Recently, I stumbled across the following line on my internet travels:
“Obama is a good man who was a bad president. Trump is a bad man who is a good president.”
This is one of those statements whose meaning is self-evident to us and yet which hides a deep-seated belief of modern Western culture, one that is worth fleshing out in more detail.
We need not concern ourselves with the veracity of the statement or questions about what it means to be a “good president”. Let’s assume for the sake of the argument that the presidency is a job like any other. Thus, we could translate the above line into a similar statement – “Gary is a good person but a bad plumber.” We understand this to mean that Gary is incompetent at plumbing but is otherwise a decent sort of bloke.
But we can be even more specific than that, because to say that somebody is a “good person” refers to some inner and holistic quality. Central to this is the matter of intention. Gary means well. He really wants to be a good plumber. This intention is “good”. Nevertheless, despite his best intentions, Gary is incapable of doing good plumbing. Perhaps he lacks the motor skills required, and it doesn’t seem to matter how long he spends practicing, he never really gets better.
We can contrast Gary against a different plumber, let’s call him Fred, who has the skills and experience necessary to do good work but who, through some combination of greed, laziness, and indifference, does not. We would say that Fred could be a good plumber except that he’s a bad person. (I once hired a Fred to do some plumbing work on my house. Needless to say, I didn’t call him back).
What we have then is a dichotomy between the inner aspects of the individual and their outer actions in the world, and this brings us to the crux of the matter because in the modern West we have a deep-seated focus on the inner aspects that almost amounts to a complete denial of the outer. For us, the inferred inner character of a person counts for far more than their actual performance. As long as we think Obama is a good person, we forgive him for being a bad president. On the other hand, it doesn’t matter how good a job Trump does in the White House, he’s still a bad person.
We take this so much for granted that we are unaware how unusual it is and also how extreme this mentality has become in the post-war years. One way to see it more clearly is to compare it against a different understanding of what it means to be a “good person”, and we find a prime example of that in Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics.
In that work, Aristotle outlines a concept of eudaimonia, which is usually translated into English as happiness but which, for our purposes, we can better think of as virtue. Aristotle set out to define what makes somebody a good person. The specific details of the answer he gave are not relevant here. What is important to note is that Aristotle assumed that the way to judge whether a person was good was to observe their actions. Intention, belief, or any other inner states of the individual were irrelevant. A good person was somebody who did good things.
Thus, the statement “Obama is a good person but a bad president” would have been incomprehensible to the Greeks because their judgement of a person was based on public performance. To do a bad job was to be a bad person. You either manifested virtue, or you did not.
Furthermore, the idea of eudaimonia could only be judged on the full lifespan of the individual. Aristotle believed it was theoretically possible to live a perfectly virtuous life and then blow it all at the end with a final misstep, for example, by dying a cowardly death. This is the opposite of the Christian belief where you can live a perfectly sinful life and then save yourself with a deathbed confession.
It is, of course, from Christianity that modern Western culture gets its focus on the inner states of the individual because the Christian virtues are first and foremost personal, inner qualities. In the post-war years, we have kept the focus on inner states while swapping the Christian notion that we are born sinners for the idea that we are born virtuous. Humanistic psychologists such as Maslow built this into their theories. They assumed that everybody is born good. Everybody is inherently striving for self-actualisation and will achieve it if society doesn’t get in the way. This was a continuation of the philosophy of Rousseau, who stated that we are all born good and it is society which corrupts us.
Although this emphasis on the inner aspects of existence has been a core feature of Western culture for many centuries, it has been taken to a ridiculous extreme in our time. We have now arrived at a point where everybody is assumed to be “good” even if their actions in the world are the exact opposite. The Christian practice of repentance at least involved owning up to sinful actions. As a result, there was still a connection between the inner and outer world. When Christianity was rejected, this connection was severed.
The fact is that we have no direct access to the inner states of others. Therefore, we can only infer their inner qualities from outward behaviour, and that only to the extent that we first understand our own inner lives. An assumed inner virtue decoupled from action amounts to a dissociation from the “real world”. Moreover, forgiveness and repentance are no longer required because, as Dostoevsky put it, everything is permitted. We are born good, and we will die good, irrespective of what we do in life. By this absurd belief, even a murderer can be a “good person”.
Hi Simon,
Was Dostoevsky pulling our leg with that observation?
Candidly, to my way of thinking, Aristotle set too high a bar for human behaviour. Nobody is perfect, and everyone messes up at some point in their life. And didn’t they try the whole Philosopher King path in some ancient Greek cities? That didn’t work out so well.
It’s interesting you’ve written this essay. Recently I’ve been reading a book about navigating human conflict, but mostly it focused on how to go about making peace. People are a bit edgy these days, and it’s a subject I knew very little about, so a bit of extra knowledge is always handy. Anyway, the book did mention that our brains aren’t wired that well in such a situation to rationally discuss intentions, when sincerity is perhaps the better path. It is worth noting that one of those is an observable action, the other, not so much. Hmm.
Cheers
Chris
Chris – like so many things in the modern world, this one comes from the protestant idea of salvation by “faith alone” irrespective of “good works”. Eventually, this morphed into the anything goes attitude that holds today. That’s what Dostoevsky was talking about: anything goes = everything is permitted.
Well, to play devil’s advocate, the philosopher and hardcore christian Kant had what I believe a good point for the inner state arguement.
He argued we do not always have direct control over the consequences of our actions – if a neighbor wanted to borrow my axe, and I was being a good friend by letting him have it, and in the morning I find out he used the axe to kill his family, I had no control over the outcome and ethically it is my intention that should count.
Bakbook – I think the more poignant example is the story from the Old Testament of Abraham being instructed by God to kill Isaac. Abraham’s intention is correct (obey God) and yet his action will be to murder his own son. What society could accept the justification “but God told me to do it”?
In any case, I’m certainly not arguing that intent isn’t important. There were problems with the position of the ancient Greeks too. To take a very Aristotelian position, virtue lies at the midpoint between the esoteric and exoteric. We’ve gone way too far to the esoteric side.
Wow, this is the perfect example of what I’m talking about. Let’s desecrate an ancient cathedral (exoteric manifestation of faith) because somehow it will creative an “authentic” “emotional punch” (esoteric) – https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/canterbury-cathedral-artwork-graffiti-drawings-b2843041.html
It’s worth noting that the Orphics and Pythagoreans, being more like our priesthood/monastic sects in function and role, were more esoteric but in a typically classical, pure-present way, and the latter sparked off large scale religious conflict and sectarianism between those who were more traditionally exoteric focused ways of living the good life and those who were becoming dangerously esoteric.
Aristotle didn’t have many nice things to say about them because I think he is expressing the typically Greek aristocratic attitude of dismissing it all as overly abstract nonsense, and he may have even censored and watered down their more esoteric ideas to a more rationalist conceptual basis in a similar way to Kant turning the Devil into Evil (just drop the D).
I wonder if something similar happens in our culture but in the possible direction; a religious sect becoming radically and dangerously exoteric.
Skip – Trump is doing something very much like that in politics. We’re so used to the idea that the pantomime that passes as democracy is just gaslighting and bullshit while real politics takes place behind the scenes that a politician who openly wields power is a shock. Interestingly, the internet could deliver a kind of radical transparency. In fact, it already has via social media. Let’s not forget that Trump’s use of twitter was instrumental in his first victory. What did they do in response? Shut down his accounts. And that’s what they’re doing more generally since governments are rushing to create shadowy government agencies to control the narrative from behind the scenes.
Yeah I guess since WW2 the western priesthood (always a multinational esoteric society out for its own interests since the middle ages) in its secular form has been in charge, and Trump looks like a reversion to the good ol’ days of more open nationalist aristocratic rule, where love it or loath it the local powerful families and factions are in charge. The aristocratic/personal rule can work better as long there is noblesse oblige, and after so many decades of priestly bullshit it is a nice change. And at least a national aristocracy are actually fellow people of the nation rather than various faceless men of from elsewhere.
Bob Katter threatening to knock out a reporter a few months back was great.
While the technocracy was building dams, roads, railways, and airports etc., they were actually adding value to society. But the law of diminishing returns has well and truly kicked in. The current technocracy is off with the fairies. The time is right for some strong leaders who know how to bash heads together.
I’d like to comment and share that I believe orthodox Judaism is currently in the opposite side of the exoteric – esoretic scale, as opposed to Christianity. Orthodox Judaism is currently at a place where commentary on scriptures (known as the Tamud or Gmarra) and formalized prayer takes center stage.
This makes for a legalistic religious practice where doing things by route because a rabbi who lived a century ago or more said it is a way to do a commandment, and as long as one does it, regardless of intention or understanding, he is considered observant, regardless of the original purpose of the rule. The same can be said about most prayers, which are often said by route, with little importance for understanding or contemplating the text on a deep level.
I believe my point is well illustrated by a brief discussion of religious agricultural laws as they are often implemented in Israel nowadays. I used to work as an apple picker, and there is a law in Judaism about leaving 10% of the produce for the poor. In practice we would have a separate tank for this reason, and theoretically those apples go to charity. In reality we were encouraged to put the worse apples there, some not fit for eating, and I don’t think there is an actual mechanism to bring those to charity. However, for the rabbis that certify the apples kosher (it’s a thing in Israel that’s as important as health regulations and done in a similar way), that is enough to tick this box. So the 10% of produce is being collected, only it is no longer done with the intention of helping the poor.
Bakbook – That sounds a lot like the situation in Europe around the time of the Reformation where there was general ignorance about the meaning of religious practices alongside very blatant corruption by the Catholic Church.
I think this kind of thing is a feature of human life, not just in the religious sphere. Any time you have a ritual or repetitive action, it becomes a habit, and it’s almost the definition of a habit that we pay it no real attention. Breaking out of a habit, by contrast, requires (esoteric) effort. One of the ways to break a habit is to destroy the exoteric manifestation, for example by putting graffiti on your church, but that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
About the graffiti on the church, interestingly we recently had a case of a man who grafitied both a church in Jerusalem and the western wall itself:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/alleged-western-wall-vandal-accused-of-painting-holocaust-in-gaza-on-holy-sepulchre/
It sounds like yet another case of jerusalem syndrome, but I thought you might find it interesting.
Bakbook – the last paragraph of that article is also a perfect example of what I’m talking about!
Paraphrasing – my son is a good person despite his actions. The “mental illness” excuse is probably the most common way to uphold the good person framing. Note that the “mental illness” somehow never affects the person’s ability to carry out the act, only to be held responsible afterwards.
Simon – exactly. Take BPD for example. I have meet people who, while in the psychosis phase, turned into nasty people capable of either emotionaly or physically damging people around them. But I also know people, including a close friend, who would not hurt a fly while in psychosis. In fact, in some people it manifests in eccentric, harmless ways. This lead me to conclude the “I am mentally ill” agument is largrly an excuse, as people still have the choice in how to behave even under mental illness, and it appears closely related to character.
Reminds me of a story by Sartre (I think) about a man who can never get drunk enough not to be responsible for his actions. Of course, it’s not at all easy to accept that level of responsibility. Thus, people are always looking for excuses and other people will make a living by providing them.
Simon,
I have seen a discussion that highlights your point well. It was in a facebook group of a university, and one student shared his girlfriend “surprised” him by turning a marble collection he inherited from his father, which I’m told had marbles whose worth are in the thousands of dollars, into an apoxy table. She did not understand his anger as she meant well, and in fact ended up being mad at him.
Now, most comments were to this direction, the student was told he should forgive his girlfriend as the thought is what counts. On the bright side, there were also quite a few posts recommending him ways to reciprocate this romantic gesture, such as inviting her to a campfire by the starlight using her wardrobe as fuel, making her another apoxy table with her jewelry and cosmetics, and so on…
Bakbook – yeah, that’s a perfect example. He’s supposed to forgive her even though she never admitted responsibility and, in fact, got angry at the very possibility that she might have been in the wrong. It’s a textbook example of narcissism, which is running rampant these days.
Do you think a couple of narcissists have taken over society and most learned to minic their “betters”, or did people genuinly turn into narcisists and the few who are not are like Will Smith’s character in “I am legend”?
Seems to me like a general social movement. It’s hard (probably impossible) to find any specific causes. It does seem very coincidental that the process went into overdrive back in 1990s, which was the collapse of the USSR and the “victory” of the West. Our elites behave just like the girlfriend, i.e., they can’t even entertain the idea that they might be responsible for anything.