Well, Atheist Week has come and gone (18-24 March), and the first practice of the year of the Atheist softball team I used to manage (another column, another time) is tomorrow. I figured I need to write something on that sort of theme. You can listen up, or in light of that, you can check out now, your choice. I'd say sit back down and listen to what I have to say, but hey, it's your call.
In an earlier column, I pointed out the fact that I derive major bits of my worldview from Confucianism. More accurately, I've always thought in parallel lines with that school of thought, even before I became aware of it, so when I did I was strongly drawn to it. Exactly how these things happen is hard to say. Actually, I can tell you exactly how this influence came to be, but it's not terribly exciting and I want to get to the good stuff now.
Over the years I've ingested so much of this stuff, it's just me now. It's great for the whole "having a moral compass" thing, but it's not terribly useful when trying to share or pass the ideas on. So in preparation for this column, I was looking back over one of my many different translations of The Analects, trying to find a good explanation of what about this way of thinking was so appealing.
D. C. Lau, in his introduction to his 1979 translation captures it better than anybody. He explains that at the very core of Confucian thinking lies the "unspoken, and therefore, unquestioned, assumption that the only purpose a man can have and also the only worthwhile thing a man can do is to become as good a man as possible. This is something that has to be pursued for its own sake and with complete indifference to success or failure" (12).
Now let's unpack this, because it's a huge and important idea. When beginning, there's nothing better than starting off with fundamentals and right principles, and this is ground zero. To hold the objective of being the best person you can possibly be...that is exactly what separates a serious person from the average guy. You either, in your heart, care, intensely, or you're lukewarm. You think that it is worthwhile to do the right thing as much as possible, and to always try to do it more and more, or you do it just when the act is convenient or has visibility. If you are the former, life is a frantic, restless search for how to be better, how to be more. You feverishly want to know the right thing to do, the right way to live. And if you're in the latter category, there's nothing preventing you from joining the former at some point.
The other huge point here--if you want it to count, the good you do and/or try to be has to be for its own sake. Not for show, and not for future reward. I've often found that everything has a price, but especially it's the case when tasked with doing the right thing. which could be unpopular, unappreciated, and misunderstood. If you start with this as your center, you can never go too far wrong.
Christianity in its modern generic form teaches us to obey. Indoctrination begins before you can even talk, and as you age it's very difficult to break out of it without coring a fundamental part of your identity out, sort of like drilling out too much to fix a cavity. Even if it has long since failed to do anything for you, you still go to church, pray, read scripture, just out of habit. It holds out rewards (God's grace, material prosperity [as proof of being among The Elect], and everlasting life) and punishment (estrangement from the asserted source of life [i.e., God], eternal punishment [Hell], etc). Whatever God approves of is good, and whatever he does not approve of is bad, by definition. So you want to do what God says, and you get rewarded. You definitely don't want to do want he doesn't like, or you'll get punished, and harshly. It's all about obeying and pleasing God. The scriptures harp repeatedly on behaving righteously to be pleasing to God and to receive His rewards.
All fine and dandy on paper, but in the real world we know that being good and being obedient to authority are sometimes mutually exclusive. When I'm told to do something but it seems wrong or unethical, I have to challenge that, and if my reservations aren't satisfied, I'm not doing it! I fail to obey, but I've done the right thing. If my core values were seeking approval from authority or securing a reward from myself, I'd be a much different person. I'd be less, and I'd be grossly disappointed in and ashamed of myself. I wouldn't be able to do the right thing a good portion of the time.
So you can aim low or you can aim higher. If you want to drift through life without thinking about it or struggling too much, you can be an obeyer. Abdicate responsibility for your moral choices to an abstract higher power. It seems harder, but actually it's a lot easier than to have to struggle day to day, reasoning if you have done the right thing, without the instant reset buttons of confession or being born again to erase your mistakes whenever you like. It's no fun to have to figure it out, to take the chance on being wrong, and to have to live with mistakes and go forward. Easier to buy into the franchise of thought that's already there, fully formed, ready for you to just add water and stir.
And this is why I love Confucius. You see, the source material for much of Confucian thought, the Lun Yu (aka The Analects) was not written by a supernatural being. It wasn't even written by Confucius, but rather by his students, who collected and revised his ideas after his death. You might say it's the collective document of an ideology at one snapshot in time.
As time went by, his followers could have claimed divine parentage for him. They could have usurped an earlier mystical tradition, like Judaism, and placed him at the center of its canon. They could have written in a scene of literal apotheosis before his death. They didn't. They knew to do so would be to go against everything he stood for. More than anything, Confucius wanted his students and followers to refine themselves by studying and self-examination, to become better people through their own efforts. (Part of this is to be able to read properly, which is more than ingesting ideas--it also means interpreting and critiquing them to see if they hold up.)
It was said that the supernatural is a topic he refused to speak on, and he outrightly refused to comment on life after death. To speak on these bizarre subjects would be an act, more or less, of speculation, and idle speculation is a distraction from the sorts of things you should be learning to straighten yourself out and make yourself a more substantial person. (Think about it: the fire and brimstone of hell and depiction of heaven is generally the most vivid but also the most pander-y thing about any sermon. It's a purely visceral emotional appeal that does nothing to aid your moral instruction. It's also quite circus freakshow-ish...think of how Jonathan Edwards likely had his audience eating out of his hand in sermons like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God...)
And anyhow, what did it matter? If the goal of being a good person was paramount, you're doing everything you can, anyhow. And if God exists, he'd have to be cool with that. But if not, you'd just have to stand against Him. Because right is right. Again, you're the person that does the right thing, or you're the person that panders to the bully. If the bully throws you in Hell for doing the right thing, you can easily re-imagine the scene between Thoreau and Emerson where Emerson asked him why he was in jail, and Thoreau in turn asked Emerson why he was not.
Folks will tell you that this is all garbage, that morality did not exist before Christianity. The chauvinism and small mindedness in such ideas are readily apparent, as this means all the non-Christian cultures are immoral (not just amoral). It also denies Christianity's debt to stoicism, Platonism, Judaism, and many of the mythic tropes it ripped off. And did Confucius not say, "Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire"? Sounds suspiciously like he ripped off the Golden Rule...except that Confucius died in 479 B.C.
Another prong of rebuttal would say that men are innately bad, and they can't be trusted to become good without some dire punishment, that we need hell because if there were no heaven and hell, people would hedonistically and savagely behave as they wished, without consequence.
It is instructive here to consider two major proponents of the Confucian school--Mencius and Xunzi. They differed on one fundamental point. Mencius thought man's essential nature was good, but in need of refinement (i.e., study and introspection for the sake of moral instruction). Xunzi thought the opposite; man's nature is essentially evil, and is in need of moral education, else he is not to be trusted. The latter led to Legalism, which imposed harsh punishments on the people and destroyed books--so that they could not become a basis for criticizing those in power--en masse.
Apologies to Xunzi. He's a superior philosopher whose work everyone should read. But to assume human nature is bad, no matter what carnage you've seen, is flabby thinking. If you assume that we (people) can't be trusted, that means you can't even trust that very idea (that people can't be trusted), because you're a person, and you thought it. I'm with Mencius. Our nature, if it must be broken down into such dichotomous terms, is good, and we can refine ourselves and make ourselves better.
So as A-Week draws to a close, if you would, take the time and think about what you're doing for your own moral instruction and improvement. Are you an obeyer, or are you trying to be better than you are now? What's your plan for it? Do you spend the time you could be using to strengthen yourself trying to please authority and be seen as good?
No school of thought is perfect, but that's the joy of study. You take the core ideas, work with them, and make them into something that has meaning and can do something for you. Nothing gets swallowed whole without it being interpreted and revised by you into something that makes sense. It's a creative act.
And Atheists, remember that you're not off the hook by any means. No God is ok, but living without a moral code, no matter what the source may be, is nihilism and oblivion. (And looking down at others for being in a different place than you is not cool, either.) Those of us who realize there is likely no life after death, or at least in a way in which will allow us to retain our identities, should be especially sensitive to the need to not waste what time we have left to us as who we are.
No matter what brush you paint yourself with, or wherever you are, we can do a lot better. To be good is the most important decision you'll ever make, and that goodness is more real if it comes from your own will and effort, and isn't derived from mere obedience. Don't stop, and in your darkest moments, don't be discouraged.
As Confucius said, "Good people strengthen themselves ceaselessly."
You are that good person.
Do it.
1 comment:
Beautifully said. I had a good chuckle at add water and stir.
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