Hello People,
It is a beautiful day in Telmar. I mean seriously beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that the smog only makes it prettier. When you were in bed or just waking at 6:00 this morning, I was waiting for the ferry to bring me home and listening to Beirut. What a wonderful band by the way. As I sat, I began to reflect over the day so far. Going to church every Sunday is always an adventure. Our church is on Istiklal Caddessi (Liberty Avenue) which is one of the busiest streets in Telmar. It is definitely the most famous and for good reason. Today it was busier than usual which, as we ate lunch in a small cafe, became readily apparent. As we ate, the sun shone a pale light for our happiness, groups of tourists with cameras and children in tow streamed by as if on parade, chanting protestors made their way to the Russian Embassy, Galata-Saray soccer fans clad in red and gold floated by chanting their fight songs, and in the middle of it all a dog made diarhea everywhere. Suddenly my mushroom pasta seemed a lot less appetizing.
The city where we live is divided almost down the middle by a strait. With only two bridges to span the gap between the halves created by the strait, a large portion of the city's population depends on ferries (iskelesi) to travel between each side. Each ferry (iskele) holds around 4-500 passengers. When we stepped off of the iskele today, we were as usual bombarded with the push to get off the boat without the discomfort of falling in the water and the frantic energy that surrounds the harbor. Because so much of the population travels this way, the area has the potential for good profit for those interested. All along the walkways are women selling flowers, salesmen calling out the prices of their wares (anything from toy cell phones to heating pads) and lines of shoeshiners stretch in bunches in every direction. It can be overwhelming at first. Still, on a beautiful day like today, as we walked to our bus, it struck me just how alive this city is. Millions of people and everyone of them busy. It is like an anthill and I cannot begin to take it all in, but I promise to do a better job of telling you about it more often in the future.
Below is a picture I took of Hazel today.
I asked the question yesterday, Can man be moral? I would appreciate any thoughts on this question to be shared in the comments section. In other words, please comment. I've been thinking a lot about this recently and though I'm going to tell you what I think later this week (hopefully) I do want to know what you think. The answer to this question has pretty big implications to how we live, what we think, and how we approach the world at large. Seriously, please give me your thoughts. I promise you won't be mocked, ridiculed, or otherwise thought down upon no matter what your answer is.
[Posted in two parts due to space limitations]
ReplyDeleteThe proper question may not be "can man be moral," but "should man be moral." The former seems to concern possibility and the latter seems to concern the ethical itself (which is always the opposition between "can" and "should"). I would answer yes to the former; examples abound of man being moral. I take morality to be the ability to hold oneself to a group's moral standard. Someone could dispute this soft definition; they might say, "I hold myself to universal morality," or "I hold myself to God's morality," not just the morality of a specific group. But such a reply would be disingenuous. Insofar as one perceives universal or divine morality, one perceives it within a particular group's standpoint. Any universal (divine or otherwise) is non-graspable in its abstract form and only tangible or testified to by specific instances. So when I say that morality is the standard of a group, I am referring to its minimal material content; universally speaking, every specific instance of morality must at least be something shared by a group.
When we move from group morality to a universal morality, in order to not talk nonsense (because, again, a universal morality cannot be grasped), we are moving away from the moral and towards the ethical. This is what I take to be Nietzsche's meaning of going "beyond good and evil." Good and evil are false poles of opposition, and if these poles are the standards by which actions are judged (morality) then we necessarily plunge ourselves into group think. This is because good and evil can't be grasped or displayed; they are "tags" that people apply to things but do not necessarily represent the thing-in-itself (though, I am a fan of Augustine and Aquinas's view of the good as the only actually existing thing because all things that are only are insofar as they exist in God, who is the only good...). If a person makes the mistake of assuming that something is actually evil or actually good, then that affects how they treat it. This stance legitimates judgment as a mode of operation, but Christ teaches "do not judge." We must not back off from the radical interpretation of this statement: he is literally meaning do not pass or exercise judgment over another thing. Rather, as he did, the proper response to "evil" is to chalk it up to ignorance ("they know not what they do...).
[Second part due to space limitations]
ReplyDeleteIt also means to hold oneself responsible for ones actions, which is the domain of the ethical, not the moral; in morality one is held responsible by something or somebody else- in ethics one holds oneself responsible. This is "beyond good and evil" because one refuses to judge an action merely by an intention in relation to an external standard, but by the effect the action would produce in relation to oneself. As Slavoj Žižek says in The Monstrosity of Christ,
"Morality is concerned with the symmetry of my relations to other humans; its zero-level rule is 'do not do to me what you do not want me to do to you' ; ethics, on the contrary, deals with my consistency with myself, my fidelity to my own desire." (p. 300-301)
This stance is opened up when law, morality, and judgment are disavowed. Many seem to think this will produce immortality and licentiousness in the extreme. I personally take the bet that man is good and already knows what the good looks like. It is law, judgment, and, yes, morality, that multiplies transgression, indeed, creates the ability for people to transgress.
Read this way, the fall did not take place the moment that Eve bit the apple but the moment there was a prohibition ("Do not eat"). In this way, the serpent is the champion of morality; he draws attention to the prohibition, as if it is an unfair one (which it is, a point the text makes). Christ draws attention away from the prohibition and puts the focus on the plenitude of love, the supreme ethical stance. When we love someone like Christ loves us we are not loving them because of their worth or morality (both of which would be exercises of judgment) but simply because we love them. If love has a reason for loving then it ceases to be love. Hence, the statement, "we love God because God loves us," points to a paradox without answer, "why does God love us?" The only actual answer to this is "because God wants to," which is an ethical, not moral answer.
Hey there Mr. Strange (and Hazel, even though she hasn't written in FOR-E-VER!)...
ReplyDeleteYou always post such deep thoughts. Can you pass some of those deep thought abilities on to me? I'm a little more surface. My brain is like a pond, or maybe a small lake (Lake Lanier, maybe?), and you are showing that yours is definitely more like the Atlantic Ocean. (Nice comparison, no?)
Anyways, short and sweet: I think that we cannot be totally "moral," if by moral you mean not sinning and doing bad things. We all sin--that's part of being a human in a fallen world. But we are called to be Christ-like and strive for goodness. So while I don't think I'll ever achieve perfect morality on this earth, I can (and will) strive to be more like Christ every day.
I miss you guys! And yes, I love you both (well, all three of you, technically!). I hope you guys are doing well. I can't wait to see ya'll again. And thanks for the mention in your last post. I really appreciate that ya'll read my ramblings. It's nice to know that we are all able to keep up with each other through the magic of blogger. :]
can man be moral? yes.
ReplyDeleteshould man be moral? absolutely.
without some form of relational cohesion(morality) all is chaos. i guess the question your really asking, or im assuming your inkling at, is can man be moral with or without Christ? again the answer is yes.
man has no problem coming up with moral laws, in order to live in a civilized world such as this one, we must have some agreement on a systemitized group of codes and cultural norms that guide or lives. in response to mr. evans's statements ethics by definition are a system of MORAL principles; in other words the application of morals.
How do we as humans develop morals? through the emulation of others, through commitment to some external code, or through the recognition or inherent values in...finish the sentence. Why have morals at all, forget can or should but why? Once again because without them what cultural bonds do we share? In order to have some sense of normalcy within life we Must have a moral code or there is no relationship.
So with this understanding is there a difference between Christian morality(or ethics if you prefer) and that of the world? I would argue yes. Though most of the human population on earth agree it is wrong in some form or another that man should not kill, steal, or commit adultry, how does God and the Kingdom of Heaven come into play?
One need only look at Christ. he is the epitome of Kingdom morality. He was born and preached morality that was completely adverse to human morality. An eye for an eye? no, turn the other check and forgive those who persecute you. One must put on love instead of indifference. These were and continue to be counter concepts to world morality, why?
Because Christ and his and his morals are not of this world, they are from a different realm, a different kingdom, His. This is why Kingdom morality is not universally(aka worldly) applicable. Forgiveness, love, grace are all manifestations of Kingdom morality and this is why they required someone more than human to create and share with the world.
The best morals we could come up with are do not kill, do not steal, etc. These are good moral principles that every human can and should live by. But Christ came that man may have an other worldly understanding of why man should not kill, steal, etc.