Share this
Mister Wong
Digg
Del.icio.us
Slashdot
Furl
Yahoo
Technorati
Newsvine
Googlize this
Blinklist
Facebook
Wikio
Hear this text
Print
E-mail
Tags
Seeking points of reference in the Zuma debate
On the eve of his first full-blooded State of the Nation Address in parliament and with the ash of the celebratory fires of his fourth wedding barely cold, President Jacob Zuma – with news breaking about a baby born outside wedlock – triggered a furious debate on the question of morality in public life. It is a complicated subject, interwoven with diverse cultural heritages in which we sought a few fixed points of reference.
In an attempt to keep our contribution to the debate divorced from the details of the Zuma affair, the first source we chose is a piece on a blog written in January last year by the prolific social commentator, Pitso Tsibolane.
With reference to moves at that stage to get Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Tony Yengeni elected into parliament, he wrote: “Clearly, the two remain popular within their party and despite their dubious moral standards (based on their criminal convictions), they seem to be seen as good political leaders.
“This certainly raises the question: should politicians, despite their popularity and prominence, be subjected to moral standards?
"In the US, impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton were instituted as a result of events relating to the sex scandal with his intern. Clearly, the lies, the denials and the conduct of the president – a political leader – mattered to some so much that his fitness for high office was questioned very seriously.
“Was if fair for a well-performing president, who brought economic prosperity and relative peace like Clinton, to be in such trouble for having consensual sexual relationship with another woman while he was married? Should morality have been set aside for the sake of politics?” Tsibolane asked.
He comes to the conclusion that “one thing seems to be certain about politics and morality: in the long term, amoral and immoral political leadership will result always in the downfall of politicians and societies that ignore the link between the two. Such nations resemble a heavy ship as it tries to navigate rocky seas without a compass.
Universal morals?
On the more purely philosophical front, we had a look at an article under the heading, “The Moral Imperative Argument” by Rabbi Yitzchak Coopersmith on the Kiruv.com website (www.kiruv.com/SSI/article).
“Most people believe in the existence of a universal ethic – that right and wrong are real, objective values which prevail for all time and cut across every geographic and societal boundary line; in short, that some things are categorically good and others are unconditionally evil,” he writes.
Addressing the question of where these concepts of right and wrong stem from, he points out that theories by anthropologists and sociologists generally fall into three categories:
They are determined solely by the society in which we live;
Morality is essentially a social contract among members of society and describes the means by which human society can survive and flourish; and
Morality is simply an expression of personal taste or opinion and completely subjective.
Rabbi Coopersmith argues that on closer examination, each of these explanations is flawed and therefore cannot be the catalyst for a universal moral ethic.
All societies agree on many of the fundamental principles of morality. Individual societies merely direct the application of these principles. Extremely diverse societies, separated by thousands of miles, vastly different from each other in almost every cultural way – somehow share a common definition of murder;
If survival is the only test, why does the belief in right and wrong in many instances actually threaten physical survival and motivate individuals to sacrifice even his/her life in defence or fulfillment of a moral principle;
One need only to define the term “personal opinion” to realise that this could not plausibly be the force that created a universal ethic.
He then argues that the only reasonable source for a universal eternal standard of right and wrong is a universal, eternal Being. “By definition, human beings are limited; their personal whims or opinions cannot create anything absolute or universally binding. Only God, who is beyond time and space, who is unaffected by the shifting sands of history and culture, can create a set of standards which, as an expression of His will, reflect universal and eternal truth.”
Rabbi Coopersmith concludes that “we take right and wrong very seriously. We will, at times, make tremendous sacrifices for moral principles. We may spend large amounts of time and effort; some of us may even give our lives. We never cease to evaluate the actions, morals and political positions of others. The manner in which we conduct our lives demonstrates that we are aware of an absolute standard of morality.
“Thus, if morality is real and absolute, the only remaining explanation for its existence must be that it is imbued within us by God, whose authority is likewise timeless and absolute.”
If one were an agnostic and did not believe in God - would a society's definitions of a universal morality then apply ?
By God - what or who do we mean ?
Common to all religions?
Good vs Evil?
Right vs wrong?
Light vs Darkness?
Hmmmm ?? !