The Common Good
One ethical argument is that group interests should have priority over
selfish interests. An investigation of ethics must consider this argument and
develop metrics for the common good. No-one should assume that it is easy to
define the common good. In political battles, clearly divergent if not
contradictory ideas of the common good prevail and efforts to achieve consensus
are difficult to impossible. The ethical implications are profound.
Michael Sandel asks What’s the Right Thing to Do? He teaches political
philosophy at Harvard and offers the most popular course on campus -- Justice
One of his intellectual anchors is Jeremy Bentham who wrote Introduction to the
Principles of Morals and Legislation in 1780. Bentham proposed a utilitarian
test to evaluate the morality of any action: ask the question will my action
produce the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people? John
Stuart Mill later argued that respect for individuals rights as "the most sacred
and binding part of morality" is compatible with the idea that justice rests
ultimately on utilitarian considerations In simple terms, the two arguments
compare individual interests with group interests.
Sandel also reviewed the philosophy of Immanuel Kant who argued that reason
tells us what we ought to do, and when we obey our own reason, only then are we
truly free. Kant’s ideas seem oddly unrealistic in the 21st century. Reason is
in short supply. Every person assumes that he or she is more reasonable than
others who disagree There is no consensus about the “common good.”We know that
some humans are bad and will harm others as a matter of course; their behavior
will not be altered by rational argument or laws and must be constrained by
force. Some of these bad people arrive in positions of authority and power. Some
bad people are elected, even to the highest positions in government where they
can do much harm without insight or remorse.
We know that the audience, the "public", is made up of different groups with
vested interests that conflict. We know that everyone invents stories that
support their own point of view. Everyone deceives others and there is no
absolute truth. We know that the voting public contains individuals with
different mental abilities and that most humans have distinct limitations on
what they can and will understand
Human destiny as a species still lies with the programs in the old brain that
offer only limited empathy and understanding and insist on the priority of local
group survival at any cost. Individuals can transcend the old programs by
diligent learning and practice but individual effort and learning does not
change the genome, so that there can be no enduring civility without the
persistent and relentless initiation of new humans into a rational and
compassionate world order. Whatever we value about civilized human existence -
culture, knowledge, social justice, respect for human rights and dignity must be
practiced anew and stored as modifications of each person's neocortex.
