Culture, Morality, and Ethics: The Interplay Between Belief, Behavior and the Objective World

By Lawrence A. Howard (December 2017)

The Night, Max Beckmann, 1918-19

There is interplay between belief and behavior such that people act in the world on their beliefs, and as a result, the world, consisting of multiple factors and layers of environment, gives feedback in context. Understanding this interplay can help us understand the nature of morality as a subjective construct, and ethics as an objective concept, and ultimately lead to evaluating ideas, separating the good from the bad.

Cultural artifacts have both an objective and a subjective dimension. Objectively, the Mona Lisa exists and has mass, takes up space, etc. Subjectively, the Mona Lisa is accorded the renown that it has as one of Western Civilization’s greatest works of art and that renown gives it a particular value and a consequent need for security. Take away the belief that the Mona Lisa is so valuable and the need for security is also removed.

Sometimes the feedback the world gives humans affirms their beliefs and other times it does not. At a deep level, the feedback may reinforce basic socialization. For example, a mother may tell her child, “don’t touch that pan, it is hot!” In his/her limited experience, the child has never been burned and fearlessly touches the hot pan, only to get burned. The child thereafter believes his mother and understands the concept of “don’t touch, it’s hot!”

The opposite happens when worldly feedback to human action is at odds with the belief(s) that motivated the action. For example, as a child in the Midwest, I gained an impression from adults, and television, particularly the news coverage of the Kitty Genovese case, that New York City dwellers were cold people who thought only of themselves. [1]

I kept that impression with me until, on my first business trip to New York, I witnessed a man impeccably dressed in business attire hold back traffic at a green light while a courier picked up boxes accidentally dropped during his failed attempt to cross an intersection. Thereafter I was singularly more open to the idea that New Yorkers could act with compassion, and treated New Yorkers with more respect.

There are instances where socialization has so structured and strengthened an individual’s beliefs about something that it takes a considerable amount of objective, worldly feedback to change those beliefs. The process of objective worldly feedback being at odds with the subjective beliefs of a person is cognitive dissonance, i.e. reality contradicts belief.

When an individual becomes aware of the extant contradictions involved in cognitive dissonance, objective facts have crossed an individual’s cognitive threshold. When cognitive dissonance happens, a range of outcomes is possible, depending on the individual’s context and psychology.

Context is singularly important. For example, at school a child may be told in no uncertain terms by another student that “Santa Claus is make believe!” Suppose the child is told this by another who is popular among his/her peers, and that other is also supported by most of the child’s friends. The child’s reasoning tells him that there must be something to the idea that Santa is fake and when he returns home that day, his first words to his mother are, “Mommy, you lied to me!”

The mother’s reaction is important, because she is likely the center of the child’s universe. Suppose the mother gently explains that Santa Claus is “good make believe,” because it is based on the Christmas spirit and the true characters of the three Wise Men and Saint Nicholas. She takes the time to sit with the child, explain the concepts, and answer all of his questions. The child is then led to an understanding in such terms that he continues to think well of his mother and “Santa Claus,” and is less likely to adopt any negative formulations, whatever they might have been. Cognitive dissonance is resolved in a positive way that may forever be an internal, mental reference throughout the child’s life.

The mother could have reacted in a way that negatively resolved the child’s cognitive dissonance. What then for the developing child’s mindset and behavior? One can envision the development of a child who doesn’t trust adults, and perhaps later the ultimate result, i.e. a cynical adult.

An individual’s psychology and mental strength is as important as context in resolving cognitive dissonance. A fragile mind can shatter when forced to admit that the world is not what the person believed it to be. A strong mind can also be a negative thing in that it can filter the real world such that objective reality is warped into perceived conformity with the strong mind’s belief system. Zealots and others who have closed minds fall into this category.

It is the true believer’s ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacle nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence.[2]

From the sociological point of view, the truth or falsity (of religious precepts or atheist beliefs) is irrelevant: we are concerned only with the comparative effects of different religious structures upon culture. Now, if students of the subject could be neatly divided into theologians, including atheists, and sociologists, the problem would be very different from what it is. But, for one thing, no religion can be wholly “understood” from the outside—even the sociologist’s purposes. For another, no one can wholly escape the religious point of view, because in the end, one either believes or disbelieves. Therefore, no one can be as detached and disinterested as the ideal sociologist should be. [3]

This situation makes the results of different studies in anthropology, comparative politics, sociology and other social sciences extremely “hot” and controversial, depending upon the reviewer’s cultural box and therefore, the reviewer’s moral precepts. Two examples presented here demonstrate the objective truth of the foregoing.

[4] Some students, enrolling in the course with the expectation of being given lectures admiring of Che Guevara and other leftist icons, were surprised to find that Adolph Hitler’s Nazi regime was included in the course. When the professor came to the Nazi regime in his syllabus and began objectively describing it, one student with a contorted, angry face jumped up in class and shouted, “You’re preaching fascism!” Cassinelli calmly replied, “I’ll get to Mussolini and his Fascists, but right now I am explaining to you the nature of National Socialism. Do you want to learn, or do you want to leave the class?” The student responded by stalking out of the class. The student was so deeply immersed in his cultural box that he had become one of the people described by Eric Hoffer as a “true believer.”

Dare we make a contemporary comparison of this Nazi action, and its purpose, with identity politics in the contemporary West? If the “differences” between people are continually highlighted, those groups can be more easily brought into confrontation with each other.[5] As a consequent objective fact, the members of the groups will never be unaware of their differences, and therefore racism, etcetera, will never end. The policies and programs ostensibly designed to end racism become perpetual motion political machines. Who benefits from that situation?

The second example demonstrating how hard it is for a human being to step outside his/her cultural box is the case of the Soviet biologist, Trofim Lysenko. Lysenko was favored by dictator Josef Stalin and made “Director” of Soviet biology because he had rejected the theories and research in genetics of Gregor Mendel and Thomas Hunt as being constructs of bourgeois capitalist society. Whereas Mendel and Hunt’s research led them to believe that animals and plants evolved and developed in an environment where individuals competed for the available resources and survived as a species by passing on their chromosomes and other genetic material, Lysenko claimed that successful organisms originated from cooperation, and proposed to change spring wheat into a hardier winter wheat using his theories. Unfortunately for Lysenko, and Soviet agriculture, he failed because his theories were at odds with reality and, unlike the Nazis in the case of the Star of David patch, Lysenko did not have the power to appear to bend genetics to his belief system.[6] Stalin executed and sent to the Gulag many “bourgeois” biologists and others who did not embrace Lysenko’s theories, and set back Soviet genetics and agriculture by a generation.

Dare we make a contemporary comparison of this Soviet action with attempts in the contemporary West to show that first, “global warming,” and now its successor reformulation, “climate change” is caused by human beings? President Obama announced that “the debate is settled” on climate change, despite the fact that it isn’t,[7] much as Stalin decreed that Lysenko’s theories were the truth, when they were not. The President followed through on his statement by enacting executive orders and directing executive agencies to engage in such policies as “the war on coal.”[8] He entered into the Paris Climate Accords that, had the United States not later withdrawn from them, would have redistributed trillions of dollars of American wealth to dubious Third World regimes and international organizations while simultaneously not having a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Likewise, Stalin had heavily invested in Lysenko’s theories and bankrupted Soviet agriculture.

Morality is a subjective concept, rooted in a person’s culture, conditioned by his/her upbringing and socialization.

Ethics, in contrast, are objective, based on verifiable fact. The cases of Copernicus and Galileo demonstrate this basic characteristic of ethics.

[9] What made Copernicus undertake his research and write his conclusions? People believed something that wasn’t true; scientific inquiry and reasonable discussion was forbidden on painful penalty.

[10]

[11] In 1616 the Church Inquisition convened a council under the auspices of Pope Paul V which condemned Copernican theory. As the years waxed on, Church personnel changed, some supportive of Galileo; but, finally Galileo was tried for heresy.

[12]

Galileo finished the ethical action begun by Copernicus that transformed a civilization from thralldom to the freedom of inquiry and innovation.

It took nearly 8 months for the United States Department of Justice, relying on all of the evidence that was available, including video, eyewitnesses, and forensic evidence, to establish the actual events and to conclude that “Darren Wilson’s actions do not constitute prosecutable violations under the applicable federal criminal civil rights statute, 18 U.S.C. § 242, which prohibits uses of deadly force that are “objectively unreasonable,” as defined by the United States Supreme Court. The evidence, when viewed as a whole, does not support the conclusion that Wilson’s uses of deadly force were “objectively unreasonable” under the Supreme Court’s definition. Accordingly, under the governing federal law and relevant standards set forth in the USAM, it is not appropriate to present this matter to a federal grand jury for indictment, and it should therefore be closed without prosecution.”[13]

Before, during, and after the DOJ investigation into the killing of Michael Brown, there were riots, protests, punditry, media speculation and demagoguery all centering around the idea that when Officer Wilson shot Brown, the man was standing with his hands up and saying “don’t shoot!” It doesn’t stretch the truth to characterize the afore-mentioned collection of people, who claimed that they wanted “justice,” as a mob that fueled itself on subjective passion. To them it was obvious that Darren Wilson was a racist white cop who had killed an innocent black man.[14]

In the case of the killing of Michael Brown, the ethics of the issue are not ambiguous. Ironically, the moral principles embraced by the mob were also not ambiguous—to the mob!

Another, dramatic example of the difference between morality and ethics is the mandatory use of seatbelts. It is both moral and ethical to save lives, correct? But what if you are dealing in probabilities, and there is a statistical minority of people whose death or injury will be caused or facilitated by the otherwise “life-saving” safety device?

[15] No test or study has ever claimed 100% effectiveness for seatbelts – so what about that group of people who died or were severely injured while wearing them? What about the circumstances of the survivors who were not wearing seatbelts?

Here, of course, utilitarian philosophy, part of America’s dominate political culture, extends its influential umbrella, i.e. advocate and support the greatest good for the greatest number. But what about the minority? Utilitarianism doesn’t concern itself with the minority.

Morality is a subjective concept. Ethics is based on objective truth, i.e. verifiable evidence. When humans are moral, they follow the learned precepts arising from their culture. When humans are ethical, they try to step outside the box of their culture and discover that which is actually extant.

The grand irony is of course that even cultural relativists are hard put to describe Nazi morality as being “relative” and equal to other ideas, and the same for haters of capitalism and other haters. Such people demonstrate the problem of human subjectivity but do not understand how they are doing so.

[16]

To evaluate which idea is better, the radical Islamist, or the general Western, we need only look at the actual facts of the implementation, i.e. the consequences of women not covering themselves head-to-toe in the real world.

The consequences include:

Lacking freedom of choice, women become chattel of men[17]
Unable to show their skin to a man not their husband (or the eldest male in the family) women cannot easily consult physicians for even routine healthcare. Because women are not allowed to be professionals, all doctors are male.[18]
Women face a health challenge in constantly wearing the prescribed clothes, including Vitamin D deficiencies. Given freedom of choice, most people would not engage in behavior that threatened their health.[19]
Cruel and unusual punishment for breaking the mandated strictures[20]

In contrast to the implementation of the ideas of the radical Islamists, the general Western view of the role of women stand as polar opposites, as are the general consequences.

Women have freedom of choice. The consequence of the implementation of this idea is that women are legal persons, equal before the law in all contractual relationships sanctioned by the society, from marriage to buying and selling property, and of course, securing a license to drive a car. Women are not chattel.

Women in the west can secure healthcare, from a male or a female doctor, when they need it.

Women are free to change their clothing as they individually think it to be appropriate.

Nobody can legally sanction a woman in the West, certainly not in any cruel and unusual fashion, for lawfully exercising her freedom of choice.

The analysis is complete, begging a conclusion. The conclusion is a statement of value, i.e. which idea was best, that of the radical Islamists, or that of the general approach in the west? Even if the analysis is objective, and the facts that are arrived at documented, how can a value statement be anything except subjective?

Because of the implementation of the radical Islamic ideas in places like ISIS-held territory, women as a class of human beings are being harmed. Their health, well-being, and natural freedom is put at severe risk. Nobody is harmed by the implementation of the Western ideas that encompass women as free to choose and be equal before the law, able to conduct their own affairs.

[21] So, given that origin, the labeling of critics of the radical Islamists as “Islamophobes” is not a criticism of objective analysis that should be accorded any legitimacy.

The harm being done to women by the radical Islamists is unethical. The issue thus becomes whether those of us who can step outside our subjective boxes of culture to understand the nature of the harm can see the path to do something effective about putting a stop to it.

End Notes

[1] I saw it on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. A recent article covers the event well: Nina Lassam. “The Brutal Murder that Started 9-1-1,” The Lineup, March 2, 2015. Accessed 8-26-2017 at https://the-line-up.com/brutal-murder-started-911/

[4] Cassinelli wrote a book that incorporated the material in his course: Total Revolution (Santa Barbara: Clio Books, 1976).

[5] Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this when he made these remarks in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech given in Washington, DC on August 28, 1963: “I have a dream that my four little chi1dren will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” See https://www.archives.gov/files/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf

[6] For an incisive history of the Lysenko case, read Zhores A. Medvedev. The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969)

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/333908-the-science-is-settled-until-its-not . See also a full compendium of emails that exposed how a group of elite climatologists manipulated data to influence the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): Steven Mosher and Thomas W. Fuller. Climategate: The Crutape Letters. (2010). Mark Morano, ‘Talking Points’ Report—A-Z Debunking of Climate Claims, (Washington, DC: CFact, 2017), accessed October 5, 2017, http://www.cfact.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Climate-Talking-Points.pdf. President Obama made his “settled” comments in his January 2014 State of the Union Address: Robbie Gonzalez. “Obama: “The debate [over climate change] is settled.” Io9 We Come from the Future. January 29, 2014. Accessed August 28, 2017. http://io9.gizmodo.com/obama-the-debate-over-climate-change-is-settled-1511451300

http://time.com/2806697/obama-epa-coal-carbon/.

[10] John Lennon, Paul McCartney. “It’s Getting Better All the Time.” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. (1967 Beatles record album)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno

[12] J. L. Heilbron, Galileo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). See especially pp. 358-365 of the chapter “End Games” in which the author recounts Galileo’s victory.

[13] U.S. Department of Justice. Department of Justice Report Regarding the Criminal Investigation into the Shooting Death of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer, Darren Wilson. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 2015. Accessed August 29, 2017. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/doj_report_on_shooting_of_michael_brown_1.pdf, p. 5

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/03/19/hands-up-dont-shoot-did-not-happen-in-ferguson/?utm_term=.346ce61eb667.

http://www.roadsafetyobservatory.com/HowEffective/vehicles/seat-belts

[16] See, for example, Raheem Kassam. No Go Zones. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2017, p.94. See also Ayan Hirsi Ali. Infidel. New York: Free Press, 2007, pp. 109-110.

[17] See Ali, p. 127, where she recounts her brother’s admonishment of her for rejecting a marriage proposal: “Certain decisions, he informed me, were better made by the men of the family.” See also Economic and Social Council, Situation of women and girls in Afghanistan, (Commission on the Status of Women Forty-fourth session 28 February-2 March 2000: United Nations, 2000), http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/l4.htm

https://www.law.georgetown.edu/rossrights/docs/reports/taliban.pdf p. 8.

[19] Physicians for Human Rights, p. 9.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/5-ways-isis-terrorises-women-a6895581.html

http://www.signandsight.com/features/2123.html

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