Philosophy

Great Artists Steal

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When I first heard the quote in 1983, it was attributed to Victor Hugo (1802-1885), not Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), and it was phrased as “poor artists imitate, good artists copy and great artists steal”. To me, it meant that a lesser artist doesn’t even have the skills to reproduce another artist’s work well, that a good artist has the skills to match the original artist’s work, and that a great artist can steal the essence of another idea and make it their own surpassing the original artist’s work entirely. Despite the invention of the Internet since then, I have not been able to find that particular line in any writing by Hugo, but I have found reasons to give him partial original credit nonetheless.

In February 1846, Victor Hugo observed a thin young man being arrested for stealing a loaf of bread, and he realized that the man was the “specter of la misère, of poverty”. Hugo thought deeply about theft, motive, desperation, and justice, and he wrote extensively on social injustice for the rest of his life. Ten years after witnessing the young man’s misfortune, writing in exile, Victor Hugo immortalized this indelible inspirational image in his novel, Les Misérables, making it the fateful event in his character Jean Valjean’s life.

“In days gone by, to live I stole a loaf of bread; today, to live I will not steal a name.”

Years after Hugo’s death, his compatriot Anatole France wrote another of my favorite quotes, doubtless inspired by Hugo’s ideas on theft and injustice.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread”.

Hugo was a strong lifetime advocate of two sometimes opposing positions. First he believed that ideas are inevitably free, writing that “an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted” and that “nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come”. And second that artists deserved credit for their work. Hugo co-founded the movement for intellectual property to be protected by international copyright, believing that ideas added something of value to the world, constructively.

Anatole France, by juxtaposing “majestic equality” with the poverty-driven crime of stealing bread, distilled Hugo’s original epic rant about how the law unjustly criminalizes poverty and adds an unfair burden upon the poor in an unequal society into a quotable thought-provoking insight. Hugo perhaps would have been flattered by the imitation of his observation, and Hugo understood that each value-added portion of an idea deserves recognition. When someone merely takes another person’s idea without attribution to sell as their own, that’s plagiarism, which Hugo fought against.

But Hugo also certainly knew that it is the truth of the idea that gives it its power, which raises the question of whether the artist truly owns the underlying truth of an idea or not. Does the whale’s song belong to the scientists who recorded it, the artist who first set it to music, the company that now owns the digital rights, or to the whale? Often, theft is essential for ideas to be free.

While I believe the debate over stealing ideas began in France, it was the Harvard-educated poet T.S. Eliot who first framed it well in English when he wrote the following.

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn.”

Here is the essence of value-added creativity. When an artist steals an idea and transforms it into something unique, better or at least different, then they deserve recognition for adding value. They are helping the idea evolve and improve, if it can.

Make no mistake, most stealing is terribly uncreative. Digital piracy alone is worth hundreds of billions annually, and the pirates are literally producing copies, by definition uncreative. Shoplifting isn’t original. And wage theft happens like clockwork, paycheck after paycheck.

The motive for most theft is instinctual—I want it—, or rational—I can take the money without anyone knowing—, but the motive for common theft is neither moral nor creative. In contrast, the motive for an artist to steal an idea is that they recognize that an idea still has untapped potential, and that they have the unique skills or viewpoint to express it in a new, different and better way. The artist works to free the idea by helping it evolve.

Pablo Picasso certainly exhibited this artistic felonious habit in his work, taking ideas and transforming them into something unique and utterly different, so there’s something appropriate about crediting the great artist with the quote. But I still think Victor Hugo deserves credit, since he helped us understand that good people sometimes have to steal for good reasons, that laws can be inflexibly misused by the powerful against the powerless, and that ideas are an irresistible force that cannot be imprisoned.

Detail from ‘Man Controller of the Universe’ by Diego Rivera. He recreated the mural in Mexico City after the original in Rockefeller Center in New York City was destroyed by his patron who did not appreciate Rivera’s subversive Communist message.

Improve Imaginative Thinking

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Rules are the first casualty of imaginative thinking, so let’s first fail to define the indefinable and then delve deeper to extricate our best ideas from social constraints. 

We’ve explored instinctual, rational, and moral thinking, but imaginative thinking is wholly different. Root thinking begins instinctually and drives us to act. Rational thinking is taught in school and is used to succeed. Moral thinking—sorely lacking these days—is desperately needed to improve our decisions. Yet imaginative thinking is the rarest, most valuable, least valued and most misunderstood.

Imagination imagines, wandering and wondering—ideally taking on a life of its own—creatively, destructively iconoclastic, unpredictably novel, exploring and ignoring limits.  Applied imaginative thinking—creative thinking and invention—is how we come up with new ideas; the goals vary, from understanding the truth, to creating a beautiful work of art and to finding a simpler, more elegant solution to a mundane old problem.  But in its purist form, imagination is unburdened by reality: a spark, a thread, a blank slate, a new world or multiverses. Yet since imagination is limitless, it tends to draw ideas from all types of thought, which causes problems right in the beginning.  

Most people use their imagination to imagine what they desire, which is driven by their instinctual needs.  Advanced creative thinking evolved from this type of fantasizing, but when only used in service of instinct, imagination is limited to serve our basic needs and is reduced to being an extension of our primitive nature.  When an animal uses tactics to hunt, that is instinct, not rational thinking.  Similarly, visualizing our urges is instinctive, not imaginative thinking.  Instinctual desires are basic, common, constant, repetitive, and ubiquitous, the most direct path to satisfying a need as opposed to the originality of uniquely creative ideas.

Motive matters. Freeing our imagination from our basic instincts is just as important as learning to think rationally or morally.  Freeing your creative mind in this way allows you to do much more than simply satisfy or stimulate yourself.  Human passions may fuel imagination, but if the goal is only to express those emotions, then that is all you will get.  If the goal is pure imagination, art for art’s sake, or a single idea, then imaginative thinking can be used for any dream. Imaginative thinkers are aware of instincts but are not bound by them. Unconstrained, they may choose to reveal conflicts in the human condition in order that we may see ourselves anew and change. If the goal is to create something novel, a child’s escapist dream can mature and develop into an elaborate new vision for humanity.

Rational thinkers are productive but follow standard procedures, limiting their capacity for change. Rational thinkers judge imaginative thought solely by its productive utility or output value, and they dislike budgeting time or resources on vague concepts or chaotic individuals. They seek to control the production of ideas, defining subcategories of creative thinking, invention and brainstorming to harness imagination to create, invent or solve their priorities, counting the number of bad ideas identified and evaluated, preferably producing at least one quantifiably useful insight per day. So, invention and creativity often become budgeted, programmatic efforts to produce quantifiable results on schedule. There is little that’s creative about a brute force evaluation of a large number of committee-brainstormed suggestions to fit a limited set of concrete criteria. Also, rational people are typically the least qualified for evaluating creative thinking, since they often lack the imagination needed to understand, appreciate or apply a new idea.

Imaginative people who enjoy new ideas for their own sake often struggle to operate within corporations and bureaucratic organizations, especially when they receive no credit for their ideas. Chaotic daydreamers with vague concepts are anathema to their rational bosses, until the day one comes up with a new competitive advantage for the whole firm. Imagination is disruptive to routine, but an idea can add more value in an instant than a division of diligent workers do in a year. Imaginative, out-of-the-box thinking necessitates removal of limits, which contradicts the standard operating procedure of rational business people. So, imaginative employees often need to find a perceptive advocate for their approach, to explain the potential reward of a new idea for a relatively low investment of time and resources, and to demand appropriate credit for a successful result. Visionaries often have to start their own businesses.

Imagination is often amoral and especially dismissive of conventions and customs.  Moral thinkers typically evaluate imaginative thought by its risks and benefits to society, and, as self-appointed guardians of righteous behavior, they often clash with new, unproven ideas. But imaginative thinkers are often seeking good ideas and positive solutions, just in different, unconventional and creative ways. Society develops moral rules which are internalized by people, but even the most well established social rules must be improved through innovation. Otherwise civilizations stagnate and can become oppressive in pursuit of stability, where consistent conformity leads to small-minded dull routine. Think of how a comedian can newly capture a common daily scenario that makes us suddenly realize its absurdity and laugh. One imaginative person can shatter the self-imposed constraints of a civilization, giving it the freedom to grow into a better one.

Our civilization does not make imaginative thinking easy. We ridicule and ostracize people who think different, assign ownership of ideas to corporations that may bury them to protect profits, and we pass laws prohibiting uncomfortable changes that challenge the status quo. In theory, the possibilities of imagination are endless, but in practice, the world places constraints upon us.  At work, creative people may be expected to produce innovations on schedule, within budget, conforming to specifications, using preferred methods, following brand guidelines, in Compliance, after gaining agreement of all stakeholders, with input from senior leadership.  If there are only a few ideas that will fit, then it is not particularly creative to pick one.  Rational thinkers may believe they understand the problem better and may try to impose their solution upon you.  Moral and instinctual thinkers may also believe they know best. 

Imaginative thinkers must both rise above instincts and keep rational and moral controlling forces at bay. Imagination can create something out of nothing, while unimaginative others remain stuck in ruts, plod through 10,000 sequential failures, or miss the point entirely. A good idea requires looking at the problem differently than before, taking a new approach or testing a tenuous new connection. A good idea may appear to come out of the blue suddenly, but usually a good idea is the result of a unique perspective or uncommon thinking.  Imagination uncovers secret shortcuts through inspirational, non-linear leaps, invisible and unknowable to others. Often such thinking requires walking outside, sleep, or focusing on seemingly unrelated ideas. Daydreaming at work is cause for dismissal, but once you come up with a new solution to an intractable problem, everyone follows and claims credit.

We need to reorient our lives, our work and our society to encourage imaginative thinking. Creative thought burns calories, and imagination requires effort and time.  Imaginative thinkers need independence, space to do their thing, and access to whatever fuels their ideas and inspires them, without interference. Realizing a dream may require new media, new technology or shattering a sacrosanct symbol. New ideas need inspiration, including varied viewpoints, diverse experiences and old forgotten ideas.  Ideas yearn to be free, realized, rediscovered, shared, stolen and reimagined. But imaginative people need recognition for the value of their contributions, champions to help bring their ideas to fruition and protection from small-minded, fearful bureaucrats, thieves and corrupt controllers.

But the magic begins when we give ourselves time to dream, so first, imaginative thinking must be a personal priority. I live my best life when I lead with my imagination and let everything else follow.

This Blog

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This blog is a creative exercise. The whole idea of trying to visit parks and world heritage sites by electric vehicle wasn’t suggested to me by anyone. Deciding what to write about and how to present it takes imagination, from what stories I decide to tell and which photos I choose to take and use.

Travel requires imagination. My itinerary has been anything but straight, as I often feel myself driven by curiosity, picking my spots by theme or asking ‘what if I try this way’. Even within parks, visitors must choose how to spend their time, so I often let my imagination take the lead. Should I bike, hike or kayak?

History requires imagination. How are places connected? More than once, I’ve asked whether or how one historic figure knew another and learned to piece together disparate parts of our American story. What was it like for natives, patriots, pioneers, and slaves? What were people thinking for history to unfold the way it did? What can we learn that informs our decisions today?

When I drive, I find my time full of thinking. The whole idea of dividing how we think into four distinct ways of thinking, each with different motives, techniques and goals, came to me while driving. New ideas require imagination, time, and a curious mix of concentration and inspiration, that I find on the road.

Most people, I fear, lack imagination. When in their comfort zone, they take in new information easily. But outside of that, they lack interest, and they resist new ideas, particularly challenging new perspectives or uncomfortable facts they never want to consider. Some are simply busy, preferring to delegate thinking to others who make it their business to tell people what to think.

But life requires imagination. Living well, especially in a diverse and rapidly changing world, requires curiosity, an open mind, empathy, and persistently trying to find your own way. Imagination can prepare you both to avoid problems and to take advantage of opportunities. Every day is a new kaleidoscopic puzzle we need to navigate through as best we can, and for that, imagination is our best friend.

Imagine

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No rules. Draws from everything, takes form out of nothing. Beyond the linear comprehension of rationality. An unexpected new path, free from past dogma. Reverberates in the human heart, soothes the savage beast, and lifts our souls to the stars. From the simplest dots on canvas to the grandest rock operas, the rarest and most wonderful way to think is imaginatively.

Imaginative thinking is how we come up with new ideas.  It is creative, unpredictable and ignores rules and limits.  We seek inspiration to leap somewhere new, to create something meaningful where there was nothing before.  We take an uncommon approach, use our unique perspective and think differently. The goals of imaginative thinking vary, from exploring a mysterious secret, to creating a beautiful work of art and to finding a simpler, novel, more elegant approach to solve a mundane old problem.  Inventors, artists and extraordinary children live and dream in this realm of possibilities when asking ‘what if?’  

Ideas can be miraculous things. Tiny seeds planted in childhood subconscious can grow into lifelong quests to change the world. A slightly different perspective, frustration, rebellion or eye for beauty may motivate an imaginative person to break all customary practices and start something new. Centuries may pass while ideas languish misunderstood or unappreciated, for it takes imagination to value ideas well and fully.

Imagination can be a complete escape from the human condition, creating an alternate universe where instinct, morality, and rationality are all entirely re-imagined.  Imagination is the spark of ideas used in all the other ways of thinking, but the other ways of thinking might never conceive of the idea on their own in a million years.  

Imaginative thinking has different motives and objectives from other ways of thinking. It creates art for art’s sake, Poe’s poetic principle. It may plumb the darkest corners of our animal instincts, but only in the interest of extracting a pure essence to enlighten humanity. The rational accountant may disapprove of paying for an elaborate lobby fresco, but if beautiful and beloved, the work of art may eventually be worth more than the office building that houses it. The moralist may initially take affront to a controversial contemporary art installation outside his cathedral, until the artist shows that the art also serves a higher purpose.

Imaginative thinkers are exploited by the rational, even as they are dismissed as unreliable, unrealistic dreamers who do not understand the real world.  Moral thinkers often disdain them as conceited, childish troublemakers, as much as they love their songs and sculptures. Instinctual thinkers fear they are being mocked or ridiculed, while yearning to possess the magic they sense.

Imaginative thinkers imagine their perspective perfect and believe that the world would be better off if more people thought imaginatively.  

Anything you want to do, do it
Want to change the world?
There’s nothing to it

There is no life I know
To compare with pure imagination
Living there, you’ll be free
If you truly wish to be

— ‘Pure Imagination’
in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

The Moral Case for Climate Action

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Rational thinking, which has been engaged in debate about climate changing carbon pollution, imposes certain limitations that often hinder action. Scientists, who warned us of the climate crisis now upon us, rationally recommended reducing carbon emissions quickly to avoid irrevocably changing our climate from the one that sustained us since our ancestors were indistinguishable from chimpanzees. But the rational approach is also to conduct a risk assessment and cost benefit analysis of best options, despite the unprecedented threat to most living species.

The risks are difficult to quantify. Supercomputers forecast weekend weather with varying accuracy, and now we are modeling global climate changes and their effects on equally complex systems over the next century, without any way to check our work. Economics dramatically discounts distant future damages, so we underestimate the costly burden we are leaving for future generations. The scale of the solution is also daunting. Global energy production and use needs to transition quickly away from fossil fuels that have dominated energy for over 100 years. How could legislation pass quickly, broadly, effectively and globally enough to fix the problem? How much would it all cost?

Smart rational thinkers quickly determine that the unknown risks themselves argue for immediate action, that the costs of accelerating our energy transition are logically less than adapting every system to an increasingly hostile climate, and that the long-term benefit of green energy is a cheaper, cleaner, healthier and more abundant future.

But the default position of many mediocre rational thinkers is analysis paralysis, to balk at the scale of both the problem and the solution. When the full extent of a problem’s risks are unknown and the solution is too large, expensive and difficult to execute, then the rational choice appears to be inertia. This suits instinctual thinking too, as we have a natural bias to conserve our limited energy and avoid problems. Do nothing, at least until the problem becomes unavoidable. Then rational thinking is sadly put to use in its most common application, rationalizing a decision already made. Oh, maybe it won’t be so bad. The climate has changed before, and scientists often turn out to get things wrong. We have air conditioning. The excuses are endless.

Moral thinking requires honesty, courage and a bias to act. While rational thinking is selfish, moral thinking is selfless. Moral thinking requires us to do what is right, even at great personal cost. Moral thinking does not discount the value of the lives of our children, grandchildren or future generations. Rationally, we seek ways to benefit financially. Morally, we seek ways to help others. Rationally, we obey the law to avoid punishment. Morally, we know that it is wrong to kill, and carbon pollution is killing the vast diversity of life on earth. Rationally, we weigh the cost of the solution to us. Morally, we weigh humanity’s responsibility for causing the problem. For rational thinkers, the scale of the problem causes hesitancy. For moral thinkers, the global extinction-level-event scale of the climate crisis demands a response great enough to fix the problem we caused. While rational thinkers will not have enough information to make a decision until it is too late to do anything, moral thinkers demand we solve the problem now, before it becomes even worse. We know the scientists are correct, we must take up the burden placed upon our generation, and we must act before it is too late.

Our instincts also hold us back. We distrust that foreigners will cooperate. We look for ways to shift the burden onto others. We are lazy and prone to procrastinate with wishful thinking. ‘Maybe someone somewhere will somehow solve it someday’. Moral thinking has a long history confronting such human weaknesses. An ancient Chinese proverb says that “you can’t put out a fire nearby with distant water”, meaning fix the problem now with what you have on hand, before it becomes worse.

The climate crisis can be depressing and demotivating. But moral thinking teaches us not to give up in adversity and to stand strong for a just cause, despite public apathy or disapproval. Courage is created by the moral certainty of righteousness.

”We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;
Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;”

— 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 KJV

Proverbs teaches us that the wicked stay down when they stumble in calamity, “though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again”. The climate crisis is real, our fault, here now, everywhere, worsening, and is catastrophically consequential, so we must act now.

For World Ocean Day this past June 8th, my sister and I watched the premiere of David Attenborough’s Ocean at the Whaling Museum in New Bedford. Although I learned even more about the scale of environmental devastation we are wreaking in our oceans, Attenborough persuasively argued that our positive conservation-oriented actions can still make a difference. He used examples of how marine sanctuaries like the Channel Islands can recover quickly, bringing broad, positive spillover effects far beyond their boundaries, as life finds a way to try to survive. The widespread bleaching of coral reefs can be slowed and mitigated when reefs are protected from overfishing, as healthier ecosystems are more resilient, buying precious time and hope for some species.

We are hardly aware of and barely comprehend all the diversity of life on Earth, yet our actions will either save them or extinguish them forever. What right do we have to end species we don’t even know? Why do we do so little, when we must do so much, to fix what we have already done? How can we justify our inaction to ourselves and to future generations? What comfort is there in a walk through a forest, when we know that it will soon burn, because of the carbon cars we continue to drive? If you claim to love nature, animals, flowers, food, beer, wine, coffee, outdoor sports, fishing, and all the seasons that we enjoy, then you should be taking carbon-reducing action now to protect what you love for the future, or you are a hypocrite.

Maybe we won’t solve the whole problem in time to prevent the worst damage, but we won’t solve anything with a bad attitude. We can improve the odds of survival for species even with small acts. Anyone reading these words is living in humanity’s most perilous time for life on earth. What you choose to do or not do may help determine which forms of life will be on earth ages from now. Act on your carbon choices with the care and consideration deserved, as you carry the future of life on earth in your hands. Morally, we have no choice.

Speaking Out

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[Good news! I will philosophize less often for the rest of the year. So when I miss a Thursday post, you will have more time to think and act on your own.]

Moral thinking, unlike philosophy, demands action. Figuring out the right thing to do and why, has no purpose if nothing is actually done. While in some cases doing nothing is the best course, moral thinkers benefit from a bias to act. Our focus on solving a moral issue builds a moral case which most frequently contains a moral imperative that compels people to effect change.

Sometimes it is too late to prevent a tragedy, but moral thinking then demands that we learn from what happened, that we speak for the dead and that we act both to prevent any recurrence and to hold those responsible to account. In 1889, the Johnstown Flood killed 2,208 people. For their own convenience, a small group of extremely wealthy industrialists modified a private dam unsafely, without paying to reinstall pressure relief valves & pipes or reconfigure spillways. Due to weak liability laws on negligence, none of the members were ever held accountable. But liability laws were changed after the tragedy, due to public pressure, and they are now more strict. We all benefit when we learn from our mistakes.

There is a new, dangerously foolish and ignorant policy now being applied to our national parks, that asks citizens to report any national park unit that provides information that is “negative about either past or living Americans”. Apparently, those in power view the purpose of national park units to be solely positive propaganda outlets designed to boost patriotic fervor.

If you go to the Oklahoma City National Memorial, you will learn about two Americans, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who committed a heinous act of domestic terror. Must the affiliate park unit now cease saying anything negative about them? Should the 168 bombing victims—including 19 children—memorialized there now be forgotten, because leadership in DC will no longer allow the story of the bombing to be told fully? Must future students lose the opportunity to learn about this tragedy and the anti-Semitic, white supremacist ideology behind it?

On “December 7th, 1941–a date that shall live in infamy—”, 2,403 Americans were killed in a sneak attack on Oahu by the Imperial Japanese Navy. 21 US ships were sunk or damaged in the devastating battle at Pearl Harbor. Are we no longer allowed to remember that critical loss? Is it verboten to study the mistakes made in lining up 8 battleships in a small harbor on the eve of war? If you go to Hawaii and visit the USS Arizona are we no longer permitted to recognize the sacrifice of the 900+ crew members still entombed on the ship underwater? Are they now to be considered “suckers” and “losers”?

On July 17th, 1944, 320 people were killed in a munitions accident at Port Chicago in California. Rather than learn from their mistakes, the US Navy protected the white officers in charge and imprisoned the African American workers. Less than 4 months later, almost 1,000 were killed in an extremely similar accident at a US Navy base in New Guinea. More people die when the lessons of history are ignored.

The US Army lost twice at Manassas during the Civil War, and the first loss could only be described as grossly incompetent. Are the park rangers no longer permitted to criticize the poor military tactics of the Union Army leaders there?

For that matter, are they still allowed to discuss the cause of the Civil War, slavery? Perhaps all the Civil War battlefields and military cemeteries should be paved over and signs put up saying, “nothing bad involving Americans ever happened here”? If current leadership insists that there were “fine people on both sides”, perhaps the Civil War should be renamed the Civil Conversation?

And are Civil Rights and race riot memorials to close? What about the history of equal education? If no Americans ever did anything negative, what was Brown v. Board about? Why did Eisenhower have to send in the 101st Airborne to integrate Little Rock Central High? Why did so many people walk from Selma to Montgomery? Why were four little girls bombed at a church in Birmingham? Who was MLK? The refusal to make any moral judgement against any Americans, past or present, means that we must accept murderers, terrorists, insurrectionists, and racists and not criticize them, even if they are the most evil of criminals. Must the KKK’s violent history be respected, while massacres of Native Americans must be erased?

What greater affront to moral thinking can there be than to deliberately erase our history?

Authoritarian Kings once demanded that they be portrayed in the most flattering light. Then King Charles I of England was executed by a Parliamentarian revolutionary named Oliver Cromwell. A famous portrait artist had drawn a flattering portrait of Cromwell, before inviting him to sit for a more complete portrait. Cromwell saw the other picture and famously demanded that the artist paint him as he really was, “warts and all”.

Whitewashed history is a lie, which is designed to mislead us. Real events must be studied as accurately as possible in order to inform us. Every generation must go back to history to gather the lessons they need to inform their moral thinking for the decisions that must be made tomorrow.

”The past is never dead.
It’s not even past.”

William Faulkner

Improving Moral Thinking

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[Apologies for the long post. My next on this topic will be much shorter.]

Perhaps the most woefully neglected aspect of our thinking trouble is our moral thinking. Most often we begin thinking about the morality of an issue with our minds already made up.  Our gut may have decided on the issue instantly.  Your boss may have already told you that the project is good, and that if you do not see it that way, you can look for employment elsewhere.  As Upton Sinclair wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Of course, most believe ourselves moral—even some professional criminals claim to follow a code. Some instinctual thinkers follow their hearts, making moral choices based on sympathy or disgust. Some follow the crowd, believing that their church provides sufficient moral guidance, that the path they were taught years ago is righteous, and even that everyone should follow that path as they assume the beliefs of others are wrong. Rational thinkers learned that rational, self-interested choices benefit society optimally and that all problems have rational solutions. A few believe that their worldview justifies acts that others believe are abominations.

All of those folks are wrong, at least in part. It is not moral to pick and choose which rules to follow, according to your convenience. Instincts are often deeply biased and can result in ugly vigilantism. While many religious traditions are filled with valuable moral lessons, blindly following one faith while denying all others has resulted in centuries of bloody religious wars. Rational government scientists conducted an unethical experiment for 40 years until 1972, and rational pursuit of profit has caused pollution killing many humans and other species. Any act of terror is unfair to the innocent victims, and as a rule they do not achieve any positive goal.

Many lazy, soft-headed ‘thinkers’ have given up on moral thinking, using excuses that there are no universally agreed upon moral facts and that all morality is relative. Some self-serving cynics use these excuses as permission to do whatever they want, consequences be damned. Nonsense. I already presented an incontrovertible moral baseline for humanity, the side of life, and next I explained it’s logical corollary, that life requires diversity and that the purpose of knowledge is to pursue the same universal moral objective to further life. This simple moral framework, based on the Golden Rule, makes many moral choices obvious.

No other way of thinking is disqualified before it can defend itself.  I see no perfect rational utopia, yet people still try to think rationally.  Instinctual thought is riven with conflict, yet people still make gut decisions.  Dismissing the reality of moral thinking appears to be an instinct-driven defense, by people who do not want to feel guilty or who want their self-interested way of thinking to prevail.   

Real moral thinking requires making moral determinations for moral reasons. If a culture has a traditional practice that causes severe pain to children with long-term suffering as adults, solely in order to enhance the power and control of one gender over another, then it is morally wrong, on the basis that it destroys much of the enjoyment of life from one group without improving life significantly for others. It does not matter how many people support the practice, what the laws or government say, or what the cultural or religious tradition of the country has been for however many centuries. The practice fails the basic premise of allowing life to thrive fully and joyously without unnecessary cruelty.

Simply because a cultural practice exists, does not mean that it has a moral right to continue. Our country has a long history of racism, including genocidal war and slavery. Many books and laws were written in the past attempting to justify these official policies, and the policies were popular in (unfair) elections. The cultural heritage of slavery does not, in any way, justify its existence morally. When foreigners complained that our institution of slavery was barbarically inhuman, they were not culturally insensitive, they were correct. The purpose of moral thinking is to challenge all policies on moral grounds and to change immoral policies, no matter how popular or profitable.

Once we view moral thinking as independent from other ways of thinking, such as instinctual or rational, then we can separate those feelings or arguments when making moral decisions. We can recognize an argument as being based on a common human desire and judge the morality of that desire as we judge the morality of the issue. Perhaps a common human behavior is no longer useful in modern society, is obsolete and deserves to be forgotten. We can recognize a rational argument for profitability or efficiency and still dismiss it as not relevant to the moral choice. Once extraneous ways of thinking are identified and treated separately, then moral thinking becomes clearer.

The primary problem with moral thinking is that people begin with the wrong type of thinking. If you try to make moral decisions with rational thinking, your decisions will be cold, profit-seeking and cruel, even if you use euphemistic terms such as acceptable collateral damage, euthanasia or eugenics. If you try to make moral decisions with the instinctual goal of reinforcing your own power or that of your group, then your decisions will be self-serving, not moral. Such mixed-motive thinking is confusing and often wrong.

Moral thinking should take into consideration human needs and desires, without allowing them to drive the decision, and it must often overrule short-run wants for long-term good. Moral thinking should be driven by the broadest love of life and humanity, while firmly able to deny base instinctual desires or herd behavior. Moral thinking should be as critical of bias and skeptical of ulterior motive as any scientist, while having the courage to defend the powerless few against the powerful majority.

Moral thinking should understand relevant rational assessments such as numbers of people involved and economic costs, without allowing strictly rational analysis to drive the decision, and must often overrule short-run profits for long-term good. Moral thinking must be as adept at analysis as rational thinking, but use that analysis to achieve a moral result, not the most efficient solution.

Moral thinking must learn the lessons of the past to avoid repeating those mistakes in the future. Most mistakes are not original. We have a long history of human error to teach us. Many old texts have profound moral lessons that only require some effort to apply to current problems. Each generation needs to go back to historic and even religious texts to reinterpret the old lessons for their new problems.

Religious beliefs may vary or be relative, but they are not the same as moral thinking.  Some religious texts reflect centuries of accumulated moral thinking, worded by our inspired ancestors for future generations to make better choices.  Just as engineers don’t reinvent the wheel, moral thinkers use the best tools they have.  Sometimes a moral decision is as simple as recalling a dictum and applying it.  But usually moral thinking requires more than looking up the answer in a book.  If you begin with a commandment already chosen, then you are simply applying a religious rule, not necessarily thinking extensively about the morality of the situation.  Your religion may require unquestioning obedience, but moral thinking requires more.  

Morality requires both flexibility to respond to new situations and backbone to stand on principle. One way to achieve this is to use techniques which were designed to facilitate good moral decisions. You might put yourself in each position and imagine how you would feel. You might ask whether one side would be equally happy to switch sides with the opposing party or if that would seem unfair then. You should prefer to take the long view and be the voice of silent future generations.

To summarize the key take-away, clear moral thinking should begin with a quick check that none of the other ways of thinking are driving it.  The method will almost certainly require a review of the facts, an exploration of the possibilities, and an understanding of what people want.  You need an open mind, not an empty one.  But the moral intent needs to be pure.  If you start with the belief that economics must decide the outcome, then that may be rational but not moral.  If you start with the belief that what pleases the most people will be best, then that may be popular but not moral.  If you start with your own idea in mind, then no matter how much you like it, it may not be the best solution for others.  You must commit to find the best long-term outcome in the most important respects, without regard to greed, fantasy, pride or other vices.  Well begun is half done, but moral thinking requires discipline, honesty, and may require significant time and effort, before you are prepared to make the best choice possible.

False Charity

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Some rational thinkers have trouble understanding moral thinking. It’s not that they’re immoral (or ‘against morals’), but purely rational thinking is amoral (literally, ‘without morals’). Often the two ways of thinking align and arrive at the same result, but since they are fundamentally different, they can, do and should diverge on many issues. A corporation must act in the financial interest of its shareholders, and while issuing a press release about a modest charitable act may only indirectly further that interest, the goal remains strictly mercenary: to improve the public image of the company to sell more widgets. It’s foolish to expect a corporation to act against their financial interests, voluntarily.

Frequently, national park units begin with regular folks who are interested in preserving some bit of history or nature for future generations, like some high schoolers and others who decided that the story of their town’s concentration camp should be remembered. These are acts of charity, volunteering time or money to provide a needed public service. Later, eventually, politicians follow the example set by their constituents, but in a great many parks, the origin story comes down to the generosity and foresight of a few, regular people who cared enough to do something good. Often, the work of some of our most moving sites come down to single, individual caretakers, like the Reverend Paul Carter at Harriet Tubman’s or Paul Cole at Kate Mullany’s home. Clear, moral thinking is what drives such devotion to public service.

On the other end of the spectrum, I sometimes visit sites that seem particularly designed to serve the interests of wealthy, neighboring property owners. Eugene O’Neill’s house in California and the Green Springs in Virginia seem to be examples of this false charity. If the reason you support a park next door is primarily the rational self-interest of improving your property values, and you are not interested in encouraging members of the general public to visit the site, then you are thinking rationally and not morally. I can think of examples in every region of the country where folks seem to go out of their way to preserve their historic neighborhoods for their own interests, instead of the general public. Sometimes it’s impossible to park, park roads are left in poor condition to dissuade drivers, signage is poor or even misleading, and fences and gates block walking paths that once were open to all.

I believe that the definition of charity requires that the recipient be “needy”. Unfortunately, the US tax code has a far broader definition for tax-exempt organizations, one with plenty of loopholes.

“The exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3) are charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals. The term charitable is used in its generally accepted legal sense and includes relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings, monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency.”

That means that a church that primarily benefits its pastor financially is exempt, for example. An elite private school, offering horseback riding or sailing, need not admit the poor to enjoy being tax free. If the beneficiaries are primarily needy folks, then I believe that our tax policies should not burden those organizations. But when the beneficiaries all own multi-million dollar homes and go out of their way to restrict public access to historic sites or public monuments, then I think they are benefitting from federal designations or public tax dollars unfairly. I love the symphony, opera and ballet, but if the organizer is tax exempt, like Wolf Trap, then I expect them at least to make some tickets available to needy people, like Wolf Trap below does.

If there were requirements that a minimum percentage of the people who benefit from the services offered by tax exempt organizations be low-income, then we would see a dramatic increase in free field trips from schools in poor communities to beautiful and important places in wealthy communities. And I believe that would be an excellent use of tax dollars.

Moral Thinking

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If you begin with the intention to determine whether something is right or wrong, you have begun thinking morally.  If you apply moral principles fairly to evaluate the social benefits and long-term consequences, then you are thinking morally. When you arrive at a well-justified course of action that advances the greater good, then you have achieved a moral decision. Simple.  

Moral thinking is often confused with spiritual or instinctual thinking, but it is more exacting than simply having a conscience, feeling guilty or a desiring to conform to social norms. If your conscience tells you that you have just made a moral error, then you should have thought before acting. Others confuse morality with submission, obedience and inculcation, but, if you’re letting someone else make decisions for you, then you aren’t thinking. Such herd dynamics are also instinctual, and following instincts without moral thinking causes more moral problems than it fixes.

Moral thinking is a conscious effort to decide what is right and wrong, from immediate individual choices to broad, long-term social consequences.  Moral thinking is what we should learn first at home, in pre-school and when we learn about religion.  But it is not simply learning rules; it is understanding why a choice is wrong. We must learn the lesson, extrapolate from it and then apply it well to a new situation. We take the moral of the story and use it to do good. Moral thinking is used to guide our behavior, to create fair rules and laws, and to question social problems and demand change.  

Neither should moral thinking be confused with rational thinking. Philosophers try to prove altruism logically and often decide it is a self-serving illusion. Poppycock. All day, every day, good people make moral choices to benefit others without notice or reward, including sacrificing themselves in ways small and large. Rational analysis can dissect and analyze these acts without ever being able to understand the moral motives to alleviate the suffering of others, to be kind to strangers or to lose so that unrelated others gain. Because moral thinking has different motives, uses different techniques and has different goals, it is difficult to comprehend with only logic and rational analysis.

Some argue that moral judgement is the sole province of the Divine, that humans either are incapable or have no business trying to make their own moral judgements and that humans must simply obey the Ten Commandments, the Bible or a delegated authority like the Pope. I would argue that we have been granted both the ability to think and knowledge of good and evil, so it would be a sin to carelessly or slothfully neglect our responsibility to use those talents to do good.

Some argue that moral thinking is hopeless, that there is no single source that everyone recognizes as being the correct answer.  Nonsense.  Even if there is no single divine rule for every issue, nor a utopian moral code hidden in the ether, it matters not.  Whether all the religious texts and great philosophers are in contradiction or not, matters not.  What matters is that humans make an effort to decide whether something is good or evil.  This way of thinking matters, perhaps more than any other.  The debate matters, getting it correct matters, and the consequences matter.  

If you and I disagree on what is good or evil, then we should have that argument.  As long as we are arguing in good faith, without being influenced by money, status, or fantasies, then we are trying to think morally.  Moral thinking is persuasive, has its own inexorable logic and its own authority, distinct from popular mob instincts.  What is good or evil may be debated, but an answer can be achieved, at least for specific topics in specific instances.  

Since we are all on the same side, we share the same fundamental, universal moral imperative: to sustain life. Since life requires diversity, we must choose to coexist and to balance competing objectives. Since each individual life is limited, we must work together to share our knowledge to pursue our joint mission and to improve not only our own lives but each other’s and also future lives.

From that simple moral framework, based on the golden rule, many moral choices become obvious. Just as your life may be important to you, others believe their lives equally important. Selfishness is being unfair to others, instead of treating people with equal respect. Our responsibility to future generations is greater than our responsibility to our own generation. Despite short run pressures, we must act for the long run good.

The purpose of moral thinking is to make a good decision or judgement to improve individual lives or society.  Whether we are thinking for ourselves or others, or about specific policies or abstract principles, moral thinking is needed to avoid making a bad choice or the wrong recommendation, or to fail to see the consequences or the underlying flaw in an idea.  We do not go through the effort of thinking morally in order to stand by and do nothing or to hurt people.  That would be immoral.  Morality requires a bias towards action, determination and courage.

We think morally in order to be good, do good and promote what is good.  We also think morally to oppose evil, fight injustice and make our world a better place.  After thinking morally, we may speak out more clearly, confidently and persuasively, and our actions may have more positive impact.   That is why we study ethics, justice, honesty, altruism and responsibility.  

Moral thinking begins with a moral objective to arrive at a moral decision using problem-solving methods designed to achieve moral results. Moral thinking takes a long, broad and deep perspective, weighs consequences fairly, has a bias towards action, is courageous in the face of popular or powerful opposition, is driven by love of life and humanity, abhors needless cruelty and suffering and sets bold, well-justified priorities that convince people to take the correct path forward.

Moral thinkers view their way as correct and believe that the world would be better off if more people thought morally.  

Climate Consequences

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The consequences of our carbon pollution provoke an instinctual reaction, but we must consider them rationally. Let’s clearly understand the cause, consider the consequences, and evaluate our options.

Humans have a history of damaging our environment, including driving many species to extinction, from the Wooly Mammoth to the Passenger Pigeon, last observed by Teddy Roosevelt. We have leached deadly chemicals into water supplies, released clouds of cyanide, bleached corals, created toxic fog and smog over cities, poisoned people with mercury, introduced microplastics into most living creatures, burned holes in the ozone, leaked radiation, made rivers burst into flames, filled oceans with garbage, and spilled oil, leaving dead zones. And that’s just pollution, excluding environments and species destroyed by development, drilling, farming, fishing, hunting, logging, mining, ranching, and war.

But our most continuous and consequential pollution is carbon. Especially since Drake’s Well began modern oil drilling, we have extracted fossil fuels of ancient forests that grew 300 million years ago and burned them into our atmosphere, changing our environment into something of which our species has zero survival experience. The last time we had this much carbon in our atmosphere was twice as long ago as when our most primitive ancestors split off from chimpanzees.

  • Heat has been increasing, contributing to fires and killing more people every year.
  • Droughts have been getting worse, contributing to fires and killing more people every year.
  • Glaciers and snowpack have been shrinking, contributing to late season fires and killing vulnerable species.
  • Storms have been getting worse, contributing to fires, floods and tornadoes, killing more people every year.
  • Sea levels have been rising, threatening to flood low lying cities and coasts.
  • Corals have been bleaching—dying en masse—and oceans have been acidifying, killing marine species.
  • Diseases have been increasing, killing more people and species every year.
  • Soil is becoming less healthy, due to erosion, salinization, loss of micro biodiversity and more.
  • Deforestation, melting permafrost and changing water chemistry are reducing carbon sinks and in many cases releasing carbon pollution, like methane, into the atmosphere at increasing rates.
  • Species are going extinct at an increasing rate.
  • Ecosystems are being damaged, where problems with one or more species affect other species, often in unforeseen ways.

These carbon pollution problems are deadly, unprecedented since humans evolved, are synergistic—meaning that they combine and multiply effects—and will affect everyone negatively, at least economically.

We have alternatives to fossil fuel that cause far less damage and risks to life on earth, especially solar and wind power. In many cases, these alternatives are also cheaper.

Hoping that someone will invent some unknown solution that’s cheap, effective and has no side effects is not rational, given how simple and cheap it is to burn carbon fuel. Carbon capture devices are expensive, especially at the scale needed to shrink total carbon in the atmosphere. Geoengineering is unproven, expensive, and will bring unexpected negative consequences. We do not have any inexpensive, reliable way to mitigate the damage of carbon pollution, apart from reducing carbon pollution.

Rationally, the choice to stop burning so much carbon and convert to renewable energy in order to avoid these ill effects is clear and simple. Dishonesty about the causes, effects, alternatives and consequences is part of the problem. Science, including economics, supports reducing carbon emissions before damage and costs worsen. History shows that violent conflicts arise when living conditions deteriorate and governments struggle to feed and house people.

Instinctually, our fear of death should motivate us to stop burning so much carbon. In future posts, I will discuss other ways of thinking about our climate crisis, but I suspect the problem may not simply be how we think. The basic problem may simply be that we aren’t thinking at all.