm the little Jew
Who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
But love's the only engine
Of survival

Your servant here, he has been told
To say it clear, to say it cold
It's over, it ain't going any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
You feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future: It is murder

There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms, there'll be fires on the road
And the white man dancing
You'll see your woman hanging upside down
Her features covered by her fallen gown
And all the lousy little poets coming round
Trying to sound like Charlie Manson
Yeah the white man dancing

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
Give me Christ
Or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby: It is murder

Cohen, as a true artist, has said, quite properly, that his poems and songs don’t mean anything, any more than a diamond means anything. There are just beautiful. He is right; it is blasphemy to “interpret” art. If you could say the same thing in an essay, you would write an essay, which is after all easier to do.

Still, it is unsettling how very wrong so many interpretations of Cohen tend to be. We do exegesis on the prophets; even Jesus did explain some parables. So I claim the liberty to clarify.

It's lonely here
There's no one left to torture

Cohen is not calling for sadism; I think we can take that as given. By making the statement, he is alerting us that he is speaking ironically. What he is saying is, give me back a moral code, in which such things, if done, are secret. The standard modern notion is that morality is simply torture—so he using the term ironically.

He argues it is better, and more moral, to have a moral code you can break than to have no moral code. So it is better to sin than to never sin, in this sense, by denying there is anything sinful. The danger is moral relativism. And Cohen further says that the result of moral relativism is loneliness.

Keep that in mind.

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left

I think I need to comment here, because many will think Cohen is endorsing sodomy and environmentalism here.

In later performances, Cohen removed the words “anal sex”; I guess he regretted them. I think he changed it to “risky sex.” What he is saying is that he wants risks, rather than either crack or sex specifically. While some might think he wants anal sex, does anyone really think he means to endorse crack cocaine? Which is to say, I think, he is calling again for morality. If there is no risk of doing moral wrong, then there is no opportunity to be moral. That is the risk evoked here: these are examples of doing wrong. This is confirmed by the reference to “Stalin and St. Paul.” Stalin and Saint Paul are evil opposed to good. The Berlin Wall is the clear delineation between the two.

It does sound as if he is referring to environmentalism as a possible new morality: “Take the only tree that’s left”; but I think not. It does not sound entirely reverent to suggest you stick your last tree up your … anal sex? And it sounds parodic to suggest that a tree can fix a hole in a culture. He is saying that environmentalism, the worship of nature, is a pathetic substitute for culture.

The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul

Here is a clear statement of the problem. The world—the physical, nature—has overcome and obliterated the soul, the spiritual. Which is order—Aristotle called it “form.” Christians call it “logos.” Moral order is a part of that, along with logic, which is to say truth. And beauty is a third form of order: the good, the true, the beautiful.

That, then, is the catastrophe. We have abandoned the good, the true, and the beautiful, for chaos.

And here is the solution, put as gently as possible: repent! The important, the vital, the essential first step, is to accept and admit that we are wrong.

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol―that our lives had become unmanageable.

I’m the little Jew
Who wrote the Bible

Here Cohen makes clear that he speaks in the person of a prophet. And he calls for love as the only solution.

Here a lot of people will eagerly jump in and say, “Aha! Cohen is calling for free love! Go for it, baby boomers!”

Just the opposite. The confusion of sex with love is at the core of the problem he has just diagnosed.

What does sex have to do with repentance?

If you know your catechism, you should know how love fits in here. We honestly repent of our sins in the confessional, when we do so, not out of fear of punishment, but out of a full realization that we have offended God, “who is worthy of all love.”

Repentance comes from love; it is its first natural expression.

And, as Jesus says, love is primarily love of God; if we do not love God, we do not love our fellow man either. Jesus says, love God with all your heart. Then love your neighbour as yourself. You cannot do the second without the first. You might do nice things for your neighbour, but you cannot love him.

As AA recognizes.

Step 2: We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Love does not mean romantic love, specifically, here, let alone sex. This should be obvious from the scope he gives: the rise and fall of civilizations, human survival.

I think he is right, too, that civilizations rise and fall, succeed and fail, based on the amount of love for one another and for God among their citizens. Armies fight and win because of love: your love for the next guy in the trench, and for the folks you defend at home. Nations rise if and when those who happen to be in charge do what they do for love of others, instead of for self-interest.

Cohen clearly sees that we in the West are losing that, or have lost that, and this will be our downfall.

We have turned away from God, and the spirit, and so we have turned away from each other.

As W. B. Yeats similarly put it:

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code

What could be clearer than “the breaking of the ancient western code”? This is the code that Moses brought down from Sinai. The devil is in the saddle. He is now in charge.

The image of the woman hanging upside down is a kind of inverted crucifix. Cohen perfects the inversion by making the figure a woman, and having the hanging expose her genitals. So this is an image of our inversion of our traditional values. Now it is all about sex, and nobody sees anyone’s face, anyone’s humanity, any more.

Art, beauty has disintegrated because it has lost its moral purpose. Poets want to sound like Charlie Manson. I have read some suggesting that Cohen’s concern here is to condemn bad poetry. It is, in a sense, but do not miss that he is telling you what makes bad poetry bad. Immorality is ugliness, and ugliness is immorality. You cannot have the good without the true, or the true without the beautiful, or the beautiful without the good.

Cohen puts double emphasis on the line “the white man dancing.” The usual claim is that this would be a good thing. “White men can’t dance” is intended as a criticism. It is because they are “uptight,” that is, too self-controlled. But self-control means morality. The image also suggests a second sense of “dancing,” as you see in old Westerns: the idea of being forced to dance as a humiliation. White men are being humiliated.

You begin to see here what he was seeing in the Trump phenomenon, perhaps. It was the white men standing up for the ancient Western code. In popular leftist terms, Cohen is a “white supremacist.” Not that that term really means what the words say it means.

Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby: It is murder

Like me, it seems, Cohen sees abortion as key to the whole problem. He puts that reference here at the end, making it a sort of punch line—a secondary punch line, because this verse is followed by the repeated chorus “Repent! Repent!”

Abortion is indeed murder. It is the present holocaust. It is the ultimate proof of our lack of love for our fellow man. Abortion is the ultimate litmus test: are you a sheep, or a goat? Are you with God, or for yourself?

That is Cohen’s Jeremiad.