Viability of moral bankruptcy: How to get to Aegina even without wanting it
We will call moral bankruptcy an adverse event or situation experienced by a person, which undermines his moral integrity, with its immediate consequences of serious deterioration of his personal image and the emergence of unfavorable opinions against him. A moral bankruptcy situation can bring other disadvantages such as acute discomfort and even legal and economic problems. Obviously, the damages for the affected person will be greater or less depending on the importance or extent of their social role, area of performance and spectrum of influence.
Normally, we are surprised and even shocked when we learn of the fall from grace - for some scandal or crime committed - of an important person, who could be a famous head of state, some exalted executive or a prelate of the Church. And we are so surprised because we fail to understand why and how such an educated person with such an honorable career - from whom an impeccable performance was expected - has fallen into such a situation or been capable of such reprehensible behaviors. When it comes to ordinary people or people of much lower status, we also reproach the crime committed and detest undesirable behaviors, but it does not impact us as much perhaps because we think it is a matter of education, that perhaps they were not well equipped to get out of the situation successfully..
Before attempting an answer to the underlying question, let us pause to consider our first perception of the fact, which is translated or connected with the linguistic, with the symbolic. And we are going to do so by placing ourselves in the perspective of Paul Ricoeur, the philosopher of the hermeneutics of symbolism. From his research on the myths and symbols of archaic cultures, he found that the texts that speak to us of evil "do it in a strange language", with words such as fall, stain, deviation, loss, which "… they refer from a literal meaning to an existential meaning ”. Ricoeur highlights that evil "is both a reality committed and suffered by man, due to its fundamental lability". In other words, the human being when faced with the possibility of evil can be involved in two different areas:as an agent or active subject -who deploys an action based on an intention-, or as an affected or passive subject, and in both cases it is the lability or condition of being weak that influences such a fall. If one spoke of strength instead of lability, there would be no point in speaking of falling but of accomplishment. No one dares to describe Caligula or Nero as strong and admirable men; perhaps with physical strength yes, but never admirable.but never admirable.but never admirable.
Even today, when faced with a case like the one reported above - the honorable person who fell from grace - the expression most spontaneously used is that of "fall". Such a situation is perceived and qualified as a deviation from what is right or desired, and what is desired is then good, good. These expressions, linked to the symbolic function of thought, suggest the notion of universal order - superior, underlying or contextual - in which evil is perceived as a detour, as a rupture. We are clear that positivists, pragmatists and relativists affirm that there is no evidence of any higher or universal order that is an ethical benchmark.
But what explains that a well-educated person with an honorable career can reach such excesses, such as committing a nefarious crime or engaging in highly irreproachable conduct? In this explanatory attempt, we will start from the following premises: 1. All conscious human action is intentional or arises from a decision, although such intention is not clear enough or that such decision is hasty or clumsy; 2. What activates the intention towards the unfolding of the action is the purpose; if the purpose is attractive or justified, there is intention-generating motivation; and 3. A person voluntarily takes risky actions or makes crucial decisions to the extent that such actions or decisions are connected to their main meanings and valuations.We complement this first part with a quote from the work "The Value of Choosing" by Fernando Savater, the well-known philosopher specialized in ethics: "… the cause of each action is always the free will that is decided for a reason, and not the reason same".
The first two premises link action with intention and purpose, and in effect there is no action without intention that unfolds it, and the intention is activated according to the purpose or desire that motivates it. The third premise tells us why people are capable of making certain important or crucial decisions, or of taking risky actions: they do so based on the main meanings and valuations of their lives. The first two premises are almost trivial: if this occurs, that proceeds; there is some theoretical agreement, at least. But, when we talk about life, its meanings and valuations, this is where the complex arises and the complications begin, since the aforementioned Savater tells us that "the life we try to preserve and perpetuate is not a mere biological process, but a becoming of symbols ", that is,of meanings and valuations with a notion of meaning, of something beyond all achievement and all limits. Here a famous phrase by Maurice Merleau-Ponty comes to mind: "Man is a being condemned to meaning." And Savater himself adds mystery to the matter when he speaks in the aforementioned work, of "… the insurmountable beyond all propitious symbols and leaves them open." And with respect to things in life, Savater tells us: "things are not what they are, but what they mean to us", stressing that humans "not only use things, but we give them value"… and by giving them value, we attach importance to them.And Savater himself adds mystery to the matter when he speaks in the aforementioned work, of "… the insurmountable beyond all propitious symbols and leaves them open." And with respect to things in life, Savater tells us: "things are not what they are, but what they mean to us", stressing that humans "not only use things, but we give them value"… and by giving them value, we attach importance to them.And Savater himself adds mystery to the matter when he speaks in the aforementioned work, of "… the insurmountable beyond all propitious symbols and leaves them open." And with regard to things in life, Savater tells us: "things are not what they are, but what they mean to us", stressing that humans "not only use things, but we give them value"… and by giving them value, we attach importance to them.
Continuing with the proposed explanatory attempt, we will now say that before a real fall there is first a symbolic fall, or that the first - the real fall - is a direct consequence of the second, which is a kind of break or fracture in the existential position of the person. Let's see, we live immersed -some more, others less- in a set of formal and informal structures of roles linked to status, protocols and expectations, and participating in symbolic games activated by language -reflection of the symbolic function of thought 'in action' -, subject to human interactions and value transactions, which sometimes translate into prerogatives and other times into debts or commitments, sometimes forced or unwanted. In certain environments, such human relationships are ritualized through meetings, banquets and protocol actions,where bonds associated with expectations of correspondence of loyalties are created and strengthened, nuanced and enhanced by the enjoyment of delicacies.
One of the most complicated social games, from the ethical point of view, are those associated with delight, considered by Savater as one of the five main types of motives that drive human desire and intention. According to the philosopher, delights refer to "cultural refinements and symbolic enrichments", where what drives "is not the satisfaction of a need, nor is the need converted into a virtue, but a luxury." They are the systematization and ritualization of waste. And such symbolic games, based on delight, generate "imaginary gratifications as important as biological conditioning." So, those who live mixed in certain social games complemented by delicacies can easily fall into a kind of socio-cultural trap based on expectations and compromising loyalties.In this complex context, an accident can happen at any time, the unexpected can happen.
Thus, we get closer to the desired answer. That honorable lord - or honorable lady - simply got where he did not want or had intended to get: Aegina, the mysterious island reported by Aristotle - quoted by Savater in The Courage to Choose. And what led you there? Well, clarifies the philosopher of Estagira… "by accident he got to Aegina, when he did not want to go there, but he was taken by the storm or the pirates" (that is to say: the environment and the influence of others). And it is that the complicated interactions and transactions of a life in which certain roles are played can lead to compromising situations. A fondness for delight worships power, money, and pleasure, and pleasure has an intoxicating effect, and drunkenness clouds understanding. AND,If more than momentary drunkenness with power, money, and pleasure, addiction to delight has been reached, then not only does understanding become clouded, but a commitment to loyalty to evil is established, unknowingly and unwittingly, understood this as deviation, as a rupture with what is right, with what best suits what we are and how we are. Thus, the person - with nobility of origin or not - has definitely settled in Aegina.
And perhaps it all begins by setting aside certain habits or ways of thinking, doing and responding to life situations. Habits define us, and by leaving certain habits we are beginning to stop being what we have been. To this end, the wise Pascal said: «They say that habit is second nature. Who knows, however, if nature is not first a habit… »
The path to evil - or to moral bankruptcy - begins with 'trial and error', the first being innocent trials or simple game skirmishes. From a very young age, we feel approached by the interest and the natural desire to find out, to explore in our environment and beyond things. This is called curiosity. In psychology, curiosity is understood as a drive, as something that drives us or generates in us an attitude and a search behavior. This attitude is maintained throughout life, as an activator of learning. As a result of that search we obtain knowledge, experiences and sensations. And we will always find something that is strange to us or that arouses in us the desire to find out, and not only to obtain knowledge, but also to experience sensations.
Also from childhood we discovered the game as an activity that will occupy our interest throughout our lives. Play is the child's first structured activity, expressed first in scores, where each child acts -in principle- seriously, and from the game he gets satisfactions, with the enjoyment of shared joy. Then the game becomes something that the child, more later the young person and later the same adult, will continue to seek as an occasion for enjoyment. And the whim? We understand on a whim any option that proceeds according to personal whim, as something without reasonable foundation. The dictionary also describes it as satisfying a desire for something even though it is not necessary. And according to the broadest social convention, we all have the right to have whims, and even carry them out,as long as they are within the limits or norms of acceptability. And in this case, generally, the standards are light, flexible. Many whims refer to something trivial or futile, but some whims can translate into mistakes, and even with regretful consequences.
By jointly considering curiosity, play and whim related to whim, we arrive at another type of behavior: mischief, a form of play that easily places us, with its typical scores, very close to the gray area where it is located -more here or beyond, that is why it is diffuse- the limit that separates the good from the bad, or that confuses good with evil. Mischief is next to caprice, since both coincide in being generated by a craving, an occurrence; something not reasoned or reasonable. The problem with this type of game is that the intention is ambiguous or is not completely clear to the person who starts the game, nor is it clear to other participants or observers, and thus the purpose is not clear either. The intention is an independent variable, since it is subject to the will and free decision of the subject. In this type of game,the result behaves as a variable dependent on the purpose when it is clear, and as an independent variable - therefore, subject to surprises or the unexpected - when the purpose is not clear.
Even adults - and even older adults - continue to feel an affinity for the game, and sometimes make scores without clarity of intention. The game is useful and even necessary for our recreation, but no social game is innocent, because there is always an intention and a purpose linked to it, even if they are hidden. In the case of a mischief game -without clear intention or purpose-, when the initiating or active subject of the game perceives with certain clarity a possible bad or inconvenient result, one of two things may occur: that the initiating subject decides -by dominating. her reasoning - to go back in time or not to advance in the game, or that the instinct or instinct dominates the scene, either by force of the initiator or another participant, and thus the undesired result prevails.
In cases where there is no clarity of purpose or intention, because both are affected by ambiguity, there are -in the words of the French philosopher Edgar Morin- "drifts and bifurcations, which cause unexpected deviations"… and even fatal. The philosopher -author of the work "The Complex Thought" - tells us about the ecology of action and in this regard he states: "The moment an individual undertakes an action, whatever it is, it begins to escape their intentions, entering a universe of interactions and it is finally the environment that takes possession, in a sense that can become contrary to the initial intention ”. Therefore, if we act without due reflection and neglecting important details, we can arrive, without wishing and without having proposed it, to Aegina… the island of mystery.
Our luggage for life must be consciously prepared and always at hand. Prudence, patience, moderation, sincerity, discipline and the practice of critical reflection should never be lacking in it.
