reason

The Disappearance of Deference: The Importance of Virtue

by C. P. Lawrence

The Disappearance of Deference: The Importance of Virtue

If you tackled that last post … thank you so much. The writing of that post was a bit cathartic for me, but it did bring me finally to the topic of virtue, which will close this series on deference. Virtue, according to Aristotle, is the disposition to choose the mean relative to oneself in accord with the right principle for the situation. Let me explain what Aristotle means by his idea of the mean. The mean is the middle or the moderate, and it is where I believe truth lives. Polar extremes are where we love to reside because they are quick, clear, and precise. They, however, are not home to truth. The mean emphasizes moderation which is how we are to live. For example, too much water in a short period of time can kill you; too little water over a longer period can kill you. The right amount of water throughout your life will keep you healthy. You will find that this axiom works in most of life. This mean or middle should be the position of a virtuous person. It should be the position of a wise person. We should understand that polarized positions rarely produce wise decisions, but this seems to be one of those lessons we never learn. I think it has something to do with our nature.      

Virtue, according to Aristotle, is a hexis, a state, a stable disposition, or habit of right actions at right times in right ways according to the right principles. It is doing the right thing for the situation or the moment at the expense of self. Here is the complicated part; these right actions that we choose, to be virtuous, they must also be our own choices. They cannot always be choices that come at the expense of ourselves. Aristotle’s point is that we, as people, will struggle to constantly make choices at our own expense; as a matter of human nature, we will not be able to make such choices consistently. However, if we are virtuous people in pursuit of virtue, the virtuous choices that we make will also be our personal choices because of the virtue that is part of who we are. This is why I think Aristotle found virtue so valuable. These right choices that we make are chosen because they embody a mean between desire and reason, which would make the choice, even if chosen for selfish purposes, virtuous, due to our pursuit of virtue. Again, a choice would only be virtuous if the person making the choice was pursuing virtue. We are not just virtuous; it is not a class we take or a characteristic we choose to have. Virtue is a daily pursuit that will come at the expense of self, but that daily pursuit will make us into someone who can and will choose virtue consistently.  

In a virtuous person, reason will be moral and govern desire, which was necessary to live a good life. Aristotle believed that a virtuous action involved the right balance of reason and desire. It was the coming together of the two, and their proper balance that was important, but it required a daily consistent intentional pursuit of virtue. Why was the pursuit important? If we do not pursue virtue, then we will pursue ourselves in some way. As I have referenced earlier, the wider the gap between reason and desire the more selfish and malicious we are, which will strengthen our addiction to ourselves, and that will be who we pursue. The gap is the key. This is why I believe Aristotle advocated a practical form of reasoning. 

The standard for a courageous act was not a general understanding of the act itself, those involved in the act, or even one’s feelings and perceptions of the act or the situation, but, instead, it was a personal standard based upon a principle rooted in the willingness to act against one’s better judgement for the good of others. This act often came at the expense of self, which would become a more difficult decision each time unless one was in daily pursuit of virtue. This was and is why virtue is important, but it is not a stagnate thought or an essential characteristic. It is a fluid and active posture, a mindset and a morality that must be pursued each day. 

We will not live this way if we are selfish, or if we are ruled only by desire. We will only live this way if we are virtuous, which is having the right balance of reason and desire. Our virtuous actions will be those needed for the time and the situation only if we have developed a habit of pursuing virtue daily. We will make the right choice if we have the right balance of reason and desire which will manifest as practical thinking rooted in virtue, which will produce the right action. How do we end up making more virtuous decisions than not? Well, we must possess a belief that an action for the good of others is ultimately also an action for the good of ourselves, and that is a thought only found in virtuous people. Deference for others is one indication of the presence of virtue. 

What do we see today in culture? Do we see deference for others, especially those who are different than we are? Do we see deference in our leaders, in our celebrities or professional athletes? What about truth and honesty in our leadership? What about our news media or our colleges and schools? We should not be surprised at any of what we see for one reason … virtue. Where is the next generation being taught virtue? Where are they being asked to be virtuous? Today, virtue is hardly referenced anymore. It is seen as weakness. We live in a pragmatic secular world that has lulled us to sleep with the many choices we think we have, but the harsh reality is that each choice that we make for convenience or for self is actually a choice that takes us farther away from virtue.    

Has deference left us for good? I am not sure, but I do know that the gap between reason and desire is growing, making us more selfish, more egocentric, and much more needy. If the gap continues to widen, then we can expect more of the same. Right is wrong; everyone is a victim, and no one takes responsibility for anything anymore. There will no longer any shame, and if we are no longer ashamed of anything, then there will be little difference between right and wrong. It is also an indication that reason is dying, and desire is replacing it. If we reason by desire alone, then we are back to power, and we know, all too well, that those with the most power decide our morality and our truth. If that is where we are, then the battles will be fierce because everything is on the line. What will reduce these battles? It depends on when we wake up to the importance of each other. Could it be that deference becomes important to us again? Maybe, but it will not start without a spark and that spark starts with you and me. To change the world, we must begin with ourselves, and maybe a good starting point is with deference for others.  

Thanks for suffering through this series with me. I hope you could tell from my posts, that I learned much from this series. I am so thankful you weathered the storm with me. Thank you for your perseverance of my writing and my thinking. Blessings to all of you! Until next time …  

The Disappearance of Deference: The Changing Nature of Reason

by C. P. Lawrence

Part III: Reason

In my last post, I submitted a thesis regarding who we have become as human beings. We are egocentric; we live in communities of sameness and deference is slipping away from who we are. Has reason also changed? To find that answer we need to go back to Aristotle and start with his thoughts on reason. 

Aristotle claimed that abstract forms of reasoning—and most reasoning begins in abstract form—are impossible without imagery; imagery used in reasoning tends to be concrete and come from community. Aristotle suggested that this “imagery” presented a “particular” that the thinker used as an example to measure a thought; he called this imagery a universal (a standard) used to adjust and correct one’s thoughts. One way to think about these particulars or universals would be as if they are akin to Plato’s perfect “forms.” The particular or the form was thought to be the center of cognition, especially when we think about moral ideas. It was a baseline of sorts on which to measure our initial thoughts and perceptions, but, according to Aristotle, these standards do not come from within us; instead, they come from outside of us, from community and the morality and differences found there. It is community that is part of the development of practical thinking and of reason, and, for me, deference is the gate that allows for that development.

But if all ideas are a priori, as many assert today, then reason would also be a priori, which makes little sense if we consider Aristotle’s ideas on reason as accurate. If reason is a priori, it would mean that these particulars, or forms, would no longer function as universal standards because we would no longer interact with community in the ways of the past, which would reduce their impact on us. Our interactions would be primarily with communities of sameness, which would no longer provide moral baselines. Instead, we would seek these communities for confirmation and encouragement, especially if the only communities we engage are those who share our same ideology. In such situations, we would no longer reason; instead, our thinking would be an extension of our own ideology and come in isolated chunks or pieces extending from our own thoughts and in support of our own thoughts. We would not rationalize or even contemplate; we would simply act or not. Everything would be personal to us because every thought would place us at the center. Every thought counter to ours would be perceived as hostile and threating because, in essence, they would be. 

Change, correction and accountability would be our enemy, which means we would keep repeating the same mistakes and never grow or mature. There would be no such thing as a general good because we would have no concern or need for such a good; our only concern would be for our own good. Every thought and action would extend out from us and be rooted in who we are. We would be offended more than encouraged; everything would be personal, and gossip and rumor would serve as a means of confirmation and promotion of our own ideas and thoughts. Thinking this way would not produce any kind of truth or morality, but instead, produce irrationality, dysfunction, and chaos, leaving those who think this way always seeking power and offended if they do not find it. The idea of good would be mangled and reduced to plays of power; the ideas extending from these people would only have two purposes: accumulate power or reluctantly submit to those who have power. There would be no need for respect, deference, truth, or morality. There would be no learning and certainly no reasoning. There would only be divisions, insults, lies and everyone would be watching out only for themselves. Excellence would evaporate and any idea of morality would be considered weakness because every situation would be a play for power, which would be selfish and pragmatic, with morality considered a weakness. Any moral decision for sake of others would be crushed and used for the sake of self.   

With abstract thought, even in this situation, we would still first seek clarification and understanding about an idea before we moved it to action, which is still a form of learning and reasoning, but if we no longer interact or embrace any kind of difference, then, there would be no way for that difference to impact us. Our actions would be reduced to reactions in ways that either benefited us or submitted to the most powerful good at our own expense. Our actions would be reduced to only reactions, which would be purely pragmatic and practical. Any new situation would force either our reaction, which would be based upon an old situation, a power play, if we had power, or our submission to the most powerful idea, but there would be no practical thinking or reasoning as those elements necessary for both would no longer be part of who we are. In each new situation, our own personal good would be the goal. We would no care for others, the greater good or doing what is right.

The absence of practical thinking, according to Aristotle, is ultimately a failure to be moral when we should be moral, which is what separates human beings from all other beings. It would also be a failure to reason properly. Reasoning, practical thinking … both, for Aristotle, were moral in nature. Our tendency, according to Aristotle, is to be too easily swayed to be general in moral situations for selfish purposes, which is what is produced when we live in a world void of deference. Is this not what we see playing out before us in culture? In such a moral state, we would make the choice that is beneficial to us, regardless of its application or situation to others or the greater good. Deference, respect, and concern for others would be gone. The only issue that would matter to us would be our own well-being and this would come at the expense of the greater good and of others. 

The even more disturbing part is that the morally right decision would mean very little to us. We would see it as weak and lacking excellence; we would even present it as a poor decision when it was merely a decision against us. Our response would either be to submit to the decision or invoke our own power to sway the decision toward us. I would question whether we, in this moral state, would even recognize how morally upside-down or selfish our decision was, in part, due to who we had become as a human being. Would the general good be general or even considered good anymore? I am not sure. Would there be a right way to do things, or would that merely be a distant memory? 

Do you recognize any of this? It is the path that we are on. Politicians, entertainers, athletes … all with power and all looking out only for themselves at the expense of everyone else while lecturing the rest of us on what we should be doing. If truth is relative and merely a means to a personal end, then there is no moral basis on which to lecture anyone anymore. There is no good and evil. There is only self. What would be the first sign that our culture is on this wrong path? In my opinion, it would be the disappearance of deference.

This concludes this section, but there is another one the way. Until then … 

The Disappearance of Deference: Analyzing Cultural Divides

by C. P. Lawrence

Is Deference Gone for Good?

Part I: Akrasia

I think we can agree that we are a divided people. It may be one of the last issues on which we agree, but that does not make it any less true. As divided people, we tend to view those who hold different values and beliefs as the enemy; we offer them no respect, no friendship, and certainly no deference, which prompts my question: Is deference gone for good? Does its absence divide us or are we divided because of its absence? I should probably offer my understanding since the term is one that can now mean many things. 

Deference, for me, is a posture of respect for others and their judgements or opinions, especially those with whom we differ. It is a humility of self and a courteous regard for others. Deference extends beyond a concern for a person; it is also a concern for that person’s reputation and character. It is careful consideration of one’s own thoughts and opinions to avoid gossip, slander, and false accusations. I also see it as embracing difference in such a way as to respect it in both people and ideas. Today, difference divides, which may explain why deference is disappearing. This situation is unhealthy because we have now been given the means to isolate ourselves into our own homogenous groups of sameness. Now, we not only avoid difference—we attack it. I recently read an article on Aristotle’s views on reason that presented an interesting perspective on all this. This series of posts will explore this line of thinking. 

The author began the article with a statement … that Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics was generally about practical thinking. While I hold a slightly different view, this idea of practical thinking does speak to my concerns regarding deference. The author suggested that practical thinking, according to Aristotle, was something that “we, as human beings, use to impact others by way of our reason.” It was this statement that garnered my attention because it was a statement rife with implications regarding reason. If Aristotle was right, and I believe that he was, then he has something to say regarding both reason and deference. Let’s begin with Aristotle’s semantics associated with practical thinking. He thought that any kind of thinking that required the “conceptualization of one of more actions” was considered practical thinking due, in part, to the movement of a thought to a physical action. This, for him, was the natural progression of practical thinking, which makes a cleaner distinction between it and cognition. 

According to the author, to understand Aristotle’s views on practical thinking, it is best to begin with the term, “akrasia,” which, for him, was acting against one’s better judgment. Aristotle saw akrasia as “lacking self-mastery; it is often translated as “weakness of will” or “incontinence,” which is an action against one’s better judgment or in accord with one’s own desires at the expense of a right decision, which tends to represent the general good. Could we also say, in a secondary sense, that akrasia is a lack of deference as well? Maybe. According to Aristotle, the failure to act against one’s better judgment for the sake of good was a conflict between reason and desire and a lack of self-control. It is the action that is key. Aristotle saw thinking that produced a physical act as the manifestation of thoughts to actions governed by beliefs and values, making practical thinking moral in nature. It was one’s beliefs and values that often determined when a thought became an action. To act for the good of others or for the general good at the expense of self was, for Aristotle, an element of practical thinking, and, for me, foundational to deference, because the implication is that both practical thinking and deference are moral in some way. However, there are those who would say that the same could be said of evil acts. They, too, are thoughts manifesting as acts, but their moral make up is, instead, immoral in nature. The point being that practical thinking is practical when its thoughts manifest as actions, but it is the nature of those actions that determine its moral makeup, which is where I see it impacting deference.   

I see deference disappearing from our culture and there are many reasons why. After reading this article, I have become convinced that the loss of practical thinking that is moral in nature could be one of those reasons. I believe one major contributor to this loss is technology and its many forms. It now provides the means to promote self while also attacking difference, which is not deference, but it is practical thinking. I believe Aristotle would agree that technology does contribute to this idea of akrasia. Today, most accusations are based upon one’s own perceptions and feelings. While I acknowledge that perceptions and feelings matter more today than they did yesterday, they are still personal and limited, especially when applied beyond oneself and in communal ways. In the past, it would be at great personal risk to apply one’s personal insecurities broadly, and yet today, those expressions seem to be more the norm. Modrak, the author, referenced that a consistent failure to act according to one’s better judgment or for the general good would seem irrational and maybe even criminal. These acts, regardless of their composite, are still moral in nature even if their foundation is more immoral than moral.  Too many of us determine truth according to our own perceptions and feelings with no concern for others or their perceptions and feelings. We often act on these thoughts, and it is this action that makes our thinking practical, but action alone does not determine good or bad in regard to the morality of our actions.  

Determining morality today has less to do with right and wrong and more to do with personal perceptions and feelings. When we use our own perceptions and feelings to determine moral goodness, we are using them as presuppositions—those beliefs that are foundational and guide all our other beliefs—but they remain personal preferences in support only of ourselves. This is problematic. In most cases, they are in direct contrast to our better judgment and to the general good because they are rooted in who we are. The idea that practical thinking is merely the conceptualization of a thought into an action is skewed, and only partially the issue. This, too, is due, in part, to technology. When we use a preference as a presupposition, which we do in social media, when it is actually a preference, we will eventually perceive our preferences as presuppositional thoughts and ideas due to our constant use of them in presuppositional ways. Yet, their sole purpose will still be self-proliferation, which, is, at best, a lack of deference and, at worst, a form of madness.

Let me stop here and explain why I made this logical leap. Acting against one’s better judgement for good is considered moral, but acting for self against what is good used to be considered immoral or amoral, but today, those distinctions have become cloudy. If practical thinking rooted in an individual’s selfish preference now functions as a presupposition, it would be thinking akin to asserting one’s selfish desires as one’s moral foundation, with those selfish desires governing all other beliefs. In the past, we saw selfish actions as evil. It was the villain who was the one who wanted to take over the city for personal gain, but it was the hero who saved the day. Why? Well, it was the hero who acted for the greater good on behalf of the general population at great personal expense. Today, perceptions of actions like these are no longer cut and dry. There is no longer consensus as to their nature.  

According to our nature, our personal perceptions and feelings, as good as they may be, are self-centered and meant to be vetted in community to determine their communal validity before they ever manifest as practical thinking. However, with the onset of technology, more and more perceptions and feelings are finding their way online into like-minded platforms and in like-minded communities. They are no longer vetted in communities by difference, but instead, they are confirmed in online communities of like-minded perceptions and feelings. The dialectic process (thesis – antithesis – synthesis) has all but disappeared in culture, and it is quickly disappearing in academia as well. The vetting process, used in the past to confirm the true from the false, has been replaced with homogenous confirmation celebrations that promote a group’s specific thoughts and ideas as true and right because, in such groups, they are. This is from where the divide comes. Both sides celebrating their thoughts and ideas as true and right.

I see deference, common sense, empathy, and the like developed and refined, in the past, by way of community. Community was necessary because, as social beings, we are meant to live in community with other human beings who will almost certainly be different. We will respect some, dislike others, and befriend others, but we will socialize with everyone and learn and develop inside these percolators of differences found in communities. It is statistically impossible for all our thoughts to be right and true all the time. However, today, we have become isolated, but the isolation I reference is not just a physical one. It has extended into a moral and psychological one, manifesting in forms of moral absolutism or cognitive bias. Living in such moral isolation is living inside one’s own moral rightness in a community of others who share our moral rightness. It is a moral isolation that is reinforced daily through a homogenous community. In this community, individual goals of self-preservation and self-proliferation and those preferences are shared and masquerade as morality. 

In any situation of conflict, the morality of the community will be right because its communal moral focus will always be itself, which makes every decision rooted in the protection and promotion of self. Morality, in this sense, is a priori, innate, and always emanating from within. Living in such a state is living in a created moral reality that is circular, producing more and more of its own morality, which is a vortex of sorts that pulls its members deeper into itself. This is the nature of a cult, but on a more macro-level. It is a belief system in alignment with Kant’s view of morality. That it was rooted in purely rational thought but separate from sensory experience. This view, as we will come to understand, contradicts Aristotle’s views on practical thinking and my views on deference.

This is the context for our next discussion which will focus on the differences between thoughts and perceptions and reason and desire and their relationship with practical thinking and deference. Until then …