Questions, No Answers, and the Fool on the Hill

Questions, No Answers, and the Fool on the Hill
by Mike Madias, Clinical Sociologist and Columnist

"Slice-o-Life"

February 25, 2004

Columnist Mike Madias In contemporary usage, the matter of being ethical and being moral are interchangeable concepts. But, not to me. Being moral is adhering to a set of rules. But to me, ethics is the contemplation of what is the good. The book of Exodus contains a moral code. It contains answers. The book of Job is about ethics, and asks disturbing questions. In American politics, the Bill of Rights is a moral code as surely as the Mosaic Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not.

Thomas Jefferson sidestepped the act of contemplation in the Declaration of Independence when he said that certain truths are self evident. Those ideas might well be true, but if one is to build a civilization, instead of an just another empire, the knowledge that they are true must arise out of contemplation by the individual citizens.

We are not a contemplative society. Instead are distracted by issues and are contemptuous of the search for truth. Because talking points are effective proxies for philosophy; America is just another empire.

I was at a party, and was sitting with a group of revelers that were playing that old pastime of failed graduate students, comparing the contents of our intellectual gifts in a round of bright-boy posturing. Being an unemployed and failed graduate student at the time, I was in there pitching bulls**t with the worst of them. One of these guys (who was looking in vain for a MacArthur Foundation nominator) challenged me. "Five dollars says that if I ask you two questions about politics and you answer them honestly, I can tell you what your opinion is on many other issues."I took the challenge. After all it was only half a sawbuck at risk. And even if I lost, it was worth the dough just to have the vicarious thrill of having to answer a couple litmus test questions.

Here are the questions this guy thought would plumb the visceral depths of my soul and lay bare my ethical and political innards. "How do you feel about abortion?" and "Should there be more laws regarding gun control?" It turns out, that I won the fiver on a technicality. This is how I answered "I honestly think that those are asinine questions, and that you are an idiot. The questions you should be asking are these: 1) How should we act in order to have less dead babies? and 2) How can we deal with the firearms in order to have less people shot?" I was brilliant that day. It was my shining hour. Had there been a MacArthur nominator there to witness my philosophic contemplation, I would be a rich man today.

When a matter is too pressing, too complex and all too real, we tend to ask questions about issues. And we ignore the situations that keep up awake through the night. Then we take sides, argue with each other on some bogus dialectic. We feel righteous in our thoughtlessness and the debate goes on for centuries. Ink is spilled willie-nillie. And sometimes blood is spilled as well.

A possible reason why these dialogues go on and on is because they are not entirely social or political matters. They are at the root, questions of personal morality and ethics. What can I do to decrease the occurrence of dead babies? If I own a gun, will I use it to kill another human being? There are no Republican Party or Democratic Party platform lines on these questions. Instead, politicians argue about abortion and gun control.

Some years later, I was talking about urban poverty with a financier from the suburbs. His assertion was that underneath the politics of poverty, was a level of personal morality and ethics, and if I wanted to find a clue, I would be likely to find it in the Torah. That notion, of dumping consideration of issues and going into deep contemplation for truths, was a gift from this man to me. At that time, he stopped being a mortgage lender, and became a rabbi.

I am so old, that I was taught to read the works of the philosophers in a public high school for average students, where I even read some of the material in the original Latin. I was in a curriculum being prepared for what they called then a "liberal education". We don't do that for our kids any more, do we?

I can't say that a liberal education has made me a wealthy or a moral man. A liberal education usually condemns one to being an outsider. If I were wealthy, they would call me an eccentric or an elitist. If I were impoverished, they might call building security and order them to eject me from the premises.

I am 58, with no job and no retirement plan. But, as long as I can keep paying my bills, I treasure my liberal education. I am glad it went down that way. The road less traveled, yada, yada, yada.

Now, in the coming presidential election, a hot issue will be gay marriage. I am sympathetic with the gay justice movement, and so I am tempted to enter the endless dialectic debate. But, the question under all of this conversation is, "What is a person to do with his or her sexuality?" It is a ethical matter.

I am not saying that the state should step away from issues. I am not taking a hard line Libertarian stance here, though that is the direction of my preferences. And depite what you might have heard on the evening news, I am not running as an independent candidate for the office of philosopher king. Ralph Nader is doing that.

I have no answers, but am haunted by questions like: How does a society actually reduce the threat of terrorism? What does a nation do with another sovereign state that poisons or tortures it's own people? What does a citizen do with evidence that his own country uses poison and torture?

While certain truths might have been held by Thomas Jefferson to be self evident, I am saying that the matter is more uncertain and dynamic. I am saying that we can commit to the documents (and be moral), or ask ourselves the hard questions (and be ethical). After contemplation we might find our civilization committing itself to a set of values, and not just being obedient to the a list of rules. We as Americans might become more than just powerful. We might be giants.

After a long hiatus from the Judeo-Christian tradition, and a trip through an all-you-can-believe salad bar of Eastern religions. I reread the Old Testament. I can tell you that what I found there was not what I learned in Sunday school classes. I did not find answers, but I found questions. What in God's name is wrong with eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil?

Am I my brother's keeper? I mean, am I? And don't get me started on the Book of Job.

As a kid I took it all in without questioning, and the world was filled with either good things or evil things. Superman on the side of the angels, fighting a never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way. Joe Stalin and Lex Luthor were in the opposition.

Since then, I have lost my Captain Midnight decoder ring. So, without a clue to guide me, I hear the words of the blow dried, Rolex wearing evangelists from Orange County. They say that we are headed for Armageddon, the ultimate battle of good against evil. Make a choice, brothers and sisters, they implore the television audience. The righteous are on one side and the homosexuals on the other. The problem is that I am not sure which side is the side of the angels. I am sharing the trenches with the queers.

The uniforms are better, and so are the snacks.Sometimes I sometimes see the world through Blake's romantic eyes. Sometimes Lucifer bears the light for man and suffers a torment, like a Prometheus. And sometimes the Marquis De Sade is a martyred saint. You can't identify the anti-Christ without a program. It is now quarter to three in the morning; and "sometimes" is right now. So I ask you, did a liberal education do me any good? Is my unwillingness to take sides on an issue (but my restless pursuit of transcending truth) a sign of madness? I am not going to test that hypotheses by going in for a psychiatric evaluation. After all, in Plato's myth of the cave, the schlemiel who goes out and sees the sunlight. When he goes back into the cave to free his buddies, he is considered crazy by the chained majority. And I am well aware of what happened to the divine Marquis in the asylum.

After my re-introduction to the Old Testament, I was in a bar and I was talking to some other drunk about the zen riddles contained in the Torah. My drinking buddy, thought I was a holy man, momentarily on a bender. He asked me if I had received a calling from the Almighty.

Because there had been no messages from Yahweh left on my answering machine; I told him I did not give a damn if I had gotten a calling or not. I told him I was answering it anyway.

If I were out to corrupt the youth of America (and I have certainly tried to do just that) I would tell them to skip school, and get their education from a library. That is what I did, and look where it got me. Oh, one more thing. If you happen to be a MacArthur Foundation nominator, I am waiting for you to call.

shalom

Mike

And good night Bill Burroughs, wherever you are. ***

Photo of Mike Madias courtesy of the author

A clinical sociologist living in the Metropolitan Detroit area, Mike's work has appeared in The Detroit News. He may be reached by e-mail at DetroitHardball@hotmail.com.