Collective Morality

Recently I found an app that allows me to run WordPerfect (may it rest in peace) on my MacBook. This opened up a whole world of previously unreachable writings that I had doggedly saved, even though I had no way of opening up the files and actually reading the contents.

Until now.

The following is an essay I wrote back in, oh, 2004 or so. Although the news is dated, I continue to be fascinated by the idea of collective responsibility and morality.

I am not a moral theologian, nor do I play one on TV. Even so, I think my argument is a little flabby.

See what you think.

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The sounds of the radio gradually intruded on my sleepy morning reverie. The station’s weather woman was reporting from Aceh, Indonesia. Turns out she’s a member of a volunteer relief effort, and they’ve responded to the call for tsunami-relief aid.

She was taking a moment from the work to report back to the station. Her voice had an unaccustomed tremble as she reported. She told of the smell bodies rotting in the rubble under the heat of an equatorial sun, bulldozers digging mass graves, ships perched precariously on the roofs of hotels.

Where she was, the wave went nearly five miles inland. Five miles.

I briefly thought to myself that I wanted to be there, helping those people, distributing aid, even digging the graves. Something, anything, to help.

The radio host asked her, “what can we do?” He echoed my sleepy thoughts, “do they need more help at the scene?”

“No,” she said. “The last thing we need here is people who don’t know what they’re doing. What the people here need are supplies and food, lots of it.” She suggested sending money to any of the dozen or more relief agencies already at the scene. “We know how to do this,” she said.

The moral thing, then, the right thing to do, is to send money. Give charity. Saint Augustine says in his Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love, “charity is the culmination of every commandment”.

I’ve given, more probably than was prudent. Why does it feel inadequate? Is it just that in the face of such enormity, my few dollars don’t amount to but a handful of dirt into a bottomless pit?

Am I helping from a sense of love, of obligation, or am I just trying to address my own sense of helplessness?

And in charity, is anything short of everything enough?

I am reminded of the example of Saint Francis, a wealthy merchant’s son, who gave everything he owned to the poor, including even the sumptuous clothing he wore. He stood naked before his surprised father and just walked out.

Not everyone is called to poverty. I, for one, am far too addicted to my comforts. But is any other response adequate to the scope of this tragedy, never mind a planet of overwhelming poverty?

Platitude: every dollar counts.

Indeed, they do. And in aggregate, they may form a response appropriate to the need, even if these dollars are but the smallest fraction of the loose change in the pockets of the industrialized world.

It’s like that other platitude: every vote counts.

Logically, it makes no sense to vote. The return on your investment of time and effort is negligible. One person’s vote is essentially meaningless, except of course in the aggregate. (NOTE: May not apply to Gubernatorial elections in the State of Washington.)

If everyone followed the individually logical path, democracy would collapse in a whoof. But what is individually logical is not corporately logical. What is best for the individual is not necessarily what is best for the community. And to a large extent, what’s best for the community is the basis for our human ethics and morals and laws.

Obviously, this can be abused, especially when one person or one clique is deciding what’s best for the community. These abuses can lead to tyranny, since there are those who don’t understand that respect for individual liberties and basic human rights and dignity are some of the things that are good for communities.

I fear that my country is becoming such a tyranny.

Examples abound, but right now the one uppermost in my mind is the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General of the United States.

The world knows, at least in part, that employees of the United States government are guilty of torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and possibly Afghanistan. These people are (or were) members of the armed forces and intelligence agencies of the United States.

It seems obvious that these individuals knowingly violated the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements on human rights and the conduct of war.

The government contends that these war crimes were committed by individuals in defiance of orders. In this way, they hope to escape the damning logic of the Nuremburg tribunals, which held not only that those committing crimes against humanity could not shield themselves with the defense of “following orders”, but also that those issuing the orders were guilty of the crimes as well, even if they had not personally committed or even witnessed them.

It’s become quite obvious that the government’s contention is a lie.

The torture orders go all the way, or very nearly to, the top of the administration. As chief White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales drafted several memos to the President redefining torture to such a degree that the Spanish Inquisition may merely have been slightly rambunctious.

On several occasions, he referred to the Geneva Conventions as “obsolete” and “quaint”. As if respect for basic human rights is ever obsolete. As if human dignity is ever quaint. As if there is no place for ethics and morals and law in this administration.

And now this man has been nominated to be the chief law enforcement official of the United States.

The Senate must confirm him, of course, and there are quite a few Senators of the President’s own party who are uncomfortable with this. They are being asked, in essense, to put their stamp of approval on Alberto Gonzales and his torture theories.

The President is asking the Senate to give the same “thumbs-up” to Alberto Gonzales that Pfc. Lyndie England gave her photographer at Abu Ghraib.

The odds are pretty good that the Senate Republicans will choose loyalty over ethics and morals and law. Oh, there will be some huffing and protesting and posturing. Some Republicans, a carefully crafted and counted minority, will join the Democrats in voting against the nomination. But in the end, the Senate will, in aggregate, voice approval.

Just as we, the voters of this country, in the aggregate voiced our approval of the Bush administration.

And, just as all of us who only donated money to the tsunami relief effort are a party to our collective act of charity, so too all of us who merely voted in the last election will become a party to our collective act of atrocity.