Moralism — The Emperor’s New Success

2007.07.25   prev     next

Question: What happens when 99.9% of the population desperately desires to be in the top 20%, but there’s room there for — duh — only 20% of that population? What does the other 79.9% do?

Some of them suicide.

Many of them spend their whole lives trying unsuccessfully to jocky into the top 20%. A lucky few actually make it into the top 20% in time to enjoy it while they’re still relatively young.

But most of them, I think, wind up succumbing to the temptation to redefine success into something which less than 20% of the population believes or even tries to practice. We call this phenomenon: moralism.

How To Be A Moralist

Moralism works like this:

1.	Pick some arbitrary activities and declare them moral (or immoral, as the case may be).
2.	Base this claim of morality on uncorroborable holy visions (either yours or those written by others). Or, base it on self-evident truth — declare (or directly imply) that people who don’t see the correctness of this moral code are just misfortunately blind, and as a result of that blindness will always be morally inferior to those who do see it.
3.	If not incompatible with the behaviors you chose in step 1, include in your moral code any behavioral dictates which are necessarily universal to human nations — i.e. prohibitions against murder, assault, and theft. This allows your moral code to leech off of the gravity and sensibility of those social dictates.
4.	Perhaps imply, or even state, that persons who obey your moral code will go on to a much more pleasant next-life than those who disobey it.
5.	While not necessarily prohibiting them, at least imply that some or all traditional measures of success (i.e. wealth, fame, beauty, and fitness) are illusory and/or immoral.

Examples

Examples of arbitrary moral assertions by which large percentages of the population persuade themselves that they are in the top 20% when they really aren’t:

• It’s immoral to eat meat.
• It’s immoral to eat meat on Friday.
• It’s immoral to eat pig meat.
• It’s immoral to eat cow meat.
• It’s immoral to eat land-walking-animal meat.
• It’s immoral to use non-human animals in any way.
• It’s immoral to work seven days in a row.
• It’s moral to pray to your creator(s).
• It’s moral to engage in group prayer to your creator(s), and to monetarily support career leaders of such groups.
• It’s immoral to have sex outside of marriage.
• It’s immoral to shop at the most successful chain stores.
• It’s wrong to purchase or praise the most successful, mass-produced art.

This list could be extended a great deal, I’m sure. But you get the idea.

Notice that each item is a rule that most people (i.e. 80% or more) would be unlikely to follow unless they were persuaded that it was somehow “moral” to do so. In other words, the list does not include the dictum “It’s moral to shop at the most successful chain stores,” because easily 80% of the population is already doing that, so you can’t posture yourself as being in the top 20% by adopting that as a moral code.

Alternative To Moralism?

If you aren’t lucky enough to actually reside in the top 20% (by wealth, fame, beauty, or fitness), and you can’t just “snap out of” the innate human desire to be in the top 20%, is there any option besides an arbitrarily selected moralism, to stave off chronic misery?

Indeed there is! Stay tuned...