The state of the union

Every Monday and Wednesday I drive the short distance to my community college to study Ethics. Its a diverse group of students, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn from a variety of perspectives. As a class, we discuss right, wrong, and in-between. The course is a highlight of my week. It’s still a struggle to find motivation to complete the homework though. Some things never change.

Ethics is a challenge for me because things don’t end in a definitive. The answers to ethical questions are often ambiguous, and a brain like mine tends to view that kind of result as a dare. I’m getting good practice in adjusting my thoughts to settle in uncertainty. I am also reminded of how far I’ve come when I see the discomfort of younger students grappling with the gray areas of morality. I watched a young woman physically relax when I reminded her that a leader is not excused from the consequences of violating human rights just because he chooses to believe they aren’t real. Hitler didn’t kill himself because he thought he did a good job.

I’m not a big fan of the formality of ethical debates, but I understand the need. Every ethical argument needs a normative claim and a few descriptive ones. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the terminology (I wasn’t), the normative claim is the one that says what we should or shouldn’t do and could be open to cultural interpretation. An example: We should not exile survivors of war from their homeland. A descriptive claim is a provable fact: Human beings are not rubble to be cleared away. In an ethical argument, one builds the case for their normative claim by supporting it with descriptive ones. Some normative claims require less support than others.

Normative claims are the oughts and ought nots of society. Recently, I’ve seen the word “ought” returning to public consciousness and while we could have used it a few months ago, better late than never. Ought is another way to say should, but in my opinion, it carries less judgement. To me “should” sounds critical. I’ve spent a lifetime telling myself I should do a lot of things that, as it turns out, were very inconsequential. Ought feels more like sage advice. I ought to exercise to keep my body healthy. I ought to save money for the future. I ought not smoke weed before a zoom call. I don’t know, maybe I’ve been reading too much Pride & Prejudice, but I’m more likely to heed reason if it comes after “ought” than “should.”

America is an outlier, ethically speaking. As a country we don’t have a lot of oughts and ought nots that we all agree on, and I think that’s causing some issues. A lot of cultures build their moral codes on the backs of religion or tradition, but here in the wild west we’ve decided it’s every man for themselves and there have been consequences. I’m certainly not advocating that we create our moral code on the foundations of Christianity, or worse, capitalism, but I think we need something. I mean, our President ought not be in commercial sales, right? And if a Nazi gets a car commercial on the White House lawn, I ought to be well paid for whatever it is I’m doing here.

I have a suggestion we could start with: Our government ought to govern, not profit. Descriptive claim: I mean… it’s in the name. While I appreciate a careful review of redundancies and over-expenditures, I’d like it to maintain the governing function, thank you. I enjoy roads and bridges, I use electricity, and I’ve been grateful for an ambulance. I give my government a few bucks every April and they set all that up for me. That’s the system I paid into. I do have a question—why aren’t we using the scientific institutions our taxes built to find a solution for bird flu so that a dozen eggs doesn’t cost me an hour of labor? Or maybe help out with the fact that an hour of my labor only earns me a dozen eggs, when a guy who’s head looks like an egg makes a zillion dollars in the same amount of time. I think we could use a check and balance there. The situation seems out of control.

Another normative claim: We ought to be mindful of our language. I know I harp on this one, but it’s a classic. Casually threatening to take another country “one way or another” is not going to win us any friends. In fact, it’ll probably make enemies. And thanks to an insatiable need for approbation, we’ve already made plenty of those. Along the same lines is making up terms like “immigration violators” to justify hate crimes. I can think of an immigrant I’d like to deport for violating the values of my country. Will he be chained and sent out on the next flight? And how far back are we going with the ban on birthright citizenship? Do we all get grandfathered in? The words we say mean something, especially when you are speaking on behalf of the American people. And Sir, as an American person, you misunderstand me.

We ought to love our neighbor. While we have projects at home that require our ingenuity, it’s also beneficial to make diplomatic contributions elsewhere. It never hurts to invest in the neighborhood. Certainly we believe ourselves a global society at this point, yes? My definition of a nice neighborhood is one where the people who live there have what they need, and the HOA only exists to check for safety violations and to pass complaints to the municipality. I wouldn’t want Karen to come knocking on my door demanding I trim my bush. (Why does Karen worry herself with everyone’s bushes anyway? I promise, if I have issues, I’ll seek the advice of someone educated in the area.) And why would we take over our neighbor’s land when we are already struggling to properly govern our own yard?

Like the old saying goes, you give love to get love. We don’t want to be the neighbor who brags about his big screen, but never invites anybody over on game day. Maybe it’s easier to think of our neighbor as a business partner. There are opportunities to split operating costs. Loving our neighbor means giving them a cup of milk when they’re in need, and trusting that next winter, they will lend us their snow blower. That way we won’t have to shell out for our own just to clear a few inches. We give away what we have in abundance, and we get to save the equipment expense. That’s good business.