Morality - The Herd Instinct of the Individual?

The issue of morals seems to have been on a lot of agendas lately. David Cameron virtually used the word as punctuation in his rhetoric on last year’s riots whilst more recently, those professional moralisers at the Church Of England trotted out Arch-Bishop Sentamu of York to challenge the government’s ‘moral authority’ as regards gay marriage. Meanwhile, Radio 4’s Moral Maze returned for a new series with its veritable orgy of moral dilemmas. I’ve already used the word five times in the first two sentences and that’s before we’ve even considered Bammy’s allegations of ‘moral bankruptcy’ against the British left on this very blog.

The Daily Telegraph’s Deputy Political Editor, James Kirkup, suggested that Cameron’s focus on morality in the wake of the riots, together with his promises to fix a ‘broken society’, would define his premiership, further asserting that in putting morality at the heart of his rhetoric, Cameron was swimming against the tide of perceived wisdom in contemporary politics, where ‘good’ or ‘bad’ are out of favour and institutional failure is deemed responsible for the actions of individuals, not the individuals themselves.

But good, bad and especially morality itself are such imprecise, subjective and potentially dangerous concepts that it is impossible to define any one of the three without some form of dissent. Why then do the likes of Archbishop Sentamu deem themselves fit to question the moral authority of others without even considering that their own authority, moral or otherwise, is essentially based on the curious notion that citing ‘the word’ of an invisible being allows them to dictate how others should live?

I don’t think that the issue of morals can help but be troubling to anarchists, being at once matter of individual freedom to choose and respecting the rights of others. But Bammy doesn’t seem to have given this a second thought, branding the ‘British left’ (whatever that is) ‘morally bankrupt’, largely, it seems, in light of a recent disagreement with Dave Douglass over Libya. If such a thing exists, aren’t all of us part of the British left to some degree - or has El Editorismo finally ascended to a higher plain?

So Barry has done his homework on this one, whereas the dog seems to have eaten Dave’s - I agree with his anti-NATO stance but wonder why the hell he used the Morning Star to back it up. There’s plenty of other ‘empirical’ evidence to suggest that ‘liberal humanitarians’ (as some interventionists have rather laughably rebranded themselves) are as blinkered when it comes to acknowledging ‘moral’ grey areas as their staunchly anti-intervention adversaries. I also wonder exactly how blanket allegations of moral bankruptcy directed at those who are against intervention in Libya differ from Tony Blair’s view of interventionism in the Balkans (another impossibly complex situation) as 'a new moral crusade’. Most troubling for me, however, is the notion that an anarchist can or should put themselves in a position of moral superiority over others, morality being, as it is, the favoured justification for all manner of authoritarian, oppressive and elitist behaviour

In fact, when it comes to the moral nitty-gritty, there is another argument here, one that is addressed by the American Indian activist Ward Churchill via the concept of ’metaphysical guilt’. Here, it is argued that ANY non-combative support for a cause, however passionately argued, vigorously undertaken or empirically researched is pretty much useless unless you actually embrace the cause as your own and uncompromisingly fight for it. So far, I don’t see the pro-intervention NAN boys setting off for Homs to take up arms alongside their favoured faction in the conflict or have the Bammy Column already left?

Churchill’s ideas are often deliberately polemical and challenging but if you’re going to open the mother of all cans of worms, that of morality, then you can’t be surprised when someone else’s view forces you to ask questions about your own. Unless you’re so sure that you’re right that you don’t need to consider any other views - surely the most dangerous position of all to find yourself in.

Nietzsche described morality as the herd instinct in the individual and Cameron’s sound bites on the riots certainly proved lush grazing for the bovine, convinced that the wolves of immorality were hot on their heels and all wearing new trainers. Meanwhile, Sentamu’s flock can be reassured that love is not , in fact, universal - it’s subject to the approval of a self-appointed moral elite and their imaginary friend (whether or not love requires marriage is, of course, also a matter of debate).

But in fact, Nietzsche is rather wide of the mark too, as a herd instinct implies a more natural compulsion, whereas morality is an entirely artificial construct. Indeed, the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy suggests that:

“Morality” is an unusual word. It is not used very much, at least not without some qualification. People do sometimes talk about Christian morality, Nazi morality, or about the morality of the Greeks, but they seldom talk simply about morality all by itself.

But the Christians, the Nazis and the Greeks can’t all be morally ‘right’ because, after all, they seem to have absolutely nothing in common in terms of their individual moral codes. What they do all share, however, is a savvy patriarchal elite, all too aware of the power of so-called ‘morals’ in keeping the lower orders in their place. Surely then, anarchist morality, or perhaps more accurately, anarchist moralising, is not only oxymoronic in theory but, in practice, a waste of time and energy.