Legislating Morality

A recent debate with my father has caused me to more deeply and introspectively consider my stance on freedom and the role of government in creating a moral society.  My conclusions remain the same, but I hope to be more articulate in explaining why.

I am reminded of Thomas Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence, that we are “endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Jefferson, of course, was of a more libertarian mind than the typical American today.  Yet the question remains, do we believe Jefferson’s claim today?  Do we believe that we are given by God the right to life, to liberty, and to pursue our own happiness as we best see fit? 

If these rights are, as Jefferson claimed, unalienable and God-given, then what right do we, or anyone, have to take them away against their will?  Indeed, if freedom is a gift from God, than to deprive another of that gift would appear to defy God’s will.  If we are to be advocates of freedom, we must accept that some will choose things that we don’t agree with.  If we cannot, then we cannot be free.

Certainly it is argued, sometimes powerfully, that our nation was founded on principles of morality, and that our nation’s structure could only function in a moral society.  Notably, it was John Adams who made this claim, a political opponent of Jefferson’s.  Jefferson would have likely rejected such a claim, but why?  It certainly coincides with Benjamin Franklin’s assertion that the more evil we become, the more we stand in need of masters to watch over us. 

But consider the causal relationship between government power and moral decay.  Which came first?  It is my adamant contention that government power and corruption precedes the moral decay of society.  Indeed it seems the disposition of government power to facilitate such moral corruption.  Nazi Germany, communist Russia, and other socialist and communist nations have directly and intentionally banned and burned religious and moral texts for the express reason that moral people prefer to be free.  We see America's decline into immorality begin as the Progressive movement takes hold and begins to take away our freedoms.  In other words, centralized power causes moral decay, not the other way around. 

But what of these immoralities that are plaguing our communities now?  What are we to do about them?  The answer is simple.  We fight against them.  We teach of their dangers.  We lead by example.  We raise our children to understand right and wrong.  I came across a story in which a spontaneous internet community emerged to help youth break free from porn addictions.  The scientific evidence given, moral support offered, and personal experiences shared have allowed this (non-religious) community to find morality on its own.  The story noted that the growth of this community (on reddit.com I believe) has been astronomical.  This is how we make society moral again.

Can government be the answer?  No.  Laws do not change a person’s moral stance.  They simply change otherwise law-abiding citizens who have differing moral opinions into criminals.  Might they stop their immoral behavior if we ban it?  Maybe, if they fear the risks and consequences of being caught greater than the benefit they expect from that behavior that they previously pursued.  But it creates resentment, animosity, and distrust among those citizens who share a community.  And it creates dark and dangerous outlets for those who regard their sinful pleasures worth the risk.

Let me illustrate with an example.  Suppose some crazy leftist biologist has determined that chocolate is bad for you, and has convinced congress to pass a law banning chocolate consumption.  Now, it is obvious that this scientist’s study is junk science, and that the law is beyond stupid.  But let me ask you, will you stop eating chocolate?  Many of you might answer yes, as we try to abide by the laws of the land.  But how will you feel about it?  How will you feel toward the supporters of the law?  Let me ask you further, what if a friend of yours stops by after taking a vacation abroad, and happens to have snuck in some premium foreign chocolate and offers you some.  Would you resist?  Obviously, as we know that chocolate is not evil, and the law is stupid, I suspect that many of us would be more than happy to indulge, especially as it’s probably been a while since we’ve tasted it.  In other words, the lawmakers have turned us chocolate lovers into criminals at heart, whether we act on our desires or not, because we disagree with the law and want to break it.  Furthermore, we become quite irritated with those who have limited your freedom thus, removing from your life one of your most prized pleasures.  They have inhibited your freedom and ability to pursue happiness as you see fit, and have thus made you disgruntled and angry instead.

Interestingly, both sides of the political debate (excepting the libertarian stance) are quite adamant about the importance of legislating morality, but takes extreme umbrage when the other side seeks to do the same.  For example, liberals are incensed when conservatives push their Christian morality on them, such as the ban on drugs, no gay marriage, or a ban on abortion.  Conservatives, on the other hand, find liberal legislation of taxing the rich to feed the poor, regulating businesses, universal health care, and saving the planet from ourselves to be repugnant.  Indeed each side is passionate about their causes, and thus there are incessant debates both in congress and in public discourse over the right morals to legislate.  In the end, each side fights for the power to enact their morality on the other side against their will.

But the question remains: if we could enact laws to legislate a morality which returns to the principles we once held, wouldn’t that work?  Wouldn’t that speed the transition back to the society we wish to live in?  No, not really.  Unless you have localized legislation only, and have destroyed and distributed the federal power among the smaller localities such that they can choose how to live and where, unless this is how such morality is legally enacted, forcing such a morality on those who do not wish it (even if it’s good morality) will still create discontent and resentment, and will necessarily lead to crime and corruption.  People will only endure moral enslavery to a limited extent.  I suspect if such legislation made it through the federal system, the nation would very quickly erupt into violence and civil war.

Economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek offers a compelling explanation of why freedom can and does create a moral society.  In a free society, best practices emerge naturally in a sort of natural selection (i.e. survival of the fittest) which weeds out those practices which do not work.  The history of mankind has shown this to be a moral and religious society which has endured the test of time.  Hayek gave strict warning of casually throwing out the moral codes which have endured time (as they have survived for a reason), which society began doing at the turn of the 20^th century as “science” began to suggest supposed better moral codes.  Enacting policies based on such science (e.g. abortion, social security, income taxation) have eroded and displaced the moral society which made America strong, and replaced it with a dichotomous nation of two general moralities.

We must trust in freedom and have faith in mankind if we are to become moral again.  I know it’s tempting to want to have government codify those principles which you know to be right and true so that you can live in a society that behaves as you think it should.  But you must resist that urge.  Freedom works!  Those immoral societies which emerge from granting such freedom will soon be displaced as they fail.  But most people are reasonably intelligent (when they have to be), and will, if free, quickly adapt to that freedom by learning and adopting those moral practices which truly work.  It shouldn’t take long, as many of us already know and will live by those principles that work, for certain moral principles to emerge as most effective.

God meant us to be free.  That’s why Satan was rejected, and we have a Savior.

Public Interest and the Greater Good

Politicians and pundits like to talk about the public interest.  We ought to do this because it serves the public interest.  We need to keep the public interest in mind.  We need to regulate more and close loopholes to protect public interest.

Let me ask you, what is public interest?  A defendant of the term might respond by defining it as something that serves the public in general.  It’s the general welfare of the nation.  Some things must be done which may hurt a select few of the citizenry who can bear the loss, but it is for the greater good.  We must, for example, tax those who can afford it more for the greater good.  We should provide public education for the greater good.  We who are able must make sacrifices for the greater good.

The general welfare clause of the Constitution was probably the biggest mistake in an otherwise brilliant document.  What is general welfare?  Who is the public?  It is us, you, me, everyone individually.  We are individuals who, together do not form a collective body.  We are not one and the same, we do not form a collective will.  We are different, we view things differently, want different things, and as such cannot be treated as a universal collective.  There is no such thing as public interest because by serving the will of one segment of the public you are ignoring or going contrary to the will of another.  The Constitution is mistaken because there is no general welfare.

All policy, except in the exceedingly rare circumstance of unanimity, must necessarily be at the behest of some while benefiting others.  How can we say that some policy is for the greater good when it hurts many people while helping others?  Are we then determining that those whom we hurt with such policy are somehow lesser than those whom it helps?  Is it a greater good because it helps more people than it hurts?  Are those whom it hurts then lesser because they are a minority?  Indeed, because we are all unique, we may all be classified into subcategories, each of which is necessarily a minority in some respect.  Now that there are more women than men, should women be able to exploit men through the law?  What about Mormons?  Perhaps a new “extermination order” might be desirable to many.  If the majority of people want it (as I’m sure they probably do) is it not for the “greater good”?  Should we force fat people to eat better, thus lowering their medical costs (again, greater good here)?  Should we force smart kids to slow their learning so the more numerous ”slower” kids don’t get behind?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, let me ask you one more.  Should we take away all of your income and make you live in a shelter so that we can upgrade my family living conditions?  I’d like a 4 bedroom house with a fenced in backyard, and a TV package with all the sports channels.  And you can’t quit either.  See, this would hurt you, but it would help me and my family, who are more than you.  It’s for the greater good.  Of course, it’s only the greater good if it’s not you that’s being exploited. 

Politics is the science of favoritism, a tried and true game of using authoritarian power to maintain and increase that same power.  By appealing to the majority of voters through the exploitation of the minority, power may be preserved or increased for extended periods of time.  This is where democracy has failed, and we’ve fallen victim to the very mob mentality our founders feared.  This path ultimately ends in aristocracy and dictatorship of some kind, the so-called “road to serfdom.”  I just finished reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and was struck by the famous line: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”  When society degenerates to such preference for one subgroup over another, as we now see, one group can capture enough power to rule the farm.

If we are to protect our society, or rebuild it, we must restore and preserve the nation’s inability to exploit one citizen for the benefit of any other.  It does not matter whether the person exploited is able or not to bear the exploitation.  If (s)he is willing to give of himself for the benefit of others, such charity may be done voluntarily, but it must not be done forcefully.  For who’s will are we to obey?  Who has the right to dictate their will on another? 

But how do we protect ourselves from such power grabs?  The best protection I can think of against this was the one Lincoln abolished in his war against the Confederacy, that is the right for any self-governing state to remove itself from an overreaching federal power through secession.  The southern states had every right to leave the union, but were forced to remain by military force.  Now the federal government has superseding power over all state laws, and the checks on government exploitation of minorities is gone.  We can no longer “vote with our feet” in choosing states which abide by our preferred principles, but instead we are forced to abide by the principles chosen by a power-driven federal polity.  We must restore the power balance, and place local and state power over the federal if we are to eliminate the “greater good” syndrome from leading down the path of Germany, Russia, and China.

Happiness and Expectations of Happiness

We've all heard the truism "money can't buy happiness".  Wise thinkers have given lists of reasons for this, like "stuff is temporary" or "mo' money mo' problems".  But the actual reason is more fundamental.  Happiness is not a state of being.  It is a state of perception and expectation. 

Economist G. L. S. Shackle gave this example: suppose you are a poor farmer and own a small plot of land.  How happy are you?  Now, suppose your neighbor comes to you and explains that he has found a deposit of gold that runs right up to your property border and undoubtedly crosses into your property.  Now how happy are you?  Do you feel wealthy upon learning this news?

"There is a sense in which a man who discovers a gold field on his farm is not objectively richer after the discovery than before.  No visible change may have taken place on his land, but simply the knowledge has come to him that a gold-bearing reef has been traced on the neighboring farm up to the edge of his own territory, into which it certainly continues. What then has changed?  In what does his new-found wealth consist?  His expectations have changed, there now open before him action-courses which will realize great wealth.  But the fact that this wealth is not yet realized does not keep him in a state and feeling of poverty." 

Expectations are what drive our happiness.  There are three parts of expectations which alter our psyche state.  First is the expectation period in which we wait for the expected event.  Second is the occurrence of the expected event.   Third and finally is the subsequent evaluation of the event's meeting or failing to meet expectations.  Somewhat surprising, it is the first of these which impacts us the greatest.

Constant expectations of future pleasure and joy put us in a state of happiness.  Expectations of discomfort, displeasure, or dissatisfaction must conversely put us in a state of misery.  This is the longest lasting period of the expectation process, and thus has the longest impact on our lives.  It is the expectation of events which causes our brain to generate dopamine, thus generating a feeling of pleasure and joy from the mere expectation of some presumably positive outcome.  Conversely, the brain releases endorphins during the experiencing of the pleasurable event, which offer a peaceful, satisfied feeling.  As it turns out, dopamine has a much stronger influence on our brains and thus our state of mind.  This means that expecting something nice has a much larger impact on our happiness than actually doing or having something nice.


Now to bring this full circle, happiness is not an actual state of being.  You are not happy because your life is in a pleasant state.  Happiness depends on your perception of your current and future status.  You may choose to be happy simply by expecting positive outcomes for yourself.  You may choose to be miserable by expecting bad outcomes in the future.  Happiness is a choice, and it pays to be optimistic. 

Black and White

I think it is human nature to try to see things as black and white, true and false. It gives sense and order to our perception of the world. It removes uncertainty and gives us purpose and direction. When the world is black and white, we can comprehend it.

But the world is not black and white. Not only is it full of shades of gray, but various colors and hues. There are very few absolute truths, and those we think we have may not be nearly as absolute as we believe. Believing in absolutes structures our mind, but also restricts it to a limited understanding of truth. We become unwelcoming to new truths, deeper meanings and hidden secrets.  If we believe unquestionably in some absolute, that absolute restricts our knowledge to the limits of which that absolute can explain an no further.

I was listening in on a conversation between my uncles at my family reunion a couple of weeks ago as they debated and questioned each other on points of doctrine.  As they struggled back and forth with intriguing questions, I realized that their failure to find an acceptable resolution to some of their queries may have been due to a failure to consider some other possibility.  Admittedly, this possibility is largely rejected by the members of the church, but it is something I had discussed with an institute teacher a few year back, who had some very interesting insights and supporting evidence.  I offered the idea to my uncles who, as I suspected, rejected it right out, noting that it was "doctrine" that my suggestion was false.  I left it at that, as they continued on their discussion as they were.

The thoughts that came to my mind in response, however, I think are worthwhile to consider.  "Doctrine" is a funny word, which has come to mean that which the church has officially said is true.  But doctrine is not black and white.  It is not true or false, right or wrong.  Our understanding of doctrine comes to us line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little.  We are not meant to be able to understand the doctrine fully.  Before each new insight, we must first become spiritually prepared, and then seek after it.  

This is the reason Christ gave for speaking in parables.  "Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom, but to them it is not given" (Matt 13: 11).  We can't be given everything in black and white because some of us, many of us are not ready for it and cannot comprehend it.  New doctrines would shatter the understandings we have come to rely upon, and we would become worse off than had we never learned the truth.  Thus we are better left to keep the understandings we have established and no more.

Take, for example, the Christian faith as a whole and its understanding of "eternal life".  This is a simple doctrine for them, it is clear as day, and is indisputable.  Eternal life means those who obtain it will live forever.  That is, after all, what the words mean.  But in modern revelation, Christ revealed that the phrase was a mystery, a secret that he had only revealed to his apostles of old (see D&C 19: 8).  The mystery was in Christ's use of language, suggesting that "eternal" is one of His names, thus its scriptural use is in reference to Him.  Thus "eternal life" is God's life.  

Why did Christ do this?  Why did He continue to use the words "eternal life" when He knew it would only lead his followers and listeners to believe something that was not fully true?  

Now, should we suppose that this is the only mystery that God has kept from us?  Certainly not, we know that many mysteries of the kingdom are not yet known to the world.  So why do we insist that we understand the "doctrine" of the church and that there can be only one interpretation of it?  Why do we scorn those who perceive truth a bit differently than we do, when we know that each of us must necessarily be at varying levels of doctrinal understanding and progress?  Are we so sure that it is we who are the more correct?

I believe that many of our truths are hiding deeper messages, that the truths we understand are meant to give us only a superficial and incomplete (if not incorrect) understanding of the universe until we are ready to understand more.  The spirit world, for example, is hardly a world divided into two, with a bridge built by Christ in between the two halves.  These "doctrines" are not necessarily literal, but metaphorical and simply meant to give us some understanding until we are ready for more.  

When we take doctrine as literal, as we often do, we put ourselves into a black and white world that is easy to understand and is straightforward and certain.  But we may be missing so much of the beauty in the world that God has actually created.

The Subjectivity of Fact

Fact is supposed to be universal, unquestionable, and certifiably true.  So why is it that so many so-called facts rarely are?

As an easy illustration, the political debate is frequently bombarded by "appeals to the facts," claims that the facts point to this conclusion or that, that the facts support my ideology and refute yours.  How can each side have “facts” that prove their viewpoint when these viewpoints are necessarily contradictory?  There is apparently some misnomer in our idea of ‘fact.’

The word ‘fact’ in fact (no pun intended) refers to something that occurred in reality, is actual.  We generally refer to historic events, scientific evidence, numeric counts, and biographical sketches as facts, reproducible by any learned individual who may  be petitioned in a Jeopardy-like fashion.  But what is fact really?  And who gets to decide it?

Implicit in that second question is the idea that a ‘fact’ may be perceived differently by more than one individual, such that a “correct” account must be decided upon before it becomes fact.  Indeed, all things known to us are no more than our own perception of them.  Certainly actual things happen, real things exist, and there is a reality.  But to us reality can be no more than what we perceive, for we exist exogenously of those real things.  Even our own selves lies to great extent beyond our own comprehension.  Thus while it may be that we all perceive some event simultaneously, and we all agree that we saw it, that it happened, our interpretation of the event will necessarily differ to some extent based on our unique individual knowledge, vantage point, context, and even genetic makeup.  

As a simple illustration, suppose that I stroll down the sidewalk with a friend and note that I saw a green car drive by.  My color-blind friend simultaneously saw a gray car pass.  Who was more correct?  Who was the observer of fact?  In general, we would probably say that I am the more correct, that the car was in fact green, but my friend, due to a genetic ‘defect’ if you will, was unable to perceive it.  We say that I am the observer of fact merely because most people are like me, and would see the car as green.  But if I was the one with the genetic mutation, and most everyone else saw the car as gray, would not my friend’s account be the ‘factual’ one?

Referring back to that list of 'facts' above, historic events are very easily interpreted in many ways, and even our perception of time is subjective (why is it that sometimes you don't know where the time went, and other times you can't believe how long the day or week seems to last?).  Scientific evidence is often believed to be irrefutable up until it is refuted by newer, better scientific evidence.  There are many flat worlds in science.  Even numeric counts can be and are subjective, as it depends entirely on how we classify a single entity to be counted.  For example, when counting apples, do the large ones count exactly the same as the smaller ones (and if so, isn't that a distortion of reality)?

I am reminded of a Calvin and Hobbes strip which depicts this ability to perceive reality so differently.

Reality is largely a factor of our own mind, of the reality that we expect based on our own understanding of it.  For example, marketing scholars found in a study that, if they put a couple of drops of balsamic vinegar in beer, blind tasters generally preferred the beer with vinegar to the same beer without it.  But when they alerted tasters to the fact that there was vinegar in the beer before they tasted it, they found that the tasters very much disliked the beer with vinegar.  So what was the difference?  The reality that we have constructed in our minds influences the way we experience things by forming expectations, toward which we are quite biased toward confirming.  In the blind test, the tasters had no reality yet constructed for the beer because they did not know what it was, thus they could not form expectations and compare the taste to those expectations.  In the second experiment, the knowledge of the vinegar creates an expectation based on the participant’s knowledge of vinegar, its taste, and their knowledge of beer and its taste.  They had a reality which they have mentally constructed with its accompanying expectations, and are asked to compare the sample to those expectations.  As I mentioned before, the expectations generally win out, and our preconceptions confirmed.  This is how placebos work.  We cannot say that placebos do not work, for the evidence shows clearly that they had an impact on its partakers.  They work because our minds create a reality which tells us they work, and we react as if they work.  This reality may be in conflict with the physical world, in which case the effects tend to wear off as our realities collide, but the power of the imagined reality is, ironically, real.

We clearly must now see that reality is subjective.  It exists only in our minds.  Again, there exists a physical and actual reality, but we are not privy to it, and thus it is of no real consequence.  While our reality is influenced by these external events, it is our perception of those events that matters to us.  What we learn, know, understand is based entirely on the unique perspective by which we experienced it, and our own interpretation of that experience.  Thus once we convince ourselves of something, it doesn’t matter if it is true or not, we think it is true and thus it is fact.  The world is flat.  The science is settled.   

The take-away is that we should never convince ourselves of anything, except perhaps in cases of faith.  Once we know the gospel is true, we must proceed with that in mind, in spite of perceptions of evidence to the contrary (remember that perceptions are not equal to reality).  But even in the gospel, open-mindedness is a key to learning and growing in faith.  When we see only in black and white (this is right and that is wrong, this is true and that is false), we close our minds to new understanding, insight and a reshaping of knowledge.  Or do we suppose our knowledge to be complete and unerring?  It reminds me of why Jesus taught in parables.  “He who hath ears, let him hear.”

Greed and Happiness

Greed has been a topic of quite a bit of philosophical debate over the past century.  Most philosophical and religious creeds hold that greed is an evil which hinders man’s happiness.  Greed, it is argued, is an inward-looking, selfish desire which puts one’s own desires above all others’, and leads its victims to lie, steal, and cheat in order to achieve those ends.

Yet others such as Ayn Rand and those of a more libertarian philosophy have extolled the virtues of greed (or selfishness).  Passionate pursuit of one’s own self-interest, as long as it is kept within the bounds of legal and moral ethics such that it does not infringe on another’s liberties, inspires individuals to create value for themselves and society.  It drives efficiency and productivity, inspires creativity and innovation, and permits the rapid growth of economic progress from which even the poorest benefit immensely.  One can best create value for himself, and thus better pursue those things which he values most, by creating value for others who then trade money (i.e. value) for the value he created.  Thus personal and societal value is promoted.

It is in reconciling these differing conceptions of greed which comes to the crux of the philosophical, ideological, and political debate of our time.  Indeed, we have supporting evidence of both conceptions, and little evidence to disprove either.  This must lead us to believe that these different perspectives can indeed be reconciled.

There is and must be a difference between the virtue which Jefferson called “the pursuit of happiness” and the vice of greed.  Because one pursues his or her own self-interest cannot and must not be condemned immediately as selfish and greedy.  Indeed, pursuing what makes us happy, provided it doesn’t unjustly make another unhappy, must lead to a happier society in general.  We must not condemn the pursuit of happiness, whatever that happiness may be.  It comes at no one’s expense.  This is where liberals often err.  They believe that any gain must necessarily come at the expense of another, that the pursuit of self-interest is equally the pursuit of otherly harm (i.e. greed).  But this is not so, and is a grave misconception.  Examples abound of mutually beneficial exchanges and win-win scenarios, the foundation of capitalism.

We are all divinely entitled to pursue for ourselves, to the best of our knowledge and ability, those interests which we believe will afford us the greatest happiness.  What another chooses is the path of greatest happiness is not in our purview.  We may seek to help, teach, inspire, etc. others of the path we believe leads to the greatest happiness, but because we are all individual and distinct, our own preferences and desires cannot grant the same happiness for others as it does for us.  Thus it becomes a meaningless and counterproductive task to force others to pursue our own chosen path to happiness. 

Now, there may be and certainly are universal truths which apply equally to all.  The Gospel, for example, certainly may bring happiness to all.  But to push such a path onto those who would not choose such a path for themselves cannot lead them to happiness, even if it should.  Because they do not believe that it will bring them happiness must ultimately cause them to not find happiness in this path.  Their adherence to the path is involuntary and resented.  They perceive that another path would bring them greater happiness, and thus this path that they are force upon denies them that happiness.  Conservatives often err here in their passionate pursuit of societal morality.  Though a noble goal, it cannot be achieved by force, but only by education and example.  People must be shown the way to happiness, not forced to it.  For a man cannot be happy against his nature.

There is recent research which has uncovered the concept of pathological altruism, which refers to a sociopathical need to help others even when that “help” does more harm (to themselves and to those they mean to help) than good.  I believe this problem abounds in our society, more so perhaps than even the authors of the study perceive.  It seems to me that nearly all of us, in some way or another, desire to force others to be happy.  We wish to outlaw drugs, pornography, excessive salaries, unhealthy foods, and sometimes even opinions (i.e. discrimination).  Some of these may be good goals.  But force through legislation cannot create morality, and simply drives the immorality dangerously underground.  For we all pursue happiness in our own ways (even if it is unhappiness that we ultimately achieve), and a law cannot change our nature.

Greed is the exploitation of others for our own benefit.  But pursuing our own happiness by whatever means we see fit, as long as it does not infringe on the rights of others, is not exploitation.  And as long as it is seen as such we will continue to forfeit, little by little, our individual right to “the pursuit of happiness.”  And without that right, none of us can ever really become happy.