When I Say No, I Feel Guilty

[kerravonsen]

I've started reading "When I Say No, I Feel Guilty" by Manuel J Smith. The book is about being assertive, and it seemed pretty reasonable stuff; that life is full of problems, but human beings are excellent problem solvers, about how not to be manipulated, not to let people judge us, that one is responsible for one's own actions; mostly stuff I could agree with.

Then I got to p43.

Morals are arbitrary rules people adopt to use in judging their own and other people's behaviour. The way we adopt and use moral systems is very much like the way we would behave backpacking in the Sierras after our surefooted guide tripped over a log and broke his neck. Each of us is then faced with the difficult task of finding our way home and the frightening possibility that we may not know enough to survive. As each of us finds a trail, we tell ourselves and the others: "This is the right way." Our fear of being lost in the wilds and not knowing what to do is relieved by finding any sign of civilization, even though it may lead us farther into the forest. We refuse to worry about coping again by considering the possibility that there may be other trails out of the forest, some better than the one we choose. By rigidly declaring our trail as the right way, we dump the responsibility for getting home off our own shoulders and onto the arbitrary path we choose. If this trail doesn't get us home, we can always blame the dumb people who made it instead of ourselves! This allegory is used to point out that there is no absolute "right or wrong" moral way to behave; there isn't even any technically correct way to behave. There are only the personal ways each of us chooses to behave, which enrich or befoul our lives. For example, the assertive backpacker in the Sierras might choose to follow none of the paths found by the rest of his group, but instead to follow his own nose, using any information available; the path of the sun and stars, the position of light-sensitive plant growth, landmarks he remembers, and also his best guess on where highway 99 is from looking at his Standard Oil map.

I was, at first, rather annoyed by this. Then, the more I thought about it, the more fascinating it became. Is this really what atheists believe? Is that what morals look like from the outside?

There are a few things to note about this passage. One is that he simply declares that right and wrong are completely arbitrary, tosses in an extended simile, and then repeats his declaration. This is quite different from what had come before, where he generally gives reasons for what he says; plausible hypotheses, anyway.

Another is the choice of simile. Being lost. How revealing is that, hmmm? Let me extend the simile a little:

We're lost in the mountains, not because our surefooted guide is dead, but because we pushed him over and ran away because we thought he was dead. But he isn't dead. He's looking for us.

Like the shepherd looked for the lost sheep.

"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."
--Isaiah 53:6

Of course, this doesn't prove my argument right and his wrong; we don't have an argument here, we have metaphors. The argument lies in which metaphor is a more accurate picture of what the object of discussion (in this case, morality) is like; which one is a better model. The difficulty here is that we wouldn't be able to agree on what plumbline to use to measure the model.

Of course, in the terms of this particular metaphor, the plumbline is this: has one gotten out of the mountains yet? Though how that translates back into the real world, I'm not certain. Possibly the plumbline in this case is "you'll find out for sure whether you were right when you die". Bit late then, of course.

Another interesting thing about the analogy is that it goes contrary to survival techniques: when one is lost, one is supposed to stay where one is, to make it easier for the rescue team to find you. Not wander about and get even more lost. Mind you, another reason why people wander about and get more lost is that they don't want to admit that they're lost in the first place.

To those who are lost, all ways seem equally valid, equally arbitrary, equally foolish. And suppose someone did come along and say "I'm here to rescue you," and you didn't believe them. Would not their way seem like foolishness to you?

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."
--1 Corinthians 1:18

I wonder if one of the reasons (barring the obvious that the person is an atheist) that the author wanted to say that morals are arbitrary (that is, completely made up with no objective reality) is that guilt is not the best motivator. It's a motivator, sure, but it isn't the best one. IMHO, the best motivator is love. Which is one of the reasons why God's grace is so freeing; it takes guilt (and the associated fear) out of the equation, and frees us to love god. What's that saying? "Love God, and do what you want."

What this book seems to be saying is "Do what you want." Half wrong; left out the most important bit. 8-P

Another way that the book is half wrong is that it keeps on saying that you are the only judge of your behaviour.

"For God does know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
-- Genesis 3:5

Ah, original sin.

The way that the book is half right is that no man is my judge, only God.

Comments

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

Interesting post!

- Helen

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

I dunno, this atheist thinks that paragraph sounds like over-simplified self-help claptrap employing a strained and probably inappropriate metaphor.

[kerravonsen]

8-)

[bktheirregular]

I don't consider myself an atheist as much as an agnostic, and my problem has never been one of being without a guide, but rather this: a thousand different guides, directing me in a thousand different directions, each one threatening me with eternal hellfire if I choose any of the other nine hundred ninety-nine paths.

(And is "do right by your fellow human beings, and let the rest sort itself out in time" really so insufficient as to warrant condemnation?)

[kerravonsen]

And is "do right by your fellow human beings, and let the rest sort itself out in time" really so insufficient as to warrant condemnation?

But none of us actually do "do right by our fellow human beings". We all fail. We are condemned out of our own mouths, because we don't even follow the morals we espouse.

[kerravonsen]

BTW, what does your icon mean?

[bktheirregular]

It's a reference to Orwell's Oceania, which sometimes I fear has been made real in my own homeland. In the red are the lies we're expected to believe; in the blue is my response.

[jinxed-wood.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on the writer's concept of 'morality'. If, as I suspect, he is referring to certain bigoted concepts, which are all too often dressed up in the clothes of morality in today's society, he may have a point.

But this is not true morality. True morality, in my opinion, stems from one simple concept:

"Do unto others as you would have done unto you."

Everything else is just sophistry.

[labingi.livejournal.com]

Is this really what atheists believe?

Disclaimer: each atheist is, of course, a unique person and I don't mean to overgeneralize.

That said, I've come to regard atheists as fitting into two main camps: 1) atheists who embrace atheism as a comfortable philosophy for making sense of their world and 2) atheists who default to atheism because they have lost their theistic faith.

I think the paragraph you quote is generally indicative of the latter: the worldview that instrinsically believes that morality derives from God and, thus, having lost God, loses morality. This is the atheism of Ivan Karamazov (m'icon), who tries to believe that God (and morality) don't exist because when he believes in God, he finds God immoral.

I think most atheists who are comfortable with atheism (who find that it meets their need for meaning) don't tie it to an absence of morality (because morality is usually necessary to our need for meaning). These atheists simply locate the source of morality elsewhere: ex. evolutionary psychology. This is the JMS or Joss Whedon sort of atheist.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

This is puzzling, because during the second paragraph I assumed I fell into the second category (having lost my faith about thirty years ago), but when I got to the last paragraph I turned out to be the first. I don't see why the loss of a sense of God should lead to the loss of a sense of morality; it just means it's something that has to be thought out, rather than accepted.

I remember the book; I think my mother lent it to me many years ago. I didn't read it from cover to cover, but I skimmed through the techniques, which seemed useful. I don't think they depend on what the author believes, any more than I think morality depends on belief in a deity.

I suppose my version of the metaphor would be that a man comes up to me and says he's the guide. I follow him for a while, and note that he has some useful tips on survival, but eventually lose confidence in his ultimate sense of direction. This could apply to more than one type of guide (see above).

[labingi.livejournal.com]

Hence my disclaimer:)

One person who comes to mind who seems to have shifted from belief in God to comfortable atheism (or at least existential atheism) is T. E. Lawrence. At any rate, he was raised in a very Christian household, and I presume held those beliefs for a time. But he seemed to have grown up to be quite contentedly secular. (One of the few things he was content about.)

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Well, I was struggling to think of any atheists of my acquaintance who did lose a sense of morality along with their faith. It's more like... a friend of mine had a white South African girlfriend, who said something on the lines of "When apartheid collapsed, we found out an awful lot of what we'd been told was wrong. So we had to question everything we'd been told, to work out what was still right." It wasn't that they assumed everything they'd been told was wrong, just that they had to work it out again from first principles.

[labingi.livejournal.com]

I suspect the despairing atheist thing was more common pre-20th century, when the vast majority of most societies didn't talk about moral systems that didn't derive from God (gods), so that when God "went away" there was a very big existential void requiring a vast paradigm shift. Just an impression though.

[claudine-c.livejournal.com]

I have that book for the same reason that you do, but I haven't started reading it properly yet, so I'm replying without really knowing the context of this passage.

My problem with this passage is that it's a caricature of moral systems, or maybe it's a kind of moral system that some people hold but others don't. The metaphor of a dead/missing guide doesn't work for me. My faith—the basis of my moral system—isn't a firm authority that tells me what to do in every situation without giving me a basis for understanding my actions. It is more like a compass and map—if I'm in a dilemma, I have to think out my own solution, but I have tools to guide my thinking.

Also, absence or presence of a fixed moral system doesn't indicate absence or presence of belief in God or gods, and vice versa.

[kerravonsen]

The metaphor is limited in more than one way.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Fascinating stuff. I need to think about it some more before I pass opinion.

[temeres.livejournal.com]

Morals are arbitrary rules

No, that is not what this atheist thinks. I don't think there is anything arbitrary about moral rules - they have been shaped by natural selection, just like everything else about us. And although moral ideas are memetic rather than genetic, some moral principles have become hard-wired into our brains. That at least, would seem to be indicated by the results of Marc Hauser's research, in which various hypothetical moral dilemmas elicit much the same response from atheists and believers alike. 97% of respondents, for example, considered it morally impermissible to use a healthy person to save five dying ones.

Some interesting research on monkeys (reported in New Scientist some months back, and I don't think I have that issue any more) suggests that the evolution of morality predates the emergence of modern humans. This doesn't surprise me - I would expect to find some kind of moral framework, or rather some behavioural framework that from a human perspective would appear moral, in just about any social animal with a degree of intelligence. The more intelligent the animal, the more complex the framework.

Personal Ways to Choose Morals

[stevenpete.livejournal.com]

I think Smith addresses those who chose a moral guide based on religion with the statement, “This allegory is used to point out that there is no absolute "right or wrong" moral way to behave; there isn't even any technically correct way to behave. ***There are only the personal ways each of us chooses to behave,**** which enrich or befoul our lives.

For your own personal reasons you have chosen for your morals those as taught by your faith. There are many other people that have chosen to follow other moral codes for their own personal reasons. For anyone to say their moral code is better or trumps another’s is arrogant and naive. For a fundamentalist Christian homosexual behavior may be deemed as evil, but to another, the Christians unreasonable prejudice may be deemed as evil. For a sociologist or a truly objective observer, I would say that all morals would appear to be quite arbitrary.

However, I think that most morals, no matter what someone professes with their faith are arbitrary. For example, a Christian may say they believe the commandment, “thou shall not kill,” yet how many American Christians whole heartedly support the war in Iraq where many innocent people are being killed and yet they strongly oppose abortion. Is that arbitrary? I would say so.
You may agree with Smith’s statement that “Morals are arbitrary rules people adopt to use in judging their own and other people's behaviour.” if you looked through a wider lens. For example, I’m sure you know many people who believe in the importance of being honest, however, how each of them interprets honesty, and their own actions may vary considerably and be completely arbitrary. Possibly if all theists realized the arbitrary nature of everyone’s morals they would be far less likely to self-profess themselves as saints and others as sinners.
From my own person experiences I have lived my entire life among people whom I had to continually assert myself to protect myself and my family from those who’s morals appear quite absurd to me yet to themselves they believe they are only agents of a higher power and show little or no respect for those who’s morals are different from their own.

Re: Personal Ways to Choose Morals

[kerravonsen]

Who are you? Your profile says that you created this account today, and have only posted one comment, which is presumably this comment. Why post a comment on something I wrote over a year ago? What's the point?

Re: Personal Ways to Choose Morals

[lolagoo.livejournal.com]

when I googled "when I say no,.." your journal entry was on the first page of results. This person probably found the discussion interesting, like I did, and wanted to put in their two cents. Why not create a livejournal while they're at it? You seem pretty annoyed at them for wanting to participate in the discussion at all.
Just sayin'.

Re: Personal Ways to Choose Morals

[kerravonsen]

when I googled "when I say no,.." your journal entry was on the first page of results.

Aha! That does explain it.

You seem pretty annoyed at them for wanting to participate in the discussion at all.

I think part of the problem is that the discussion has moved on. Since this is a really old journal entry, then rather than the usual crowd who participate in the discussion, the only person likely to see this comment is just me. So, from my point of view, this random person came along out of the blue, made a comment making negative remarks about people who have absolute morals rather than relative ones - it came across to me like someone who had an axe to grind, who was only interested in attacking me, not in participating in a cordial discussion. So I reacted with hostility, because I didn't know where this person was coming from. And they didn't explain where they were coming from, so I was left none the wiser.

Thanks for making it clearer to me.

Re: Personal Ways to Choose Morals

[lolagoo.livejournal.com]

it's ok i hear ya. it's weird to think our livejournal entries make it out into the non-livejournal world like that.

Re: Personal Ways to Choose Morals

[kerravonsen]

I apologise for my reaction earlier; I felt as if you were attacking me because I didn't know where you were coming from.