Unlike the bad, the Good will survive only if it is cultivated. It may be true, as Aristotle claimed that we are neither morally good nor morally bad on account of human nature. But then there is that other claim that he made, namely that it is so much easier to get thing wrongs than it is to get things right. And one reason why it is so much easier to get things wrong than right is that doing what is right so very often requires persevering in the face of all sorts of desires to do otherwise. So while it may true that we are neither good nor bad owing to genetics, there is a very real sense in which the momentum is often in favor of the Bad.
The momentum is favor of the bad on three accounts: The first is that there are so many ways to achieve the bad. The second, which is related to the first, is that it rather easy to achieve the bad even while aiming for the good. By contrast, it is very rare that anyone aims to do what is bad only to be stunned that she or he brought about that which is good. And if that happens, it is easy enough to turn the good produced into something horrendously bad, whereas recovering from the bad is typically very difficult to do.
The third consideration is brought home to us by the poignant case of Kitty Genovese. The bad that everyone did consisted in simply the fact that they did nothing at all. She was beng murdered outside of her home (in the Queens borough of New York city) while 38 witnesses did absolutely nothing to save her, despite her cries for help. No one did so much as even pick up the telephone to call the police for help. What makes the fact that 38 people did nothing at all to so riveting is precisely the fact that anyone of them randomly chosen would most certainly be considered a law-abiding and upstanding citizen.
There is something profound here that is easily missed nowadays, namely that being a morally good person in Aristotle’s sense is not just about being a law-abiding and upstanding citizen. For that is compatible with merely minding one’s own business and not in any way wronging others.
Alas, the heroes whom we admire are never those who are just about doing nothing more than minding their own business. From those who ran the underground railroad that enabled blacks to reach freedom from slavery to the people of the French town of Le Chambon who sheltered Jews in their homes to officers who risked their lives to rescue people trapped in the World Trade Center: These people are moral heroes for the very reason that they made the well-being of others their own business.
No one accidentally risks radical social alienation or accidentally stands up to the might of Hitler’s army or accidentally runs into a burning room. No one accidentally does any of these things in order to save a life.
The world does not need everyone to be capable of the level of moral excellence that Aristotle had in mind. But history has revealed time and time again that it is only because enough people were capable of such excellence that Good was able to prevail.
We who are the beneficiaries of so much that is Good are now faced with a choice. We can accept the Good that has been handed to us, and then proceed to mind our own business with unfailing zeal. Or, we can make a point of cultivating the Good in our own lives and the lives of our children.
In order words, we can die and bequeath a future that is shorn of the wherewithal for moral excellence. Or, we can leave the gift of Strength Moral of Character to posterity.
This is a choice that we must make whether we like it or not. For the Good will not simply appear when we are in need it. In that sense cultivating the Good is rather like setting up a Moral Saving Account in which one unfailingly makes deposits on a near daily basis. You see, the case of Kitty Genovese points to the profound reality that evil masterfully exploits the social space of indifference delivered by the attitude that goodness consists primarily in minding our own business. For that attitude leaves us susceptible to one excuse after another for not acknowledging the harm that a person is suffering before our very eyes, as was the case with those who witnessed the murder of Genovese.
There is a kind of preparedness to do what is right that one can have only if one has been in the habit of doing what is right for so long that failing to do so is no longer a real option. The idea here is not that one unreflectively does what is right as if one were a robot. Rather, it is that one is so in the habit of doing what is right that excuses that get in the way of so many others acting rightly have little or no weight with one.
Surely, this was the case with the people of Le Chambon. Helping those in need is what these people did on a regular basis year after year. So when the persons in need turned out to be Jews, who showed up one door step after another in Le Chambon, it never occurred to any of the city’s denizens not to offer help or that others generally would not do so. Take away that history of helping; and one literally changes, for the worse, the course of history.
Undoubtedly, there are moments when extraordinary moral resolve exerts itself from seemingly out of nowhere. Alas, such moments are rare and their occurrence cannot be known in advance. To be sure, there are no fail proof methods. But the only palladium against evil that can be relied upon is a history of moral excellence in a person’s life.
Once upon time, religious institutions played an enormous role in terms of there being a Moral Savings Account in place, and so in terms of cultivating the Good. Increasingly, people pay lip service to the idea of God. Indeed, at many universities believing in God is thought to be downright stupid—a sign of irrationality in perhaps an otherwise reasonable character.
I am not about to make a plea for the return of religious institutions. That said, it is clear that if we do not find a way to cultivate the Good in our societies, as opposed to merely going on the hope that it will appear when we most need it, then we have fastened upon a trajectory that sounds the death knell for our destruction—if not physically then spiritually.
A few centuries ago, John Donne penned these words:
…No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee…
I see the Moral Savings Account of yesteryear as nearly depleted. On this New Year’s Eve, it is my hope that we will move en mass and with all due speed to replenish it beginning in
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