Dizzy, or, Therapy for Moralists
One’s remnant moralism cannot be ignored even if one becomes a convinced amoralist.
I have accepted that desirism is an ideal (see “Suppose”)
and not a state of being likely to be attainable in full by the average person
or perhaps any human being.[1]
Nevertheless, as I noted in “Suppose,” ideals can be very useful in practical
affairs. Some more than others, of course; and some may be noxious. So clearly
I still need to make the case that this ideal is a useful one, and, more
specifically, relative to the alternative of morality. But even then, on the
third paw, there is a further practical point to be made. For to the degree
that one’s amoralism or desirism is imperfect – which is to say, to the degree
that one still retains moralist tendencies – one must still contend with that.
Put it this
way. I have argued (see “The Psychic Basis of Morality”) that guilt is the
ultimate basis of morality – that is to say, the belief in guilt or the feeling
of guilt. I further analyzed this guilt into a primal feeling of worthlessness
or inadequacy of one’s very self. So long as this conviction or suspicion
remains in one’s soul, one will be liable to all the ills of moralism. Absent
it, they vanish. But our hard-wired moral nature may not accord us access to
this blessed state, no matter how much we strive for or are aware of it.
I always
find it instructive to analogize the situation to a visual illusion like the Müller-Lyer. We continue
to experience the illusion even when we know it is an illusion. (I call
it a delusion if we experience it without realizing it is an
illusion.) However, the point I want to make now is that a different illusion
is the better analogy, namely, vertigo. For example, you might be sitting stock
still in a chair when suddenly you feel yourself spinning ’round and ’round.
Now, here again you may know you are not spinning, physically, and still
experience the illusion of spinning. What is different from the Müller-Lyer, however, is
that there can be noxious consequences from your feeling you are
spinning even if you are not and know you are not. For example, you could throw
yourself off the chair in an effort to still yourself, and of course the
experience itself could be nauseating.
Worse
still, if this condition could strike at any time, you might have to reconsider
ever getting behind the wheel of a car again. And so on and so forth.
What this
means is that an experience that is illusory, even if not delusory, may still
call for interventions in its own terms. Thus in the case of morality: Even if
one is a convinced amoralist, so long as one is still liable to bouts of
moralism, one must still manage those (insofar as they are seen to be
damaging). Furthermore, if indeed the root source is a sense of guilt, one
needs to confront this. In other words, one cannot ignore it just because one
has become enlightened about the speciousness of its nature. Thus a kind of, or
perhaps literal, therapy is called for.
There are two main (secular) ways
to approach an obstinate but faux guilt. One is to analyze it with an eye to
discrediting it and thereby dispelling it or at least ameliorating it. Of
course that is what the amoralist program is all about. But, ex hypothesi,
that is not enough, for the (sense of) guilt remains even though one has become
a convinced amoralist. That is why I speak of therapy: Something more like
psychoanalysis seems called for. The difference is that now one is seeking to
understand not where moralism as such came from (e.g., natural selection
in human evolution) but where one’s own particular sense of guilt came from
(e.g., feeling responsible for one’s parents’ divorce).
The other
approach is practical. Sometimes called exposure therapy, this involves
putting oneself in situations where
one’s moralism is likely to be elicited – which is to say, one’s self-contempt
or self-disappointment tapped into – and then dealing with it on a case by case
basis. By beginning with relatively easy cases (e.g., being tempted to tell off
a friend for some perceived slight), one can (“in theory”) gain greater and
greater mastery and strength, so that finally one will be able to weather even
the most difficult cases (e.g., being divorced by a beloved spouse, or maintaining
a relationship with a difficult spouse; as a legislator, voting on penal policy
or a declaration of war; etc.). Relevant techniques extend from just listening,
or at least counting to 10 before responding, to thinking about the other
person’s “good” features, or recognizing one’s own, and so forth.
The two
approaches are not mutually exclusive. For example, perhaps a look into your
childhood experiences with your parents could help you grasp what is really at
play in the dynamics of some current relationship. Indeed, perhaps only an exclusive reliance on
either is to be discouraged. It is not likely that an exhaustive examination of
one’s early experiences will lead to some liberating revelation in a useful
time period if ever; but neither is it to be expected that practice practice
practice is the key to everything. Both extremes are readily caricatured:
The psychoanalytic approach:
It's just as if a man were
wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends &
companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the
man would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man
who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.' He
would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given name &
clan name of the man who wounded me... until I know whether he was tall,
medium, or short... until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or
golden-colored... until I know his home village, town, or city... until I know
whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow... until
I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo
threads, sinew, hemp, or bark... until I know whether the shaft with which I
was wounded was wild or cultivated... until I know whether the feathers of the
shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a
peacock, or another bird... until I know whether the shaft with which I was
wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a
monkey.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether
the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow,
a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.' The man would die and those
things would still remain unknown to him.
— The Buddha analogizing metaphysical inquiry in the
pursuit of spiritual enlightenment in Cūḷamālukya Sutta (MN 63)
The practical
approach:
[A] man goes into an Italian
restaurant for dinner, and, due to a preposterously unlikely -- and therefore
side-splittingly funny -- sequence of events, gets into a heated argument with
the staff there. Meanwhile, another man is walking out of his psychiatrist's
office. His psychiatrist gives him a little speech that goes something like the
following:
"Well, Mister Fonebone, I
believe our work here is complete. After years of hard work, you are now ready
to face the world, secure in the knowledge that you do not look like a plate of
spaghetti and meatballs! Good luck!"
Mister Fonebone, who seems rather
less confident in the success of the therapy than the psychiatrist, proceeds to
walk down the street, all the time nervously chanting to himself the mantra:
"I do not look like a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. I do not look
like a plate of spaghetti and meatballs."
Back at the Italian restaurant, the
patron, in his anger at the staff, grabs a plate of spaghetti and meatballs,
and hurls it at the waiter. What happens next? Of course. The waiter
ducks, and the plate of spaghetti and meatballs sails past him, out the door
and hits Mister Fonebone in the face.
And so the comic ends, with Mister
Fonebone walking down the street, with a plate of spaghetti and meatballs
plastered on his face, continuing to bravely chant his mantra: "I do
not look like a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. I do not look like a
plate of spaghetti and meatballs."
--
about a Don Martin cartoon in Mad Magazine
In sum, then, a person who has become “intellectually” convinced that morality is a myth is still very likely to retain the moralist tendencies of a lifetime, which may even be innate and part of human nature. Therefore, recognizing the banefulness of moralism, the (aspiring) desirist will want not only to keep reinforcing their amoralism (by philosophical reflection on human experiences and events) but also to continually address their own moralism directly, both by seeking out its psychoanalytic roots and by practicing the de-fusing of morally fraught situations in a graduated fashion.
Once more with feeling: What exactly did I mean, in the moral case, when I wrote that “an experience that is illusory, even if not delusory, may still call for interventions in its own terms"? The desirist already “knows” that they are not guilty of doing x, simply on the general grounds that there is no such thing as moral guilt. So would dispelling any remnant feeling of guilt involve “proving” (to oneself) that one is not guilty of doing x because one did not in fact do x?
Sometimes.[3] But I have in mind something more radical, namely, dispelling the feeling of guilt even when one has done x, and knows it. There are certainly situations when a person is guilty of something … but (by amoralist lights) only in the sense of legally guilty or in the sense of having done something they themselves wish they hadn’t or their society frowns on. So for example: Suppose you once set a cat’s tail on fire for a prank and even enjoyed it at the time. By strict amoralist lights, you did nothing wrong. However, in later years you may have come to feel very bad about this. Now this “badness” could have two distinct components. One is that you may feel moral guilt: You are a rotten person to the core for having done such a thing. On the other hand you may feel very sad for the cat. As much as I would want you to rid yourself of the first, I would actually encourage you to dwell on the second. There is no free ethical lunch, even for an amoralist: Being open to empathy and pain is still a live option and one I myself would urge on everyone.
So the bottom-line dispelling of the
feeling of guilt will have to be carried out, not in terms of whether one has
done the deed that one has been deemed guilty for having done, but rather whether
one is guilty for having done it. And this means, according to my arguments
elsewhere, that the question is whether, having done the deed or not, one is
a worthless person. That is what the therapy needs to address, and convince
you the answer is “No!”
[1] Alan Duncan demurs.
[2] An adjunct to the second approach, or perhaps even a third way in its own right, is mindfulness. This is something one practices in formal meditation, as in yoga or Zen, but ultimately one’s whole life becomes a meditation. The idea is to be aware. Most eruptions of moralism occur when one has lost sight of what is really going on, whether that be externally or internally, or failed to consider what the consequences of one’s reaction would likely be, whether for oneself or others.
[3] Although, frankly, that
doesn’t always work either, so powerful is guilt’s grip on us. “Well, maybe I
did not lie on that occasion, but I am still guilty in God’s eyes for so many other
things I have done.”