Chapter 10.                                Part E 

                                                          Vinton Cerf                                                               Robert Kahn       

                                    

                                    (main creators of the internet, one of the big changes of our time) 

         One way or another, changes keep happening in every human culture, whether the changes originate from within or without. But changes in ways of living aren't always accompanied by people hurting and killing each other. And given that, in the end, we all must answer with our cultural codes and morés to the same material reality, there may even be reason to hope that peace-loving people, if they can become clever and motivated enough, may prove more fit for long term survival than are the war-mongers. From these and many other observations of the open-mindedness, adaptability, and improvisational capacities found in major segments of all societies, we can draw hope for peace.

               

            Further discussion of whether war can be avoided or at least reduced in destructiveness and duration is, however, premature at this point. Even this most pressing and distressing of issues must be subsumed under our discussion of world views, a discussion which is yet to come in my argument. But a few words on the larger picture are appropriate here.

               

            In an objective analysis, even though all values are tentative for humans, no values should be called "arbitrary". Yes, our world, including the parts of it that we make, is always changing, so our values must also. But new, different values and morés are not arbitrary, i.e. they are not all of equal merit, because they do not all lead to the same survival odds for a nation or the human species. Some new values, and the morés they foster, work well, some badly. Some are moving society in an unhealthy direction entirely.

            Values have consequences that are too crucial for us ever to describe those values by a term as casual-sounding as the word "arbitrary". The whole point of formulating a universal moral code would be to guide us all so that we can clearly see the new patterns of energy flow emerging in our environment and then devise new ways of living that will give our species the best chances of surviving over the long haul. We have to learn to live consciously and by reason. If we don't find a code of values that is reasonable and easy to keep in mind, the lessons of History and the trends of technology combine to say that we are doomed to scorch or poison our planet – or both. 

            As I have said above, the wide variety of the morés and values systems of the societies of this planet has led some social scientists and philosophers to say every system of values is "correct" in its own cultural context, and none is "correct" in any ultimate, objective sense. But this is a dangerous and false conclusion to draw. These people have the best of intentions: they want to encourage us all to feel tolerant toward one another's cultures and to get along. But as noted above, their moral code is not assertive enough. It aims to fill the gap left after they have deconstructed - with a kind of cerebral, detached amorality - all of the traditional moral codes.

               

         However, humans need strong, affirmative guidelines to live by. What the moral relativists seem to be aiming to produce is a cynical, judgmental outlook that aims to be above critique because in the realm of morals it affirms nothing. But real humans have to make decisions in real life. We need a global model of what is right that has a sense of direction and purpose to it. In the analogous situation for scientists themselves, real scientists couldn't do science, i.e. could not do research, without models and theories which guide them to plan their experiments and studies. Without a model of the phenomena being studied, a model that can be used to guide his research, a scientist would be a mere buffoon wandering among rooms full of gauges, beakers, and computers, with no clue as to what he was doing there.    

               

            The practical consequence that moral relativism leads to is a resigning of this planet to the bullies. When the tolerant citizens can say only what they are against and never what they are for, the bullies with their “will to power” will sway the masses and get their way, by trickery, promises, threats, or blood. The Western Allies in the 1930's did not call themselves "moral relativists", but the moral relativist way of thinking was already loose in the universities of Europe, and the consequence was that most of the leaders of the nations who might have stopped Hitler and Mussolini had no stomach for such action. In fact, many prominent citizens in the West quite admired the fascist states and leaders and said so openly. FDR himself said he was deeply impressed by what Mussolini accomplished in Italy.(3.) The consequences of this indecision were WWII and the deaths of fifty-five million people. Parallel situations abound in the History texts right into our own time.

 

                                                                       Benito Mussolini 

               

            The core of the problem for the moral relativists of the West is that other nations' cultures may very well be telling their citizens that they must spread their culture until it encompasses all of humanity and that democracy is a dangerous delusion. Their belief system requires that they conquer, subdue, or eliminate altogether, the other cultures of the world. And aggressive, confidently self-righteous cultures have always existed. Democracies have to be motivated to face them, if we are to have a world in which we can discuss any options at all. I will discuss more fully why pluralistic democracy really is, for humans, a more rational, strategic, long-term social design than xenophobic totalitarianism in coming chapters. For now, let's return to developing the main argument.   

               

            We have to build a far more assertive code than moral relativism offers. Furthermore, such a code will only be acceptable to most people in the science-driven world of today if it integrates and harmonizes our world view - i.e. our best models of  reality - with the code itself till they are one cognitive entity. Even under this constraint, many different morés are possible, and many of those that are possible could be used to equip human society to flourish. Integrating and harmonizing them all is the challenge of democracy. It's up to us.    

            However, some values clearly don’t work. In today's world, values which teach citizens the virtues of war or, alternatively, of moral inertia are among the least survival-oriented. Again, then, I must reaffirm: we have to find that third way. Not a return to one of the traditional moral codes, but not moral relativism either.