Insightful Observations

Da Vinci's Last Supper

Welcome back my readers, please let me pick up where we ended last time and investigate morals and values of men in another set of epochs.

1. On the Morals of a Christian Man

This man lives under the veil of monotheism. Because religious leaders and politicians have succeeded in making a deal about power division, he is forced to obey a doctrine of one and only omnipotent God. To make his behavior predictable and controllable, he is given a canon containing the 10 holy commandments, which he must obey unquestionably. Whenever he fails to to do so, he is to report the event to a priest, to confess,  in order to be forgiven and relieved of bearing the burden of a sin. For only the “good” people managing to restrict themselves ascetically for the whole life are allowed to enter the kingdom of heaven after they depart from this poor existence full of suffering, indeed. This life doesn’t matter, it’s the heavenly one where all the fun and enjoyment begins!

Now let us stay at this notion of a constant asceticism and self-denial for a bit. As mentioned in the previous article, even the Ancient Greeks (and Romans too) realized that to make human civilization and collective life possible, the man’s natural animal urges must be restricted. Man is the highest animal living in this world, that is for sure, but it’s imperative that he realizes it through the faculty of mind, which only he possesses. There are trade offs to be made, naturalness and desire satisfaction versus civilization and development of the race and culture. One cannot live without the other, hunter is nothing without the huntress, as Illidan observed in my favorite game World of Warcraft, or to put it differently, there’s no white without black, no good without evil and so on. Very absurd as the whole existence in this reality, isn’t it?

With Christianity, therefore, a domestication of man comes. He is fully forbidden to exercise any of his animal desires and is forced to live in a never-ending appetite restriction. To give meaning to such a lifestyle, priests and their holy canon promise him fulfillment and satisfaction in his afterlife, under the condition that he manages to abolish his animosity and makes peace with it in this one. For the biggest evil, indeed, is to sin against the canon or not to obey a priest’s command. This would close the heavenly gates from him for good and condemn him to an afterlife in hell where he would live with even more despair than in this world. Certainly a frustrating outlook for such a poor man.

To sum up then, in this set of morals humanity got shared and unified meaning in one God as a trade-off for experiencing joy and fulfillment of some of their basic human needs, which are indispensable part of man’s animal side. This is valid only for the average Joe and Jane, however, because the rulers and leading priests command water, but drink wine. Afterall, this world view was implanted into minds of the herd only to allow rulers to manipulate with the herd more easily.

2. On the Morals of a Modern Man

Thanks to insights of geniuses such as Hegel and Nietzsche, this man is aware of the silliness of religious dogmatism and thus, in case he is a believer, uses his faith only to kill his past time with or as a necessity of belonging to a certain stratum of social herd. Because he is only a man, however, he has to construct rational boundaries and identity somehow to be able to make sense of reality and of himself. For the latter one, he uses his job which gives him not only identity, but a meaning in life too, a sense of direction and worth in the universe. The former, namely the boundaries, are provided by empirical perception and other “truths” served through him by mass media in newspaper and TV. He doesn’t have very many information channels to acquire news from and, moreover, these are under supervision of government in whose interest is to shape world views of people.

Because government is thus the sole creator of truth, this man is rewarded with apparent freedom and money for not asking questions about their decisions and the Whys of their conduct. Should he become inquisitive into the origins of rules and laws, he would risk becoming “bad” and dangerous for the general welfare of society, condemning himself either to a life in exile, jail or death. Government and mass media are his referal systems and life guides, while money is his God and therefore to work and stress himself in order to obtain them is a virtue, it is considered to be “good”. For money as the means of market exchange provide him with satisfaction and hapiness by allowing him to fulfill his desires for food, drink, entertainment and other material and immaterial stuff. Moreover, he wants to succeed at the game that society plays, specifically the game of “who has more money is better man and is worth more”, which gives him another incentive, for he is a very competitive creature with an intense need for belonging. Who refuses to play gets ostracized and the vision of solitude outside of herd frightens our man very much, indeed.

Summing up, this man has shared referal system and lifestyle provided by mass media and controlled by government from which he is also able to draw meaning. Additionally, he shares purpose with others by striving to acquire as much goodness (money) as possible and for it he has very strong motives. He is forbidden to question authority of government and the purpose of having God in money, but other than this, he is more or less free to pursue his happiness.

All right Freunde, next time I will finish this series by sharing my thoughts on the morals of a contemporary postmodern man, stay tuned!