Morality & The Institutions
How do we reform our spirit after someone has used the hammer to philosophize?
Wise men have told us that morality is all subjective, maybe more importantly, how human morals not at all have any basis in reality. There are no eternal ideals or values, being as fleeting as their originators, and to say otherwise is vanity. At best there might be recurring patterns displayed under a similar circumstance, but the details and the larger context will vary, altering the gleam of morals, shining from some hardened helmet, on the way.
I bow my head to these wise men. Yet, some subjects and subjective experiences are stronger than others. Have you tried dealing with a completely self-serving man your entire life? Since we have no measurement to call ourselves moral, we can hardly call our enemy immoral. All we can note is that the self-serving man serves no one, not even himself. Thus, we enter the paradox, a hint that further thinking is required, and the jolt and bump that tells us our keel has encountered a factor that is both pertinent and quite concrete.
We must ask the wise men. Nietzsche presents to us three interpretive levels of the good, or for our purposes, a larger morality, in his Genealogy of Morals. The first level points to the good as some eternal value - That is hopeless. Hopeless enough to be Platonic, one might say. An Englishman, even though they shouldn’t be allowed to involve themselves in philosophy, saw the good as what brought about good results. That is the second level of interpretation, which Nietzsche applauded. Now we’re getting closer, he said. What, then, is the good? The master answers with the third level of interpretation. Well, the good is a testimony of the self, and all further morality must then be the result of self-expression. Different people have different thresholds for cleanliness, disgust, fear, and nerves. (Nietzsche, 2010)
It is with this reductionism Nietzsche shows his all-piercing genius. A human being must always see himself as good, even if riddled with guilt. Our very people-names point in that direction. The Goths having named themselves good, long before they encountered Plato, or Christianity, or any feelings of guilt. Being good merely meant being competent - and yourself. How is that for a positive self-image? Hence, we have different sets of morality. Master morality and Slave morality being the most famous from Nietzsche’s hand. Your situation, your potential and your bravery bring about what you see as desirable. Meekness and bondage therefore became goodness, yes, moral, through the perversion of the ages, the result of city-life and too many lost battles.
This reductionism of concepts is brought further by Nietzsche. Reality itself is irreductive (non-reducible), hence there are no truths at all. (Nietzsche, 1873) I agree, but some approximations towards reality are more precise than others. Don’t ignore the traffic lights. When I speak of truth, I always speak of an approximation. Only a fool demands absolute knowledge in order to think, or absolute certainty before he acts. We must accept the world is a set of innumerous rolling dice, where nothing is quite steady. It speaks well of me that I’m the most unsteady of all, or so I think, as the newest version in a long line of the historical Goths.
All this does not help us very much. The bump we felt under our keel was concrete and must therefore be part of the reality we find ourselves in. Morals, then, must not be understood to spring directly from nature, but represent an adaption which in turn influences the natural entities that forced the adaption in the first place. Humans are not the first species to change their environment. The great oxidation event comes to mind. While other plant-species spew poison in form of oxygen, we have our dams and morals, potentially as nurturing or dangerous. With it we can turn ourselves into living gods (Ancient Greece, Victorian England), or become circus-animals (The modern west).
In his reductionism, Nietzsche landed on the broadest view possible, which is, with Machiavelli, every situation is unique and deserves its own deliberation. That might be so, but experience, theory and training tend to give better outcomes. For whom the world is entirely irreductive, there is no lense to concentrate and group phenomena. Some ships seen on the horizon are indeed, similar. Likewise, as all objects not only are influenced by context and surroundings, but are defined by them, a body on earth and the same body in outer space vary widely in viability. I’ll repeat this, because it is important. If you were to be moved from where you are, to outer space, the depths of the sea, or share the destiny of Empedocles, you would change your bodily quality, either due to pressure, lack thereof, or a conflagration. Yet, it was the same body. So, the body itself depends on and is defined by its surroundings. I’m not myself, without air, the trees and a little bit of sunshine. As with objects, morality as a tangible force in-the-world must not be seen without its proper social context.
By avoiding to use an unreasonable level of reductionism, down to each and every individual, we avoid the broadest vantage point, where we can say nothing other than describing each specific case. The mental image we can use is that of a framework laid upon perceived reality. The widest possible frame sees everything as unique, therefore, we must have a ground to stand upon, specificity and a smaller frame to understand parts of our world, and with that, group phenomena. We understand that morality has a function for groups, and by taking this logic to its end, we may add a biological function at that. DNA being an ever-expanding echo of what has been done in life.
Enter Edward Dutton and in-group, out-group preferences. According to data models, those populations who act benignly towards to their own, and discriminates those outside of the group, will soon overtake all other populations in prevalence. (Ross A. Hammond and Robert Axelrod, 2006) And as we know from biology, if a trait is successful, it will multiply to most members of a population. For this reason, humanity is divided into tribes, nations and religions, various forms of the in-group based on the breadth of their scope. If the in-group is too small, it will be overtaken by an empire. If the empire is too inclusive, or if the religion is universal, it will fracture due to a lack of integrity. As always, the balance point will forever vary. Everything varies! that is one of the most profound answers I can give.
The in-group is best served by obedience from the majority, and rebellion from the thinking class. Like a friend of mine said, intelligent dogs are hardest to govern. The obedience from the majority ensures integrity. The rebellion of those with an inner monologue, ensures development and new ideas to enter. (Russell T. Hurlburt and Christopher L. Heavey, 2018) But not too fast! Ideas are the most dangerous thing of all. Ideas killed Rome, and ideas will kill the modern west.
This might be interpreted as a general disdain for humanity, and maybe it is. Humanity is often divided into three groups by those with much life-experience. Leaders, followers and independents. The leaders represent the tip of the spear, and are best able to integrate ideas with the obedience of the masses. The majority, in turn, is what gives the spear its weight and mass. Human beings without an inner monologue will always be the most prevalent, just like grass is a very successful species, demanding very little energy and nutrition. So too, when you don’t have to think. Hence, the crowd is successful in good times, having inherited virtue and useful methods from their betters, and tend to die by the scores when the bad times come, as they are unable to adapt. The independents give the spear it’s flexibility, ensuring it won’t snap in half because of some misguided creed, and maybe one will be able to direct the spear in a new direction? At the same time, independents are unable to lead or gather up too much force, at least not directly. Remember what I told you. Pursue your goals? Change your goals? It varies! The polar fox must know when to give up when digging for a mouse - but not give up always.
There is a name for such a creed. I have here professed my view of morality as a form of evolutionary psychology. It is always good to conclude in difficult questions, and know where you stand. The in-group becomes meaningless without the out-group, and so discrimination on behalf of what we say we love, becomes the order of the day. I never said that truth, our approximation, wasn’t harsh. Hardest still it is to accept the relativity of even our highest truths, as Nietzsche’s, some will say most important article illustrates. On Truth and Lie in an Extra-moral Sense has ruined many a thinker. (Nietzsche, 1873) But I aim to go beyond my own ruin. Pick up the pieces and give sensible definitions of both truths and morals.
To sum it up, morality can only be defined in the context of a group, whatever that group is, and this group must have an external enemy, universal love being a form of camouflage for egoism and the will to bring harm. Morality as such is an evolutionary adaption, and those with morals will overtake those who refuse to partake. Here we can resolve our paradox. The self-serving man does not serve himself, because in his quest for egoism, he will be overtaken by those who are able to cooperate. In your sacrifice for other, you are ultimately serving yourself, provided that sacrifice is recognized. And to resolve another paradox, the madman, the hunted, the so-called autistic psychopath, might be the most benign of all. He sacrifices himself to bring the group onward, like Prometheus with his fire. What does it matter, then, if you must burn in it? Power is good, and all power must die.
How to make our institutions viable?
I’m a Master Marksman. I became one by scoring a hundred precise hits at a distance of a hundred meters. My peers thus reveled, and gave me my title. Master Marksman, they said, and now I’m forever known by that name.
All titles, for good or bad, depend on this three-step process. A goal is set by someone, the goal is met by another party, and the originators of this aim bestow their accolade. Two things threaten the viability of any title. The goal set may be insane or meaningless, which is generally the same thing, or the title may be taken away. Granting our criteria any meaning is the broadest and probably most difficult topic, and I will address this last. When it comes to the retracting of a title, this should be a very rare occurrence.
Only an individual has access to a perceived reality, whereas groups and institutions do not, having right of entry only towards a shared tautology or psychosis (the same). If we provide the goal set indeed is both sane and expedient, I would say necessary, but many great things are not strictly necessary, it is a given that any assessment and action taken within the framework of an institution must be done by an individual. The smallest component must be allowed to be the most fundamental and weight-carrying component.
And why do we utilize institutions and the titles within them in the first place? Well, it’s one of the few ways to achieve concerted action, a structure of order upon the sea of chaos, if you will. Our institutions are there to achieve an ordering of our life-world, as is, but then we must ensure that this ordering is flexible enough to withstand change and the dual nature of reality itself. Physical reality, that is, because I don’t point to a world outside of this one. It should come as no surprise I am a dualist, not a monist. Let me state the obvious. Without institutions we would lose to those with institutions, which is the only justification for institutions in the first place, albeit a very needed one.
Groups of people have by the exclusive nature of a significant title, not achieved its criteria, therefore, they cannot give any meaningful assessment of the framework and duties found within its practice. Outside critics should be allowed to dissolve an institution found doing more harm than good, but not dictate its running day to day. An institution in and by itself cannot think, and exists per definition only in the realm of language, a tautology. I called this madness, and it’s true. Madness is only good if it’s wielded by the sane, like a genius, as this increases his intensity. Further, our mad tautologies, or institutions only become meaningful when run by the competent individuals within, which can give their independent assessment, based on the fundamental building blocks of perception, experience, and thought. You can’t have justice without truth, and with that, the ability to query and examine freely, no matter the topic, no matter the taboo.
The threat of exclusion and a stripping away of a title, renders the assessment in the hands of the group or the language based logocentrism of the institution itself. That is to say, we end up either incompetent or insane, respectively. Only a coward neglects politics. I will here directly criticize how the institutions of the west, especially the judicial and the medical field, have been corrupted by exactly these mechanisms. Either group-think and hysteria, inside or outside these most venerable institutions, has rendered them incompetent, or, by Marxist ideology, the institutions have been allowed to define themselves, and therefore now pursue goals completely detached from reality. In philosophy, nothing can be allowed to define itself, not even God, and in that he has been tried and rejected nonetheless. All the competent individuals who have criticized the genocidal vaccines, or the obvious mishandling of justice in the imprisonment of dissenters and the purging of whistle-blowers. The case of Jordan Peterson, losing his license as a psychologist, is only a very public case of the rot that has set in in our institutions, which has been going on since 1968 and the first Marxist generation taking over the steering wheel.
Us outsiders, observing this, must now dissolve these institutions, or render them meaningless. Everything in order to build these institutions anew, hopefully in a more slimmed-down version. As a man lives his best life by having not all his energy committed to predetermined activities, so too a society must free up its energy. Creativity, as we know, is energy released from duty. Institutions, therefore, must never be allowed to be all-encompassing - a hint to the conclusion of this text.
Allow me to further my point by utilizing the starting analogy. As the Master Marksman, I figured out how to shoot well, in cooperation with certain shooters. I took the wind in account, adjusted my sights, and developed ways to hold my rifle steady. If a group forbids me from assessing the wind or adjusting my sights, I won’t shoot as well, and eventually I will fail to achieve the criteria that gave me my title in the first place. Likewise, if I’m only allowed to learn of shooting in the form of theory by an institution, I would soon lose my touch with the earth and a lived life-world, and the abilities that can only come from experience. As a personal anecdote, in one of my fields of education, the university had removed any practical learning altogether, by the logic that it soon would be obsolete anyways. The result being that the students are obsolete before they have begun. Some learning! Only a university or an international organ can give origin to such novelties of idiocy.
Once a title has been given, however arbitrary the process by its very nature ultimately is, it must not readily be forfeited by all but the most grievous of transgressions. But what if the doctor or marksman in question indeed is insane, you ask? The doctor may begin giving the wrong diagnosis, or deliberately be poisoning his patients. The marksman might turn his rifle against the spectators. Such occurrences are rare. My soothing words here are that genuine madness shows itself in most, if not all things, not just a single occurrence. You therefore will have indications that an individual is not to be trusted. On the other hand, you may question if an individual is competent, but the crowd is always incompetent. You may question if an individual is sane, but an institution allowed to define itself, or a world of ideological tautologies, is always insane. The difference in who we allocate our trust, is the one between chance and guaranteed failure. But we must have more, shouldn’t we?
For only individuals of a certain kind can be trusted. Where the individual is the closest arbitrer of thought and an experience of the world, a group is the closest arbitrers of values and morality, and indeed, the framework in which we feel. When alone, I feel neutral. Sorrow and joy come from other people, whom I direct such sentiments at, even in my solitude. And values and morality are nothing but condensed feelings. It is now time to unite our individuation and thoughts, with our values and feeling, and with that, be whole. How to be whole? Hint: By being together.
How do we determine our goals?
I have said it. Morality being an expression of self and shared values, it is a given that morals, however without direct relation to nature, must be shared between groups with similar dispositions. With such shared similarity, morals will become key to the success of which all other justifications are measured against. Nature is everything, the group, being part of nature, is limited. The morality of the group, then, is a form of condensed force to be found within the phenomena of nature. As empty space is overtaken by burning stars, so meaninglessness will eventually be overtaken by fields of meaning, and chaos give way to order.
It is controversial to state the truth in our fallen age, but here a shared ethnicity is of the outmost importance. A racial group is too broad, with too many diverging impulses. Only with your closest relatives will you find dispositions which are shared across the board, from the simplest tastes to the largest paradigm. What is the direct expression of ethnicity? To be concrete: What do you do when you’re together with people like you? Surely this must be culture. If we understand religion from its possible etymological origin to be ‘correct method,’ then culture is a method before the method, it is the reason we do things, and the reason we find those methods in the first place. We culture the soil by tilting it. We culture the soul by uncovering it. Religion as such, is an outcrop of culture. Therefore, the best religions are the pagan ones, being an expression of a folk-soul and the justification: “This is simply what we do, because it’s part of our deepest feelings.” Universal religions, on the other hand, are the outcrops of empire. Many diverse groups needed to live and function together, and therefore, the net and bondage must cover all arenas. Remember what I said about energy freed? In the field of culture, or in the company of friends, you are free to do most things, only there are certain taboos, or concentrations of control, if you will. I may say the most inane things, but not take off my pants, usually. Order must not be allowed to be all encompassing, just order, where it is to be found. Thus, you will have the liberated energy to be free and creative - to best serve the group, and the energy will flow together at certain nexuses, enough to be ordered, give direction - and meaning. Alone we are left to think. Only together can we feel, have value and purpose.
The world is not a place of high-minded principles, but a question of simplest practicality. Serve the in-group, I claim. How? Make me hold a jackhammer and things would get a little shaky, not only for myself. Likewise, if you allow the working class to think thoughts of any consequence. Yet, jackhammers must be wielded and somebody around here must think. Some call it perverse, I call it profound: An action may be moral or immoral depending on who performs it. Value is connected to ability for some, body for others, or to spirit. Fool that I am, understand that these are common, that these happen at the same moment, because they work as one. The words of Marcus Aurelius come to mind: “That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bee.”
To the man-of-today I will give a statement. My first message: You are psychotic. My second message: You are unable to think. My third message: This can only be resolved by obedience to those you now call ‘evil.’ A human as evil or sinful would only be logical within empty logos, provided you measured yourself against an ideal. But there are no larger ideals, and all development came from our “evil” or “misguided” predecessors. Who just do, and do not embrace slave morality, will succeed. I recommend this direct route. Ideals are found, and shared, with those who feel like you.
My brother told me how he and his friends were playing with pinecones when they were little. Small little twigs stuck inside the pinecones became rifles, and thus armed, the soldiers formed ranks. A pinecone with a removed top turned into a primed grenade. It is with some pride I can conclude I influenced such a warlike disposition. According to him, creativity us to operate within limitations instead of with endless freedom, which soon becomes slavery, like the ‘endless’ possibilities you now have on the internet children grow up with. Maybe more profoundly, the play of these children, being similar, are the first steps of culture, of morality and ideals. When the Soviets occupied Germany, they discovered to their despair that blonde children were still playing with mock-rifles. Let’s continue that despair. It is always right to oppose a logocentric.
References:
Ross A. Hammond and Robert Axelrod (2006) The Evolution of Ethnocentrism, Volume 50, Issue 6. Available from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022002706293470 (Retrieved: 30.09.23)
Russell T. Hurlburt and Christopher L. Heavey (2018) Inner Speaking as Pristine Inner Experience. Las Vegas: University of Nevada. Available from: https://hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu/hurlburt-heavey-2018.pdf (Retrieved: 30.09.23)
Nietzsche, Fr. (1873) On Truth and Lie in an Extra-moral Sense. Available from: https://archive.org/details/NietzscheOnTruthAndLie (Retrieved: 30.09.23)
Nietzsche, Fr. (2010) Moralens genealogi. Oslo: Spartacus forlag.
Writer’s comment: This text represents my leap back into philosophy, after an absence of five whole years. In order to gain more outreach, I transition from writing in Norwegian to English. Certain similar texts have been criticized by men I respect as being all over the place, covering several topics at once. Point number one, I have improved, but I also believe this represents my mode of being as an INTP within the profiling system of Myer-Briggs. My strength is as much in breadth and scope, as it is in depth. Besides, you can’t just throw around terms such as truth and dualism, without clarifying. Our terminology should be as precise as possible, yet we find that our terms can only be understood within a certain context or thought-school. I can’t let those who don’t share my nature, dictate me. Somehow, this is the greatest misfortune. It should also be said that I’m not an academic, nor do I want to be. During my education, one of my professors commented I had an ‘essayistic style.’ I was tolerated and given relatively good grades, yet, I find academic writing and demands to be terribly constraining, having to document every little subject or digression you touch into. Some basis of what you’re talking about, sure, but not demands that are both neurotic and boring at the same time, a product of our fear-based culture, needing absolute certainty and safety. Evolution? Source! Certain computer programs? Source! Someone mentioned something once? Source! The documentation outweighs any important message. I prefer the fast style and the leaping thought, touching into many things at once, so, an essayist and a free-thinker it is, even though the latter is an often-mocked term these days. If I’ve learned anything through these years, is that you must remain true to yourself, and not allow yourself to become a slave to opinion.