Distinguishing Theology from Ethics: A Critique of Waging War

Whereas an ethical critique of war appeals to an ethical principle, typically that is against humans being harmed, especially the innocent, a theological critique can be based on a divine degree or on the nature of the divine in contradistinction to human nature as anything but. That is, a distinctly theological critique of war itself or people who wage war is typically based on some obfuscation of the divine and human wherein the latter has sought to appropriate divine nature or attributes to what is in Nietzsche’s famous phrase, human, all too human. Although Kant’s “kingdom of ends” formulation of his categorial imperative looks a lot like Jesus’s Golden Rule, for example, offending rational beings by treating them only as means to one’s own goals is distinct from offending God by violating the divine command of universal benevolence, or “neighbor love,” which is Jesus’s second commandment, which is like unto the first (i.e., to love God). Having probably just now lost, or “blown away,” just about every normal reader, I want to illustrate my point of distinguishing the ethical from the theological by analyzing pertinent comments made by Pope Leo, the first Midwestern (Illinois) pope, in April, 2026.

The full essay is at "Distinguishing Theology from Ethics."

Overriding Selfishness by Experiencing Awe

As biological animals, we are genetically and even behaviorally programmed to be self-centered, even though we can “self-program” to override this instinctual urge, which is geared to self-preservation. We are naturally economizing beings, oriented like squirrels to store up as any nuts as we can for winter, given the natural conditions of scarcity and uncertainty in the human condition. Yet we eschew selfish people and generally expect some extent of generosity from benevolence (benevolentia), which in turn is based on good will (benevolentia). To be sure, we can take measures not only to hold us back from abject selfishness, but also override the instinctual urge even for self-preservation. One such way has to do with experiencing awe.  

 

The full essay is at "Overriding Selfishness by Experiencing Awe."

Authentic Corporate Social Responsibility during a Pandemic

"We’re doing a lot of social distancing,” U.S. President Trump claimed during his press conference on Coronavirus on March 23, 2020. The day before, he had said he is proud of the American people for voluntarily taking precautions. March 21st, I had been in a Target store to buy some necessary items. No one was "social distancing," including employees. A more accurate, and better understood term would be physical distancing, as it is more broadly applicable than socializing and the latter can be done at a distance, especially via telephone and the internet.[1] A day before, I had been in two grocery stores—two because one—a Safeway [Albertsons]—was missing so many hoarded items. I found no physical distancing at Safeway and Sprouts. The former was not that safe after all, and the latter's healthy-food was not being sold in a healthy way. It was as if the employees, customers, and managements were oblivious to the obvious risks, but the explanation may be more complex. I contend that it applies to corporate social responsibility too. For I also found that none of the store managers was making announcements or had signage to remind people to keep a distance from other people in the respective stores. On March 26, 2020, I again saw no physical distancing being done by employees and customers at a Safeway store; the store manager told me he would have a store meeting on the issue. In the meantime, not even periodic announcements would be made. This is known as erroneously applying status-quo management procedures in a state of emergency. Also, Safeway's store management had not acted proactively to ration products such as toilet paper and cleaning products that had been voraciously grabbed off the shelves by herd-exuberant customers in a panic mode. In short, I submit that the unique business conditions of the Coronavirus pandemic can be used to assess whether corporate social responsibility is real or merely a marketing tool.

The full essay is at "Corporate Social Responsibility during a Pandemic."  

How actually safe was Safeway during the pandemic?

1. "It is important for us all to realize that when they recommend 'social distancing' . . . what health experts are really promoting are practices that temporarily increase our physical distance from one another in order to slow the spread of the virus." Cecilia Menjivar, Jacob Foster, and Jennie Brand, "Don't call it 'social distancing'," CNN.com, March 21, 2020 (accessed April 4, 2020). 

Elected Representatives in a Republic: Is Any Sense of Duty Remaining?

I suspect the notion of duty had by 2018 taken a rear seat, pushed out by self-centered ambition, in many if not most democracies in the world. In the ancient world, office-holding by lot stemmed the impact of people desiring office. Of the latter, the desire for personal gain would, I submit, be more likely. In contrast, finding oneself holding an office by lot was more likely to be accompanied by a sense of duty rather than personal ambition. Of course, ordinary citizens could find themselves voting in councils or legislatures—but would that necessarily be so bad?

In the American experiment, office-holding was originally thought of as a civic duty of the wealthy class. Landless citizens were cut off from even voting. George Washington did his duty as the first U.S. president, then went home to Virginia; he had done his duty (and then some). Once he decided not to run again, he did not, while still president, call it quits even if he was personally done with the office. I submit that that sense of duty had been lost by the twenty-first century.

The full essay is at "Duty in Public Service."

Corporate Social Responsibility Is Not Altruistic: The Case of Amazon Prime

In a doctoral seminar on corporate social responsibility (CSR), the professor turned to me, perhaps because by then I was also taking courses in the religious studies department, and asked, “What is enlightened self-interest?” In my answer, I argued that such self-interest is distinctly oriented to the long-term, rather than, for example, immediate profits. Alternatively, I could have stressed the ethical connotation of the word, enlightened, but the self-interest component would seem to invalidate an ethical basis. In line with the notion of love as caritas, which is human love (eros) sublimated up directed to God, as distinct from agape, which excludes lower, self-interest inclusive, love, doing good can go along with long-term self-interest. In other words, doing good has value because good is done even if self-interest is salient in the motive. In regard to CSR, the self-interest that coincides is long-term-oriented. Amazon, for instance, giving the poor (i.e., Medicaid recipients) 50 percent off on the monthly charge for Amazon Prime is in line with gaining full-paying customers eventually, for it usually takes a while for poor people to move up the economic ladder.

The full essay is at "CSR at Amazon."

The Increasing Decadence in American Business (and Society): The Case of On-Screen Distractions during Television Programs

While watching Lord of the Rings on TBS in 2010, I noticed that the network was posting not only its logo on the bottom right of the screen, but also advertising for its programming on the bottom left. Also, “more movie, less commercials” was written to accompany the logo. What really got to me during the movie was when pictures advertising a television show were shown. They took up almost an eighth of the screen and thus could not but distract the viewer from watching the movie. I decided I would not watch movies on networks that compromise or prostitute their own programing in order to sell themselves while "in progress." It is like sitting down at a restaurant and having the waitor sell me on other dishes while I am trying to enjoy the one that I'm eating. “I just want to enjoy this fine meal, thank you,” any discerning customer would be wont to say. Once at Starbucks, the customer in front of me at the register was paying $25 for a variety of products.  As I was thinking that the store had made a good sale, the clerk tried to sell the customer on a certain food item for the next visit--as if the present sale was not enough.  The same propensity wherein nothing is ever enough is evinced by the television networks that can't seem to restrain themselves from adding more and more self-promotions onto the screen during their own programming.  These networks are playing off the mitigated nature of the additions being incremental, and thus not objectionable to the average viewer. 

The full essay is at "Business Over-Reaching."

Occupying Wall Street: A Self-Regulated Protest?

The right to protest as a manifestation of freedom of speech is held societally as sacred the United States, but the question of how far protest goes before it becomes simply living in a park is one of those gray areas that tend to be decided by the judiciary far from the tarps and sleeping bags. The protesters’ premise that living in a public space eventuates in the achievement of their goals is tenuous where the goals are broad. Undergoing a hunger strike to get a certain anti-corruption bill voted on by India’s parliament is far different than camping out in Zuccotti Park in New York City until corporate capitalism is ended in the U.S. In short, the tactics used should be oriented to the sort of objective being sought. Moreover, the tactics and indeed the objectives themselves require a protest group to self-police such that it does not wander too far off course or spread itself too thin. Protest movements may be too prone to die a slow death from self-inflicted wounds without even the slightest recognition of the cause of death. The Occupy Wall Street protest movement had the capacity to self-regulate, but fell well short of that which was necessary for the group to achieve its anti-corporate goals.

The full essay is at "Occupy Wall Street Protests." 

The Catholic Ethical Stance on Greed

Catholic economic, social and political ethics from Vatican II’s Gaudium et spes (The Church in the Modern World) encyclical in 1965 through the relevant encyclicals of John Paul II are “especially critical of the risks of avarice, acquisitiveness, and waste in consumerist societies, the indifference of many affluent people toward the poor, and the swing of governments away from redistributive taxation, welfare ‘safety nets,’ and foreign aid to poor nations, toward a kind of ‘economic rationalism’ that encourages and enacts hard-heartedness and selfishness.”

The full essay is at "Catholic Stance on Greed."

Source:

Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, Vol. 1, Ruth Chadwick, ed. (New York: Academic Press, 1998), p. 486.

On the historical Christian views on the relationship between wealth and greed, and the associated theory of justice as love and benevolence, see: God's Gold, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

Congressional Ethics: Investing on Insider Info

To what extent should members of Congress be permitted to adjust their investment portfolios in line with general information on the economy gained as part of their legislative work? Whereas insider trading refers to information that is not available to the public on a particular company, the trades at issue as the U.S. headed toward a possible financial crisis pertained to diversified portfolios.

To take one example, John Boehner (R-Ohio), who would become the Speaker of the House after the 2010 Congressional elections, met U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for breakfast on January 23, 2008. According to the Washington Post, “Boehner would later report the rearrangement of a portion of his own financial portfolio made on that same day. He sold between $50,000 and $100,000 from a more aggressive mutual fund and moved money into a safer investment. Boehner is one of 34 members of Congress who took steps to recast their financial portfolios  . . . after phone calls or meetings with Paulson; his successor, Timothy F. Geithner; or Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, according to a Washington Post examination of appointment calendars and congressional disclosure forms. The lawmakers, many of whom held leadership positions and committee chairmanships in the House and Senate, changed portions of their portfolios a total of 166 times within two business days of speaking or meeting with the administration officials.”

The paper points out that the financial moves by the members of Congress were permitted at the time under congressional ethics rules.  Some ethics experts suggested that lawmakers should refrain from taking actions in their financial portfolios when they might know more than the public. In my view, we can assume that lawmakers will know more than the general public on matters relevant to investment decisions; the question is whether those decisions ought to be placed in blind trusts.

Lawmakers are going to know more than the public; merely sitting through hours of hearings will accomplish that. Indeed, part of the rationale for having a representative rather than a direct democracy is that representatives can be in a position to be better informed on the economy because lawmaking is at least in principle their full-time endeavor while they are in office. Essentially, the electorate delegates the popular sovereignty to the representative to focus on the lawmaking role.

Furthermore, human nature being what it is, we cannot but expect the lawmakers to have protected their investments by reducing the level of risk after learning that the U.S. economy could go over the cliff on account of being over-leveraged on subprime mortgages and over-securitized on them plus the related securitized insurance swaps. Adjusting their portfolios based on “insider information” on an upcoming stimulus plan is based on more particular information and thus more problematic even though it is not on a particular company. Regardless of the specificity of the information, however, any private gain from the public service is rightly generally regarded not only as unfair, but also inappropriate and unseemly.

At the very least, for lawmakers to use even the inevitable information they have on the general condition of the economy for private gain detracts from the notion that public service is a duty rather than an opportunity to enrich oneself. In this regard, having citizen lawmakers are preferable to careerists. However, even doing one stint in the U.S. House of Representatives could be financially lucrative, so even with term limits, the question of whether lawmakers should be able to adjust their investment portfolios would be relevant.

Although it is undoubtedly impossible to stop virtually any private benefit from accruing to members of Congress, their management of their own wealth should be separated from their public service where possible. The instrument of a blind trust makes this possible in the case of investments, assuming that direct and indirect communication with the managers of the trusts is preempted effectively. The trusts could even be mandated for several years after the lawmaker vacates public office.

More generally, the opportunistic orientation evinced by several lawmakers in January 2008 suggests that they may have viewed their respective offices less as stemming from a sense of a duty oriented to public service than as being an opportunity for personal gain. Rather than electing citizens who yearn for the office, perhaps we ought to seek out those who have reservations in place of ambition, yet would serve out of a sense of duty if called. In other words, whoever in the two parties gets people to run for the offices ought to be suspicious of people whose sense of duty seems all too comfortable and convenient to come out a sense of obligation. In other words, if it is easy to convince someone to run, then he or she probably is not the best person for public service.

Source:

Kimberly Kindy, “Lawmakers Reworked Financial PortfoliosAfter Talks with Fed, Treasury Officials,” The Washington Post, June 24, 2012.