Moral Disintegrity

"Now he felt that the man had condescended to him. What surprised him was the fact that an educated man would ever do this. He had been innocent enough to assume that the educated had excised all prejudice from themselves and would never delight in injury to others — that is, he believed that they had easily attained the goal he himself was struggling toward. He did not know that this goal— which he considered the one truthful goal man should strive toward— was often not even considered a goal by others, educated or not."

― David Adams Richards, "Mercy Among the Children"

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Dear Kate,

The morning after the Derek Chauvin verdict, this morning, and the world is a better place, we are told, by the media, the learned ones, guardians of our conscience.

"Still work to be done after Derek Chauvin verdict: Vancouver academic," a morning headline.

Now, why do we need an "academic" to tell us this, and pay him too, with money and our attention, to "research" and confirm what we fear to be true and affirm truth is the side from which he speaks and we listen, before getting ourselves distracted and moving on to the real businesses of our day, which will involve mostly perpetuating falsehood in countless ways?

The headline tells us a certain work was carried out, rather successfully, and now we will just need to keep up the winning streak, in the name of progress and the real possibility of hope.

So what was the "work" that has been carried out so far?  Well, Derek Chauvin is a real piece of work, properly dealt with after yesterday, to our collective sigh.  Now let's focus on working on and working out the rest.

Would that involve having ourselves worked over?  Amen, we say, of course, we humbly submit to the possibility of us being implicated in the troubles of this world--Dah!  We search our soul, you see, rummage through it daily like a pick-pocket looking for a silver coin of clean conscience that we all possess, if only we know where to find it when we need it for show, if only it's an accepted currency in the current where we happen to be swimming.

I hope you didn't miss the irony in my last two letters, my admiration for people with intellectual rigor, and my hesitation about what it means to their moral integrity.  "There can be no moral integrity without rigorous intellectual engagement," I said.  However, maybe I should have said this first: There can never be any intellectual rigor if moral integrity is not what one strives for.

We are going around in circle, aren't we?  Of course we are seeking moral integrity, we say, all of us.  Look at the billboard above, at least the good intention is there, right?  Good enough.

Actually, no, not good enough.  The question is not good enough.  It seems to open ourselves to judgement but has bypassed the more fundamental, perennial questions necessary for any meaningful political discourse.  It is a loaded question that fails to question its own assumptions, speaking from a pulpit where the truth is believed to be readily available just for our asking.

If the "academics" are really interested in engaging the public to "excise all prejudice from ourselves and never delight in injury to others," they should have guided us to ask intellectually rigorous questions that we cannot evade to cultivate moral integrity.

What are these fundamental, perennial political questions?  Let me sample a few from the best academic with moral integrity in mind and heart, a teacher who is also a father to this man and many others, Glenn Tinder:

―Are human beings estranged in essence?
―If human beings are not estranged in essence, why are there so many divisions and conflicts among them?
―Can estrangement be overcome through reason?
―Should all peoples be united in a single global society?
―Should all class distinctions be abolished?
―Are some human beings unequal in essence?
―If some human beings are essentially superior to all others, how and by whom can they be identified?
―If human beings are essentially equal, are all conventional inequalities wrong?
―If all conventional inequalities were abolished, could liberty survive?
―If all conventional inequalities were abolished, would estrangement disappear?
―Should men and women always and in all ways be treated equally?
―Can social order be maintained without power?
―Is it good to have power?
―Why obey? 
―Can political power and perfect knowledge ever be joined?
―Can human beings control the course of history?
―Can we guide history without using extensive violence?
―Do truth and right change in the course of history?
―Does history lead naturally toward the “the good society”?

I shall end with my own questions: Why are these questions never asked by the media, even when claiming to channel the learned voice of scientists and academia, or by ourselves, the most educated ones in our great society, basic, genuine, most relevant as these questions are?  And we call ourselves having "moral integrity" for being so superficial and indifferent?  

Understand these are questions that politicians not only wouldn't ask but also wouldn't want us to ask.  Why do you think this is the case? And should we expect the same lack of rigor from each other when doing "research" in school, coming up with "statistics" to build our narratives about humanity, speaking about the "way of God" in church, painting a cosmic picture of justice, beauty, and redemption to answer to our longings collective and personal?

Yours, Alex