Morality and Utility

maintaining the high ground is most effective

If you don’t want to get cut in half and get burnt to a crisp, maintaining the high ground is critical

I think there is a tendency to artificially separate morality and utility the same way body and mind are often separated. A consequence of left hemisphere brain dominance, no doubt. I’d like to try to argue that morality is the foundation of utility, regardless of your subjective values. Lets start with some definitions.

Morality: The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct.

Utility: The quality or condition of being useful; usefulness.

Utilitarianism: An ethical theory that determines right from wrong by focusing on outcomes.

So what if being in accord with standards of right or good conduct is universally the most useful way of behaving? What if utilitarianism is actually the least useful way of determining right and wrong with its implicit pretense that we can know the outcomes of our conduct ahead of time?

Good Conduct

I’ve been reading Timothy Ashworth’s Paul’s Necessary Sin. I’ll probably write up a summary of my thoughts on the entire work when I get through it, but there is something I need to draw upon from it time-now to make a point. When morality is guiding a person to its fullest extent, it is totally divorced from fear of punishment. The final realization of morality within an individual is achieved when they act in accordance with what is right because they believe it to be right. What accompanies this condition is a faith that if your behavior stays aligned with your internalized appreciation of right and wrong, then you can weather any consequences. You have the moral high ground, and no amount of strife or suffering will make you regret doing what you know to be right. The alternative, knowingly doing wrong, was never even an option for you.

Utilitarian Dilemmas

Since this is a little abstract, an example is warranted. One of the classics is the organ harvesting dilemma. Is it ethical to harvest the organs of one man against his will to save the lives of four men? Instinct tells most people it isn’t. For some people (e.g. Tony Fauci), this instinct is absent. Nevertheless, there is a straightforward reason that this is morally unacceptable: It isn’t your choice to make. Sacrificing the lives and wellbeing of others isn’t a virtue. Generally, sacrificing your own life and wellbeing isn’t a virtue either. How much good can you do if you’re sick or dead? In any case, it is morally acceptable for you to donate your own organs if you’re so inclined, but to slaughter another human being “for the greater good” is unforgivably evil. How do we know? In this particular dilemma, you could sacrifice yourself without being evil, but to sacrifice another is monstrous for one simple reason: It is hypocritical.

Non-Hypocrisy and Non-Delusion

If you aren’t hypocritical and you’re not delusional¹, you have the moral high ground. Who could disagree? No one would dare openly. This is the morality of the common man. Nothing is a stronger indictment of someones character than the recognition that they are a hypocrite. To be justified is to behave in accordance with your own outwardly professed morals. Keeping your behavior consistently aligned in this manner enables the most powerful technology available to human beings: Faith.

Faith of America

America started with a justification. Our budding elite sent a scathing letter to the King of England rationalizing how to be consistent with the moral beliefs of America’s people, subservience to the crown was no longer possible. Americans had faith that this was the right thing to do, and the people were prepared to face the consequences of taking this position. They didn’t have another choice. To bring it back to Ashworth’s book, Paul recognized there was a fundamental difference between being justified, or aligned in this transformative way, and obeying the law. This revolution could be viewed as illegal, but a people of faith do not need law to behave morally. They do the right thing because it is the right thing. Some died horribly as a result, but those who had this faith knew until their final breath that they were doing what they had to do.

Preservation of Soul

When you have the type of faith Paul describes, you have to do the right thing. If you were to knowingly fail in this regard, you would leave your soul open to being torn asunder. Put into secular terms, you open the door to a life of cognitive dissonance and existential pain. Morality and utility, one in the same.

Anti-American Morality

The morality of our enemies that constitute the managerial elite is different from that of the common man. They luxuriate in hypocrisy. To them, hypocrisy is proof of the fact that they are superior. The rules of the common man don’t apply to them, and nothing is sweeter to their wicked tongues than tangible evidence of that fact. Of course, to them, it isn’t really hypocrisy. Their belief is that they are above the common man, so it only makes sense that the rules don’t apply to them. They’re different. Unfortunately for them, this isn’t really possible to fully internalize for a human mind. Its just too obviously not true. You can’t take your money and prestige everywhere you go, and you have to interact with other human beings some of the time. These human beings are driven instinctively to hold everyone to the same standard. I can only imagine the anxiety that relying on people that you can only control with money to protect you from demotic human instinct must produce on a continual basis. As they try everything within their power to isolate themselves from reality (looking at you Zuck), I look on doubting that they truly believe their own bullshit. They’re terrified of us. The don’t know what to do to attain deep satisfaction in their lives. They’re playing a game that their entire left hemisphere knows they’re winning. To be sure, the random pangs of cognitive dissonance these folks must endure can be held at bay with drugs and an ever increasing focus on optimizing for the only variables they understand and see. Some might see philanthropy as a way to quiet those random pangs, but this is merely self-delusion. You can’t contribute to human flourishing by optimizing for the variables that the left hemisphere sees. Human lives as numbers on a spreadsheet. Calculations of indices meant to measure standard of living. Try as they might, they can’t escape the ever present anxiety associated with the arbitrariness of it all. A strong spiritual foundation is the absolute requirement for human flourishing, and they don’t have it. They tell themselves over and over that the ends justify the means, but the ends are starting to look inescapably bleak for those locked in this secular mindset. They can’t have faith because they aren’t justified. This is why many of them are planning on hiding out in bunkers and obsessing about how they’ll keep control of their security details in a self-serving fantasy that they can escape from the common man when the apocalypse they have wrought finally comes crashing down.

There is no End State

Life is a process. It requires constant evolution and motion. Life doesn’t have an end state. Death isn’t the end of life, it is the absence of life. You don’t know when you’re going to die with any more certainty than you know the outcomes of your decisions. Trying to pretend you can know these things sets the conditions for self-delusion, hypocrisy, and misery. If you’re traditionally religious, I suppose there is an end state, and that is heaven. I don’t believe consciousness survives the loss of life, however. I think life and consciousness are inextricably linked. While the process goes on, I have the faith of America. I have faith that as long as I do what is right, I’ll never have any regrets, no matter how difficult the road ahead may be. This is the faith that populism needs to prevail against our enemies, and we have it in spades. For this reason, we will always have the high ground, no matter how powerful our “betters” may seem.

Don’t Sacrifice the High Ground

Keep the faith, don’t violate your principles. The ends don’t justify the means. Our beliefs are demotic, staying consistent with them will allow us to coalesce into particularized communities and develop widespread political coalitions. This faith will be a wind at our backs while the albatross of anxiety hangs around the necks of our enemies. Be Moral. Be Useful.

1. The non-delusion part is only critical because self-delusion enables hypocrisy that escapes your awareness.