Three issues in ethics
Purity v/s goodness
Suppose you are, say, a Muslim shopkeeper, who runs one of those small countryside shops in Mauritius which sell a bit of everything. You will probably not sell pork or alcohol, because the consumption of both is forbidden by your religion. You would also not sell religious images such as those Hindu and Christian chromos which most Mauritians will have at home. On the other hand, you would probably not feel too bothered about selling those boxes of joss sticks which Hindus always use for their prayers. After all a joss stick is just a joss stick. Now, what about wine glasses and corkscrews ? And what about snacks on whose wrapping it is not clearly indicated whether the content is halal or not ?
As we go further and further into asking ourselves what may and may not be sold, it becomes apparent that we are not so much dealing with a moral issue as much as one of ritual purity. The Muslim shopkeeper does not be to be soiled by contact with haraam objects. A concern for ritual purity can be found in all religions. It is more obvious in Hinduism with all the latter’s obsessions with touchables and untouchables, and it is also seen in Judaism and Islam given their concerns about forbidden foods. You would think that Christianity has less of it, but the Apocalypse can be seen as one gigantic dream of purity. At the last judgment, the elected few are to watch dry eyed as their brothers, wife or children are cast in the fiery pit. Most cultures seem to have a dream of purity, and it has very little to do with goodness. It is a wish to be ritually clean, so that we can receive god. Goodness implies loving other people, which is messy and unclean. There is a pretty big conflict between purity and goodness in most religious people’s minds. Of course, most prefer purity, it’s easier to attain: you just have to follow the rules in your religious books, whereas goodness brings you no end of trouble and confusion.
How to judge people ?
Religions say that we are to be judged about our actions, after our death. Our moral conscience tells us that somewhere, somehow, we are to be judged one day. But the actual act of judging must be quite tricky. Consider the following problems:
(i) how does God judge kings and other important leaders ? When you are running a country, the decisions you take affect the lives of millions of people in an enormously complex and wide ranging manner. You can even decide to take harsh measures which cause suffering to the present generation, but for the benefit of future generations ( and what if you were wrong in your judgment ? Are you forgiven because your intentions were good?). What about leaders in general, such as in a big company ? Up to what extent are they responsible over what happens in their organization?
(ii) what about collective guilt? For example, as Mauritians, we are collectively guilty for letting our politicians be as corrupt as they are. Or, we can say that the French bear a collective guilt for their government’s involvement with dictators in Africa. How is this guilt apportioned among the common people ? I guess that the intellectual, who could have used his pen to denounce a wrong situation must bear a greater part of the guilt. But what about those people who only read the sports pages in the newspaper and don’t care about anything but their drink and Saturday’s horse racing ? Are they charged as guilty of being self centred and narrow-minded ? Can people be charged for crassness and lack of sensitivity ?
Mystery of evil
This one is not really a straightforward ethical problem, but more of a wondering about the power of evil.
Very often we are baffled by the enormous power of evil in the world. There creeps up the disturbing idea that maybe God is a bit like those nice young student couples, who make a baby and dump it at the doorstep of the nearest orphanage…. earnest, well-meaning, full of ideals but also irresponsible, powerless or incompetent. Creating us and then leaving us at the mercy of the world.
Of course, goodness exists, but it seems to make its way in a meandering way in the world, like a hidden stream. When it does flow out in the open, in the broad river of official goodness ( churches and their charities, the grim corridors of government social welfare) it tends to get polluted by condescencion, hypocrisy or even worse, good, paternalistic intentions ending in horrible results ( see communism for details).
Goodness is like a clever yet gauche youngster at high school. Everyone esteems him, will copy from his notebook, will make him do the donkey’s work at the students union, yet at the end of year party, he never picks up a girlfriend, and at the elections, it’s evil that gets elected as the school president ( though we usually elect goodness as the secretary, just to keep things in check). Whenever he tries to take centerstage, he does lots of laudable actions, which everyone applauds. Yet his manner is stiff and clumsy, his speeches are boring, and while we give him a pat on the shoulder, we also yet make fun of him while sharing a cigarette with evil, in the school backyard. Even the school director never gives goodness a cup of tea, when he calls on his office to lay out his plans of how to make things better at the school – yet when the director calls evil in his office to read him the riot act, he’ll sometimes offer him a spot of whisky. It’s just that when he talks to evil, he like he’s talking to an experienced man rather than to a student, while goodness is so geekish and boyish….
