Chapter 4

The theory that works

But then if we eliminate social pressure as an explanation of why we think what is inhuman is forbidden, where are we? This prohibition attached to inhuman conduct can't be deliberately attached to it, it can't be innate, and it can't come from habits resulting from past experiences, so it can't be internally generated at all. It can't come from things inferior to ourselves or equal (other individuals); it can't come from people as formally organized (the laws); and now it can't come from people as informally organized. But that's all there is, isn't it? What else could give us this conviction?

Remember, we are not playing games here; we are talking about the obligation that is felt to be the most serious of all obligations. Just why do people think that inhuman behavior is to be avoided at all costs?

I think the answer was given some twenty-four hundred years ago in the early pages of Plato's Republic, when Cephalus, the old father of the boys Socrates is visiting, tells why it is comforting to have been virtuous when you get along in years:

"You know yourself, Socrates, that when you get near the time when you realize the end is coming, fears and worries you never had before come creeping into you. Your mind gets tortured now by stories you used to laugh at, about the Land of the Dead and how bad people get their punishment there, and you wonder if they might be true.

"Maybe it's weakness from age, or maybe it's because you're nearer now and can see better into what's on the other side; but whatever it is, you get full of doubts and anxiety, and start trying to figure out if you've cheated anyone. And if you find there's been a lot of dishonesty in your life, you start waking up all the time in the middle of the night, terrified like a child, and you spend your days anticipating disaster.

"But if you know you haven't done anything dishonest, then you have "bright hope always with you like a nurse for your old age," as Pindar says.

And we have the intellectual Hamlet saying the same thing in reference to suicide:

In short, if we make the assumption that we are different from animals and that we will not be annihilated at death, then what happens to us after death could very well be what makes sense out of acting consistently even if it means disadvantages in this world.

My contention is that it is very difficult for anyone to escape this conviction that death will not be the end of his life, because he is conscious of his life and its insatiable drive to continue indefinitely. Hence, it would only be reasonable to expect that every human being would have at least a "gut feeling" that death is not going to be the end for him, even if rationally he thinks that it will be. And in fact, the notion that human life goes on after death is another of those "cross-cultural constants" that is there in every culture, even when the society as officially organized (as In Russia) is atheist and strictly this-worldly.

But if we have this inescapable feeling that we will not simply "sleep" at death, but might "dream," then "what dreams may come" must necessarily "give us pause." It is only by putting this out of our minds as silly and contrary to fact that we can avoid being bothered by the possibility of some kind of hell facing those who would act hypocritically.

And this is reinforced, as I mentioned in Chapter 3 of Section 4 of the third part 3.4.3, by the fact that it simply does not make sense to do what is consistent and suffer horribly for it, and to do what is inconsistent and prosper greatly--as is the universal experience of mankind. Only those who have their heads in the clouds think that moral conduct actually gets you where you want to be in this life; those who have their eyes open know that Leo Durocher was right when he said, "Nice guys finish last." But this, as I pointed out, makes it good to do what is obviously bad, and bad to do what is good; and so instead of being simply possible, it then becomes probable that (since the reality around me basically makes sense) that my life too will make sense in terms of what happens to me in the life after death.

What I am saying here is that, whether or not this reasoning is true, it is perfectly natural, given the fact that we can't avoid at least a doubt that life ceases at death, and that the afterlife might well be what makes you better off not being dishonest. That is, if people actually thought they might live on after death, then, faced with the fact that inhuman conduct is very highly rewarded and human conduct often leads to horrible suffering, it would be practically impossible for people not to conclude that the afterlife would--or at least might--straighten matters out.⁽¹⁾

My contention in Chapter 3 of Section 4 of the third part 3.4.3 was that in fact this reasoning is valid; but the point here is not that, but that it is natural and therefore widespread, so that it would occur to every human being. If so, it would account for the universal conviction that morally wrong conduct is somehow punishable, even if you get away with it in this life.

The reason, on this view, for the first sub-point, why the imperative attaches itself to morally wrong conduct is that the existential problem comes from observing people who directly contradict what it means to be human leading better (more human) lives because of it, and people being dehumanized because they tried not to do what was inhuman. People don't necessarily have a problem with others being better off than they are, if they aren't positively suffering-- especially people who are more enterprising than they; that simply gives rise to the notion that if you work hard, you get ahead; the problem comes with people who couldn't avoid hardship without acting inconsistently with themselves.

As to the second point, why every person thinks he is "really" right, a person would not tend to think that something was forbidden to him unless he thought he had pretty good reasons against it; we don't like to restrict our activity any more than we have to. But since he thinks it would be unjust for him to be punished for doing something he had no idea was wrong (because how could he have avoided it in that case?), he would tend to excuse others who deviated from his idea of what was wrong on the grounds that "they don't know any better" unless they can show him evidence that he was in fact mistaken--as does sometimes happen. But the evidence has to be pretty compelling, of course.

This is what you would predict from this theory, and it is pretty much what you find in the way people act.

We can approach the third point, the seriousness, by pointing out that, to the extent people believe that there's no hell facing us when we die, to that extent you would expect morals to deteriorate. Is it a coincidence that the moral decline in our country happened shortly after the irreligious teachers taught that we are simply the product of chance evolution and "spirituality" was "unscientific" and so false, and at the same time the religious teachers began to get sentimental and taught that even if there was a hell God was too "loving" ever to send anyone to it--and so we should "stress the positive" in religion rather than threatening hell-fire to transgressors?

That is, why should a young girl not get pregnant when this will put her on welfare and the government will hand her money--if realistically speaking, she'd be worse off if she tried to get a job? Why shouldn't a young kid push drugs if he can take in a thousand dollars a day doing it? He answers that he's not responsible for the others' misery, because if they didn't get it from him, they'd get it from someone else--and he's right. How do you answer the kid, when he says that if he goes straight and joins the Establishment, he's then in league with an organization that is putting all the people in his neighborhood into the condition you see them in--and you want him to do this to avoid causing misery to others! "Live in the ghetto," he says, "and then talk to me about it."

For many many people, the only hope in this life is morally wrong conduct; it's not that what's morally wrong makes them better off than what they would otherwise be; it's that morally wrong conduct saves them from a life of abject misery. And if there's no life after death, or rather no hell after death, then there is simply no reason why any sensible person would act morally.

I mean, why should these people care about "the greatest good of the greatest number" if they're the ones that are going to have to suffer for it? Why should they care about the fact that Reason inside them issues a "categorical imperative" not to be immoral, if all that means is that they'll have to live with the thought that they're inconsistent as they lift themselves out of agony? What's society to them or they to society that they should weep for her? What do they care if they're violating their early training if keeping to their training keeps their faces in the muck? What profit is there in losing everything to save their immortal soul if that's just a pretty myth? Why should they bother being on the "cutting edge of history" and working for a just society for future generations if they have to sacrifice every shred of justice now for it and watch the leaders enjoy the fruits of their hardship? If this life is all there is, make the most of it; it's all you've got. "Better to be a live dog than a dead lion."

But then, as I pointed out in the chapter on immortality 3.4.3, life is absurd. And people's reason will not let them believe that life is absurd; therefore, they are bound to believe that there is an afterlife that makes life not absurd.

And, of course, what happens in this afterlife has to make you better off than any suffering you endure to avoid being immoral, and worse off than any gain you achieve by doing what is morally wrong--which makes the moral imperative the absolute one, overriding every other. Once you believe there is a hell, you believe that moral conduct is essential. This takes care of the third point, the seriousness of the obligation that is felt.

And since morality is concerned with deliberately acting, where you know what is right and wrong, and since this cannot be known except by the person himself and any Being who could know what is in our inmost thoughts without our telling him, then it automatically follows that if there is a hell, there has to be a God running it who knows whether we have been immoral, or whether it has been an honest mistake on our part, so that we won't again suffer without its being our fault that we are suffering. And so the fact that no one wants to be punished for what he in fact couldn't help doing accounts for the fourth point, the universal belief that there is some kind of god who knows our thoughts and who takes care of the sanction on moral conduct. Differences in contents of the obligation, of course, are accounted for, as I have so often said, by different ideas of what it is to be human. The connection with early training is that we get our idea of what humans are by observing our parents first, and our idea of what behavior is consistent with this by seeing them and being taught by them. The consistency of moral codes within a culture is also due, not to social pressure, by to the fact that the people around us are our evidence for what people are like, and what they tend to think is consistent behavior would of course, absent any evidence to the contrary, be taken as consistent behavior.

In short, this theory can explain everything that the other theories can explain; it can explain it just as naturally as they can; and it can explain what they can't explain. It is therefore, unless further evidence comes forward, the one that is to be taken as the correct one.

If you add to this the fact that an analysis of reality and life, especially human life, leads to you predict an afterlife, as we saw in Chapter 3 of Section 4 of the third part 3.4.3, that would in fact be just what the doctor ordered as a sanction on moral conduct, then there are two lines of evidence that converge on the same conclusion: that there is a life after death, and that it makes moral behavior rational.

I will therefore take it that I have proved not only that the reason people think that there is a punishment connected with immoral choices is their belief in an afterlife (or at least their fear that there might really be one), but that in fact there is an afterlife which makes it always advantageous not to be immoral, as we saw in Chapter 3 of Section 4 of the third part 3.4.2.

The view of life sketched there, then, which I am not going to repeat here, not only is a theory that accounts for why it is reasonable not to choose what is morally wrong, it is a theory which also accounts for why we think it is necessary not to choose what is morally wrong; and furthermore, it is the only theory which faces the facts of our actual experience and makes sense out of acting consistently when it is greatly to your disadvantage in this life to act inconsistently. The best all the other theories can do is show why we would be deluded into believing that it is better not to choose wrong in that situation; only this one can show not only why we believe it, but why our believing it is more rational than dismissing it as wishful thinking.

I rest my case.

Notes

1. In fact, if you read the Old Testament, you find that the Hebrew people progressed as time went on from a simplistic view that right conduct was rewarded in this life, to a recognition (in the book of Wisdom) that the "sheol" (life after death) was not simply a going on, which was the same for everyone (Ecclesiastes), but a place where virtue was rewarded and vice punished.