Evil

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.  

Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields Memorial National Military Park

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While this is the longest park name, they could have gone with “Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House Battlefields Memorial National Military Park”. This is the largest military park covering 70 miles and three years of battles. Outside historic Fredericksburg, there are few buildings to see, including the Old Salem Church (another battle site), Ellwood (where Jackson’s left arm is buried) and the Stonewall Jackson Shrine. There are miles of fields, forests, trenches, historic trails, foundations, key military positions, markers, and memorials, with well over 40 tour stops, and there were visitors at every battlefield even until dusk.

Fredericksburg is roughly halfway between DC and Richmond, the Confederate Capital, which explains the numerous, bloody battles fought in the area. Spotsylvania is the name of the county. Fredericksburg was a Union disaster, under General Burnside, who ordered repeated attacks up the steep hills held by entrenched Confederates, but unlike Antietam all attacks failed and ended in retreat. At Chancellorsville—a one house village— the next year, General Hooker had executed an end run around Lee’s forces in the hills above Fredericksburg, but Stonewall Jackson executed an end run around Hooker’s forces. Jackson was killed, but the Union retreated in another defeat. Lee, confident after many victories, went north to Gettysburg. Another year later, General Grant returned to the Wilderness and Court House of Spotsylvania, finally making progress towards Richmond.

Chatham House, the Union HQ where both Clara Barton and Walt Whitman worked in the hospital, has a commanding view of Fredericksburg above, where Union artillery supported the failed assault. Washington, Jefferson and Madison were among the visitors to the wealthy plantation home that predates the country. Lincoln met with some of his generals here during the war. In the 1920’s the owners built a magnificent formal garden, which makes a nice break from the gruesome battlefields. Fredericksburg also has a historic walking tour, with some buildings that predate the Revolution, monuments to founding fathers and a slave auction block.

There is a common factual error in too many park films on the Civil War: that slavery only became an issue when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This conceit defies all plain fact. Lincoln was anti-slavery from childhood and argued against it his entire life, including all his campaigns and in every office he held. The primary political division in the country pre Civil War was about slavery. Most northern states were not only anti-slavery but had worked on ending slavery since the Revolution. The Abolitionist movement began in Europe in the 1770s and was active openly in the north and in secret in the south before the Civil War. Every southern state that seceded, cited preservation of slavery as the reason. Lincoln’s hesitancy in making it official policy at the outset was due to the few northern border states that were still in the gradual process of ending slavery. Lincoln might have accepted a negotiated settlement early in the war, but the Confederates rejected it, being willing to fight to the death to keep their fellow humans in eternal bondage.

General Lee is quoted at the visitor center in Fredericksburg as expressing his sympathy for the white refugees fleeing south, but he apparently had zero regard for the far greater number of black refugees fleeing north. The Fredericksburg park film expresses much anguish for the destruction of pianos and other household goods, but only briefly mentions that 1/4 of the town were slaves when the Union troops arrived to liberate them. Tens of thousands of slaves fled Virginia through here during the war, crossing the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg and getting passes to travel to refugee camps at Fort Monroe and near DC, seeking the safety of the Union. The lost property that the Confederate newspapers bewailed was largely human property.

Those who hold these Confederate generals in high esteem need to ask themselves why their heroes cared so much about the white residents and not at all about the black residents? It’s possible to admire Von Manstein for his strategies and Rommel for his tactics, but it’s not possible to ignore the 6 million Jews their government killed in the Holocaust. The Civil War ended 158 years ago. Moral judgements must be made about the cause of the war and the motives of the participants. The Confederate cause was evil, and we must not make heroes of those who served the cause of slavery. Stonewall Jackson was not a saint, so he does not deserve a shrine on national park land.