We need a little more ‘should’ and ‘shame’
We as a nation SHOULD be ASHAMED that 90 million of our fellow citizens did not vote in the last election.
We SHOULD feel SHAME when we read that the average American in the richest country in the world gives 2% of their disposable income to charity.
We SHOULD feel SHAME that our president, a convicted felon, proposed moving all the Palestinian residents out of Gaza against their will and turning it into a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Conscience is the term we usually use for having an internal Jiminy Cricket in our psyche whispering what we SHOULD and SHOULD NOT do.
Freud call it our superego. AI explained to me that “the superego is a part of the human personality that controls a person’s morality and ethics. It’s one of three parts of the personality, along with the id and ego. The superego is partly conscious and internalizes the rules of society and parental conscience.
“The superego’s positive aspirations and ideals represent a person’s idealized self-image, or ego ideal. The superego’s main concern is whether an action is right or wrong. The superego can help people make decisions that move them toward their highest potential. The superego can also help people live responsibly and freely.”
Here’s the rub: Freud postulated that a second part of our psyche is the id, which counters the superego’s “I should” with a clear, strong “I want.”
Many commentators argue that we are living in a postmodern age in which the cultural consensus is that there are no absolute ethical or even factual truths. Postmodern folks replace “right” or “wrong” with “comfortable” or “not comfortable.”
The journalistic ethical principle of “fact-checking” has been replaced with “that’s just your opinion.”
Have you ever thought about firing your conscience? It is a pain to have Jiminy Cricket on your shoulder whispering in your ear, “always let your conscience be your guide.”
Freud proposed that the human psyche is composed of three parts: the Id, who says “I want;” the Superego, which says, “I should;” and the Ego which says, “Let’s figure this out rationally.”
When I was growing up, we would say “that’s right” or “that’s wrong.” Now I hear people explaining their choices by saying, “I’m not comfortable with that.”
What seems to be lost in the national psyche is the appreciation for the role of the superego, aka the conscience. It seems when it comes to ethical decision-making most of us are pro-choice: don’t tell me what I should do. That’s between me and myself.
For presidents, the equivalent of an institutional conscience is the office of the inspector general, created in 1976. The role of the inspector general, according to the IG of the Federal Trade Commission, is to “prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, misconduct, and mismanagement in the government, and to promote economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in our agency’s operations and programs.”
President Trump finds IGs a pain in the butt. According to the AP he has already fired a dozen of them. Some commentators have even judged him to be an ethical nihilist, a person without any morals
And what if we who elect are leaders have lost our ethical compasses?
What does it tell you that President Trump fired at least 12 (and counting) inspectors general in his first three weeks in office?
The founding fathers did not trust human nature — i.e. the id and even the ego — so they created three branches of government that were supposed to check and balance each other. In other words, have one foot over the brake while the other is pressing down on the accelerator.
Francis Collings, retired Director of the Institutes of Health, has written a book titled, The Road to Wisdom – On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust, in which he argued:
“Following the upheavals of two world wars … a new philosophical movement arose … within the academic community [humanities departments] which rejected all prior ‘grand narratives’ based on reason, culture, or faith traditions. This is postmodernism.”
Postmoderns trust the ability of their ids and egos to make good decisions about direction in life.
“I think what the postmodernists did,” Collings declared, “was truly evil.
The result of eliminating the superego/conscience from our internal processes in the name of spiritual/psychological “freedom” is the same kind of ethical relativism and chaos we are observing in government when people with a conscience like Liz Cheney are “primary-ed” for standing on their principles.
Collings offers a more hopeful path, one that believes that truth is available to all who humbly seek it: that science is a powerful method for separating truth from falsehood in certain domains; that faith can illumine vital and transcendent truths; and that trust must be earned, partly by recognizing the limits of your own expertise.
