The Universality Of Morality

Postscript:

More On Occident-Fetishism

It is worth elaborating on my critique of the oft-invoked locution, “The West”.  While Edward Said proffered a well-known indictment of what he called “Orientalism”, there are other points worth making on this matter.

Let’s start with some simple observations.  The so-called “West” gave us Mozart, Marx, and penicillin, but it also gave us post-modernism, Scientology, and car alarms.  How are we to assess this track-record? Indeed, the so-called “West” may have given us Parisian salons, but it also gave us Rodeo Drive.  Some within the Occident may have propelled the Enlightenment, but others pioneered Reality TV.  They may have created computer technology, but they also created Twitter.

Of course, EVERY culture is a mixture of good and bad.  China gave us the timeless spiritual insights of Lao Tzu, but it also gave us the blundering idiocy of Mao Tse Tung.  So it has gone with Europe.  Russia gave us Pushkin, but it also gave us Putin.  France gave us Voltaire, but it also gave us Robespierre. (Diderot compiled an encyclopedia, but Jacque Lacan churned out fashionable nonsense.)  Germany gave us Brahms, but it also gave us Himmler. Spain gave us flamenco dancing, but it also gave us Torquemada. England gave us the Magna Carta, but it also gave us marmite.

Ascribing everything desirable within a designated geographic area to a singular legacy—while attributing any dysfunction to those arrayed against that legacy—is a fatuous enterprise.  Such a vast area–from California to Prussia–is invariably comprised of a patchwork of variegated cultures, impinging upon one another in haphazard ways.  So it bears worth remembering: While the so-called “West” brought us Copernicus, Mendelssohn, and french fries; it also brought us fascism, hedge funds, and Facebook.

As for tracing “Western” philosophy back to ancient Greece, we might consider the tactics employed. In order to make their claims seem plausible, proponents of the (chimerical) Plato-to-NATO pipeline require that we disregard the Stoics…and Spinoza…and Hume…and Rousseau…and Thomas Paine.  Such a dubious caricature of world history requires use to indulge in a litany of non sequiturs and gross generalizations.

Contrary to the claims of those who fetishize the Occident, the so-called “West” progressed insofar as it DIVORCED itself from Judeo-Christian tenets (read: dogmatism, tribalism, and theocracy) and embraced secularity (read: science, humanism, and political liberalism).  For every advance made, Mosaic law had nothing to do with it.  (Shall we supposed that refraining from making graven images, mixing meat with dairy, and working on weekends somehow abetted societal progress?)  Once we consider the tenets that were NOT unique to Mosaic law, we find that the Decalogue is—and always has been—utterly superfluous.

In reality, over the past two millennia, progress was stymied by religiosity at every pivotal juncture.  (Retort: If only more people engaged in daily prayer, society may have evolved faster!)  The specious locution, “Judeo-Christian values” (as with its more recent cousin, “family values”) has typically served as a euphemism for imperialism, reactionary thinking, and ethno-centricity.  Those espousing such values have fought science every step of the way, from Galileo to Darwin–be it the mitigation of climate change or the support for the lives of “unborn children”.  “Judeo-Christian values” didn’t give us feminism; it gave us misogyny.  It didn’t give us critical thinking; it gave us Messianic fervor.

According to those who exalt “Judeo-Christian values”, a better world awaits…if only people stopped taking the Abrahamic deity’s name in vain, abortion was criminalized, and we took the Book of Revelation more seriously.  So far as they’re concerned, we can draw a direct line from the Torah to the Declaration of Independence; and the way forward is to continue on that sublime path…though, presumably, without all the racism and slavery.  (Never mind the genocides.) If it was good enough for the Iron Age, it’s good enough for the 21st century.

So we are asked to believe the history of “Western civilization” was an epic journey from Sinai to Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (It meandered through Jerusalem and Athens before winding up on the shores of the Potomac.) The result: DEMOCRACY. To make this tall-tale seem remotely plausible, we are forced to disregard the fact that how democratic countries are is–invariably–inversely proportional to how religious they are. The pattern is so consistent, it requires a concerted effort to not notice it.

It is worth noting that there is something duplicitous about the rather cloying vernacular one is forced to use to make all this seem plausible.  When polemicists prattle on about “Judeo-Christian values”, they are almost always describing Christian values, yet want to pretend they are being inclusive of Jews.  (The same goes for the unctuous paeans to Israel by Christian Zionists.) What would this hybridized canon of values even entail?  Kosher dietary constraints?  Honoring the Sabbath?  (Such things are too Judaic; so that doesn’t work for right-wing Gentiles.)  Well, then what?  Persecution for heresy?  Blasphemy laws?  (Such things are overtly theocratic.  So perhaps not.)

What, then, might the proponents of such values have in mind.  Certainly not what Jesus of Nazareth enjoined—notably: living one’s life as if in a socialist commune (thus refraining from rent-seeking, usury, materialistic pursuits, and hoarding).  On the contrary, those touting “Judeo-Christian values” routinely embrace avarice; so tend to push for unbridled capitalism (every man for himself; devil take the hindmost), no matter how plutocratic things might become as a result.

What about separation of church and state?  Or forbearance?  Or universal empathy?  Nope. Nope. And nope.  We soon find that “Judeo-Christian” is an empty catch-phrase, often deployed in pursuit of a perfidious agenda under the auspices of estimable goals (e.g. “individual liberty”).  This esteemed program may do nothing to promote civil rights, or universal healthcare, or cosmopolitan ideals; but, to the untutored ear, it SOUNDS quite lovely. According to this hyper-romantized portrayal of the so-called “West”, the Occident has a monopoly on sugar and spice and everything nice; and any injustice that occurs is–by definition–NON-Western in nature. Oligarchy, corruption, oppression, exploitation? Those aren’t WESTERN traits, we’re told; and when they occur in Occidental precincts, it must be IN SPITE of the Occident’s gilded legacy.

But there are glitches in this just-so story. Christianity did not bring us Kant’s “Critique Of Pure Reason” or Paine’s “The Rights Of Man”.  Rather, it brought us demented lamentations like Oswald Spengler’s “The Decline Of The West” and James Burnham’s “Suicide Of The West”.  While Thomas Aquinas may have introduced Aristotle to Christendom, we don’t have the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church to thank for the gesture. It was his heterodoxy that moved him.

In hewing to ancient creeds, we didn’t get major medical advances or human rights or micro-chips or even balanced diets.  Instead we got deranged prognostications like Hal Lindsey’s “The Late, Great Planet Earth” and political movements like “The Moral Majority”.  It’s no surprise that the same country that gave us Martin Luther King Jr. gave us Donald Trump. This is not exactly a stellar record.  Yet the way Occident-fetishists tell it, if only more people hewed to scripture, and allowed the “free market” to run its course, civilization would have had iPhones, CT scans, and the Cheesecake Factory by the Middle Ages.

Ironically, in popularizing the trope, “western civilization”, Oswald Spengler (begrudgingly) predicted its demise.  His analysis was characterized by over-simplification, and was riddled with false dichotomies.  It caught on nevertheless, as we homo sapiens are suckers for a good story. And Spengler offered a compelling narrative–casting all human affairs as some kind of grand Manichean struggle. The paradigm holds undeniable appeal because it is poignant and simple-minded.

We are thus furnished with a puerile, binary worldview. It is us (the good guys) pitted against them (the bad guys)…fighting for, respectively, a Galt’s Gulch of unbridled capitalism vs. a communist tyranny festooned with gulags.  The former alternative is depicted in cartoonish terms (an equitable, perfectly meritocratic marketplace populated by well-behaved Jews and Christians); while the latter is depicted in sinister ways (a hell-scape over-run by Stalinists / Maoists, Islamic jihadists, intellectual elitists, and legions of godless, purple-haired vegans). Presumably, the former looks like an episode of Leave It To Beaver, while the latter looks nothing like Denmark.

So what is THE WEST? It’s everything and nothing. Whatever it is, it has been a very mixed bag.  Nobody likes a checkered record; but if we count Chopin’s nocturnes and the Sistine Chapel, we also need to also count televangelism and QVC.  If we count Athenian democracy, we also need to count the Ku Klux Klan.  There are Quakers, but there are also Pentecostals.  If we praise Da Vinci for his designs and Bach for his fugues, we are forced to also acknowledge the Watchtower Society and the Church Of Latter-Day Saints.

The conclusion is clear: The sooner the so-called “West” jettisons its Judeo-Christian legacy, the better.  And the sooner it stops fashioning itself as the vaunted “West”, the sooner it can recognize that we live in a global society; and that we are ALL a work in progress.