MORAL LEADERSHIP: WHEREFORE ART THOU?
June 18, 2017, KUUF Presentation
Greet Your Neighbors:
Prelude:
Lighting the Chalice:
Opening Words: A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, … the period was so far like the present, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on it being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
Opening Hymn: #170 We Are A Gentle Angry People.”
Affirmation of Fellowship:
Candles of Joys and Concerns:
Responsive Reading: #597 Love Versus Hate
Silent Meditation:
Words For Reflection: Mahatma Gandhi
The “Seven Social Sins:” Knowledge without Character, Science without humanity, Wealth without work, Commerce without morality, Politics without principles, Pleasure without conscience, Worship without self-sacrifice
Offertory:
Offertory Response:
Hymn #370: All People That On Earth Do Dwell
SUBJECT: Moral Leadership: Wherefore Art Thou?
For the past few weeks there seems to be a consistent undercurrent to our presentations and sermons. For instance Reverend Wilson and I both thought that the beginning words to the Tale of Two Cities seemed appropriate as did Reverend Guegerich for All Souls UU Church in NYC in Wednesday’s A Common Meditation. I wonder why?
Why do we seem as nation, maybe even as a species, to be increasingly lacking in moral fiber? What has happened and why? What can we do about this apparent slide into dissolution? There do not appear to be any simple answers to this dilemma. But the condition is not new, as Dickens pointed out over 150 years ago, it has happened before.
So let’s start with a couple of simple definitions:
- Being moral means knowing right from wrong.
- And being ethical means conforming to a group’s set of moral standards.
One might well ask “are morals an inherent part of being human or is this something we learn from our environment.” Do Morals come from Nature or from Nurture? As individuals we know when we have done something wrong and we also know when our group disapproves of something. But if morals are only taught and not inherent, then perhaps we’re discovering that we don’t need them anymore, or that they need to be replaced with something that works better. Better here meaning more likely to ensure our survival.
If you have read Lord of the Flies you may well believe that moral standards are taught; that they are the result of Nurture rather than Nature. While the variety of moral norms around the world certainly indicate that Nurture can and does affect the specifics of morals, is that the complete story?
I am a Darwinian, and firmly believe we are what we are primarily because of Natural Selection. Natural Selection works so that those traits that result in a greater survival rate will produce more of the same traits until those characteristics are either dominant, and sufficiently powerful to assure continued replication, or are no longer useful and therefore are eliminated.
We are social mammals and among animals that are similarly evolved, morals are clearly present. Your dog, a social animal, knows when it has done something that you have said it shouldn’t and thus acts guilty. Humans are supremely self-aware, so this proclivity takes Natural Selection even further. We can and do evaluate how we act and what we do, we project ourselves into the future and we judge our past behaviors. We don’t live in just the moment. We inherently know that helping others, even when it doesn’t yield an immediate reward to ourselves, is the right thing to do. We believe in reciprocal altruism. However, it is also part of our nature to be selfish, dishonest, greedy and self absorbed. We are indeed a mix of our better and our worse angels. It’s just that the better Angels just seem to be losing out these days.
A good friend of mine recently sent me a short utube video. As the video begins we see a high school corridor with students going to their lockers to get books and papers, chatting, and milling around. In the foreground is an ethnic looking boy with his arms full; along comes a small group and it’s leader, another boy, knocks all the papers and books to the floor; and the group laughs as they walk on. The first boy bends down to pick up the mess. Just across the hall is another small group of boys, they are jocks, you can tell because of their school jackets and sports letters on them – clearly members of the in-crowd. The leader of this group sees what has happened, looks at the group that has moved on and at the kid picking up his papers. You can feel him thinking, “should I do something about this?”
His decision is to help the kid pick up his papers and he smiles at him while doing so. And the video ends. This was a clear act of reciprocal altruism but it was more than that. It was about the use of power to help or to hurt; about giving some of one’s power away to someone who has less. The jock could have laughed at the boy picking up his stuff, or he could have gone after the boy that caused the trouble. But in both those cases he would have been taking power away from someone and adding it to his already high status. Instead he gave some of his power to the one who had the least – he helped level the playing field. This is social empathy at its best.
It seems to me that an essential component of Democracy is the protection and aid to the lesser from the abuse of the stronger. The alternate is hate begets hate which only leads to war.
We know that morals have evolved to a fairly high degree in humans. This happened because individual morals and group ethics helped our social mechanisms work. Those who helped others in their group thrived more than those that didn’t. Initially this applied mostly to family and to those with related genes. Then, over an extended period of time, this was applied to larger and larger groups. Patriotism is a national expression of this. However, geographically separate groups developed different standards. Germans behave differently than Italians who behave differently than the Irish. Each group has its accepted standards of behavior. Some rules overlap and are therefore similar, some rules are quite different and these make such “others” seem alien to us. For our prehistoric ancestors such “others” could be dangerous and thus strife and war are also a part of who are.
As Americans we have historically prided ourselves on being a land of all nations – a melting pot – that accepts and absorbs different groups with often-different ethical standards than ours. Our caveat was and is that while we welcome all, our fundamental rules of behavior, our moral and ethical standards, were to be applied to all and should be accepted by all. This makes our democracy a particularly difficult one to successfully implement. Unlike the many democratic countries of Europe, we are not so homogenous as to ethnicity, religious beliefs, or moral and ethical norms. However, over time as our population changed so did some of the standards. But the changes were internal and multigenerational. And as a nation we slowly adjusted to the new us.
Today, because change is occurring so fast and we are now in groups that are so large and so heterogeneous, we feel threatened. The few have so much power and the many do not. We feel the need to protect what we have and who we are. Others have become dangerous again. The standards that used to apply don’t seem to work, we feel exposed and thus unwilling to take the risk of being generous and kind and truthful. We fall back on the prejudices we all have deep inside, the darker angels of our natures have become stronger than the better ones. And since we are a democracy where we essentially get what we feel we need and want, we have selected leaders that exaggerate these unfortunate tendencies.
If I were a doomsayer I might suggest that as a species perhaps we have outlived the usefulness of reciprocal altruism. But I don’t believe that for a moment. However, I do know that if we continue on this current path Natural Selection will work it magic and we may well eliminate ourselves. So it is essential that the reciprocal altruistic component of this self-aware social mammal be nurtured and advanced.
If we truly believe a better balance of selfishness and kindness, dishonesty and truthfulness is a requirement for our continued success as a species, what do we do? What can we do?
Habits are strong things. If we consciously developed the habit of Random Acts of Kindness this will in turn encourage others to do the same and this can help rekindle the belief in the power of this concept. This is a small daily habit that we can teach ourselves. It will take more than this, to make major changes, but it is something each of can do on a daily basis to push the tide in the right direction.
Most of us have already done what we can to pass on our moral standards to our kids but we still have time to share with our grandchildren the lessons of reciprocal altruism. My father had a saying that he lived by and that I never forgot: “Cast your bread upon the waters and it will return tenfold.” He truly believed this; he was exceptionally generous with his knowledge as a leader in the world of plant propagation and he was both admired and rewarded for it.
I found that in my professional life that this idea was immensely powerful. We have passed that on to our children and they each have taken the idea further.
If your belief in this is unshakable it has a power that is immense. But if this idea is to take hold and spread we must encourage it, tell real stories about it, and promulgate it. Our children and their children are the future. If we as a nation are to remain true to our founding principles it will be up to them to carry such ideas forward. How do we help assure that this will indeed happen?
As a rather elderly congregation most of us I suspect utilize and are grateful for Medicare. It is a good thing that we did as nation. It helps assure that those with less are protected when they are least able to fend for themselves. But as a nation what have we done to aid and support the next generation, our nation’s future, the young? Using the idea of giving power to those who have little shouldn’t we be just as concerned about young children as us old folk? What are we really doing to help kids from poor families that don’t have enough to eat, kids in working class families who struggle to provide for the cost of day care and health insurance; middle class families that find it so hard to afford college for their kids that a new generation immediately indebt is created? Is it right that so much of all our collective money should be spent on the ends of our lives and so little on the beginning of theirs? How do we get our representatives to deal with these issues?
Fundamentally we need to elect representatives that believe in the role of government to protect the weak from the strong and to act as if they truly lived by the sentiment of the Declaration of Independence…
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (and women) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Equal here means to me that all should have a fair and as equal as reasonably possible chance at the beginning, but not necessarily that we all will achieve the same ends. The playing field should be as level as possible when we each begin life. And while that will never be perfectly achieved, it is a worthy goal for which to aim. We need to elect representatives that believe similarly.
There are other things that need to be done, such as overturning Citizens United, taking the absurd power of money out of our elections, creating an one year National Service for everyone immediately after high school, political term limits, etc. etc. But those are for another Sunday, and so AMEN.
Closing Hymn: #124 “Be That Guide.”
Extinguishing the Chalice:
Postlude:
Closing Words:
Not everything that is faced can be changed.
But nothing can be changed until it is faced.
James Baldwin, 1924 – 1987