Artwork © Richard Spisak

 

Why We Should Study Ethics, or Better Think Out Our Own Value System for Ourselves

Certainly inculcating values condescendingly onto others is tantamount to the hubris of a preacher and lacks constructive import, at least in my opinion. Any ethical treatise must avoid moralizing. It must also attempt to ascertain virtues in moral malaise and show how difficult it is to determine, let alone do, morally correct actions. All of us are in the same situation of often groping in the darkness of moral dillemas with anxious disquieted minds, seeking even the dimmest light wherever we can find it, and, if lucky, inadvertently finding a glowing ember of a unique idea within the self from time to time. Aristotle reminds us that seeking pleasure as an end unto itself instead of accepting it, appropriately, as a positive reinforcement or complement of a good activity, is the result of reacting vehemently against particularly distressful personal situations in life. However, especially in an unsettling series of life changes it is only natural to seek temporary respite from confusion of thoughts by hedonistic pleasure in a brothel or orgy of our own makings to counter the void of loneliness. Strangely, whereas solid intimacies of these insular islands of minds are achieved through abstract bridges of mangled words, some which are lies, constructed over a long period of time and can go to pieces at any juncture, physical intimacies are intense and immediate and although the brain recognizes them as the illusions that they are, the body tingles and taunts, and touts them as something more genuine. As we seek what is scarcely perceptible–that being to know what is right instead of societal projections of false virtues– we try to maintain composure while spinning around in a society so subject to changes that require multiple alterations of professions and the severing of relationships to survive in multiple venues while under the duress of our employable skills obviated and relegated to the past in the encroachment of artificial intelligence. It is no wonder that we seek out pleasures, perverting their central aim of pleasure as means for reinforcing good activities. Plato may have said that the philosophical element must control the ambitious second tier of the human personality and that both must reign in the largest element of the soul which is passionate energy, but he fails to recognize that every dog needs to be walked, and repression or ignoring caged parts of oneself is like an invitation for a rebellion. Some exercise of our worst inclinations must be done with the man needing to walk the dog and not allowing the dog to walk the man. This notwithstanding, we must be ever vigilant and circumspect lest we, in exercising our more instinctual appetites, become bound to these pleasures and appetitive or aquisitive aspects of ourselves like addicts.

Contrary to the ideas of Leibniz, this is not the best of all possible worlds. It is life, practical and functioning the best it can, and in the course of time will undoubtedly become more symbiotic if, in the meantime, we don’t blow up the planet with our wars or make it a desert through environmental degradation. As Machiavelli points out, albeit not in these words, we may be intelligent enough to understand the deficiencies of the real world and seek better alternatives when plausible and feasible, but to live in dreams of perfect republics, ideals, human beings, and human interactions is like becoming innocent prey waiting peacefully in a quiet pasture of predation unwittingly. Denial of the primal instincts that drive human motivation is in no one’s interest; however, I do believe that there have to be those at the vanguard who tug humanity slightly into becoming more compassionate entities. I do not speak of isolation, natural selection, sexual selection and mutation which altogether constitute physical evolution to a new species when adjusting to changes in the environment, as we understand evolution to be at present. I speak of spiritual evolvement for lack of a better word, although Democritus, the Pre-Socratic thinker who envisaged atoms, understood well that the spiritual (our mental prowess and concept of self) is subject to decomposition at death, just as the body. As religion is a storybook for indoctrination and gaining power over superstitious people, we must study ethics instead of these things lauded as scripture to become the best gods in the godless universe that we can, despite our innumerable flaws as moral creatures. We are mortals subject to instincts, socialization, and other variables (perhaps even the dictates of bacteria and other microorganisms within) while at the same time being creatures that can propositionally think and have a certain degree of free will, albeit limited much more than what we assume and want to assume about ourselves.

None of the philosophers of Ethics that I have encountered were dictators of morality. They just followed the dictates of logic in assessing what one should do to have a constructive existence, and stated the scope and limitations of their recommendations. Aristotle admits that his own formula (largely, behavior alligned with virtue+ character formulated from repeated behavior+maintaining the golden mean between excess and deficiency+enaging in activities that foster use and growth of logic+ friendship) is predicated on a modicum of wealth and freedom from inordinate tragedy. If either of these complications is excessive, the formula will not work. In other words, his ideas of ethics are completely untenable for those in dire poverty or those, for example, who may have lost family members and property in the ravages of war. Most remarkably, Boethius was able to maintain equilibrium when facing imminent execution, but maybe that was only possible from imagining philosophy as some type of goddess that descended into the mortal realm of man to console him personally. Boethius is perfectly right that after being tossed by the waves of favorable and unfavorable fortune for many years one begins to think of “happiness” as an internal construct and becomes less dependent on the outside world to supply this sense of well being, but that is only attained, probably, if the waves are not tsunamis, or when overwhelming, that one imagines or hallucinates God protectors or God advisors the way Boethius himself did for his own sanity in such difficulties.

Thus, in the complex intricacies of life I won’t moralize, per say, but, through these writings, I will try to show you my own journey of seeing these flickers of light (call them epiphanies) which I try to kindle enough so that when looking into them I am able to elucidate values that I think work at stabilizing a life, not that I follow them fully for the brevity of time I discern them, or that I think my life would necessarily have been better if I had. Anything in excess would go against Aristotle’s Golden Mean, including sainthood. It is quite possible that too good of a life would be unbearably boring if one were to endure it longterm. I know it is counterintuitive to the Greek concept of arete, meaning that excellence should be the driving factor in our lives in all things, but maybe by not living up to the best of our ideals is in some ways our deliverance in providing us a purposeful conduit of transcendence in this life. Still, to not even attempt to ascertain values leads to petty lives built around numb enervating comforts that stultify intellect or addictive shallow pleasures that are invariably brief and are an ignimonious indignity to the excellence that man, for all his flaws, is capable of. He is definitely more than instinctual cravings even if instinctual appetites and emotional responses constitute most of his conscious and subconscious internalizations and behavior. It is important that each of us consider moral precepts by at least reading the ethical treatise of others if not writing out ethical precepts of our own as human beings were not provided operators’ manuals for existence and, to make matters worse, were compelled to accept the ersatz of archaic fables enshrined as scripture and meant more to socialize us into specific prejudicial attitudes than offer real guidance.

As a poet I have pondered issues of gravitas without, fortunately, ever falling fully into depression or the laborious process of trying to clamber out of it. Some people come from happy families that keep them buoyant. For me I had a moderately horrific family life–they do get vastly worse than my experiences– of a sadistic father and sister duo who wanted to crush under their heels any concept of self that a young boy tries to develop. Why in my adolescence I didn’t kill them or myself when targeted in their relentless barrage of derision came more from realizing that this torture too would pass, being immersed in the ideals of American and British literature at an early age, and I must admit it, fantasizing a heavenly father up there somewhere looking down on me. If any of those things had been lacking–if the ideas of Emerson Thoreau, Hawthorne, and many others hadn’t given me buoyancy, or if I hadn’t had an imaginary celestial friend– who knows what I would have done. So ethical considerations both guide and save us from what Plato calls the third and largest part of the soul–that being our irrational impulses, but everything must be qualified. A healthy life is not just logical but a bit delusional. As the French poet Charles Baudelaire says, we must be drunk continually on wine, poetry, love, or some other preoccupation and fixation so as not to consider our diminishing mental and physical capabilities when coming ever closer to our demise. My ponderings on Ethics over the next weeks will be written as short essays on a wide range of issues and in that respect similar to the essays of the French philosopher Montaigne. I hope they will be constructive for the reader and myself. Writing does bring the writer into deep corridors of the mind that have never been explored before and causes him to tap into resources of wisdom that he never knew existed

 

Steven David Justin Sills is an American poet and novelist living in Thailand. Some of his early works can be seen on the Online Book Page at the University of Pennsylvania. His poetry book, An American Papyrus is in various libraries including a scanned copy of a library book that is in the Internet Archive. Of this early work, one reviewer said, “Sills’ vision is often a dark one. He writes of the homeless, the abused, the forgotten people. He is also intrigued with the mystical, the sensual/sexual, loss–as in losing those whom we hold dear, such as a spouse or lover–as well as the lost, such as someone who is autistic, who seems unreachable. Sills’ skillful use of the language to impart the telling moments of a life is his strength. He chooses his words carefully, employing a well-developed vocabulary. He is thoughtful about punctuation, where to break lines and when to make a new stanza. He’s obviously well versed in “great” literature. Sills’ command of language helps to soften the blows of some of the seamier passages found in his poems. Seamy may not be the best word to use. Perhaps gritty is a better word or just plain matter-of-fact…” Following the rewriting of his last novel, The Three Hour Lady, the Russo-Ukrainian War began and he felt that its significance needed to be captured in verse. As his Master’s degree is a humanities/classical studies emphasis (great books of the Western Canon) to which he cited Aristotle a lot in his papers, he has been hoping for a reason to write an ethical treatise.

Richard Spisak began his artistic career as a light artist in the Lumonics Studios of Mel Tanner, a legendary Light Artist. After serving under Jack Horkheimer as a planetarium operator at the Miami Space-Transit Planetarium, he left to begin traveling with Lumist Kenvin Lyman, whose show Dazzleland Studios traveled across America. Richard later worked as a Laserist with LASERIUM and Laser Productions, served as a technical producer for the festival company PACE Concerts, and later as operations Manager and Senior Producer at WWHP and WTCN-TV in Stuart Florida.

Richard writes for Theatre, TV, radio, and the web. He published two short story collections, Two Small Windows, in a Pair of Mirror Doors, and Between the Silences. Followed by his poetry collection 7370 Allen Drive and the recently released STONE POETRY. Richard also produces “POETS of the East,” a televised webcast featuring poets from across the globe.