moral

Moral legislation dwells not in geography; it is global; moral legislation cares not for individual hang-ups; its interest is the purity of the motives; moral legislation has no sexual leanings, no religious dogma, its concern is in what it is to be human through the legislation of the self. Even behind the inhuman Islamic veil a woman, though imprisoned in body on the societal plane, has the potential to be liberated in mind, just as the more gifted slaves in our nation’s history was capable of internal legislation.

A human to be human must confront the myriad variables of his immediate experience, the ambivalence of his past and the ambiguities of his future. To be human one must perform; to perform one must be in harmony with oneself and overlapping harmony with others; to be in harmony with others there must be a common ground of pure truth — ah, there's the rub.

Some are more fortunate than others — how this is, scientists pretty much agree that it is a microscopic phenomena of the genes rather than a macrocosmic apocalypse of gods extending human knowledge. Therefore, we must, however much it hurts, acknowledge the superiority of some—whether it be looks, talent, intelligence, health. Yet this tragic note underlies the theme of the human drama of what was, is and will be; for it is this very theme — this perplexing inequality — that drives humanity toward the nebula of meaning. If there were not this seemingly insurmountable challenge, life would come to a startling halt and once more enshroud itself in the grave of pre-existence, or in the stasis of the Garden, or at least immobilized in Nietzsche's barbaric state of acceptance — never arriving at conscious truth. However shameless the treatment of the native American, the Afro-American, the immigrant, the fairer sex, painful political amends have been made, but not morally upgraded to humankind. As long as pseudo classification exists, primitive alienation is ever present.

I am not here advocating that life to be meaningful must be expendable; nor am I saying as Melville that because “the chips of Creation have been carted away some billions of years ago” that there is no greener pasture for some other new creation that some Demiurge might be cooking up for some other time, some other place; that there is no other way to plot a play. It is however, the only play we have and it is badly in need of revision and because there does lurk superiority — streaks of brilliance that dart out of the dark sky to tease the myopic — we had better accommodate the poet, the philosopher, the artist; for they have been there, they are our seeing-eye friends.

But I am saying that life is meaningful because we are expendable: that all the great values of the human drama stem from conflict, crisis and climax, there are those who escape injury, there are those who are injured; there are those who rule, there are those who serve; there are those who ridicule, there are those who are ridiculed; there are those who are wise, there are those who are ignorant; there are those who are beautiful, there are those who are ugly; there are those who cure, there are those who are diseased; there are those who are free, there are those who are enslaved; there are those who give birth, there are those who dispose of the after-birth. On the moral plane, however, inequalities on the socio-political plane diminish in the human soul enhanced by self-legislation.

The stage has been set, the plot generated; some characters develop others stay the same; but the midnight oil burns for the moral revisionists to get everyone into the act — not all can expect a leading role though all indeed might be capable of heroic deeds, time and fortune rule-out this as pure possibility for most. As the human train unfolds and civilization of a high order gets a toehold, there is less emphasis on survival motives and increasing concern for values of the common spirit: the leading characters begin to soliloquize on what it is to be human and embark on a dialogue with each other. Hopefully, the main actions of primitive anxiety fades as but a dark episode of a clever animal beating its breast as king of the hill and is displaced by an enduring dialectic in the realm of common spirit. The sub-plot continues, despite societies still lagging in primitive survival and beliefs. Freed of the chains of the primates, the human struggles to partake of this tantalizing dialogue on the meaning of life. Those who are gifted interact in this higher order of existence without alienation bent on contamination.

Notwithstanding the benevolent aim, the intrusive hierarchy, finding it difficult to shed its atavistic attitudes of primal existence, interfere with the purity of the dialectic process of this higher order which knows no sex, no creed, no race in its relentless drive toward pure, altruistic spirit — free of the primates’ tribal subsistence moment to moment impressions. The intruders — whether intolerant religion, crime, terrorism, or political-capital power — counterplot the synthesis at the climax — dangerous thinking belongs to the university — polluting the dialectic ontology. The playwrights — more appropriately, the rewrites of noumena — have had their fling; the homespun Stage Manager intervenes to restore the original script of thunderous dogma, which is to avoid the development of the perfect human, the altruistic soul in generous relationship to otherness: The superimposed climax, then, of the tribal stage manager's revival of judgment day is to remind the life-world that God is a Caucasian male; man is not a man without his woman and conversely. A woman who wishes to compete with her opposite has not grasped the significance of life. If mates made for each other, still conflict because of their sex, they have not grasped the significance of love. In daily living, genders more or less interact as fellow humans; in love they are expected to complement each other. The social claim is that it matters not whether one be homosexual or heterosexual; in love, however, it matters a great deal: the homosexual is a bad carbon copy, he perjures himself; as God, the unisex Demon, had done before he set out to rectify himself by forging his cosmic sexual drama with the introduction of Eve. Liberty is now the right of everyone, though the pursuit of happiness and property is at a premium. Public education is the step-child to choice. Urban schools by definition are inferior to suburban schools. Sub-minimum wage is essential if the privilege is to maximize holdings. In short, reactionary lobbying is essential to the tribal customs of capital and bias to defend self interest of the unenlightened The reactionary revival, then, is to undo moral persuasion, lest humankind negotiates a contract to insure dignity of wholeness.