March 15, 2006 at 11:15:58

The Challenge of Affluence: A Root of Our Moral Crisis?

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By Andrew Bard Schmookler (about the author) Page 4 of 5 page(s)

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So, if we respond to an abundance of food by over-eating, we may become obese. Thus the much-reported rising epidemic of obesity --and of other unhealthful conditions associated with our over-indulgence of the foods containing excessive amounts of sweeteners, salt, and fats-- stands as an emblem of how we can hurt ourselves with unwise, undisciplined choices.

If we respond to the abundance of media options by choosing those that appeal to our baser selves --spending our time with the most sensationalistic and coarse of cultural expressions-- we train ourselves to yield to our lower impulses. We fail to embody the ideal of what we could be.

Accordingly, it is possible to track a change over the past two generations in the moral structures of everyday American consciousness by looking at the movement in our major theaters of cultural expression --television, films, popular music-- toward the glorification and satisfaction of some of humankinds darker and least desirable inclinations.

The children and grandchildren of people for whom striving toward an ideal occupied a major aspect of their consciousness about the meaning of human life have trained themselves --and have been trained by the culture-- to imagine that the satisfaction of appetite and impulse is life's most fundamental purpose.

If we use our discretionary income to buy ourselves things that titillate but do not elevate, that we choose out of impulse rather than need, that are only about comfort and not about growth, then we diminish ourselves.

And so we see middle class Americans swimming in "stuff," turning to "shopping" as one of life's central activities, piling up possessions without finding any deep fulfillment in all these "choices" the marketplace gives them.

People have turned with increasing fervor, over this period, to traditional religions. But in the teachings of those traditi0ns one cannot find adequate guidance for how to make such choices. Thus the attempt to turn back the clock of human consciousness has not solved the problem of our moral chaos. But neither has America solved it by moving forward into a fuller vision of moral order.

And so, in America, the capacity of moral structures to channel human choices has weakened.

And thus now America has moved into a time of moral darkness. For the transformations of consciousness brought on by a lifetime of unguided choices ultimately impact also the wider world.

The habit of self-indulgence --of answering the question "What do I want?" in terms that make no distinction between "right desire" and "wrong desire"-- cannot stop at the borders of the realm of the purely individual. It inevitably erodes also that other realm, the realm in which the tradition worked for centuries to discipline people to consider their responsibilities to others and to the good itself.

The ethic of self-indulgence enables people to saddle their descendants with their own debt, running up huge deficits in the national accounts. The habit of yielding to baser impulses makes it easier to support baser policies in the collective realm-- wielding great national power without being constrained by a sense of obligation to provide reasoned justification, or to obey the accepted rules of conduct among nations. The failure to distinguish between those desires that are worthy of being satisfied and those that should be held in check by moral discipline can lead to a pervasive cynicism in society, a belief that human beings can never amount to anything anyway, thus opening the door still further to mere selfishness.

And now moral anarchy has opened the door to evil. The general weakening of moral structures has loosed the wolf from its cage. America slides toward fascism, in which the darkest impulses of greed and the lust for power, thinly disguised under a false righteousness, govern from the nation's highest places.

Hence it is an urgent matter for us, as a society, to combine our affluence --with its wealth of choices-- with an ethic that helps us know which wants we are wise to follow and which to deny as unworthy.

Teachers Good and Bad

In our quest for an ethic of wise choice, we don't have to start completely from scratch. For one thing, there have been other people before us who have faced the opportunities and challenges of affluence: the aristocrats of earlier eras, sitting atop societies in which the impoverished masses labored to serve them. These people, too, confronted the challenge of finding the wisdom to elevate themselves above the decadence of self-indulgence. And indeed, that distinction between "right desire" and "wrong desire" is the intellectual and moral fruit of the aristocracy of ancient Greece.

And so some of the ancient philosophers --like Aristotle-- might have something to offer us affluent Americans, at least a starting place for thinking about what kind of person we might wish to become, and what kind of choices we should make to craft ourselves into the best of our potential.

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Andrew Bard Schmookler's website www.nonesoblind.org is devoted to understanding the roots of America's present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. (more...)

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