The Ten or Twenty Commandments We Can't Agree On

Big Think is one of my whipping boys as I browse the web. It's a junior version of TED's speculative science fiction, presenting purportedly new ideas, always brief and usually wrong. Occasionally, they get close to some contrary thinking, wondering out loud whether Egypt is suited for democracy or whether Kurzweil's singularity is pie-in-the-sky utopianism.  

This is not one of those days.  Check out "There are 10 or 20 Commandments We all Believe in," by Swiss pop philosopher Alain de Botton, author of "Religion for Athiests."  Like everything on Big Think, it's a short, short article, so check it out.

He posits that all of "contemporary America, Europe, a contemporary world" agree on basic values:

Are there things we can believe in?  You would get immense agreement around fairness, justice, kindness, love, value of children, value of education, the environment.  You would get at least 10 or 20 commandments, if I can use ironically that word.  But I mean that seriously in a sense of a set of values that we can rally around.

First off, we used to have that.  It was called Christianity and the areas you talk about used to be called Christendom.  You and your friends decided you didn't like it, mainly because it said you shouldn't do just whatever pops into your head.  Second, yes, everyone believes in "fairness" but no one agrees on what fairness is--and I shouldn't have to say that because it's obvious to a college freshman.  What is "kindness" to a proponent of tough love?  To a codependent enabler?  And on and on.

"So, we’re not short of things we can believe in.  What we’re short of is methods for making those beliefs stick."

You know what's really good for that?  Tradition.  But you didn't like that, either.  This musing is the point of piece:  How can we get people to follow these unwritten commandments?  The argument is too long to get into here, but the short answer is that most of them do follow them.  At least, they think they do. With no objective standards, who's to argue?

The truth is that de Botton knows exactly what will make us stick to those principles.  It's the same tool Leftists use for everything:  the state.  And, failing that, a Paula Deen-style public shaming, I suppose.

Finally:

I think there’s a great fear that once religion disappears or loses its hold on people, there can be no agreement around belief and values, that there’s then a post-modern chaos where all values are relative, no one agrees on anything and everything splinters.  I simply don’t think that’s true to experience. 

No, that's precisely what we've experienced.

Like the traveler in Chesterton's Orthodoxy, I arrived at traditionalism by walking in the exact opposite path.  I really believed that times had changed and that the benefits (and I thought there had to be benefits to traditional values--why else would they have gone on so long?) of tradition had worn out. We had scientific knowledge and communication across the globe and thus so many unexplored options.

Common citizens were educated like never before.  No longer did we have to receive wisdom from authority.  The tools were in our hands.

I arrived at two things.  One, the traditional decisions were always the most certain of good outcomes.  Second, I was the only one actually examining and weighing the options.

Of course, that's hyperbole, but all the progressive, "liberated," and "forward-thinking" people I met in the world spent no time at all considering the broader consequences of their choices. They had justification for what they wanted to do and no one arguing the opposite. 

People don't want to do good, they want to be good, while doing what they feel like.  As long as every question is up for debate, that's all that will ever happen.