An Ancient Take On A Modern Question: Morality In Our Changing World

From Tikkun:





An Ancient Take on a Modern Question: Morality in Our Changing Worldby: Michael Hogue on September 23rd, 2010



Consider the story of the ancient Greek philosopher Cratylus, who was influenced by the philosophical vision of Heraclitus. Though the name Heraclitus may be unfamiliar, his dictum that “you can’t step into the same river twice” is probably very familiar. Heraclitus was one of the original philosophers of process and flux – everything is dynamic, whatever is, is in motion.



Cratylus was deeply influenced by this idea and followed it to what he deemed to be some of its logical consequences: he argued that not only can one not step into the same river twice, but one can’t step into the same river once.





For Cratylus, if everything is in constant motion, then nothing very precise can be said or claimed about anything. Once a claim is made about some thing, the thing about which we are making that claim has already changed. The flux of the nature of things, according to Cratylus, always destabilizes our claims to certain knowledge about them.



In other words, for Cratylus, flux makes knowledge impossible (at least the kind that aspires to certainty). The changing nature of things continuously subverts our claims to knowledge. In light of this, Cratylus entirely gave up speaking and resorted to merely pointing.



Though change is one of the only constants in our world, pointing at it just won’t do. For Cratylus, the constancy of change presented problems for reason and language. Those are important concerns, no doubt. But what I’m concerned with, and what I was “pointing” toward [with words] in the previous post, has more to do with a moral problem. Though concern with change is ancient, its moral character is peculiarly complex in our time.



Change is not new. What’s new is the velocity of change. Moral concern with change is not new. What’s new is the scale and urgency of our moral concerns amidst the increasing pace of change. The questions of moral responsibility (what is right?) and moral value (what is good?) in a changing world are not new. What’s new is that these questions are complicated by both the velocity of change (in all aspects of nature and culture) and the scale and urgency of moral problems in our world.



On the velocity of change, consider our technological transitions from oral to literate cultures, from literate to digital, from digital to…we know not what – virtual telepathy? (whatever that would be). The velocity of change from one communication age to the next is increasing and the span between them is shrinking.



Consider another example: the planetary climate system. The climate system is and has always been a dynamic, changing system. But the rate/pace/velocity of change since the industrial revolution is out of sync with historic natural fluctuations. This increasing pace of change is at the heart of the case for anthropogenic climate change.



On the increasing scale and urgency of our moral challenges, consider our broader ecological crisis. The Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas argued that never before in the history of humanity has the whole of the biosphere been an object of moral concern. The moral scale of biospheric demise exceeds the scale of all previous moral challenges. So too does its urgency.



The problem is that the increasing velocity of change in our world, and the scale and intensification of our moral problems may be out-pacing (velocity) and out-spacing (scale) and out-deepening (intensity) our existing moral visions.



Until recently, the range and impact of human alterations of the world were relatively limited. Further, the scope and concerns of traditional moral systems have been calibrated to the relatively short reach of human power. But if the range of human power is dilating and the impact of human power is intensifying then our moral systems may need recalibrating.



Are we up to it? Are our moral and religious traditions capable of the radical changes called for by our contemporary challenges? If we’re up for it, how will we go about it? Might there already be changes underway in our moral and religious communities that can generate the kind of collaborations our new challenges demand? Religious and moral revolutions are not about tweaking things; they are not simply about adjusting principles and norms or reinterpreting symbols and rituals. They emerge through deeper change – change in the deeper infrastructure of religious consciousness and moral practice: changing the world depends on changing lives (minds, hearts and hands).



“Changing lives to change the world” is what I take to be the contemporary challenge of progressive religion. At Meadville Lombard Theological School, where I teach, this is our pivotal concern. On first glance, it may not sound like an especially profound idea, but it is. It’s a radical commitment stitched together by a number of implicit theological threads.



Being committed to “changing lives to change the world” implies something about the nature and tasks of human becoming (theological anthropology): we and our world are not usually or often the way we should be; we need to change our lives to change the world into what we hope for ourselves and our world to become.



There is also an implicit theological claim about the nature and tasks of religious community (ecclesiology): the church (in my tradition) exists as a gathered assembly called together and called out to represent, imagine, and embody (imperfectly) what we and the world hope to become. Our religious communities and institutions are some of the most powerful channels for “changing lives to change the world”.



Of course not all change is morally constructive, and religious communities have an ambiguous moral history. But our religious communities and institutions, for good and for ill, are the world’s most powerful transformers of cultural imagination and moral practice. “Changing lives to change the world” is a social commitment, deeply linking personal transformation and social change as reciprocal imperatives.



Along with these commitments, there is also an implicit theological view of the nature and tasks of human culture and history (eschatology): though “the arc of the universe may be long, it bends toward justice” (King, paraphrasing Theodore Parker). This is a faith commitment more than an empirical claim. And as a faith commitment, it’s also a call to action, for the arc doesn’t bend of its own accord. History and the future are open. Justice is co-created through the joining of deep neighbor-love with delight in the holy.



“Changing lives to change the world” is a hard gospel. But in the face of the constancy of change, amidst the swirl and flux of existence, if we care to repair the world, we must not resign merely to pointing.