Maturity and Morality

I've been keeping another list of things to talk about. When I did it last time, I went on for ages. This time, there's only two things on the list:


A. words that should be used more in jokes:
fibreglass, coins


B. maturity -
clever people argue their way out of doing the right thing


I think point A speaks for itself. And there's not a woman (or man) alive who would disagree.

Point B is a bit more nebulous.

Let's see if I can locate my train of thought. It can't be too hard to find. It's a train. It must be on tracks somewhere. Unless it's a flying train like at the end of Back to the Future III. But I don't think my train of thought would be so gaudy.

I was thinking about maturity.

People use 'immature' as a term of abuse. Being mature is seen as a goal to strive for.

Well, I don't agree. I don't think maturity is in my list of good characteristics. In fact, I'll go further and suggest that anyone who disparages someone for being immature is a boring, soulless idiot.

People generally use the term to refer to some abstract concept of 'grown-upness' that involves paying bills, drinking quality wine and never ever putting a cushion on your head and acting like a pirate.

In other words: boring, soulless idiots.

Because what is maturity really? Social development? Sophistication of thought? Pragmatism?

It's not really any of those things. It's a non-specific concept to convince people they're sensible when really they're self-deluded. If you're convinced you are mature, you're blind to the realities of being a human - which is in itself an incredibly immature mindset.

All the good qualities implicit in a notion of maturity are better served by other terms. It's good for someone to have a sense of perspective. It's good for her to have a knowledge of historical precedent. It's good for her to not be entirely governed by base emotions.

But "maturity" is a big, clumsy umbrella that encapsulated everything grey and necessary and treats the spurious, the fantastic, and the irreverent with a patronising shake of the head.

It is in fact a very childish notion. I'm sure children as they grow up are more fascinated by the concept than we are. There will be 12-year-olds you view their younger siblings with withering disdain.

"Oh, these 10-year-olds are so immature. Still watching CBeebies are you? Some of us have moved onto Horrid Henry, thank you very much,"

If I was looking for love in personal ads, and someone described themselves as 'mature' I would tough them with a ten-foot telephone pole.

So. Maturity. Poo, more like!

[A little touch of irony for any 12-year-olds reading]

But from this thought station, my train trundled towards the next stop: I'm immature. Or at least, I'm immature by the definition of those who use it pejoratively.

I read comics, I watch wrestling, I make silly jokes on Twitter, I post photos of myself making funny faces.

So maybe the real reason I deride maturity is because I don't possess it.

It can't be the case that I decided to be immature because it's a worthy characteristic. So I must have recognised it as a characteristic already in me and decided it was good because, well, I'm brilliant.

That must have been my thought process.

And it's worrying. A combination of extreme arrogance and extreme irrationality. I don't want to think I use my own traits to provide the foundation of my values.

Even if I don't believe in absolute moral truths or 'natural' goods, I would still hope that what I believe is based on something more objective than my proximity to myself.

Do I value beards because I have one? Or do I have one because I value beards?

The danger is that if you're reasonably clever (and, given that I've just identified the most awful arrogance in myself, I think I can claim to be that), you can use your powers of reason to convince yourself that things are true.

You can create convincing arguments for lots of things, which means you can justify a great deal. It might be by finding a loophole in logic, or a past example. It might be that you weigh your actions against their consequences in a certain way.

I was trying to remember why I didn't march against the war in Iraq when I was a student. It wasn't because I didn't care; it wasn't that I was in any doubt about its wrongness. But I think I managed to argue, in my own head, that the protest would be useless, that the people going were self-righteous and marching for the wrong reasons, that auxiliary causes would be tacked on and would dilute things.

Now, these things may well have been correct. They probably were correct. But it was still wrong of me not to go on the march.

And there's the scary part. If you think critically enough, you can argue your way out of doing the right thing.

In my case, all that ethical gymnastics was nothing but a clever way of rationalising my own laziness.

I think that was a big factor in making me go on the March march. I wanted to atone for my younger self's inaction.

I was so immature then...

I also justify not buying a Big Issue on the basis that it's not out of a lack of compassion that I'm avoiding it, but out of a fear of getting into a conversation with a stranger. As though that's ANY EXCUSE WHATSOEVER.

I'm sure the Big Issue-seller shivering in the sleet will be cheered up my the thought that I've been saved a bit of social embarrassment.

So after all that, we're left with two depressing thoughts.

1) My values are a projection, reflecting nothing but my own pre-existing character traits

2) I can use my intellect to evade the requirements of morality

Disturbing stuff.

But the sun is out, I'm on holiday, and I'm fundamentally an optimist (a quality I value in the external world). So let's use my intellect to make myself feel better about point 1) and self-reflexively deal with point 2).

But first, I need to go to the toilet.

***

Ah, that's better.


1) My values are a projection, reflecting nothing but my own pre-existing character traits


Of course people's values do derive in part from their upbringing, from their family, from the environment in which they find themselves.

People learn right and wrong (wrong or right) from their parents, and this informs how they see the world. In fact, there's probably a genetic predisposition for certain values to take hold.

But they also learn morality from talking to others, hearing different points of view, reading books, watching films, experiencing things independently.

[I'm probably wrong to say that people learn morality. More likely, it is constructed from all these sources.]

People are complicated. Even me. Even when I have a cushion on my head and am pretending to be a pirate.

There are lots of people that have very different moral attitudes to their family. There are some that take on morals from the church, or the state, or a particular school of thought. Upbringing is just one of many reasons for people doing what they do.

The things I value are a combination of so many different sources.

My faith in my own personality probably comes from my upbringing - my parents were very supportive and taught me to have confidence in myself.

But these values do evolve. You can see from what I wrote before that I have doubts and question myself. I'm sure most people do.

I don't think point 1) can be true because of these doubts, because of the constant flux of my ideals. The characteristics I do value the most have that status because they've withstood rigorous questioning, and have kept coming back to me as things that feel right, and that are confirmed by experience - and how I see things working in the world.

[Good grief. I need a knock-knock joke to break this up.]

So to take the maturity example. I was presumably brought up to not value maturity as much as other characteristics. I hopefully attained some of the positive elements of maturity, but didn't have much care for the whole.

So I kept reading comics.

But the notion that this was 'right' would be reinforced by encountering other people who were 'immature' whilst still being good and kind and imaginative and open-minded (all elements I do admire and aspire too).

Similarly, I probably met 'mature' people who were cold and serious and who threw around 'immature' as an insult to all those people I knew to be great.

And as I grew up, I'd also find that the people I respected and idolised - the musicians, the writers, the comedians - shared this sensibility. In fact, I can't think of any of my heroes who would see 'immaturity' as something to be ashamed of (except maybe Mark E. Smith, but he's the exception to every rule).

This doesn't mean I'm 'correct' in my opinions. But it is rational to value things and aspire to things that you see as good in the world.

It's all part of the thinking process of the rational human. Which leads too...



2) I can use my intellect to evade the requirements of morality


We've established that I can do this, and I have done it in the past.

It's probably quite a common phenomenon - you have an aversion to doing something, and you use reason to explain away any of the guilt.

But I hope that this tedious treatise shows that I don't do it without thinking about it, without worrying about it, without trying to escape it.

And in fact, most of the time the intellect is an aid to making moral choices.

I think the reason for this is that a natural consequence of rationality is empathy.

If you truly seek to understand the world, and weigh up the evidence, and come somewhere close to approaching 'truth' (or at least approaching the approach), you'll inevitably have to realise that there are other people out there, making the same blind, fumbling attempts towards truth as you are.

So whilst the intellect may allow me to avoid buying a Big Issue, if I think more clearly, it allows me to empathise - to see things from a different point of view; to view things in proportion. I recognise that despite my reasoning, I should buy the Big Issue because the inconvenience to me doesn't outweigh the inconvenience to them.

Reason allows you to interrogate the world, interrogate others and interrogate yourself.

So, in answer to point 2) - The intellect, properly employed is a greater aid to moral thinking than it is a hindrance.

And in answer to point 1) - This same intellectual reason allows you to contextualise your own morals and negotiate the tricky waters between personal preference and objective truth.

Done.

Easy.

Knock knock
Who's there?
Mr Rational
Mr Rational Who
Mr Rational... uh... Smith?
Come in.

***

I have an extremely limited readership, so every now and then I like to whittle them down to zero with posts like this.

Also, you know rationality leading to empathy? Right-wing people never take that final step.

Which is why they can rationalise immorality (like me not buying a Big Issue), they can rationalise laziness (like me not marching against the Iraq war), and they commit the fundamental failing of rationalising their own irrationality.

I escaped. I wrote this and did a knock knock joke. Let's see George Osborne do that.

***

It's a good thing I didn't go on for ages like last time.