Morality in the 21st Century: Moral Heroes

BBC Radio 4 - Morality in the 21st Century, Episode 13: Moral Heroes

"‘Throughout this series, I've been looking at the fate of morality in the modern world, because for the past 50 years, we've embarked on a fateful experiment. We've outsourced morality to the market and the state. The market gives us choices. The state deals with the consequences, but neither passes any kind of judgment on those choices. Words that once guided us like right, wrong, ought, duty loyalty, virtue and honor now have an antiquated air about them, as if they come from an age long dead. This has been a huge liberation.

We are freer to be whatever we choose to be than humans have ever been before. But as we've heard throughout these programs, there are costs, in terms of broken families, loss of community, a rise in depression, teenage suicides and loneliness, a loss of trust in big corporations and governments, the new tribalism of identity politics, and the vitriol that passes for communication on the internet.

Morality binds us together. Lose it, and we find ourselves vulnerable and alone. But there are powerful reasons for hope. And that's what I want to focus on in this, the last program'...

'Most people think that global extreme poverty has increasing, whereas in fact, it's been plummeting. There's been a 50% decline in the rate of extreme poverty just in the last three decades, and most people are just not aware of it. So it's not a question of saying, look at the bright side, it's a question of saying, look at some facts that you probably did not know... there's a phenomenon in polling called the optimism gap, where if you ask people about their own lives, they actually say they're going pretty well. If you ask them about the world as a whole, or the country as a whole, they say that it's going to hell in a handcart.

People have theories about the state of the world, that are not generalizations of their own experience. They're based on, on headlines. They're based on ideologies, they're based on theories. And you consistently see that that that discrepancy. And by the way, the view of the trajectory of the world that I presented is certainly not based on life in Oxford, or Boston or New York. It's based on data from the world as a whole'...

‘In the course of making these programs I found myself moved many times, but few as powerfully as when Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, the man with whom the series began, spoke about his daughter Michaela. All his teachings about character and personal responsibility came vividly alive in that story. This is what he said.’

‘My daughter was very ill for most of her life, but really for a five year period, it was absolutely, it was absolutely dreadful... between about 12 and 17, or 12 and 19, she has a very serious autoimmune disease of unspecified origin and it manifested itself in extreme depression, extreme fatigue. She had arthritis in 38 joints, which is really not good. And when she was 16, her hip disintegrated and then a year later, her ankle disintegrated. And so she was basically walking around on either one or two broken legs for about two years and was taking extremely high doses of opiates to contend with the pain which was absolutely excruciating. And to be in excruciating pain for two years is something that you just can't imagine. But, and this is the crucial part of the story or a crucial part of the story.

One of the things we were very careful about and talked with her a lot about was to not allow herself to regard herself as a victim. As soon as you use your, your illness, your lowly status, let's say, as an excuse, you blur the lines. Then you don't know what you can do and what you can't do. That's a very bad thing. And then you also start to view yourself as a victim. And that breeds thoughts of anger and revenge and, and all of those things. It takes you to a place that psychologically, let's say, as terrible as the physiological place.

And, to her credit, her great credit, I would say, and I think this is part of what allowed her to emerge from this because she did eventually figure out what was wrong with her and by all appearances, fix it by about 90% anyways, I mean, it's unstable, but it's way better was the fact that she didn't allow herself to become existentially enraged by her condition, and that, you know, that's relevant to this whole victim, oppressor narrative.

It's like people have hard lives. Their lives are characterized by suffering and betrayal. Those are ineradicable experiences. It's like well, what's the right attitude to take to that? Anger, rejection, resentment, hostility, murderousness? That's the story of Cain and Abel. It's like, no, that's not good. That leads to hell.’...

'What we fail to remember is that you can't outsource conscience. You can't delegate moral responsibility away. Because when you do you raise expectations that cannot be met, and when inevitably they are not met, society becomes freighted with disappointment, anger, fear, resentment and blame.

People start to take refuge in magical thinking, which today takes one of four forms: the far right, the far left, religious extremism and aggressive secularism. The far right seeks a return to a golden past that never was. The far left seeks a utopian future that will never be. Religious extremists believe that you can bring salvation by terror. Aggressive secularists believe that if you get rid of religion, there'll be peace. These are all fantasies and pursuing them will endanger the very foundations of freedom. So we have to bring back a sense of togetherness within society.'…

‘We do seem so fractured and polarized, that it's almost difficult to imagine, reasoned debate about the common good. But that challenge, I think, sets a project. And I think that schools and higher education have a big responsibility to do a better job of cultivating civic skills. The ability to argue, to reason based on mutual respect. But these civic skills, we’re not born with them, we need to learn them. I would also include the media and the tone it sets. The shouting matches, the emphasis on spectacle, sensation. This is deeply corrupting of the kind of discourse needed for the public good. So I think that the media has a big responsibility to play’

‘One thing that struck me watching you interacting with your students in Harvard is that you construct your course on justice one on one as a conversation. And clearly you see, public conversation is terribly important. It's what helps us reason together. But the trouble is, isn't it Michael, that the more we rely on the internet and social media, we are actually not really engaged in face to face conversation at all. You will have said that our global media allow us to connect people around the world, but that doesn't turn us into neighbors and fellow citizens. So what do we need to bring back into society that will allow us to reason together?’

‘I'm a big believer in experimenting with the internet, to open access to public debate, to education, to reasoned argument, to forms of community that reach across national boundaries. That's the hope, but there is a danger, and we've seen it on display all too often lately, that social media is a kind of atomizing form of public discourse. Unless it's very carefully structured, online discussion can be rude and vulgar, and doesn't really teach people how to listen very well. We're not just born with it, it has to be cultivated through practice. And here is where I think human presence - people gathering together, whether in a classroom or in the ecclesia in ancient Athens, arguing with one another, seeing one another, hearing one another, having to contend with one another, even where we may disagree. This is an important way of cultivating the human skills and arts to do with listening and persuading and being persuaded in turn.’…

'Some of the most inspiring remarks have come from our sixth form students, and they've shown how hungry people are for such conversations. They're tired as I am of black or white, friend or enemy, victim or oppressor shouting matches. They know how much we gain when we listen respectfully to views with which we disagree'"