Morality in the "Me" Generation

Being laid off does strange things to your mind. You can be a little proud of your accomplishments when you work hard and land a good job at a firm. You simmer with anger as you pay your taxes and watch social degenerates popping out child after child whom you know they cannot support. But then the bell tolls for you, too. And you collect some unemployment. And you struggle. And you hear Republicans in Congress say that extended unemployment just makes people lazy (despite the fact that the number of people competing for the same job has reached record numbers). And you hear wacko economist Ben Stein say that most people who got laid off are "unpleasant personalities... who do not know how to do a day's work." Yeah, Ben, I sure asked for all my firm's clients to stop sending us business. That was all me. You pompous ass.

Both parties are good at pointing out the extremes: liberals can righteously point to the stingy heiress who earned her money by virtue of the lottery we call "birth" and never contributes a dime to charity. Conservatives can equally as righteously point to the patient with gold teeth, brand new clothes, a shiny cell phone, and a BMW in the hospital parking lot... who is paying her bill with Medicaid. (In college, I once saw a woman in very nice clothes pay with food stamps and then jump in her Lexus.) But what about that massive gray middle which--especially in a recession--includes plenty of hardworking people who just got screwed over?

Objectivism: Greed Is Good

So with this in mind, I stumbled upon this brief article, which you really must read. Mr. Brook and Mr. Ghates are advocating Ayn Rand's philosophy--objectivism, which essentially holds that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self interest. Objectivism meshes awfully well with popular megachurch preacher Joel Osteen's message that "God wants you to be rich," which, oddly, I couldn't find in my Bible--King James or NIV. But it doesn't take a genius to see why materialist Americans are flocking to someone who is giving them a "religious" way to justify their lifestyle. (As it shouldn't surprise anyone that Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" is listed as the second most influential book by business leaders, as it gives them a philosophical way to justify their selfish lifestyle. The most influential book, of course, is the Bible, because, well, you just have to say that before you list a book advocating ruthless capitalism.)

So is this good advice for the 21st Century? Do we need to strip charity and the communal good from our concept of modern morality? Should those unemployed people just starve, cause, after all, they're just lazy sons of beeyatches?  I guess we have to step back and ask ourselves: What do we value? Prosperity? New gadgets? Or just kindness, charity, and merely sustaining life (life being defined as: the act of breathing, sleeping and pooping)? On one hand, as the article points out, people like Steve Jobs do create a lot of jobs. But if he failed to donate a penny to charity, would we still consider him a "moral" person?

Jesus once said, "The poor you have with you always." Matt 26:11.  Though the point of the verse was for Jesus to show that He was the sh*t and people should honor Him during His brief time on Earth, the passage is also remembered because Jesus, who preached charity and helping the poor, admitted we'd always have the poor around. He's right, of course. There will always be have-nots. But my fear is that as religion is on the decline (over 16% of Americans now claim no religion and numbers are higher in the rest of the Western world), if there aren't good non-religious moral (and by moral I mean: charitable) social structures in place, what happens to the people who aren't as ______ as the authors in the CNN article with their MBAs, Ph.D.s, and money? And here you would fill in the blank with the word: "fortunate" if you were an ultra-liberal or a generous Christian (i.e. "people who aren't as fortunate as the authors") or with the word "industrious" if you were a capitalist/Objectivist (i.e. "people who aren't as industrious as the authors"--and therefore less deserving).

Religion--for all of its faults--at least instructs us that there is something bigger than us, judging us, and watching to see if we treat others with kindness. What happens when God disappears and Ayn Rand's objectivism meshes with the easy-to-love message of preachers like Joel Osteen? "God wants you to be rich! No, really, people! Put down the Book and listen to me. And as you do we're just gonna begin passing that collection basket on the left... Remember: give till it hurts!"

Or if/when Objectivism takes hold, and we blink while the masses die because our morality instructs us that they just must have not worked hard enough or else they too would be awesome and industrious like us, will our morality have been so rampaged so that we will cease to care? Or worse: will we not even know that we were supposed to care?

Capitalism and Charity: What a Wonderful World It Could Be

Perhaps a third option, which the authors do not consider, is (and always has been) the workable answer: combine the two paradigms. Why isn't it possible to encourage people to be industrious like Bill Gates, build empires, create jobs, invent things that improve our lives... and then give your money to charity to help those who weren't as _______ as he? And here, again, you would fill in the blank with the word: "fortunate" if you were a bleeding heart liberal/generous Christian or with the word "industrious" if you were a capitalist/Objectivist. Regardless of how you view the charity, at the end of the day the world's poor would get some freakin' soup.

Maybe a healthy balance of Bible mixed with a little Objectivism has always been the solution for a workable equilibrium in the world--where the rich can thrive and advance society while the poor can merely endeavor to survive. If that's the case, we should be suspicious of both the Jewish carpenter from Galilee who said, "Give up all your riches and follow me" (Luke 18:22) and of the creepy Ayn Rand devotees who essentially say, "Discard your millenia-old definition of 'morality,' let the poor die, and follow me."