Dare Blair speak?

At a recent press conference in London Tony Blair spoke out against Brexit. A BBC reporter challenged him on his right to speak. His response was simple:

“I am a citizen!”

Following the dramatic recent political events, Brexit, and Donald Trump’s election as president, some past Presidents and Prime Ministers have come out of the woodwork. In Britain, former Tory PM John Major, and Labour PM Tony Blair, have been critical at the disinformation of the European referendum campaign, and the pattern of ignoring the potential negative consequences, and of hyping up some apparent Brexit opportunity. In so many words they have indicated that the government’s approach is not only misleading but, distracting of the real challenges that ought to be faced. In the United States, President Barack Obama has been critical of President Trump’s banning of travelers from several Muslim countries, whilst George Bush has been critical of Trump’s handling of the media and the implications on the role of the press in a democratic society. 

Driven by concern of conscience?

Now it is unlikely that these men still envisage future political careers for themselves, so presumably they are driven by conscience and concern. Whilst concern can be driven by fear of consequences, conscience is generally driven by some sense of morality - and that implies some system of ethics. Their intervention is therefore to be welcomed. Some might say that since they have not been democratically elected, they’ve had their turn, they should rather keep their noses out of politics - and in any event the ‘majority’ had voted for their new leaders. We’ll look at this majority issue.

Experienced voices

It is to be welcomed that folks with no further political ambition, but a richness of political experience, should let their voices be heard. I have long advocated a Council of Elders to bring their wisdom and experience to help guide global affairs. Now there might well be an immediate chorus of condemnation about the track record of all four men mentioned above. Of course, none of them are untainted, but that’s not the point - there’s a huge difference between politics as a career opportunity, and politics as a civic responsibility as Blair contends.   

What ethics?

But by what ethics should they be guided? I have previously suggested that one of the most influential and respected leaders of the 20th century was Jan Christian Smuts who dominated the global political landscape for almost half a century. For him it was all about ‘ethics' - even though very controversial decisions had to be made from time to time. So, what was the nature of ethics for Smuts?

We must be clear that for him it was not some pre-ordained code of conduct - some system of rules of conduct. For him ethics was the product of human understanding of how to think and act in the world. And human consciousness determined ethics. He said in his 1931 address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science:

“Mind is…an active, conative, organising principle. It is forever constructing new patterns of things, thoughts or principles, out of the material of its experience.”

We shall return to how he regarded the role of experience in human development and creativity. For now, it is sufficient to examine his following conclusion:

“The highest reach of this creative process is seen in the realm of values, which is the product of the human mind.”

How we, through experience, come to apportion value, those sets of criteria we respond to when deciding on a course of action, will ultimately determine our ethical framework. Smuts’ world was an evolving world, and evolution progressed from inorganic material, to life, to mind, to the emergence of human Personality, and ultimately to values. So, since values too were evolutionary, so too would be ethics.

Evolutionary values

Now if we consider this perspective, we will come to see how so much of the world’s conflict is ideologically based, ranging from religious warfare to economic competition. Different sides of the conflict adopt a fixed set of rules, and those who do not abide by those ideologies tend to become dehumanized - they become less 'human' - less worthy of respect, and even of life. But then again, this accompanying social prejudice is not only limited to Descartes ‘res cogitans’ - the human subjective world; prejudice, Smuts pointed out, even extends to the scientific world, Descartes ‘res extensa’ - the so-called quantifiable world of proofs.

Reductionist thinking

And Smuts argued that our world of proofs has tended to the reductionist way of ‘minding’ so that our scientific laws, based on materialism, have informed our moral laws as well. He was deeply concerned about this. To that same scientific community that he addressed in 1931 he declared:

"A serious lag has already developed between our rapid scientific advance and our stationary ethical development…"

Science had developed increasingly potent technology, but it’s frame of thinking about the human person was still stuck in materialistic reductionism. Remember we are here exploring the meaning of Smuts’ statements in respect of the dehumanization of the person in the materialistic world view. We are considering the implications concerning the superficiality of our ethics when located in a mechanistic scientific world view. One of the great dangers he had identified was that of aggregation - and the attempt to isolate universals. He abhorred its application to the human person. Aggregation of course helps to generate norms from the average, and then apportion a particular significance to that norm. And, in a way, this principle of aggregation underlies the criterion of ‘the majority’ in democracy.

Relativistic ethics

A further product of this approach has been relativistic ethics that would lead to Alasdair Macintyre’s lament about the ‘incommensurability of premises’. In this globalised world we’ve had to learn to accommodate different social norms. But when different societies have different norms, whose morality is right?  So, we might consider a utilitarian approach - what works? What is more convenient?  Take this, for an example; already back in 1893 writing for a student journal, Smuts concluded:

“Society is founded on convenience; human nature is grounded in passion, if ever…society sets itself against the individual, the convenience of the many against the primary requirements of the individual, then convenience and passion will have to measure their relative forces.”

 Repeatedly throughout his life Smuts stressed that morality and ethics were bound up in the ‘influence’ and ‘consequence’ of attitude and behaviours to this extent that they either impeded or promoted the development of ‘Personality’. The enablement of the evolution of human character was the primary consideration for ethics. In ‘Holism and Evolution’ (1926) he argued that Personality was the greatest ‘whole’ in the evolutionary process, simply because evolved personality could comprehend the whole and choose to come into relationship with it.

Enslavement

A few year later in 1899 Smuts publishes a paper ‘Homo Sum’ in a South African journal on the advancement of humankind where he argues that ethics is about influence and consequences.  With his emerging cosmology that embraced the interrelatedness of all things through generative influence he could assert:

‘The Law of influence is one of the grandest and most universal of moral laws’.

So, in respect of the development of character, Smuts advocated a passionate engagement with life (enthusiasm) to which the individual could uniquely respond, and thus find her or his own ‘being’ or personality in that response. The converse was pessimism and apathy, and for Smuts that attitude led to parasitism, which, he concluded, according to the laws of nature, would ultimately lead to increasing degradation and final annihilation. Against these considerations he pondered the foundation of society, and governance, and the question of its relationship to the individual; he wondered:  

“Will it favour the development of the individual…or (dwarf) him to the dull commonplace of paralyzed existence, to the level of the state-fed pauper?”

Smuts political stance has been classified by biographers as ‘liberal’. But for him his view of the human person was not ideological - it was ethical. The evolution of the human Personality accompanied, and indeed reflected, cosmic evolution. And that evolution was a synthetic quality of consciousness that unified disparate elements into greater creative wholes - actualising cosmic potentialities. He argued that in its organic aspects the universe was increasingly on its way to life and mind:

“…The potencies of the universe are fundamentally the same order as its actualities.” 

Law and governance

Society then could ideally be considered as individuals associated in their commitment to each other’s self-actualisation as a response to cosmic purpose. Now such an assertion begs the question of the nature of governance, and the rule and role of law. Given this perspective we can make some sense of his assertion in that 1899 article ‘Homo sum’:

“No law is thinkable without Personality, law being but the very faintest recognition of the harmonious form in which personality reveals its essence”.

That article particularly concerned slavery, and Smuts argued that the defense of slavery had typically “…rested on material grounds, on consideration of convenience and profit…”

It is thus this factor, this differentiation of the materialistic reductionist view, that distinguishes Smuts’ view of ethics, and the law, from conventional approaches. His biographer, Sarah Gertrude Millin, also refers to ‘Homo Sum’ and points out that when Smuts wrote on the condition of slavery, in addition to its physical phenomenon, it also dealt with the spiritual and economic implications. She is right - Smuts had deeply studied the philosophy of Immanuel Kant in his moral categorical imperative where he said that rational human beings should be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something else. So, to that same group of august scientists, he said in 1931:

"The denial of what is deepest in our spiritual nature must lead to a materialist, mechanical civilization whose economic goods take the place of the spiritual values and where mankind can at best only achieve a distorted and stunted growth."

It was the philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, who introduced the idea that from time to time scientific knowledge needed a reboot - he called that a paradigm shift. That means that some of the foundational assumptions have to be revised. With ‘holism’ Jan Smuts introduced just such a paradigm shift - and the essence was that existence did not consist of fixed particles (material) but of movement in the flux of energy and information.

Knowledge versus wisdom

Now there is an important distinction between accumulation of knowledge; being able to process so much more data with defined algorithms, and wisdom. Data, when comprehensible becomes information. Information when internalized (remembered) becomes knowledge. Knowledge, when employed to improve choices of action and attitude in in a dynamic world becomes wisdom. And ultimately wisdom is informed by ethics - knowing the right thing to do - and having a clear idea of what ‘right’ means. For Smuts rightness was framed within the holistic evolutionary perspective. The criterion was that the choices made enabled the realisation of greater human potentials.

Computer wisdom?

From the scientific perspective, the microscope and the telescope have served to extend our vision - providing us with so much more data to convert into knowledge.  The computer has served to extend our capacity to process that additional data through complex calculation. Whilst computers are now even becoming self-learning, but they still operate on algorithms that are man-made. Google monitors our internet footprint and then forms profiles of us to sell to advertisers - but that footprint can surely only be a caricature. So there is a clear distinction between artificial intelligence and the wisdom informed by ethics.

Holy Spirit?

And wisdom, from the holistic perspective, is the accumulation of ‘knowing’ that has informed creative evolution through the ages - hence our very being is informed by that wisdom. You might even call that the ‘holy spirit’. And as we humans, as the most recent manifestation of life, at least on this planet, engage with life itself and each other we learn, and our learning is captured in value fields that add to, or compromise, the creative process. The Great Master, for example, spoke about the danger of sinning against the ‘holy spirit’. Smuts fully realised the significance of our subjective engagement with being from a non-materialist perspective. He said:

“Great as is the physical universe which confronts us a s a given fact, no less great is our reading and evaluation of it in the world of values.”

But, in the real world, was there any significance to values, beyond their mathematical application, other than their influence on human subjective experience? From a purely materialist perspective - no. It’s all about aggregation and convenience. But from a spiritual perspective - yes. Smuts continued:

“Without this revelation of inner meaning and significance the external universe would be but an immense empty shell.”

Smuts’ view of the sanctity of the human Personality has been informed by the principle of ‘Imago Dei’ - made in the divine image. We have now become powerfully co-creative, irreversibly reshaping our planet through trial and error. But we are not only creating a physical home - we are creating the spiritual future for ourselves and future generations. He said:

“As against the physical configurations of nature, we see here the ideal patterns or wholes, created by the human spirit as a home and an environment for itself.”

Richard Bach, in his book ‘The Reluctant Messiah’ asks; “How do you know that you still have work to do?” And then answers; “You’re alive - aren’t you?” So when challenged by a reporter whether he had any right to get involved in British politics Tony Blair responded; “I’m a citizen!”

We salute men and women of passion who are willing to discover their deeper potential through engagement with this troubled world. If that is ethically informed, they are contributing to creating a different future right now.