What Happened?

I have recently learned how to walk the talk of amoralism. It took me 16 years of being a convinced amoralist in theory to become an amoralist in practice. What finally made the difference?

            The mystery might at first seem to be how I could be a “convinced amoralist” in theory without being amoralist in practice. And, since my answer to every question is “yes and no,” I readily grant that, no (or yes!), I could not really have been a convinced amoralist in theory if I hadn’t been one in practice as well, since the very meaning of being “convinced” is that one truly believes x, and the very meaning of truly believing something is that one will behave accordingly. So to claim to be a convinced amoralist while not acting like one is like claiming to have drawn a four-sided triangle: the very meaning of “triangle” (and “four” etc.) precludes the truth of the assertion.

            But also yes (or no), since it is the most common observation in the world that someone can have an “intellectual conviction” whilst yet being unable to act on it. For example, a person may believe utterly that they ought to help defend their country in war, and yet be too cowardly or whatever to follow through. Or a person may believe totally that they are lying safely in bed and yet cling tightly to the sides of the bed in a fit of vertigo as if they were about to be tossed to the floor.

            Similarly: I have been convinced for 16 years that there are no objective values (which is what I mean by amoralism), and yet I have found myself highly unreliable in the implementation of that belief. For example, I have continued to feel scorn toward various individuals on various occasions because of their beliefs or actions or traits, as if they were violating some objective standard of correctness or truth or rightness or goodness etc. Similarly, I have continued to view myself on various occasions, or even in general as a matter of character, as worthless in some objectively damning sense. Blame and guilt (which is self-blame) cover the range. Both manifest a failure of amoralism in practice.

            But now, as I say, I have, at last, undergone my desired transformation … or at least, since there is no such thing as perfection in the world, rounded the corner. How did this happen?

            The answer is simplicity itself. But of course a simple answer can be complex (yes and no). This “answer” at least has multiple components or steps. In quick outline:

1.    Psychotherapy (or life counseling). Having strived for most of my adult life to rid myself of certain feelings and behaviors by means of thinking, reading, writing, dialoguing, meditating, etc., to no avail, I decided, out of sheer desperation (the way a believer or even a skeptic might resort to prayer) and with almost-zero expectation of results, to consult a shrink. After one year of mostly no progress I rather suddenly felt myself a new person and was even ready to stop seeing the therapist. 

2.    Practice. The therapist and I discussed what had made the difference. Our conclusion was that the “secret” was simply having the opportunity to practice the ideas, of which I was already highly knowledgeable and convinced, on a regular basis and in a comfortable environment with a person whom I trusted to be intelligent and concerned with my interests. 

3.    Listening. For example, and perhaps even the main thing: The therapist noted that I often interrupted him. I saw no problem here, and even thought it was a good thing, because I felt I knew what he was going to say and our time together was limited, or else I was unclear about what he was saying and was seeking clarification, and anyway it’s just a cultural tick from growing up in New York City. I did also comment that the habit got me in endless trouble with people, who did not understand that what I was doing was actually a form of respect for them, since it showed I was being highly attentive and even cared about what they were saying. Nevertheless when the therapist counseled me to stop doing it with him, I discovered that I learned a great deal from letting him have his full say; and of course he was getting less ticked off himself in the process. It also gave me time to better formulate my own reply. Furthermore – and this is key – under the therapist’s continual reminders, I was able to replace my habit of interrupting with a habit of listening. For it is a marvelous, and often hugely discouraging, fact of human (and probably animal) existence, that any habit, no matter how major (smoking, drinking) or minor (nail biting, saying “uh” before speaking), is almost impossible to break simply from “knowing” it’s a habit you’d like to stop … not to mention, a habit one does not consider detrimental, or even a habit one is unaware of having. 

4.    Learning / reassessing. As I became able to practice this without the therapist’s prompting and even outside the therapeutic milieu, because it had become my new modus operandi (habit), I was introduced to a whole new world of old friends and acquaintances who were full of wisdom and reacted completely differently to me. This in turn enabled me to see that I myself was “ok” … for three reasons: (1) I realized that I was not really getting criticized as much or as “deeply” as I had previously believed; (2) I was now in fact getting even less criticized and in fact “praised” because of my new manner; and (3) I was able to “listen” to myself better and thereby realize that my thinking had often made no sense. Furthermore, since I was ok, they were ok too, since I no longer needed to bring them down a peg in an effort to prop up my own ego. 

Part 2

So that is “what happened” to enable theory to become practice. But I still wonder about the connection between theory and practice, and indeed, how to characterize “what happened.” My initial thought was that, as I have said, I had learned to walk the talk. And the “talk” was amoralism, that is, the denial of objective values, and of objective moral values in particular.

But another interpretation is possible. Perhaps I am still a moralist, and (to take the case of guilt) “what happened” is simply that I no longer believe I am bad (or “worthless” or what have you), or as bad as I used to think. So, yes, there are bad people out there, but I’m not one of them. I am just sort of normal, morally speaking, and so I occasionally do the morally wrong thing, but the magnitude does not rise to the level of being truly bad, evil, worthless, etc. In a word, Hitler was bad, but I’m not Hitler. I call this hypothesis Kelbyism, after one of my interlocutors, who maintains that this is “what happened.”

My own hypothesis – Joelism (or Marksism to be cute) – is that what happened is not merely that I realized I am not as bad as I heretofore “thought” (or “felt”), but that I have finally grokked that I am not bad at all because nobody is. In a word, I’m not Hitler, but Hitler was not bad either.[1]

            The “nobody is” is my theory of amoralism (which I have also called desirism in its full spelling out). This is the view of which I have been “intellectually convinced.” It is, as I say, the denial of objective values. The argument that convinces me is traceable to J. L. Mackie’s argument from queerness (bizarreness), and can also be thought of as an argument to the best explanation. The idea is that the best explanation we have of the world of our experience comes from science, and there is no room in that worldview for objective values, which indeed appear quite bizarre in a cosmos presumably composed entirely of atoms and the void (or spacetime or quarks or cosmic strings or fields or whatever). Of course the inhabitants of physics’ world are also exceedingly “queer” by the standard of everyday experience: wavicles, anyone? But, given that queerness, the other queerness of objective values seems quite out of place.[2]

            And yet: I am also pretty much a convinced pragmatist, by which I mean that utility is the ultimate criterion of truth. For example, it has proved more useful to believe that the covid virus is dangerous than that it isn’t; hence we can conclude that it is true that the covid virus is dangerous. Of course the equivalence of truth and utility is not ironclad, if only because one and the same belief can have both positive and negative utility. I suppose one could still cling to pragmatism even in those cases, simply by making truth relative … so that under such circumstances the answer to a question would be “yes and no”; i.e., it’s both true and false, “depending.” Alternatively, one could limit the meaning of utility in the formulation, for example, to net utility (i.e., something is true if it has more positive utility than negative utility). Nobody has definitively figured out how to pull this off. Nevertheless, pragmatism appeals to me.

            So, to complete my qualm, the question arises whether Kelbyism might be more useful than Joelism. It is easy to imagine a case being made for this. For example, while my personal experience of relief from the burden of guilt (feelings or beliefs) has been exhilarating and productive (“useful”), it could be that a general regime of guiltlessness (and nonjudgmentalism) might have devastating consequences for society. Don’t we wish, for instance, that Hitler had felt guilty about ordering the murder of millions of people and consequently called it off? And even in my own, everyday circumstances, might it not be useful for me to take cues from my conscience about what to do and not to do?

            If I were to accept those reasonable-sounding items of evidence, I would then face the prospect of being a divided self, who was convinced by the argument to the best explanation that morality is a myth and yet felt the force of the argument that believing in that myth could be very useful.

            Fortunately for my theory, I am not convinced by the “reasonable” examples. That is not to say that I don’t accept that the belief in morality could ever be useful – but I think that, by and large, the belief in morality is baneful (to the things I care about, the society I would like to exist). Indeed, I think there is reason to believe that Hitler’s murderous policies were themselves the product of the moralist character of his convictions. And in my own, everyday case, I find compassion and other nonmoral, purely subjective (albeit reasoned) feelings to be an adequate, even superior substitute for moral convictions in motivating or inhibiting my behavior. 

Part 3

A related ambiguity (to Kelbyism v. Joelism) is whether my new feeling that I am not “worthless” is an objective perception or “just a (subjective) feeling.” The latter hypothesis is that a human sense of well being is like, or just is a Gestalt perception: The very same objective display can be seen as (a picture of) an old woman or a young girl, a rabbit or a duck … but it is neither. The former hypothesis is that the item in question is (a picture of) either an old lady or a young girl, either a rabbit or a duck.

Thus, is my sense that I am not worthless merely a subjective switch from the identical state of affairs that I used to see as my worthlessness, when in fact I am neither worthless nor “worthy” (because there is no such dimension to begin with)? Or is it a switch to an accurate perception of my in fact being worthy (or at least not unworthy)? The latter preserves the objectivity of value (akin to Kelbyism), whereas the former is a pure subjectivism (akin to Joelism).

Again, Kelbyism has an obvious appeal and reasonableness. I’m “OK,” even if I might not be stellar (although maybe I’m stellar). That seems plausible. So my real problem was not being worthless but rather misperceiving myself as worthless.[3] Joelism may seem like a bridge too far, or throwing the baby out with the bath water, since it eliminates worthiness along with worthlessness (“worth” itself being a chimera).

I suppose I’m willing to split the difference (yes and no) by accepting the practicality of Kelbyism even as I embrace the truth of Joelism, But, again, what tips the scales for me in the end is that being a divided self creates difficulties of its own, and so it is better to choose one or the other; but Kelbyism would then require self-deception, to which I am generally opposed on both intrinsic and instrumental grounds; so Joelism is the correct position. Thus the therapy for me was becoming disabused of the false beliefs that made me seem unworthy; but it was not necessary to instill within me equally false beliefs in my worthiness.

I don’t know. This is an empirical question. I would self-report that I have in fact felt better about myself in a positive sense of thinking myself worthy and not only not unworthy. That supports Kelbyism. But as a Joelist I feel that this may only mean that my journey is not finished.

[1] A related example: I notice that when I am feeling “in a good mood” I am freer to genuinely listen to and sympathize with others. The immediate phenomenology of this is that I have no needs (analogous to I’m not guilty because guilt is a phantasm) … and so I am free of the burden of myself and can focus wholly on others. But might not a more correct parsing of my state of unneediness be, not that I have no needs, but that my most basic needs have been fulfilled (analogous to moralism is real and I’m OK)?

[2] As my graduate professor Joel J. Kupperman once put it, when comparing the Abrahamic worldview of most of his students to, say, the Hindu worldview: “Ours is but a familiar weirdness.”

[3] A therapist of the psychoanalytic stripe might then want to pursue where that misperception came from, whereas a therapist of the cognitive-behavioral sort (like mine) would attack the false belief directly with counterevidence. The two approaches can work hand in hand since, for instance, not coming to grips with the source of the misperception could interfere with adequate cognition of the reality.

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