Aesthetic Morality

The thesis of this paper is that debates over social policy, especially regarding sex, are driven more by aesthetics and culture than by objective morality. Aesthetic morality is the opposite of liberation morality. It seeks to restrict based on feelings rather than to recognize the freedom intrinsic to salvation.

We are, as a species, ruled by our feelings. This is not a bad thing. Feelings make society possible. Indeed, without them, we could not even procreate. It will surprise no one that most of our feelings involve procreation.

Abortion is a prime example. The pro-life movement is mostly about feelings about the babies rather than the good of society at large. I am not talking about eugenics. I am talking about freedom vs. obedience. Or maybe authoritarians do include cultural analysis. 

Cultural Anthropology

One of the key questions in culture is the priority it puts on obedience. For conservatives, it is the highest cultural value. 

The other main element in culture is individual vs. group preference. Are cultural decisions and relationships determined by the individual or the group?

Questions of obedience and group identity give us four basic cultural types. Hierarchism is high group and high obedience.  Egalitarianism is low obedience and high group. Libertarianism is low group and low obedience. Authoritarianism is low group and high obedience. 

Being in a group leads to rights within the group. The currency of the realm of cultural  membership is rights. Hierarchists have rights within the group. Egalitarians insist on group rights. Feminism, especially regarding abortion, is found here. Libertarianism recognizes the rights if the individual. Authoritarians give all rights to authorities and none to its subjects. 

There is nothing wrong with any cultural bias as long is people are honest with themselves and others. Authoritarianism is fine for many people, but those who accept it must be clear on who must obey the authorities and whether those that are made to obey are not seen as inferiors in terms of race or class. Otherwise, authoritarianism is just systemic exploitation.

Obedience extends to most questions of sexuality, from interracial relationships to gender. Most pro-lifers, especially the religious and the leaders of religions are also opposed to marriage equality. These attitudes are also aesthetic and unexamined. 

Put bluntly, at heart they find the idea of nonconventional sex to be icky. They cannot even tolerate seeding people of the same gender kissing. The deeper the kiss, the greater the revulsion. This revulsion occurs in individuals more than groups.

Conventional is an apt word and is related to the concept of covenant and the perceived source of morals. In a word, God.

Visions of God

There is an axiom in theology that on the sixth day, God created man and on the seventh day, man returned the favor. In my studies,  find this to be absolutely true. Call this absolute relativism. 

When we existed in hunter-gatherer clans, we had ancestral gods (whether they communicated with us is still a topic of debate - do such gifts exist?). Tribes had tribal gods and gods who were tribal. Even the First Commandment indicates a pantheon, as does archeology. 

National gods included both a national or city dirty and a god-king. The time of the judges coincides with the overthrowing of the Caanite god-king and the assertion of personal freedom and responsibility.  

Pagan emperors did not get the message. Now the God-king is patriotism or the leader as the State. See also Donald Trump. Myths of God highlighted personality traits. Astrology created paganism (not the other way around). Trump's followers wish to emulate their god-king, not knowing that he is a fraud.

When myth began to recede into philosophy, God became conceptual and universal. The pantheon was replaced by One God. The conceptual One God now had attributes rather than parents and siblings. Are these attributes how God occurs or how God occurs to us? Is there a difference between the names of God and the persons of the Christian God? I suggest that the answer is a matter of group loyalty. A distinction without a difference.

The god meme has evolved over history. Free thought has given people a personal God. In AA, people seek a God of their own understanding. My intellectual journey includes a realization that my Catholic ancestors have Ashkenazi surnames. The project of Luther to convert the Jews to bring about the end times and the Treaty of Augsburg explains the berg in my third great-grandmother's name.

Judaism has names, rather than persons, for God. The name Shekinah is both the Divine Feminine and God occurring to the world in Spirit and our hearts. It is not a stretch to see how this concept evolved into the Holy Spirit. Christians can now call the Spirit by name and use the correct pronoun: She rather than It. As She is how God is experienced in ourselves, perhaps our generic pronoun for God must change.

Whether to do that or not is a group decision. We cannot know the reality of God in this life (or truly know if there is such a being - this is why we have faith). All we can do is agree on how we think of Her. Such changes take time. Feminists are ahead of the game.

A big part of theology, aka the philosophy of God, is to identify the attributes that God has and does not have. This impacts how God relates to us individually and to our group (national and religious). 

My alma mater, Loras College, has as its logos Pro Deo et Patria. Very French (our founder was a French Archbishop).

Authoritarians profess a God who needs to be placed who insists on our obedience. Even atheists can be authoritarian. Richard Dawkins' god is science and insists that having a god is a delusion that must be purged to be considered rational. 

Greek, Christian and Judaic philosophy sees God as Logos or Word by which the universe was made. Science now uses Mathematics as the access to understanding creation. Is this a distinction without a difference? This is a matter of both personal and group belief.

In the Book of Exodus, YHWH translates into He or That Who Is. Essentially, this is Being itself. Whether this is an expression of transcendent Being or the Universe itself is also a matter of personal or group belief. What is more important to exist in the world is to be related to reality, whether the R is capitalized or not.

God is also Love (assuming live is not simply a meme or evolutionary trick). In Christianity, this is an aspect of the Holy Spirit. See above. Because God is One, this is also an attribute of the Father (Being). 

Jesus said to be perfect as the Father is perfect. He is not talking here about conduct. He is talking about Love. When it is said that God cannot see evil, it is not that our evil must be purged. It is that there is no evil in God so that She cannot see it.

Humility is to know and accept one's self exactly as how one is and is not. Love is humility toward others. God must be perfectly Humble. A god that needs to transact with its. creatures is dependent upon their actions. Such a being cannot be God.

Jesus stated that he is gentle and humble of heart. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. Because he and the Father are One, he is not simply bowing before God. He is making a claim about and as God. 

This is the acid test for any moral code that claims to be Christian. I am not claiming that is must be utilitarian - that it is simply the best thing for the greatest number. Rather, it is to be based on humanism. What is the best way to be fully human and respect the humanity of others as they are rather than as we would have them be.

Gender (Queer) Theory and the Priesthood

This brings us back to human sexuality (having already discussed Shekinah's). The easy lift is gay rights. The Catholic Church rejects Queer Theory,which it calls Gender Theory because it does not like the implications.

As an aside, the current controversy on the spectrum is whether demisexuals and asexual belong. If you look at from a partisan lens, sex positive heterosexuals are a better fit for the spectrum than sex negative asexuals, particularly those Aces in the Catholic clergy who, unlike gay priests, are sex negative. 

Demis (who only bind sexually after binding emotionally) are sometimes lumped with their clergy as obedient rather than authentic.

The issue with the Catholic priesthood is not its chosen celibacy but that most asexual priests are not, by nature, capable of toxic masculinity. Some consider this a mark of holiness. To others, they merely seem queer. Because they only think gay priests are queer and that this is a choice, they reject the theory. 

If they were to embrace Queer Theory, male asexuality would not have a privileged position, asexual priests would have to engage in self-acceptance (rejecting guilt), accept the sexual diversity of all genders, celebrate gay weddings and women ordain women.  

This also settles whether Aces and Demis belong in the spectrum. Indeed, even Breeders would deserve a color. I suggest green because we grow the population. Perhaps Demis to. One thing is certain, the particulars of LGBT sexuality is none of their business. 

The perception that gay sex is icky is endemic to sex negative heteros and celibate asexual. Their biological aversion is not divine will. It is an opportunity to accept and love others. This is what takes the moral courage to go beyond one's biological programming.

Abortion

Abortion is the harder question. A materialistic soul starts at gastrulation and lives until entropy. A chorion containing undifferentiated stem cells is no more than a fleshy Petri dish. A dead body is a feeding ground for its former parasites (many of whom are also doomed with the host body).

Confining the soul to rationality implies that it only exists when we have language. This would be bad news for infants and old people and lead to the view that the non-verbal don't have souls. On the other side, Helen Keller described her pre-linguistic self as animal.

We don't have to answer the question of souls, but we do have to balance rights. The right to life is not what mist pro-lifers think it is. The constitutional right to life is limited to being killed by the state. This is why we do not execute women who could be pregnant. Doing so would be a violation of the rights of the unborn.

Not being murdered is a positive or social contract right. These are negotiated within the political system, not won in Court. The rights of women are recognized in the United States while the rights of the unborn cannot be. I have covered this previously in more detail.

The Texas case is a stunt that I will ignore except to say that Texas is bluffing. 

The Mississippi case is where the action is. The 19 week limit on abortion corresponds with findings that fetuses in utero respond physically to painful stimuli. They really hate ultrasound. They have no rational conception of pain nor can they remember it. 

Methods of abortion which dismember the child shock the conscience. Such shock, however, exists in the world of feelings and aesthetics, not in rationality. 

Rationally, a child with no hope of surviving to birth has no moral claim on the life or health of its mother. I will gladly concede that it should not be dismembered, especially without anaesthesia. 

This does not preclude inducing labor or performing a C-section and providing hospice to the unborn who cannot survive. Requiring extraordinary measures in their case is the same as for any other dying person. They are neither required by law and are not required morally or according to traditional Catholic moral teaching.

The more troubling question is children with Down's Syndrome. They are not doomed but having to raise them is a danger to the family, or is seen that way. 

The treatment of the unborn between the onset of sensation through viability should be discussed. President Obama offered to open discussions and was met with a debate in a mythical Freedom of Choice Act. Settling these issues robs the pro-life movement of its cherished conscience shocking graphics. 

I am all for such debate, but not doing so in such a way as to empower authoritarianism over women us a step too far. This is a job for Congress, not the members of the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Catholic hierarchy. The pro-lifers need to come clean on what their plans would really do.

If Congress decides that they are to be given rights under the law prior to viability (states cannot do so and the Court resists such activism), then it must put forward the cash for both respite care for the family and lifetime subsidies for the children. 

Even without granting legal protection in utero, society must improve how the disabled are treated. The safety net has big holes and anyone calling themselves pro-life must take the lead in filling them, including support for adequate taxation.

This is the case for all abortions. There is nothing in the moral law which requires criminal punishments for abortions or government surveillance of every pregnancy. 

To ban abortion, the registration of each pregnancy would be required in the same way that each birth is documented today. The choice on whether to do so must be rational and public. It cannot be forced based on aesthetic sympathies. 

This is especially the case with economic and social support for all families, not just those who may feel compelled to resort to abortion. Increasing taxation generally and distributing adequate income is simple justice. 

No one has a moral right to provide their own children with luxury while others, especially those of employees, exist in poverty and uncertainty. Doing so is as shocking to the conscience as abortion; especially if families must resort to abortion, contraception or even natural family planning because their needs are not met.

Requiring families to endure harsh economic conditions as an incentive for work or self improvement is both ugly and contrary to evidence. When people have enough, they seek improvement. There is ample economic evidence of this. Psychological evidence too. The belief that low wage work is ever justified comes from racism, classism. 

To trap people in poverty and then penalize them for having to take extreme measures is cruel. This is especially the case when taxes are as low as they are now. To resist taxes out of perceived self interest is both bad morality and bad economics.

Much is said about the perceived cruelty of the Old Testament God(s). I don't see it. The harsh dietary and social injunctions built national identity. 

The punishment of Israel and Judah came from ignoring the needs of the poor, the widow and the orphan. The Lord hears the cry of the poor. Blessed be the Lord. 

The manifestation of God in our lives is Shekinah, the divine feminine. She wants the children fed. I would also be wary of continuing to persecute women as a class. It would not be morally rational.