What makes people good?

National Review, Sept 9, 1991 by David Martin

We can't make people good,' but we can, as a society, create conditions that will help them to be better-or the reverse.

A LOT of people, probably most, would like most people to be good, or at least better. I assume this entirely from persistent hearsay, because although pollsters have asked people if they are happy, no pollster, at least to my knowledge, has asked:

Would you like mankind to be better?

Very much better? Perfect?

What would be your response to more goodness? Dismay? Modest approval? Passionate enthusiasm?

We lack this information mainly because calls for more evil and larger legions of unashamed malefactors are so infrequent. Nobody demands a more robust and invigorating tilt in favor of evil or feels it would be so much nicer if people were nastier. Presumably that is why, when George Bush called for a kinder, gentler country, no enterprising columnist nailed him for misjudging public sentiment. Everyone stays on board the coalition against sin.

That must mean there is the largest possible market for any proposal to make people good. Yet one observes with tremulous astonishment that the market is virtually empty. Clearly we have an insatiable, universal demand for a good, perhaps indeed for the good. And yet no proposal presents itself. I for one find it extremely difficult to imagine a TV advertisement for NATIONAL REVIEW that would intone, "Do you suffer from greed, malice, pride, concupiscence, and all uncharitableness? In yourself? In others? Read NATIONAL REVIEW for a modest proposal."

But why not? What is it about goodness that there are virtually no proposals for its augmentation? The answer lies in two false ideas. One is that virtue is a "natural good" snuffed out by any attempt at assiduous cultivation. For example, if investigation showed people would be better were they sufficiently frightened of what happened when they were bad, a policy based on that finding would only "damage the goods." They wouldn't be as good as when they just came naturally.

Where Are the Relativists?

THE OTHER false idea condemning virtue to founder unassisted is the supposed disagreement about what is good. People say we have entered an era of moral anarchy and warring moral preferences. Yet the evidence of sociology and common sense is quite the contrary. According to the International Values Survey, we are mostly agreed about good and bad. Setting aside the unabated practice of false witness etc., etc., the belief in goodness is well nigh uniform. People are, it seems, adamantly opposed to lying, stealing, cheating, coveting, killing, and dishonoring their parents. The same goes for the moral details. Just imagine responses to the following questions: Grinding the faces of the poor, the widowed, and the fatherless is reprehensible/admirable. Drinking and driving is irresponsible/responsible. Causing a little child to stumble is perverse/life-enhancing. Poking a sharp shard in another person's eye is revolting/entertaining.

Of course, there are dilemmas about how to reconcile acknowledged goods. Peace and justice for example. And selective indignation ensures that we exculpate some groups and excoriate others. But a consistent moral relativist is hard to find. People are unwilling to evaluate each and every way of life from imperialism to societies sanctioning female infanticide as part of the charming and morally indifferent variety of culture. You can't get very far with an argument based on alternative life-stances when it comes to infibulation. Indeed, in liberal company, where tolerance and moral relativism are supposed to be the order of the day, you are continually confronted by a noble rage about the delinquent condition of the world. Here is little else but moral passion for purity: pure jokes, pure speech, pure earth, sky, and sea, pure food and pure bodies, even undiluted equality.

What Good Does It Do?

IN THE other hand liberals do entertain certain notions which divert attention from "what makes people good" and even render suspect proposals for the encouragement of virtue. According to one notion, goodness is primarily inhibited by social structures, and will be naturally exhibited when these are reformed or overturned. Goodness, so to speak, is a dependent variable, and politically doesn't "do much good." Nowadays this half-truth may be on its way out, especially after the Eastern European regimes have so convincingly illustrated the state organization of lies and mistrust, and their people have had to look elsewhere, even to churches, for the independent generation of virtue. Vaclav Havel, after prolonged suffering under a regime of organized and principled lying, has even dared to espouse truthfulness as central to his political program. But the implications of this restoration of virtue for moral education in the West are slow to sink in. Besides, how exactly do you encourage truthfulness if it neither comes naturally nor is generated by the abolition of bourgeois society?

The other notion blocking proposals to help make people good is a secular version of Christianity. It takes off in a thoroughly amiable fashion from an attempt to reverse the balance of denunciation in favor of the victims of history and society. As a result you are not "saved" and justified" by a Victim, as in orthodox Christianity, but by being yourself a victim. Victimage opens up an unlimited credit line absolving you of all responsibility for the past and for the future. Indeed, in some versions this theology holds that the only responsible and guilty people are the rulers of the present American empire or the descendants of the British ex-empire. It follows that you can express a moral opinion only provided you first certify your status as a qualified victim or bow before all approved victims in silent humility.