I was listening to an interview with Rutger Bregman and The Good Fight Host, Yascha Mounk (Humankind, Utopia for Realists) on his newest book called Moral Ambition.
Bregman is fascinating to me. While I don’t share his philosophy, I agree with much of his approach. More specifically, I find his critique of western civilization, and more specifically the tendency to find in its allegiance to western progress a kind of secularized moralism that is not based in reality, to be spot on.
Moralism: making judgements about others morality
The Problem of Using Moral Constructs To Create Moral Truth
His own philosophical commitments don’t land him here (he is content to uphold some assumed acceptance of the notion of moral progress), but I do think his ideas play with certain logical implications that challenge some of the common rhetoric that we find embedded within the modern, western framework. One of his assertions is that the shape of human history does not require individuals to adhere to particular morals in order for societies to obtain a moral structure. In fact, the idea, which is inherent to the modern western social structures, that humanity has become more moral as a necessary part of its human evolution is not only rooted in a wrong understanding of the nature of humanity,, it produces forms of moralism that create and reinforce the very illusion that this belief is true and necessary, which of course is anchored in us versus them paradigms. This is true even though history demonstrates that such moralism (the belief that better people bring about a better world and therefore must be judged accordingly) is not the thing that brings about social change. In fact, such a belief acts contrary to what we find in reality.
He uses the abolitionist movement as an example, pointing out that actual change came about through numerous appeals by history itself to different and sometimes contrasting concerns on a societal level, including all manners of economic, political, social, psychological and biological interests which could, relative to the moralistic society we find, be categorized as immoral.
This example plays into the bigger picture, intersecting with most aspects of social and societal structure. On a macro level, the ways percieved negative and positive movements bring about inconsistent outcomes, and outcomes that are often dependent on or a product of the other (so a percieved positive requiring the negative to come about, or the negative being a product of the positive), create a muddled landscape when it comes to trying to track down and clear and definitive sense of morality as a consistent and true construct within a universal narrative of progress. Even more so when one needs to justify western superiority, or the superiority of western rationalism, by turning the rest of history or the world into a necessary scapegoat. The only true way forward, on rational grounds anyways, is to locate some sort of universal grounds for morality that exists apart from the fluid nature of these constructs. Bregman, in the interview, tries to argue that morality is really far less controversial and far more shared than we might think, defining it as being rooted in the inherent worth of all life. I personally think he has a hard time justifying this, or at least has a hard time establishing this inherency, even if it does make sense of what we find.
What I mean by that is this: Moral responsiblity is anchored, in his view, not in a given, but in a forward movement. It is moving somewhere, thus why we call it progress. As an equally expressive construct in context of different times and different places, it is developing according to something that is drawing it forward. But this is precisely where things begin to break down for his reasoning. It cannot both be the case that we become more and more moral, and for it to be equally true that morality is driven by some true and inherent nature or foundation. If one cannot locate morality equally and consistently in past, present and future as a non-contingent truth, whatever future we imagine history shaping (see his book Utopia For Realists) remains completely contingent on its emergence, and not only emergence but on the idea of better people making better societies. And as his ideas point out, this notion of an emergent morality shaped by a paradigm of good and bad people or good and bad societies, is not reflective of actual history, of actual reality. It is in fact the very thing he wants to reject. Morality is a construct that remains contingent on its context. Meaning, the construct isn’t what is true, the thing the construct is responding to, rightly or wrongly, is the thing that is true.
I do think that Bregman is kind of on the right track in removing people from the systems that create moral constructs. He does this in order to say that people themsleves are inherently good. The emergence of moral societies occurs outside of them, often in ways that are actually ambivilant to any human awareness or even embodiment of these morals. Rather, he would say that basic intuition. which is built into nature, simply follows the same patterns in recognizing what is good and what is bad, often using contradictory things to achieve a given purpose. Given that he has not established actual grounds for stating any true foundation however, it is a weak argument on his end, even if I find some agreement in the direction he is taking things.
The Problem of Effective Altruism
I was reminded of a movement I became familiar with when I was an atheist called effective altruism, which makes a similar case in regards to the relationship between altruistic behavior and the actual outcomes and effectiveness of this altruistic behavior. This distinguishes between the belief that what I do makes me a good or bad person, and that good people, whom the western enlightenment progression sees as the necessary and constructed outcome of its bend towards progress, make the world better. In fact, when we assess reality this couldn’t be further from the truth. Such a belief that acts of altruism function this way might make us feel like we are good people living meaningful lives, but such altruism rarely intersects with the truth of what actually brings about change. In fact, much of what makes us feel like we are good people (altruistic acts) makes zero difference and can even contribute to what we might call harmful or negative outcomes (if we can use those labels at all).
The western enlightenment, which is reflected in its secularist approaches, hinges on an unshakeable belief in human potential, or humanism (or positivism), or human created moral and ethical systems. This belief requires an equally unshakeable belief in human progress, meaning our fundamental trust in this world relates to our fundamental belief in the potential of human accomplishment and ability. Such a world allows the central human enterprise (science) to overturn the old world of superstitions. It also allows us to progress to more moral (read: better) societies.
But what do we do when reality challenges this narrative? When it turns out the foundation of this bellef is not rooted in actual truth?
What happens when we find our identity in something (being altruistic) that, according to the science, doesn’t actually make the difference we believe it does? That the very thing that gives our life meaning actually doesn’t have a foundation in reality, and doesn’t make us good people?
What happens when history reveals a narrative that doesn’t require us to believe in anything true at all for it to come about? And in fact, arguably depends on us playing into illusions for it to come about? What happens when we discover that history tends to develop the way it does for any number of reasons not related to our actual beliefs about what is good and bad? That it needs the bad as much as it needs the good?
Things get worse- what happens when reality goes after the lynchpin of it all: the modern western commitment to the existence of a free will? The interview above ends up here because it cannot help but do otherwise. Morality requires our ability to make judgements, and without the notion of a will it seems very difficult, if impossible, to make those judgments.
At one point Bregman notes that he wonders about whether free will is a necessary problem or a necessary illusion. Or both. He uses the example of, in his mind, progress doing away with the need for God by doing away with the God of the gaps. He likewise wonders if we have done away with a need for the will, given that morality is not only driven by systems and structures rather than people, but that people are inherently good, not determined by behavior. Here host Yascha Mounk presses back, saying that if we do away with the will we lose the essential fabric of our participation in these systems. He uses the word “sidetetepping ” to define how he gets around the problem by appealing to compatibalism, which I’ve often found to be a bit of a cop out. It’s also ironic given that Mounk himself also does away with God by using the very reasoning he doesn’t want, or is not willing, to apply to the will.
The Problem of Civilizations
As a final note and observation I wanted to bring in a book I recently finsished by Josephine Quinn Called How the World Made the West. It’s an apt book to bring into the conversation given that his thesis is going after the “us versus them” tendencies that come with turning, what he calls, a history of civilization into a history of civilizations. This same theory could apply to morality being turned into a history of moralisms.
There is a curious point he draws out at the beginning of the book that, while he doesn’t connect the dots directly in this way, seems to me to be all but prevelant in the way he fleshes out the body of his argument within the book. In the introduction he points out how the Judeo-Christian narrative encapsulates what history was before the west turned history into competing civilzations- which is a world shaped by shared origins. A single people sharing a single story. And what we find inherent to the story of Israel is the history of a people in which all of these connecting cultures and beliefs keep converging in this collecation of people bound by and shaped by the liberation from Empire, the very concept that the West would coopt and use to reinterpret the shape of history according to the narrative of progress. Isreal itself is shaped by the confluence of all these influences coming together to bring about this unique identity, creating a society within history that is built on connections, not disconnections or supersessionism.
It is extremely curious to me to see how Quinn then talks around the story of israel in this book, coming back to it only where he is forced to, but otherwise speaking of it in theory by speaking of these surrounding influences and connections. This seemed obvious to me. The result is a book that is quite profound in its observations about the worlds function, but a bit evasive in establishing a foundation. If civilization is a universal truth or idea in which we find the different and unique fabrics of our coexisting social and societal constructs, that universal needs a foundation. That foundation, as the intro seems to betray, is similar to Bregman- the inhernet shared identity or value of all people, precisely because we all share the same source.
I don’t know. It seems to me though that the central problem with Bregman’s thesis is that he wants to locate the potential for a utopia but he is also not quite willing to commit to establishing that foundation. The utopia is easy to imagine, precisely because it has nothing to be held accountable to. It’s just an idealized world that he can argue we need to do the necessary work to invest in and towards in order to bring about. It can evade critique by evading any real definition. A foundation is much more difficult. Perhaps his superficial dismissal of God using the self imposed and very modern rhetoric of the God of the Gaps, an idea that requires modernism to be uphoeld, is not the historical reading he wants or needs it to be. Just like Mounk is not willing to let go of the will, it could be that Bregman’s own argument can’t live and breath without that necessary foundation to keep it afloat. The same for Quinn and his appeal to civlications. Perhaps the necessary key to his own argument is the necesssary foundation of that universsaal narrative he tries to avoid but keeps coming back around to.
The Stories of my Life 