Amerika

Consider for a moment that morality may be asymmetric when we view it through the individual.

Much like the famous acronym “NIMBY” (not in my backyard!) morality reflects a duality between self and world: rules for everyone else, and then a private desire to avoid the consequences personally. Hence, it is good that there be nuclear reactors, but not near my house.

In the same way, “everyone” agrees that we need taxes… but when given a choice, will reduce their own taxes however they can. “Everyone” thinks there should be care for the poor, an end to racism, or better death metal scholarship, but we see very few stepping up to give out their wages, energy, time, and focus.

Humans think in a duality of the Age of Symbolism shared objective space of ideas, contrasted with individual human experience. In the shared space, some things “should” be done… but in the individual human space, the individual acts for his own interest at the expense of what he just approved.

This reflects how we see ourselves as externalized social individuals first, but then when confronted with decisions, act like scared wild animals backed into a corner. Maybe there “should” be taxes, or should not, but we each know how to use the money better than the government does.

That in turn arises from the nature of individualism itself. Our goal is to place the individual above all else — this is what individualism literally means — which requires that we gain power through social acclaim by using the right symbols to reflect what will make a crowd happy.

Then, however, like abused children, we cheat on the group because they forced this upon us. They made us compete with others in the game of being fake and administering palliative pandering palaver to our fellow citizens. Therefore, we hate them and will cheat on them.

In the same way, in a marriage, each spouse knows what the “right” thing to say is, so they say it. Later on they regret that because they have bound themselves to the symbols in those statements, and so they reinterpret the symbols to mean what is convenient for themselves by excluding from those symbols the parts that they fear.

For example, a spouse may agree that the children deserve more time with their parents, and everyone feels good and has unruffled feathers after that. But when it comes time to sacrifice more time at the office or bowling night, out come the exceptions, excuses, justifications, and deflections.

Not my overtime or bowling. But in theory, in that abstract objective shared space, yes of course someone should spend more time with the kids.

Rationalization follows any loss of transcendental vision. With the transcendent, we can accept the real and yet also seemingly paradoxically have goals of reaching new heights of excellence. We have firm grounding and goals. But this leaves the individual as a means to the end of these goals so that the individual has a good life experience.

Look at that sentence. What a long chain of stuff. Does anyone have the patience to read that nonsense? Probably not because it does not establish nice linear subject verb object construction. It offends our brains. Our brains filter out what they cannot understand or what makes them feel bad.

From that comes rationalization. Instead of feeling bad, we remove all the scary stuff and then accept whatever remains as “good” because it has not destabilized us. Since it is not good, and is imposed on us by the externality of our lack of understanding, we retaliate against it.

From that you get our NIMBY morality. Taxes should be paid, yes, but not by me. They say every man has three lives: public, private, and secret. In our public lives, we pay taxes; in private, we cheat; in secret, we hate everyone else on Earth for forcing us into this situation and scheme to destroy them.

Tags: morality, NIMBY, rationalization