The Power of Moral Ideals
by Joseph Rowlands
A colleague of mine told me about a business trip he went on to a foreign country. When he got there, he found himself under the attention of an attractive young woman. She had surmised that he was a wealthy businessman from America, and was offering more than just a good conversation. Being the married man that he was, he declined. Great right? But when he got back to the states, he kicked himself over and over for being a fool. While he didn't cheat on his wife, he felt like he should have.
This is the power of a moral ideal. Now most people wouldn't think that cheating on your wife could be considered a moral ideal. Usually moral ideals are thought of as the kinds of things you're supposed to do in order to be moral. But that's superficial. A moral ideal projects a kind of life or behavior as something you should pursue. Typically you should pursue them for the sake of being virtuous, but there are other possible reasons.
Some ideals are presented as "mature" or "grown-up", implying that if you don't pursue them, you're acting like a child. I've heard this used to bludgeon someone into getting married because "it was time", and he needed to "act like an adult". It didn't matter that he didn't want to.
Some ideals are offered as being "enlightened" or "nuanced" or "sensitive". Defenders of post-modern art will often convey an air of superiority for those who "get it". And those who don't are ignorant, simple-minded, uneducated, and dull. The same is offered for much of modern philosophy.
In the case of the man who felt he should have cheated on his wife, the ideal is conveyed as "practical". Those who don't take the chance are just chumps who "believe that nonsense". Since he won't get caught, why shouldn't he have a good time? Only a fool would say no. Or maybe a chicken. Maybe he's just too scared to do it!
There are many examples of these kind of ideals. They can be justified or rationalized in different ways. Some claim to show what kind of person you are by whether or not you perform the act. But other ideals just present a goal as if it were the obvious thing to pursue.
One that's all too common is the dream of having someone completely take care of you. You don't have to get a job. You can stay home and do what you want. They pay for you. They give you anything you need. You don't have to be bothered with learning or developing skills. Often this ideal is seen as a possible goal in marriage. You look for a spouse to be the responsible one, and you get all the benefits. It's the dream of life as a parasite.
Another one that comes up far too often is the fantasy of stealing money and getting away with it. Sometimes it's robbing a bank. Sometimes it's embezzling cash from the company. Sometimes it's shop-lifting. This might normally be considered the opposite of a moral ideal, since most explicit moralities object to theft. But it's actually just a manifestation of a wider moral ideal, which is wanting to get something for nothing. Both of these last examples are just instances of it.
I said these were moral ideals, but I want to explain a little more why this is so. A moral ideal does not need to be phrased in terms of being moral, or even thought of in those terms. It's just a conception of what a person should do. Any ideal that affects your choices of values and actions counts as a moral idea. Morality is concerned with making choices, and these ideals are tools in that decision making process.
By taking a vision of what you should aim towards, a moral ideal acts as a kind of small-scale moral standard. It integrates your actions around fairly concrete goals. You accept it as something that you should pursue not just intellectually, but emotionally. It motivates you. It drives you in that direction.
For instance, if you think you should cheat on your significant other when you have the opportunity, you're likely to put yourself in those situations, or at least not avoid them. You'll look for ways to rationalize it, even before it happens. And if you don't follow it up out of fear of being caught, you'll feel regret and prepare yourself to take advantage of the next time the opportunity arises.
These moral ideals are often in conflict with Objectivists ideals. The prevalence of some of these is shocking at times. Targeting specific ideals could be a powerful way to influence the culture. The ideals are concrete enough to analyze and deal with. We can offer competing ideals that are fully informed by an objective assessment of life, and pave the road to expressing a much more comprehensive moral vision. The first step is to identify that these are moral ideals, and appreciate the effect they have on a person's life.
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