Dualism and Theories of Ethics

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The history of the 20th century provides the ethical theorist with examples of extreme distress. If he is willing to keep an open mind and not make his conclusions conform to his expectations, he will see that the effects of goodness and badness do not validate traditional theories.

It is always the case that low-intensity problems can admit of a multitude of explanations, since the boundaries of such problems are not usually clear and their root causes are difficult to detect. The factors of these problems cannot be easily separated. In this situation the moral theorist uses his imagination and his prejudices to provide explanations that seem plausible. Different theorists give different answers to the same problems, and there appears to be no clear criteria to judge who is correct and who is not.

But experiences of horror and nightmare define boundaries quite explicitly, enabling their real causes to be understood much better. The more intense the horror, the fewer the reasons there are that can explain it. This means that low-intensity problems can generate many ethical theories as a response to them. These theories give reasonable guidelines and explanations. But problems of extreme intensity show up the limitations of these theories ; their explanations and exhortations cease to have current relevance. Ethical theory fails and becomes marginalised.

Consider the concepts of duty and loyalty. These are time-honoured concepts within ethics ; duty, especially, has always been one of the most highly-recommended attributes of a moral upbringing. But does duty always uphold righteousness?  Is it always good?

I pass from the limited mental horizons of the 18th century to the horrors of world war in modern times. Much of Hitler’s early success in war arose from the valour of the political wing of the army, the storm troopers. They did the unpleasant work which the regular army did not want to tackle directly: they engaged in battle situations where high casualty rates were expected as the cost of a fast victory. The storm troopers were very loyal to Hitler, with an intense sense of duty. However, they were also responsible for much of the atrocities committed against civilians. In this scenario, can duty and loyalty still be adhered to as desirable moral attributes?

The 18th century was the time when intellectuals were orientating on the idea that reason should have the central role in consciousness. Hence moral theories had to be centred on reason as the proper way to conduct life. Such ideas cannot handle the problems of modern high-stress societies. Ethical theory needs to be derived from the concept of mankind as a battlefield of conflict and desire, and not as a rational being. For most of mankind to orientate on reason is a prospect for the distant future.

Sources of Conflict

Human evolution requires the progressive unfolding of good traits of character, by developing new traits of goodness and by the transformation of existing bad traits into good ones. Each person develops some traits which reflect his sense of individuality, and some traits which reflect his sense of being socially-orientated. This way he develops his individual identity and his social identity, though usually either individuality or social-centredness is preferred, depending on what is happening in his life. So when a person experiences conflict, it is usually focused on either his individual identity or his social identity. Overall, it seems to be that the progressive unfolding of good traits of character usually requires the experience of severe distress.

What produces conflict and distress?  A major factor is the confused boundary between goodness and badness (or good and evil, if  I want to enhance their opposition). In my view goodness and badness link together, and hence it is very difficult to separate them. The boundary between them is purely relative (or relational ) to the culture of the individual or of society. Only in times of severe distress does the boundary become clearer. 

Militarism highlights another factor, the need to transform qualities of character. The soldier strives to eliminate weakness in himself: he tries to convert his failings into good traits of character. This is the transformation of bad into good (within the setting of his individualism or idealism). But if he is poorly led then he can create unnecessary suffering to opponents and to civilians. If he is taught that his opponents are less than human, then he may practise genocide against them. Now he converts his good traits into bad ones. Whence good aspirations turn into bad consequences. What is true of the soldier is true of other sectors of society as well (though not in so marked a form).

Another major factor is the process of abreaction: this links good to evil in a dialectical way. Something that is good may end by producing bad consequences; something that is bad may have some good effects. [¹]

So within a psychological perspective the relationship of goodness to badness has three main factors :

• The relationship is circular: goodness arises out of badness ; badness arises out of goodness. The object here is to transform character. Individual identity is emphasised.

• The boundary between good and evil in any particular society is relational (or relative) to that society (other societies will define that boundary in different ways). The object here is to develop character : as society evolves, so new opportunities unfold for each person. Social identity is emphasised.

• Goodness is linked dialectically to badness through the process of abreaction. The object here is to understand character and the existing limitations and failings of the person. [²]

One way of looking at this problem is that goodness and badness mix together in the subconscious mind and generate amorality as the base-line of conduct. Each person has to refine the goodness from the potpourri of amorality in the subconscious mind. And personal distress is the means of achieving this goal.

The philosophical analysis of good and evil is left to my website on philosophy, since it requires an understanding of relativity. The concept of relativity has not been completely understood by modern thinkers, so my view of it leads to original ideas on consciousness and on ethics (as well as a new view on particle dynamics within the atom). [³]

The psychological analysis of good and evil has not been possible within the Christian tradition because the devotee is not prepared to critically analyse his beliefs. This is the paramount deficiency of all religions. Faith is necessary to mankind’s evolution. However, faith is also a convenient cloak for confusion and self-deception. [4]. Such failings are an obstacle to spiritual growth. To understand the limitations of faith we need to view religion from a perspective that is separate from the influences of faith.

Another perspective on reality is required, one that is completely independent of religion.

Therefore a dualistic framework is needed in order to develop the understanding of reality. In such a framework, the religious perspective and the other perspective can mutually criticise each other to the benefit of both. What is this other perspective ?
I need to digress for a while.

Two Monisms

In the years following the mission of Jesus, the Middle East was a melting pot of religious ideas and religious feeling. In particular, gnosticism (viewed as theory) was adding itself to Christianity (viewed as practice). This potential amalgam was stopped by the Roman emperor Constantine, who was responsible for turning Christianity into an orthodoxy that had some degree of political power. The flux of religious enthusiasm suffered and declined in consequence.

Compare this scenario to that of early Buddhism. The orthodox form of it, Hinayana (which evolved into Theravada), dismissed the rising Mahayana form of Buddhism as a heresy. However, because the Hinayana had no political power it could not stop the Mahayana. So Buddhism became enriched with the formulations of theory that the Mahayana developed, those of Madhyamika and Yogachara thought. Yogachara theory is the concept that the world is purely a mental phenomenon – so a form of philosophical idealism arose in the east a thousand years before the time of Rene Descartes and George Berkeley. [5]

The New Testament in the bible is the Christian analogue to the Hinayana. The gnostic texts would quite likely have provided the basis of a Christian version of Madhyamika and Yogachara if Constantine had not given political power to an ‘orthodox’ sect of Christianity, thereby enabling that sect to eliminate its rivals by persecution and crucifixion (and thus become the Catholic Church).
This pattern re-emerged in a secular form in the early twentieth century, with communist groups being more intent on eliminating their socialist rivals than in furthering socialism.

Looking at this pattern of rivalry I see that, for many believers (whether religious or secular), it is of paramount importance to establish a universal belief : this is a monism of belief. This monism then becomes their way to express their desire for power by preventing the adherence to alternative views. So although the devotee is insistent on the need for faith, actually it is not faith that he primarily wants but power.

For a person who has genuine faith a monism of belief is unimportant ; therefore he can be tolerant of other religions, of other ways of expressing spirituality. What is important is to have a universal basis of faith: this is a monism of faith. So long as a person has faith it is of secondary importance what belief he uses as the vehicle for that faith.

It is faith that gives rise to the desire to practise the benevolent aspects of his belief.
It is the desire for power that generates views that condemn non-believers.

I accept that spirituality is ultimately a monism of some kind, but views of monism that are made by humans are not necessarily true. As a society evolves and faces new situations and creates new needs and opportunities, its major beliefs tend to become out-of-date ; so periodically these beliefs need to be updated. This happens even to a monism of belief. What happens when a monism of belief has become inadequate in its conceptualisation of spiritual reality and reflects only the past psychological needs of the believers ?  If it is not updated, then what happens is that sooner or later it falls apart.

Two Paths of Spirituality

The mystic prefers the world of Being, a world of unchanging spirituality. However, this world takes its definition by its opposition to the world of flux, the world of Becoming. Being and Becoming form a binary partnership. As such, neither can be the ultimate form of reality. Neither of them can be a monism. In fact they form a dualism. This dualism means that all conceptions of reality have to be binary in their nature (perhaps this is why the brain is split into two different hemispheres).

Therefore there has to be two major paths of spiritual development, a separate path for each separate reality. A situation where just one path, one tradition is dominant is an unbalanced situation. Traditionally only one path has been recognised, that of religion. But when religions fight each other, on what basis can the conflict be judged?  It is repressive of human needs for any religion to try to be totally dominant against all rivals. More than one conception of spiritual reality is required. [6]

A single tradition cannot see its own faults.

The first mature religion that arose in India was Samkhya. It tried to be all-embracing, but eventually failed. In my view this was inevitable. Where a religion is monolithic it must eventually split into two, if there are no alternatives to it. Hence the failings of Samkhya had to give rise to Buddhism and Vedanta. Hence Christianity had to split into Protestantism and Catholicism. But this split is simply a compromise. Neither of the derivatives is a genuine alternative to the other one since they are both embedded in the ascetic tradition, in the religious world view.

My feelings towards the spiritual life are ambiguous. Asceticism has always been natural to me, yet the concept of ego-denial seems self-contradictory to me. Meditation both attracts and repels me. Peace is a desirable quality of character, yet the passivity of the saint seems an aberration to me. I prefer freedom to perfection. I prefer to follow the path that is binary to religion.

What is the true binary opposition to the religious tradition?  What is the true binary path to asceticism?  For me it is the path portrayed by king Arthur and Camelot. Of Galahad and Garibaldi. And Lawrence of Arabia. With Robin Hood!  And Arjuna (in the Bhagavad Gita). It is the ideals of chivalry. It is the path of the noble warrior. It is the life of the shaman, the warrior healer.

It is the life of adventure!

The saint represses his feelings of destructiveness (caused by infancy trauma and the process of reincarnation). The warrior sublimates his feelings of destructiveness. [7]. The path of the saint is a slow path, because of the tremendous difficulty involved in achieving the repression of his internal violence (by which I mean the violence within his mind) ; but it is a sure path. The path of the warrior is much faster, but it is more dangerous. Failure to adequately sublimate internal violence leads to the channelling of that violence into society. There have been many saints but few noble warriors. 

In both traditions it is all a question of trying to master oneself, rather than mastering the world or one’s opponents.

In both traditions it is all a question of being able to handle power in a way that does not corrupt the person, as Solon demonstrated in ancient Greece. Solon was given total power for a year in order to achieve a political task – when the task was completed, he handed power back to the Athenian citizens and went on his way.

Problems of the Adventurous Life

I have separated the two paths for the purpose of analysis ; in reality they are often mixed together. The problems experienced in the pursuit of either path are magnified by the process of abreaction.

On the religious path, evangelical success and conversion produce catharsis. [8]. Then in the resentment phase of abreaction that follows the catharsis the followers turn to condemnations of opponents and heretics and will often support persecutions against them. During the bitterness phase of abreaction, sections of the community (such as the peasantry) who have not supported the crusading zealots will often be made the target of apparently mindless violence, in acts of ideological revenge. This is a familiar theme in history.

The problems experienced on the warrior path are not always so dramatic as religious crusades but they are often more powerful in their effects on progress. I give an example from a period of the Graeco-Persian wars of antiquity.

In 480 BC the Persian emperor Xerxes invaded Greece. His naval fleet was defeated by the Athenian navy at Salamis, thus forcing him to withdraw most of his army back to Asia Minor. The following year his army that was left in Greece was defeated at the battle of Plataea. The Persian threat was now eliminated.

To achieve this victory, most of the Greek city states had temporarily united together in a confederacy. Athens had contributed more than any other state to the economic cost of victory, mainly by building up a large navy. But the Athenian countryside had been devastated by the Persians. The heroism of Athens’ sacrifice ensured the triumph of her political regime, which was a democratic one. Democracy spread through most of the other city states as politicians emulated the Athenian model. Yet within a few decades this concord had turned sour, through the process of abreaction.

The cost of maintaining the Athenian navy in peacetime was put by Athens onto her neighbouring states, and this cost gradually became oppressive and onerous to these states. Athens made this ‘tribute’ subsidise her own economic development. Athens relations with her neighbours gradually and progressively changed for the worse, even during the era of Pericles (one of the best of Athenian statesmen). As political resentment grew, Athens ended by turning most of her neighbouring city states into her own empire. Eventually the discord between Athens and Sparta led to the defeat of Athens in the war between them that began in 432 BC.

This half century, 479 - 432 BC, was a golden age for the arts of Greece. Yet it saw political concord give way to suspicion and resentment. The catharsis of military victory led both to a time of cultural efflorescence and to the generation of resentment between political friends and the subjection of many of the allies into an Athenian empire. Democracy turned into a dictatorship.

The virtue of studying the history of ancient Greece is that the city states were small enough to make the processes of abreaction more visible then they are in modern times.

I summarise the effects of abreaction on the warrior path. Battle success breeds catharsis amongst the victors. Then in the resentment phase the victors squabble among themselves. The victory alliance soon falls apart. The successful politician sooner or later begins to domineer and persecute his erstwhile allies.

The struggles of modern international political conferences usually reflect obvious quarrels over power ; but below this level are often conflicts between abreactional consequences and the idealism for a new future.

Purpose

The religious way of life and the life of adventure have an almost universal appeal to people, no matter what their social situation or their culture. How can we account for this attraction?  The answer depends on the thinker’s view of how and why these ways of life originated. I give my perspective on this issue.

No doubt primitive religion began as animism – early man interacted with spirits, which he either saw in his dreams or with clairvoyant sight (in those times, the faculty of sight was different from what it is now: it still had vestiges of astral sensitivity, which it has now lost). As man interacted with spirits he became accustomed to power, and thereby accustomed to deriving his happiness from that power. So the connection between power and happiness, based on the loop of projection and introjection, became firmly established. [9]. Anyone in the position of leader functioned principally around the roles of magician or shaman ; these roles had more power, which could be used in ways of indirectly controlling the world.

So long as early man had an undeveloped intellect, his evolution centred on power, not on morality. The morality that he espoused was motivated by fear (of the gods), and such a morality fades when the fear fades ; but the attraction of power remains.

As man’s mind turned away from spirits to the fascination with materialism, so power became centred on controlling the physical world directly. This required group activity.  Now anyone in the position of leader exercised power over his fellow men. So the subconscious mind was created. The dialectical nature of the subconscious mind meant that everyone became prone to repetitive periods of sorrow, even ‘divine’ warrior kings. Such sorrow often seemed to have no meaning, no relevance to a person’s life. Sorrow appeared to be a gratuitous feature of a human life.

Out of this situation, advanced teachers created systems of thought that produced the beginnings of more mature religions, religions that gave ideological reasons for the sorrows and did not depend on the capriciousness of the spirits.

Religion has many purposes, some of which are :

Moral conditioning of oneself and of others.
Power (which is used to achieve the moral conditioning of others).
A sense of identity.
A way of caring.
A source of inspiration and hope.

However, these functions are of secondary importance. To explain the primary function of religion we need to understand in what ways god helps the person who seeks spiritual support. I give my perspective on this. A person will usually be practising a particular line of development, for example: meditation and contemplation, duty, caring, development of psychic abilities, healing. When a person is under stress and seeks help, god gives help only for the purpose of strengthening that person’s line of development.

For example: if a person practices duty, then when he is under great stress so god helps him to carry on his duty until the problem is resolved : duty becomes the way to survive stress.

In my understanding, god does not give emotional support to a person. The giving of emotional support is one of the functions of astral guides (these are a person's helpers who are residing in heaven), but usually this support is not enough. A person’s emotional problems are part of his karma, so he is responsible for finding a solution to them (this predicament is a major means for producing character development). To handle this situation two outlooks on life were created in order to provide the needed emotional support:

• the warrior ethos developed into chivalry and the noble life, and the sense of camaraderie between warrior equals.

• the creation of more mature religions.

Both these outlooks gave meaning to sorrow. Hence the primary purpose of a major religion is to provide a social support system within a particular moral ideology. The ideology explains sorrow and enables the person to meet fellow believers wherever he may travel in his section of the world ; sorrow is eased by receiving community support from fellow sufferers.

The primary purpose of a major religion is not to give meaning to life, but to give meaning to sorrow.

God furthers a person’s line of evolution, but god does not interfere with the person’s karma. So the noble life and the religious life are the consolations created by man in order to survive the precariousness of a human existence. [10] 

The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it. The addresses of my other websites are on the Links page.

[¹]. My analysis of the process of abreaction is given briefly in the article Emotion and Abreaction. For a full analysis, see the articles on Abreaction on my websites  The Strange World of Emotion and Discover Your Mind.
The dialectical nature of abreaction is explained in the article Dialectics and Human Evolution on my website Discover Your Mind. [1]

[²]. In this article I am analysing the psychological aspects of ethical theory. The philosophical analysis of these three factors is explained in the article Personal Evolution on my websites A Modern Thinker and The Strange World of Emotion. [2]

[³]. My website on general philosophy is A Modern Thinker. [3]

[4]. There is an analysis of  Faith on my websites  The Strange World of Emotion and Discover Your Mind.
Also, see the article Confusion on my website Discover Your Mind.
There is a section on self-deception in the article Characteristics of a Psycho-Analysis, on my website The Subconscious Mind. [4]

[5]. Philosophical idealism is described in the section Mind, on my website A Modern Thinker. [5]

[6]. Religion inhibits the development of self-awareness. This is a primary defect. See the article Sexuality and Ethics. [6]

[7]. Infancy trauma is my name for psychological trauma that occurs in the first years of childhood. On my website Discover Your Mind, an article on Bonding focuses on some problems of a sensitive child and explains an unintentional source of infancy trauma. See also the article Creating the Ego.
In more detail, infancy trauma is explained in an article Infancy Trauma on my website The Subconscious Mind. 

There is an article on Destructiveness on my website Patterns of Confusion.  [7]

[8]. Catharsis is the first stage in the abreaction of guilt. See the article Emotion and Abreaction. [8]

[9]. I have an article on Power on my website Discover Your Mind. [9]

[10]. In modern times, the attempt to give meaning to life (rather than to sorrow) has been an aim of existentialist writers. See article Existentialism and Human Evolution. [10] 

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