Whose Moral Relativism?

In the Hutong
Dry dry dry dry
1701 hrs

Uber-establishment public intellectual and Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria does a decent job calming the otherwise financially panicked in a pallative column from June 13.

What I found most intriguing about the article was the conclusion (proving, once again, that it does occasionally pay to read long essays all the way through,) where he explains that the West is in the throes of a crisis of morals as much (or arguably more) that a crisis of finance. When he first started this bit of his rant I shook my head. "Yes," I thought. "We've all heard this before - the old Wall Street is an Ethical Wasteland argument, with Bernie Madoff, Allen Stanford, Alan Greenspan, Wall Street traders, and subprime mortgage brokers all trotted out as poster children."

But then Zakaria pointed out that Wall Street was not alone.

"Most of what happened over the past decade across the world was legal. Bankers did what they were allowed to do under the law. Politicians did what they thought the system asked of them. Bureaucrats were not exchanging cash for favors. But very few people acted responsibly, honorably or nobly (the very word sounds odd today). This might sound like a small point, but it is not. No system—capitalism, socialism, whatever—can work without a sense of ethics and values at its core. No matter what reforms we put in place, without common sense, judgment and an ethical standard, they will prove inadequate. We will never know where the next bubble will form, what the next innovations will look like and where excesses will build up. But we can ask that people steer themselves and their institutions with a greater reliance on a moral compass."

(Italics mine)

Leave aside for a moment the problem that when you start blaming society, you deflect the blame from the bad guys. I do not get the impression that this is Zakaria's intent. 

No More Higher Ground

Zakaria makes two points, one implicit, one explicit but not sufficiently so, that we need to take into account for China.

The first is one I have discussed and heard from other China hands over the past year. Anyone who thinks that Chinese leaders and the Chinese people are blind to the malfunctioning moral compass in the West - especially in the wake of current events - is wrong. If we ever were in a position to preach, either at a systemic, enterprise, or personal level, we have lost that position.

And that means that any American who excoriates corruption in China will be dismissed as a hypocrite; any foreigner who tries to explain to a factory owner why it is better to make produts safer will be held to a higher burden of proof; and any executive trying to preach the importance of integrity and ethics to a recent recruit will face annoyed skepticism. 

The Law of Rules

But the larger point - the one I do not think Zakaria makes plain enough - is that rule of law is not all that we have made it to be. As we talk about China's development, we attach to the concept of "rule of law" a Holy Grail-like quality, as if the quest for the rule of law, as much as finally attaining it, will be the answers to many of China's major social challenges.

In pointing out that in America, the paragon of societies living under a fully developed body of law, legislative process, and criminal and civil court systems, is deeply socially flawed in spite of the rule of law, Zakaria sends us a warning about China, one that will discomfort many of us. Rule of law, as important a goal as that may be for China, is inadequate to ensure that leaders, enterprises, and people behave in ways that are not sociopathic.

A rule of law must be paired with what I would call a Law of Rules, a detailed code of behavior that is rigid enough to withstand relativism, is adaptable enough to stand despite massive social change, and is set forth by a body or entity that operates at a level removed from our own unlimited ability to rationalize almost any behavior.  Law of Rules is more than just a moral compass. It is a clear description of how to live, so that the rule of law - the nation-specific constitutional, criminal, and civil codes standards of behavior - need only come into play in exceptional cases. The rest of the time, it is our fear of doing wrong and our desire to do right that guide us, not the fear of the cop, the lawsuit, the jury.

The Law Gone Missing in China

Twice in the last hundred years, China has had its Law of Rules stripped away. The first was what might best be called Confucianism, an imperfect but longstanding code of behavior rooted in a system of rigid interpersonal obligations. Ripped away in the aftermath of the 1911 overthrow of the Manchus, it died a slow death, and was eventually replaced by Maoism.

Maoism was battered by almost continuous challenge and upheaval, until finally its precepts of egalitarianism, service, self-sacrifice, and patriotism were abandoned in the 1990s. What replaced them were two simple maxims: "To Get Rich is Glorious," and "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice."

Now, we are told, all that we need to lay upon this highly practical foundation is a legal system backed with apolitical courts, and everything will be fine. Not bloody likely. If the fear of prison and death are not enough to keep the chief executive of a dairy from making decisions that will kill babies, no rule of law can hope to end such behavior.

There is no silver bullet solution to this problem for China, no simple path to change, because the change that must take place is not in institutions but in individuals. This is not one battle, but 1.3 billion battles. And for that reason, it is the greatest single challenge facing China today. 

Where to begin?

Comments

[Brad]

May I suggest an old, simple and effective motto? "Do unto others as you would like others to do unto you".

[gregorylent]

china is a more dramatic situation than many ...

but this dynamic is global ... india, south america, north america ...

6.5 billion battles ... and that is what earth is, a school for souls to grow ... and graduate ... the school remains

[Dror Poleg]

Spot on. The idea that moral values and a certain level of cultural development are not new, but seemed to slip out of public consciousness with the rise of postmodernism and moral relativism. Max Webber saw the Protestant Work Ethic as the basis for America's industrial rise more than 100 years ago, and, more recently, Gregory Clark reached similar conclusion concerning culture and economic development in Farewell to Alms.

The problem is that individuals today are taught to rely on government in order to save all their problems and guide their actions. This breeds irresponsible, morally bankrupt individuals.

Left to their own devices, human societies either develop the required moral and social laws that help them prosper, or they cease to exist. A wonderful example of this is orthodox Jews, who lived without government welfare (or recognition) for centuries. They developed their own social institutions and took care of each others welfare and education much more efficiently than modern government ever managed to do.

[twitter.com/pdenlinger]

But isn't the search for Law of Rules a search for what worked in the past as a reference? Just because something worked for a few thousand years in the past is no guarantee that that is what will work in the near future.

Looking to the near future, all I see is a growing rich/poor gap, resource wars, accelerated global warming, and major die-offs of humans. Fareed Zakaria implies that the institutions of government and society will somehow change to adapt in a new world.

I don't think so.

I believe that multiple societies will head to major successive breakdowns on multiple levels until a majority of the human population dies off, and our successors rebuild their way out, assuming that they they do indeed exist. They may or may not use old institutions repackaged in new forms.

China will accelerate this trend because in the race to become developed before it becomes old, it will literally destroy huge portions of the earth, leading to multiple resource disputes and resource crashes.

Now what was that you said about Law of Rules?

Got to head off to my beautiful new beachfront home in the Yukon...Seeya!

[David]

Brad, the Golden Rule is a good start, but by itself is insufficient. Aphorisms are useful mnemonic devices that allow us to more easily absorb a Law of Rules, but by themselves they are insufficient. There is a reason, after all, that Proverbs is but one book of scripture, rather than the entirety.

History demonstrates that the problem with the Golden Rule is that it leads to a kind of moral minimalism that obscures the greater truth behind it. Unless you understand the WHY behind the rule, either via elaboration or exegesis, you wind up with masochists who find it perfectly moral to inflict pain on others. And worse.

All of which is fine for those of us brought up with a tradition that incorporates such teachings. But for those who have not, it is but a fair start.

[David]

Paul, while I think empiricism has its uses, I think you overstate by suggesting that a Law of Rules - or a normative approach to any subject - is based purely on experience. Experience has a vote in morality, but not a veto. Because the problem then becomes which experiences you choose to learn from, and what lessons you learn as a result. It also fails to take into account new situations, as you correctly point out.

As I noted above, a good Law of Rules must be timeless, strong enough to stand despite the moral relativism that comes with social change.

To your larger point, though, throughout history there have been futurists and pundits who have looked ahead and seen only disaster, and as such have developed a personal philosophy and moral code that takes such events as givens. You are one of those, and I must admit to finding your thinking interesting and provocative.

Leaving aside moral judgments for a moment, both your arguments and those Dr. Zakaria makes suffer from the same weakness: determinism. Zakaria believes government and institutions will adapt and save the day. You believe they cannot and will not. You are both wrong.

What you both miss is the fundamental nature of choice. Our future is neither guaranteed nor doomed. The answer is "we choose," and we make that choice in every act, in every word, in each moment. Fareed has not yet proven to me that our institutions will save us. Even your most colorful prognostications have failed to prove to me that we cannot yet save ourselves. Indeed, by your ability to see the darkness below you cause us all to strive all the more for the light. Take that, O Prophet.

You, Zakaria, Richard Dawkins, and I will likely never quite agree. I prefer to act on the premise that neither entropy nor Darwinism, whatever their scientific merits, can be applied to human behavior or even the fate of the race.

Our fate is in our own hands. We must only ask how we will be guided. And that is the question that provoked my post.

[stuart]

"We must only ask how we will be guided."

I think guidance that could reasonably be described as 'moral' depends upon the choices you mentioned. Surely we need to see all sides of an argument before we execute those choices with any degree of moral judgement. Sadly, for a country that is currently entrenched in a 'the ends justify the means' approach to economic success (both nationally and individually), China displays little inclination to raise the level of ethical debate.

You spoke a couple of posts ago about America in Afghanistan. This is an issue discussed on a daily basis in the States - the pros and cons are weighed, the loss of life and the suffering documented and debated. Should they stay or should they go? The impact of America's foreign policy comes under open, critical analysis.

Not so China's foreign policy and resource grabs, which are protected from debate by the tiresome mantra 'non-interference, peaceful rise'. Where do we tune in to hear the debate about the moral questions surrounding China in Africa? Where is China's choice? Where is the moral guidance that will lead them to that choice?

"We must only ask how we will be guided."

In China's case people need to start questioning how they ARE being guided. Right now the Chinese people are being led down a path; and it's not a moral one.