Op-Ed: Good and Evil are Measurable in Politics

Ethics is a technology.  Good and evil are measurable in politics.

 

In our era of exponential tech growth, metamorphoses emerge to alter the globe.  In my sixty years, this has happened at least several times.  The acceleration not only jars us, but unifies and magnifies social movements.  Humans have conceived a conflict of good and evil since ancient days, and so maybe my repetition of the theme is prosaic; and yet we have nuclear weapons, genetic engineering, and a wired wink-fast oneness of interconnectivity, susceptible to hacking and, just as important, a highly targeted marketing strategy or ‘psy ops,’ which exploits fear in the human brain.  If this weren’t enough, the threat of AI overreach looms over it all like umbrella.  Perhaps we can define good or evil more clearly than ever before, simply by considering our impact and effects:  whether we devastate and destroy or instead advance and dignify humanity and our planet.

 

More than ever, our future is ours to craft.  It  comes down to how we manage our godlike abilities.  A good management style, one that brings good effects, is adaptive, rational, science- and psychology-inclusive, and centers on flourishing of both human and environment.  Given our rising tech powers and related knowledge of brain and ecosystem, the result could be a relative utopia, a world where humans live in relative security and edification. 

 

An evil management style fosters effects much like what we are seeing now:  wanton disruption of global pillars of environmental stability, such as weather patterns and ocean currents, as well as toxicity, both physical and mental, and wanton potential for extinction of species, including our own.  Such effects are brought about by a management style that is irrational and nonadaptive; a style that is myopic and disordered, driven by insecure ego; one that fosters ‘lemming effects’ whipped along by obsessive fear and greed. 

 

I have taught and studied ethics for decades.  If I had to crystallize what I’ve learned into a single phrase, it would be:  ‘ethics is a technology.’  As a set of ideological tools for managing human well-being and the world, ethics can evolve and advance.  Good effects increase as we rely on science, humanities and critical thinking, as opposed to fixated preconception.  Humans rights are a reasonable elaboration on the venerable Golden Rule.  And our understanding of human rights has evolved and improved in the last few hundred years.

 

The bottom line is that we need to advance our ethics tech in order to keep up with our weapons, AI, genetic, and other tech.  Otherwise we are like children wielding planet-sized machine guns.  Right now, there are two main options for governmental management on the geopolitical stage.  Democracy and fascism.  Fascism, as Madeline Albright described, is a way to gain and maintain power through a charismatic, demagogic dictator.  In terms of ethics tech, it is primitive and pathetic.  The reason is that such dictators fit a pattern of malignant narcissism.  They lack a conscience, are reckless, ‘always right’, thrasymachian, and generally irrational and nonadaptive - traits that fit the evil management style described above.

 

Democracy, flawed though it is, is our only path to advance our ethics tech.  And, yes, it is possible.  In fact, we have already advanced greatly since the time of ‘the divine right of kings.’  Women can vote in the USA.  This is an enormous change across the entire history of civilization.  Our collective consciousness, over recent generations, has enshrined and advanced reason-based standards, while challenging prejudice.  The progress of science and ethics go hand-in-hand.  The Human Genome Project supports the fundamental ideal of equality.

 

If we don’t advance our ethics tech, we will likely perish as a civilization.  Our increasing ability to shape the world, our minds, and our genes needs virtuous direction.  Soon after WWII, Omar Bradley said, “The world has achieved brilliance without conscience … We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.” Short-sightedness will destroy us.  Everything beautiful about life is in our hands to either nurture or desecrate.  This is a critical juncture.  It is time that we began to learn more about peace and living than we know about killing and dominating through fear and force.

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I would like to write a book someday on how ethics, as a meta-religious force based in a consonance of reason and spirituality, can approach an ideal of 'the Good'.   However, that is likely to be quite a while from now, as I am working on a second novel.  It may never happen.  But the core ideas are in this essay and others I've written on this blog.