I met a man…
The ever-interesting mind of David Jones spits out another masterpiece. Is our moral compass continually correct in a complex world?
I met a man, two weeks back, who said being a Christian made morality simple. In two short sentences he described a belief over 3000 years old, that the ten commandments are a rule book inscribed in stone, dictated by God, and, for the rest of time to be adhered to by all who wish to curry favour with the Lord.
Complexity theory talks of emergent properties, usually-stable states of systems that every other state converges to. We’ve put a man on the moon, wrapped a probe around Venus — impressed? A jumbo jet is complicated, mayonnaise is complex, for any deviation from the desired yin and yang of vinegar and vegetable oil and the result is a magnitude of disorder beyond what we might reasonably expect. Likewise, if a butterfly flaps its wings in New York, the result might be rain in San Francisco. We live in a complex world. To impose (law and) order on this is a gargantuan task, yet we still try. Why, when salad cream is so much tastier? When a liberating alternative already exists. Trust in the chaos…
Before starting this article I wrote another, different article, designed to destroy the commandments one by one, sentence by sentence, truth by absolute truth. I read the commandments looking for loopholes in their ethical reasoning, and I found them, and I wrote an article on them that was just wrong. One should never simplify or pretend to be sure of such simplicity where none exists. If things were simple word would have gotten around. Do this, do that, obey the rules and stay on the pavement. Cross the line and die. Why do we persist in clinging to an artificial order when a less costly alternative is the natural result of autonomy?
Today’s judicial system, imposed on us by the body of people that claims the exclusive right to use force to maintain (law and) order, requires more than four words of olde to describe the legislation against murder, yet in January of this year I listened to the high-court judge (Retired), Lord Hutton, destroy them with scenario after scenario where their applicability would have been inappropriate.
What if (law and) order were overrated? Complexity theory tells us that there’s order in chaos, that there’s beauty in madness. Models exist that show humanity acting without leadership in a manner that serves the best interests of all. Organized yet without leadership, as autonomous as ants scaled up a notch. BBC Radio 1 claims there exist certain crimes that are binary — just plain wrong. Murder, rape, child abuse: I’m sure we all have our pet hates — yet spare a thought for a legally insane perpetrator. The Evening Press plastered its front page with an article about sexsomnia, a disease resulting in an intimate equivalent to sleep-walking. A drunk driver kills a kid on a bike and gets six months because the bike didn’t have lights. A farmer shoots a fleeing robber in the back. A man kills his sole shipmate as an aid to survival, cannibalism, after being adrift for three months. Thou shalt not kill sayeth the Lord, but on stone tablets that would have long ago sunk their inflatable raft. What price a morality? Should a starving kid who steals a Mars bar have his hand cut off? What price a morality of olde? Ten points, one blunt chisel and some businesses (including to this day, a ferry crossing to the island of Lewis) lose commerce worth billions — a price our broken economy couldn’t afford twelve years ago. What price your morality?
Stephen Hawking predicted that the 21st Century will be the century of complexity — If he’s right the ten commandments, our blacks and whites, our light and darkness, our binary moral compass is due for a degree of grey, and our system of government is in for a paradigm shift.