The Vicarious Golden Rule
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Last time Thomas Hobbes recommended the Golden Rule as a sort of shortcut for those who have no time to read thick volumes of ethical theory. Instead, we just think of the Golden Rule and that is all we need to do the right thing. The GR is not like psychotherapy taking years before it starts to work; it is more like a pill you take any time you feel the need. Same way in nutrition, life gets hectic and you may not have time to eat all four colors from all of five food groups, so you pop your vitamin, stop at your fast food restaurant, and hope you get what you need.
But there is another advantage to the GR that less obvious than its brevity. It appeals to and relies upon an aspect of human nature that is surprisingly powerful and pervasive, the fact that we derive pleasure from seeing pleasure in others for its own sake. Even seeing the agony of others can be edifying, which is why tragedy is so important in drama and fiction. This we can call the vicarious Golden Rule. Until last week I was aware of no thinker who had given this much attention.
Then I bought from Audible.com the audio book version of Levitt and Dubner's "Freakonomics, A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything." Unfortunately, thanks to the copy protection woven into these productions I had to put the file through contortions and permutations just to transfer it into a format that my portable player can read. After much frustration I succeeded but what with one thing and another I took the easy way and went to the library for a printed version. Now I am reading Freakonomics the old-fashioned way. Anyway, last week I was writing intensively about the Golden Rule and it so happened, by luck or divine guidance, that I came across in Freakonomics the following quote from Adam Smith. This, it seems to me, perfectly sums up why the vicarious Golden Rule gives such effective insight into right behavior.
"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it."
This did not come, as I expected, from the Wealth of Nations but from Smith's first work, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments." I admit I had never heard of it. I was soon to learn that I had been missing something. "It was not the famous Wealth of Nations, but a work on ethics and human nature called The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which made Adam Smith's career. It was the sensation of its age, sold out in weeks..." This is from Eamonn Butler's excellent introduction to the book at the Adam Smith website. He continues,
"In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith asks that most fundamental question: Why do we regard certain actions or intentions with approval and condemn others? At the time, opinion was divided: some held that the only standard of right and wrong was the law and the sovereign who made it; others, that moral principles could be worked out rationally, like the theorems of mathematics. Smith took a completely new direction, holding that people are born with a moral sense, just as they have inborn ideas of beauty or harmony. Our conscience tells us what is right and wrong: and that is something innate, not something given us by lawmakers or by rational analysis. And to bolster it we also have a natural fellow-feeling, which Smith calls "sympathy". Between them, these natural senses of conscience and sympathy ensure that human beings can and do live together in orderly and beneficial social organizations." ("Is this Adam Smith's greatest book?" <http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/tms-intro.htm>)
What a brilliant insight! According to this, we all are like painters. When we live our lives we dip into a multi-colored pallet of feelings and judgments and paint the prettiest and truest picture we can. The inspiration for moral right comes first of all from who we are, it wells out of the goodness of our divinely created nature. It is not an accomplishment of ours, it is a grace of God, and outcome of His truth. This explains why the poor are so often morally superior to the rich, the intellectually challenged better and happier than those gifted with high intelligence. Adam Smith's insight in Moral Sentiments lead directly and logically to his understanding of economics, the ability of large numbers of sympatric workers to build a better order than any central planner has been known to approach.
"So our morality is the product of our nature, not our reason. And Smith would go on to argue that the same 'invisible hand' created beneficial social patterns out of our economic actions too. The Theory of Moral Sentiments establishes a new liberalism, in which social organization is seen as the outcome of human action but not necessarily of human design. Indeed, our unplanned social order is far more complex and functional than anything we could reason out for ourselves, a point which Marxist politicians forgot, to their cost." (Ib.)
Baha'u'llah spoke of this by pointing out the pervasiveness of the sense of touch, as compared to the localized senses of sight and smell. He compared the former to the gift of faith, which is also woven intimately into our very nature,
"These gifts are inherent in man himself. That which is preeminent above all other gifts, is incorruptible in nature, and pertaineth to God Himself, is the gift of Divine Revelation. Every bounty conferred by the Creator upon man, be it material or spiritual, is subservient unto this. It is, in its essence, and will ever so remain, the Bread which cometh down from Heaven. It is God's supreme testimony, the clearest evidence of His truth, the sign of His consummate bounty, the token of His all-encompassing mercy, the proof of His most loving providence, the symbol of His most perfect grace. He hath, indeed, partaken of this highest gift of God who hath recognized His Manifestation in this Day." (Gleanings, 194)
John was expressing the same thing when he said, "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." (John 1:17, KJV) Ideally we would always and for all time see the world through the eyes of God, and feel sympathy for what falls short (grace) and condemn only what is really wrong (truth). But most of the time we are human, imperfect, and often our vision fails, and we are in danger of perishing. In those times we can fall back on the vicarious GR, whose compass is our own feelings, our own likes and dislikes, our own divine nature. If we think of what we like and hate and treat others according to that, we will be following the Rule of grace and truth. That way, when we read a novel or watch a movie we will be, as it were, strengthening vicariously the imaginative ability to jump into the skin of others and know just what they would like or dislike in any given situation, no matter how foreign to our own circumscribed real-life experience.
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