Does the cosmos have an inherent moral order? Are humans part of a natural law that governs everything from stars to plants to people? The answer given throughout much of Western history dating back to the Greeks is “yes.” This “yes” has provided the bedrock for guiding human moral life across centuries and, to this day, reaches into every corner of our lives from politics, religion, and jurisprudence, to marriage, family, sexual relations, and personal identity.

Two sources of moral authority typically have been identified: natural laws and positive laws. Natural laws are inherent in the natural order of the cosmos and, thus, also integral to human nature. Natural laws cannot be refuted, are not subject to legislative amendment, and carry intrinsic moral obligations for humans to “do right.” The Golden Rule is an example of a natural law. This contrasts with positive laws, which societies enact to maintain civil order. These laws are legislated or decreed, applicable locally, and make no inherent moral claim on individuals. Traffic laws are examples of positive laws.

The outlines of these distinctions between natural and positive laws have remained relatively constant throughout history. What has changed, and changed dramatically, is what is considered a natural law. This is pivotal. If there is little agreement on what they are, then the belief in a moral North Star to guide human affairs is upended. A brief review of the history of natural laws illuminates the wild fluctuations in this moral compass. And these wild fluctuations have mortal consequences: When groups disagree about natural laws, the Golden Rule is often the first casualty.

Greco-Roman Natural Order

Natural law begins with Greek and Stoic philosophers who held a pantheistic view of the cosmos, which they believed is animated by a primal Fire, a life-force organized by a universal rational order, Logos. This animating Fire-Logos is not a supernatural being, but an immanent force that pervades all things. Nature is God. All humans share this Fire or spark of life, possess an equal right to life, and are endowed with reason. The Logos that orders the cosmos is integral to human nature, and through learned or right reasoning, humans can grasp the natural laws that are the basis for our innate intuition of right and wrong.

Natural law was assumed to govern human life as well as the cosmos. What was considered natural in human affairs was closely tied to the presumed order of the existing culture. Hierarchy was the natural order in Ancient Greek and Roman cultures: Men were considered more capable of reasoning than women; barbarians (i.e., men), those who did not speak the language or possess citizenship, were inferior but could acquire the status of citizenship and be capable of right reasoning; and slaves were beneath all. Sexual relations was based on class and power. Sexual relations between men and other men and boys was condoned, as was promiscuous sex by men with their mistresses, slaves, and prostitutes, as long as the “natural” power relationships were preserved. The strictures on women were tied to their positions defined by their place within the patriarchal power structure. While all humans possess an equal right to life, the natural relations among humans were hierarchical.

Christian Moral Compass

As the West became Christianized, natural law became understood within a Christian theological framework. Aquinas has had the greatest influence on Christian theology, as his work in the 13^th century is the foundation of contemporary Catholic theological doctrine that has profoundly shaped formulations of natural law for many centuries. Aquinas incorporated Greek assumptions into Christianity, arguing that the cosmos is ordered by a God-conferred rationality.¹ Humans, innately endowed by God with the capacity for reason, can uncover the natural laws governing the cosmos, which also apply to human life and society. Reason, however, can sometimes be clouded in understanding the natural law. The Bible, which is the source of Divine Law, offers the path to clarity where reason falters.

Aquinas’ natural law was understood within his cultural context. Patriarchy is the natural order, decreed in Biblical text and practiced at every level of both the Church and secular culture. Sex is for procreation, so “unnatural”, sinful acts include masturbation, contraception, homosexuality, and “not observing the right manner of copulation.”² Beliefs also are subjected to the sting of natural law, as harsh punishments are meted out to heretics.

Social hierarchy was the natural order; husbands rule over wives, fathers over children, master over slave: “For good order would have been wanting in the human family if some were not governed by others wiser than themselves.”³ Aquinas distinguishes two forms of slavery: economic and servile. Economic slavery, whereby the master economically benefits from the slave, was deemed unnatural and a sin. In contrast, servile, whereby slaves are governed for their own benefit, was considered part of the natural order.

These two views of slavery are present in our own history; abolitionists roiled against the sin of slavery, while slave owners claimed their slaves to be better off under their subjugation. This justification, disturbingly, is still used. Florida teaching standards, defended by Governor DeSantis, states ” slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Aquinas’ Greek-influenced theology had far-reaching consequences. The Church-sanctioned belief that the cosmos is rationally ordered gave impetus to use reason to divine God’s natural laws. Science was born in the bosom of Aquinas’ natural laws. Almost all early scientists in the 16^th and 17^th century were deeply religious, seeking to fathom God’s rational order through investigations of the physical world.⁴

Opposition to Aquinas was swift, vociferous, and long-lasting. Outraged clerics argued that the Bible, the word of God, is the first, last, and only foundation of natural law. Reason has no place in discerning God’s cosmic order. Indeed, it is a dangerous threat to Christian belief. These warnings proved prophetic, as the natural laws of science became decoupled from religion and did, indeed, undermine the authority of Biblical text. Natural laws became Laws of Nature.⁵

Triumph of Death —Jan Brueghel the Elder

“Reason is the Devil’s whore.” This is Martin Luther’s response to Aquinas-inspired Church doctrines on natural laws. The Reformation was about many things, but at the center were disagreements about Biblical text and Church practices. Tens of millions died in centuries of warfare over Biblical disputes (i.e., transubstantiation—“Does the sacramental bread and wine actually transform into the body and blood of Christ, or is it a symbolic transformation?”). Murderous pogroms against heretics, massacres of those who held differing interpretations of Biblical texts, blood saturated grounds where entire populations were exterminated—all this and much more blunts the argument that the Bible is the basis for natural law. Whose Bible? What laws? The Golden Rule—for who? It also reveals that more than reason and the Golden Rule lurk in the dark recesses of Human Nature.

Unalienable Rights

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution carry this history into our present lives. The Founders, close readers of Greek and Stoic philosophy, declared that all men are created equal. The life-Fire of equality proclaimed by the Greco-Romans is echoed in this assertion. The Constitution does not mention God. The Declaration of Independence cites “Nature’s God”, “Creator”, and “Divine Provence.” Nature’s God? Yes. Biblical God? No. Not explicitly.

Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and Monroe were deists, and having witnessed the calamitous effects of religious wars among Christian sects, wanted to ensure that their new, revolutionary nation avoided these savage, internecine religious conflicts. Hence, the first Constitutional amendment in the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of religion. James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, understood that government sanction of a religion is a threat to religion when he stated: “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?”⁶ Rights—life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, religious freedom, free speech, and the others contained in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—are asserted to be unalienable, self-evident, natural laws.

Patriarchy, slavery, and the relegation of indigenous peoples to savages is also embedded in these documents, either explicitly or implied.⁷ But so is ambiguity. The framers of the Constitution included slave owners and abolitionists, and the compromises between them are lodged in the Constitution. Indeed, the arguments for and against slavery that precipitated the Civil War drew from both Biblical text and the Constitution. Each side fashioned arguments from these documents to claim that their moral principles were supported by natural law. “Liberty and Slavery—opposite as heaven and hell—are both in the Constitution”, remarked Frederick Douglass.⁸

The enduring struggle at the heart of our democracy is how should the Constitution be understood? What interpretation captures the “real” meaning? Slavery exposed the profound consequences of differing interpretations. Disputes about the proper way to plumb the meaning of the Constitution have moved away from trying to divine the natural law embodied in the document, to textualism (i.e., “What does the text mean?”), originalism (i.e., “What was the intent of those who drafted it?”), and pragmatism (i.e., “What is the optimal balance of political and economic outcomes?”) among others.

Until recently. Some current Supreme Court members have intimated that natural law, specifically natural law as understood within a Biblical context, should guide Constitutional interpretation. Abortion. Contraception. “Unnatural acts.” LGBTQ rights. Gay marriage. Racial justice. These issues have moved into the cross-hairs of judicial Christianized natural law.⁹

Cosmic Perspective of Cosmic Moral Order

The efforts for over two millennium to anchor jurisprudence in natural law is animated by our desperate need for certainty, to be assured that there are moral guideposts to help us as we grope our way in the darkness. The disputes over whether someone has the “natural right” to enslave another highlights just how windblown these guideposts are. We are but evanescent creatures, scurrying about on a cosmic dust mote amidst a vast, unfathomable universe, chanting local certainties arising from febrile visions, which we use to persecute each other. Cosmic moral order, indeed. . .

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What is a weed? I am not a gardener and have always found the question puzzling. As I gaze at a garden, it is never obvious which are weeds. The definition of weeds explains why: “Any plant that grows in an unwanted place…”² Weed is a moral term. The world is partitioned into the “wanted” and the weeds. We do not simply plant a garden, we also impose a moral grid on the earth. And we do not do this alone. We may not care about what plants spring up in our patch of earth—but others do. Try not weeding, mowing or tending to your lawn. Community ordinances in most urban areas prohibit the proliferation of weeds and you could receive a citation. Even if the ordinance is not enforced there are consequences: Weeds lower property values and raise neighborly ire.

Good friends of ours are native garden enthusiasts and offered to do ”missionary work” on a small patch in our small backyard. They carefully designed and planted a garden of native plants with beautiful flowers that bloom at different times and also attract birds, insects, and butterflies. They told us that we would have to weed the garden. I was surprised, as I thought “native” meant “no weeding necessary.” Despite being native, the division endures: the “wanted” and the weeds.

The day after the garden was completed, I watched a bunny munch away in our precious, newly planted patch. I was horrified! I quickly went to the garden supply store and bought sturdy two-foot high chicken wire to protect the plants from marauding rabbits. I began thinking of these intruders in different terms. They are no longer bunnies or even rabbits. They are varmints, pests, felons.

It is not lost on me that the words “varmint,” “pest,” and “felon” are all moral terms applied to undesirables who have trespassed into my space. It is also not lost on me that my moral compass about rabbits swung from “cute-harmless” to “objectionable-destructive” when I altered my values about our small plot of earth. And it is not lost me that claiming it to be “our plot” is the height of god-like presumptuousness. I am, of course, not alone in making such a claim. Every square inch of this entire continent is “owned” by someone or some collective entity.

One of the reasons we must fence out rabbits is the lack of predators. Rabbits proliferate and hop around our yard with impunity. They do this because most rabbit-predators are more objectionable: wolves, foxes, wild dogs, feral cats, raccoons. Those that prey on rabbits from the sky, including hawks, kites, falcons, merlins, eagles, and owls are of limited number because of urban habitat degradation. Rabbits thrive because the larger communal moral grid banishes or inadvertently diminishes their predators.

Grass

The “civilized space” in many urbanized areas is typically neatly partitioned into garden and lawn. The garden is an enhancement, a beauty mark set off from the grassy green lawn. Grass. My puzzlement about weeds is accompanied by my loathing of grass. My father bought 250 acres in the rugged, forested mountains in the Southern Tier of New York State when I was 12 years old. Our weekends were spent clearing large areas of natural growth, making trails, planting—and mowing—grass. This is not how a teenaged urban boy wants to spent his weekends. It is where my loathing of grass was fostered.

Turf grass is America’s biggest irrigated crop; more than corn, wheat, and fruit orchards combined. Over 1/3 of urban water use goes to lawns and up to 60% of this is wasted. Lawnmowers use gas and pollute—over 17 million gallons of gas are spilled filling lawnmowers. Grass is environmentally unsustainable in many parts of the country, especially the Southwest, where climate change, drought, and fires renders grass an extravagant folly. Nonetheless, grass still flourishes in many of these areas, where the extravagance of grass is not viewed as folly, but a badge of wealth and privilege. The moral compass has not yet swung from privilege to folly, but movement is afoot: Las Vegas, for example, has banned certain types of grass, water rationing is in effect across the Southwest, and fines have been imposed on those using water for their grass.

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A grassy, manicured, weeded lawn is a moral imperative for much of the rest of the country; a communally enforced aesthetic. It is a moral esthetic imported into this country in the 19^th century from England, where the large manor houses and palaces are fronted with huge lawns. Americans now front (and “rear”) their “estates”, mimicking the privileged class of Old England. The pernicious grip of grass-fed entitlement reaches across continents and centuries.

The moral compass about grass will be harder to swing in these water enriched areas, but early signs suggest the needle is starting to move. The environmental advantages of native gardening are many: Native plants are hardy, do not require fertilizer, need less water, reduce pollution, promote biodiversity, and are beautiful. Native gardening is becoming a booming industry, sale of native plants has dramatically increased, and standards for certification of native gardens have been established. Posting a sign of certification provides moral standing to a yard that might otherwise be judged as a neglected eyesore. On my small street alone there are several yards that are covered with plants, not grass, and another with a certification notice.

Gardening is inescapably moral, having consequences for the birds, insects and butterflies, the plants and animals, and the planet that cascade from our decisions about what constitutes a weed. Grass is a weed.

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Child abuse did not exist before 1960.

You probably read that statement and thought, “That can’t be true.” You would be half right. The term “child abuse” was first used around 1960 and encompasses physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. These can occur, not just with babies and young children, but at any point in childhood, which, in most states, extends to 18 years of age.

The behavioral characteristics of child abuse have likely been ever-present features of human life across time and cultures. So, in that regard, you would be correct. However, a second component of our contemporary understanding of child abuse is quite new: the identification and valuation of these behaviors as morally repugnant and legally punishable. The first appearance of organized concern for the physical maltreatment of children was the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, founded in 1874. It was an extension of the already established Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.¹

The concern for cruelty to children emerged in concert with the appearance of other concerns about children’s welfare, including child labor laws. Prior to the 19^th century, the economy of most societies consisted of agriculture and handcrafts. Children worked on family farms, as indentured servants, in homecrafts, and some were apprenticed to trade guilds, typically between 10 and 14 years of age. Children were critical to family finances and the labor force, employed like adult workers, and essential for survival in a time of struggle and hardship. Children lacked legal rights or any recourse. Cruelty to children, and child abuse, were behaviorally integral to the social order; simply a part of life. However, there was no identification or valuation of these behaviors as moral or legal injustices.

It is difficult to appreciate that what is now so obviously, and profoundly, morally repugnant could have been invisible; an accepted fact of life. Differentiating the behaviors from their moral valuation allows us to better grasp how the dramatic transformation in material circumstances, political and economic contexts, and cultural values can reconfigure our moral universe.

Racism

Racism did not exist before the 20^th century.

You probably read that statement and thought, again, “That can’t be true.” You would be half right, again, for the same reasons as that just discussed for child abuse.

The word, “racism” first appeared in 1902 to describe and condemn the practice of segregating a race of people from the rest. The current definition of racism, “a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capabilities and that racial differences produce inherent superiority of a particular race”² gained its full meaning in the 1930’s to describe the political ideology of the Nazi’s about Jews.

Although the term “racist’ did not exist prior to the 20^th century, what did exist was the abolitionist movement that was propelled by the conviction that no race had the right to enslave another, and that freedom was a right due to everyone regardless of race. The abolitionists movement began in the 18^th century and the first abolitionist organization in the United States was founded in 1775.

Slavery has been an ever-present part of civilizations since the first settlements in Mesopotamia, beginning about 3500 BCE, and has flourished on all inhabited continents since that time. Slavery in many societies was not always, or often, based on race. Slavery in Colonial America and, later the United States, however, was largely racial, as most slaves were brought from Africa by Europeans. Here, slavery and race were inseparably linked. The belief that one race, Whites, is superior to another, Blacks, was simply assumed (by Whites) as part of the natural hierarchical order. Behaviorally, slavery and racism were an ever-present given.

No systematic philosophical or religious arguments questioning the moral injustice of slavery existed in the West before the 18^th century. It was simply a fact of life. So, what changed in the 18^th century that lead to a moral awaking to the evils of slavery and racism; to the appearance of the abolitionists?

Thomas Jefferson

The idea that all individuals have rights that are not conferred by a divine ruler, privileged personages, or an institutional decree, but are intrinsic to being human, first appeared in the 17^th century and was most powerfully argued by John Locke. Locke’s arguments provided the foundation for the American Revolution; a revolution that forged a radically new political, social, and moral order.³

The Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, announces this new ordering in the very first lines: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These truths were NOT self-evident at that time. They challenged the existing self-evident beliefs that all are NOT created equal; NOT endowed by the Creator with rights; and do NOT possess the right to life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness.⁴

The Declaration was a missile aimed directly at monarchy. Rights are not innate to a divinely sanctioned ruler; they are conferred by the Creator to all individuals, who establish a governmental order that derives its legitimacy from these individual rights. It inverts the social hierarchy. It shatters the political order.

We fail to appreciate the enormous risks taken by Jefferson and his colleagues. Their fortune, family, position, reputation, their very lives, were staked on a bold declaration to lead an insurrection against the world’s most powerful, wealthy, militarily strong country that controlled every corner of Colonial governments, every courthouse, every harbor, every form of authority and power in the land, and was supported by many passionate Colonialists. It was not only a declaration of war against British monarchial rule, it was a trigger for a civil war. These unlikely rebels had no army, no navy, no organized government, no currency, no allies. This was a wild, crazy, mad gamble.

Unappreciated by our country’s founders was how far reaching “All are created equal” would become; not only a bugle call to overthrow monarchy, but a clarion call for a revolutionary moral order. It is not an accident that abolitionist movements first appeared in human history at the exact moment as the revolution against monarchial order.

The 250 years since the Declaration have been marked a growing appreciation of the reach of the ethics of rights and equality. The abolitionist movement to end slavery has been joined by other liberation movements that continue to our day: civil rights, equality of women, the rights of children, of animals, gender equality, the rights of persons with disabilities. All these moral uprisings have involved struggle, hardship, sacrifice, and bloodshed. They continue. This history affords appreciation of the long, arduous, and tumultuous process required to wrench behaviors out of taken-for-granted darkness into the hot glare of moral injustice.

Our highest ideal, that all are created equal, is inherently disruptive, calling us to continually confront injustice and reaffirm our commitment to a more perfect union.

Jefferson a Racist?

Was Jefferson a racist? Of course. As was everyone else of his time—and before. The pointed critiques of how racism, sexism, and the other heretofore invisible injustices have shaped human history, and killed, maimed, and destroyed so many lives, is a necessary corrective to the blindness of the past. But simply condemning Jefferson and his brethren who championed equal rights, at great personal cost, without recognizing their contributions flattens the moral landscape; affords easy self-righteous moralizing at the expense of understanding.

250 years from now, will any of us escape the moral condemnation certainly due us “fossilists”⁵ for our wanton, headless destruction of the biosphere that may, perhaps, render human life extinct by then? How many of us have sworn off using fossil fuels; taken a Jeffersonian stance to create a revolutionary political, social, and moral order to save our species and our planet? Very, very few.

But damning climate patriots among us as equally morally reprehensible as the CEO’s of the oil and gas companies, and the commercial and political interests that denude, pollute, and destroy the planet’s forests, rivers, and oceans, flattens our moral landscape, obliterating the crucial differences between individuals that make a difference. This is how revolutions happen: Individuals, in the trenches, relentlessly, aggressively, tirelessly, in the face of long odds and bleak prospects, at great personal cost, confront and attempt to upend powerful vested interests. The future is forged by the efforts of courageous, imperfect individuals acting in the uncertain, messy present.

Jefferson and the other Declaration instigators were imperfect visionaries in their messy, uncertain time who championed ideals they were prepared to die for. They bequeathed to us a moral order that, ironically, we use to condemn them for their moral shortcomings. This paradox is their legacy. When we critique them, we need to do so with gratitude. And humility.

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Genealogy

I had never given much care to genealogy, thinking it a form of navel gazing into a distant past that has no bearing on me, and my life, now. That changed after my mother died. My father’s family was Dutch and my mother’s was German and Scots-Irish—solidly Christian, White, and Northern European. Checks all the boxes. However, my mother’s father died in 1934, when she was 12, and she told us she thought he had a family secret, but didn’t know what it might be and didn’t want to find out. After my mother died, my sister did a genealogy of my mother’s family and discovered my grandfather’s secret—he was Jewish. He changed his name when he immigrated to the U.S as a 16 year-old.

I was stunned. At a subterranean level, I felt very vulnerable. I certainly understood antisemitism and abhorred it, but from a position with my feet firmly planted on the “mainland”, waving with empathy at those on a close, but offshore island (e.g., Jews and the other “outsiders”). Now I share not only a past with some of those offshore, but given the long history of parsing ancestry to sniff out Jewish ”blood” for extermination, it changed my understanding of myself, my identity. The low rumble of antisemitism was now quite audible and personally menacing. The living power of the past, its relevance for my life in the present, and its possible consequences for my future—pile-driven home.

Therapy

The seismic power of the past is also the engine of effective psychotherapy. We all construe stories about our identity; who we are, what formed us, who influenced us, what memorable events mark our lives. These stories compose our identity and are distilled into habits, assumptions, and reactions that reflexively govern much of what we believe, say, and how we act. The past is relived at the visceral level, guiding our present lives and our expectations for the future. When these guideposts falter or breakdown we can find ourselves unmoored; anxiety, angst, anger, and despair become our companions. Therapy, in its various forms, focuses on changing the visceral assumptions, and this often involves reexamining the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Therapy for trauma evinces this in its most stark form. Trauma therapy must directly confront shocking past experiences to forge new narratives, new habits, new reactions about the trauma’s meaning and its bearing on who we are. This therapy can be destabilizing, painful, and terrifying, requiring great courage. This is a major reason therapy is often avoided; the pain we know is less frightening than the destabilizing unknown pain that awaits. But the courage to confront the horrors of the past is rewarded with a reclaimed life and hope for the future. The only way out is through.

National Narratives

A similar process to therapy occurs at the national level. Our narratives about our past, which is the history that we tell ourselves about ourselves, forms our identity. These narratives, typically, are heroic; obstacles faced, challenges met, and adversity overcome at great odds. They are morality plays where, after grappling with demons for 40 days and 40 nights, virtue and righteousness triumph over evil. Our national pride is, after all, pride about our past, which defines who we are now and what we hope for our future; it shapes our political landscape and national conversations, our laws, institutions, legislation, and elections.

Slavery is a 400-year indelible stain on American history. It was integral to our country’s founding, essential to its economic viability and vitality, and intrinsic in its social structure. Unimaginable cruelty, brutality, suffering, and murder of slaves, and their descendants, have been routine in American life for centuries. The presence of the progeny of slaves in our midst—in their very appearance—is a stark reminder of the horrors of our past, evoking reflexive, habitual reactions conditioned by the longstanding narratives about race; about Black and White and what they mean.¹

The current upheaval in our country about racism is a challenge to the dominant stories of our history, of our identity. As with therapy, and genealogy, our past is complicated, filled with facts—known, unknown, avoided, denied, and ignored— selectively highlighted and given structure and meaning by our narratives. Was Robert E. Lee the hero of the “Lost Cause”, fighting for “States Rights” and a “Noble Defender of the South?” Or was he a traitor leading a rebellion to preserve slavery and destroy the Union? The struggle over the narratives about our past is not simply an esoteric debate among academics; it is a struggle for our nation’s soul: Who were we? Who are we? Who do we want to be?

The Abolitionist movement, the Civil War, the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Constitutional Amendments, and the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s are all landmarks of progress toward equality; achievements certainly worthy of note. Our narratives, however, only highlight these accomplishments, avoiding the 400 years of murder and misery. We comfort ourselves with hagiography to avoid honest history.

The power of the trauma at the very heart of our national identity—slavery— threatens the foundations of our body politic, our civil life, our personal engagements. We, collectively, face the same onerous challenge as many combat vets: Do we choose to continue with the pain we know, or do we have the courage to face the searing hard truths of our past, our moral failings of great consequence, and endure the disturbing uncertainties and disruptive pain that will result?

Monuments

Germany offers a model of what this might look like. Monuments to their Nazi past are scattered throughout Germany, with an especially dense concentration in its capital, Berlin, marking the sites of momentous dark happenings, egregious atrocities , and homage to the victims who were tortured and murdered. These monuments testify to this past and bear witness to grievous moral failings. They also, however, are bold statements of Germany’s values, now, and their commitment to a future informed by this past. They display a unique kind of heroism worth emulating: moral courage.

National monuments to the past are values we hold, now, about ourselves, made visible.²

Do we have the courage of the Germans?

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A Niagara of books have poured off the presses in recent years extolling the ever expanding opportunities available to the elderly and retirees. “80 is the new 60”, we are told. “Start a new business.” “Follow your dreams.” The AARP magazine carries pictures of aging movie stars, in their 60’s, 70’s, and sometimes 80’s, facelifts intact, smiling with perfect teeth, extolling the virtues and pleasures of aging.

There is some truth to this. Americans are retiring with greater health, wealth, and opportunities than ever before. Rarely acknowledged, however, is the black-hooded figure, circulating through this party, striking down revelers, sometimes mid-sentence, to the horrifying glances of other revelers. No one is exempt, and the most susceptible are those who cannot afford the books and magazines trumpeting geriatric wellbeing. Since the onset of the pandemic, however, much of the chatter about the joys of aging has subsided and the disparities and injustices in health, wealth, and happiness are now glaringly apparent.

Statistical Life Expectancy

We do, nonetheless, live in extraordinary times. The statistical definition of life expectancy is the average, across all births, of how long a person may expect to live at birth. Life expectancy, for most of human history, has remained remarkably constant. Based on the best estimates from the historical record, life expectancy, across all civilizations, from ancient Greece and Rome, to the Inca and Teotihuacan empires, to Renaissance Italy and medieval Japan—indeed, up  to the mid 19th century, was around 30 years.¹ These data lead to the obvious conclusion that 30 years is the biological limit of life expectancy for the human species. Every species has its lifecycle and this is ours.

Dramatic changes, however, occurred in the last 150 to 200 years. In 1850 in the united States, life expectancy was 38 years; in 1900, 48 years; in 1950, 66 years; in 2000, 77 years. The change in life expectancy for the world shows an even more startling increase. Prior to 1900, life expectancy was 30 years. By 2013, it had risen to 72 years. The global average today is higher than it was in any country in 1950. Life expectancy for the entire human population has doubled in 200 years! This is an astonishing improvement in human life.²

Why? Science. A radically new way to understand the material world, based on doubt, systematic methods of experimentation, and material explanations that can be objectively verified, was developed in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. When this method began to be applied to medical conditions in the 19^th century, astonishing discoveries and advances occurred. We now have the power to intervene in the course of nature, able to change our biological destiny.

The full benefits of this power are not equally distributed in the United States. Communities of color who have been targets of systemic racism and injustice, and those living in poverty have significantly lower life expectancies. We must ask ourselves, “Why?”

Semantic Life Expectancy

Life expectancy also has a semantic meaning: What do we expect from life? What do we anticipate for our future? What possibilities are open to us? Semantic life expectancy also has remained relatively constant throughout most of human history. The answer to the question, “What do you expect from life?”, was simple: Our fate is the same as our parents; and their fate was the same as their parents. Our birth determined our destiny, and little changed from generation to generation. And this fate was likely grim. 95% of the population were laborers, surfs, peasants and poor. Life was toil, suffering, degradation, and hardship. The most important semantic life expectancy in a nasty, brutish, and short life, was the question of afterlife expectancy; what fate awaits beyond this mortal coil of suffering.

Now, in our current times, the semantic question, “What do we expect from life?”, extends beyond the confined straightjacket of our birth, embracing possibilities unimaginable to our ancestors. Our youth is shadowed by the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, we experience “identity crises”, and spend the first 18 years of our life, and oftentimes much more, going to school; many of us spend almost the entire life expectancy of earlier times preparing for life.

We enjoy a surfeit of food, which is delivered to “super” markets in fleets of tractor trailers, miles of railroad cars, and a flotilla of ocean tankers from distant places, offering a cornucopia of choices. We travel at breakneck speeds across town, across the country, and across oceans. In our heated and air conditioned homes, we turn facets to shower and to drink purified water. Music, information, and entertainment to amuse and inform us are at our fingertips, 24/7. We enjoy comforts that would have made even royalty of bygone eras jealous. And after 30 or so years of work, many of us retire to enjoy 20 or more years of labor free life, embrace, “80 is the new 60”, and ponder: “What do I want to do with my life?”

This dreamscape is not evenly distributed. The semantic life expectancy of those outside the circumference of health, wealth, and opportunity is much grimmer and bleaker. The happy talk about the “Golden Years”, and the wrinkle-free faces and cheerleading smiles of aging celebrities are marketed to a select group; the fate of the impoverished and communities of color who have been targets of racism are airbrushed out of the picture. Again, we must ask ourselves, “Why such disparities?”

The answer to this troubling question about semantic life expectancy is, not surprisingly, the same as for statistical life expectancy: both result from the lack of good health care, nutrition, housing, education, opportunity, and employment.

The 19^th century not only ushered in a dramatic rise in statistical life expectancy, but another startling growth: the size of the population.

This growth begins around 1850. We would expect that a population growth like this would usher in mass starvation and universal misery. It has not.

Costs and Consequences

The exponential increase in life expectancy and in population trace almost identical paths. These have been accompanied by a host of other exponential growths, referred to in scientific circles as the “Great Acceleration”.³

This graph captures the costs on the earth’s biosystems of our long life of luxury, and includes atmospheric composition, stratospheric ozone, the climate system, water and nitrogen cycles, marine ecosystems, land systems, tropical forests, and terrestrial biosphere degradation. You can see the initial jump out of the steady state beginning in 1850, about the same time as the jump in statistical life expectancy, and biosphere destruction picks up steam into the 20^th century.

Great inequities lie behind these trends as well. Currently, 18% of world’s population controls 75% of world’s wealth, and consumes much of the world’s resources. The biggest consumer of the world’s resources is us in the United States.

This second graph traces trends in the socioeconomic factors contributing to our affluent life and includes economic growth, primary energy use, fertilizer use, large dams, water use, paper production, transportation, telecommunications, and international tourism. These make our remarkable lives possible.

The great acceleration of socioeconomic changes, as we can see in this graph, is much steeper than the prior one. It took a century of environmental exploitation to build the infrastructure that enabled the abrupt, explosive growth in socioeconomic benefits. The appearance of science and modern medicine, the dramatic rise in statistical life expectancy, the rapid industrialization, steep acceleration of socioeconomic factors, and transformation of semantic life expectancy are all interconnected, all of a single piece of a profound, historically unprecedented alteration in human life.

This all came together around 1950, as this second graph indicates. After WWII, the United States emerged as the only combatant nation untouched by bombs or invasion, the economy humming at war time production, and possessing a GDP that was equal to the entire rest of the devastated world. Rarely, if ever, in human history has so much of the worlds wealth resided in one country.

We have been living in this historically anomalous time, in this historically anomalous place, where many of us have enjoyed the bountiful life expectancies of our unique and narrow place-time envelop that could not even have be dreamed of by most humans who have ever walked this planet.

And it is ending. The entire edifice that undergirds our privileged life is unsustainable. The bill has come due on the costs: the biosphere is being degraded beyond repair, species are being exterminated at a rate unseen for 65 million years, essential resources are being depleted, and our planet is irrevocably changed. We are in the midst of rapid and profound changes to the entire biosphere that no previous single generation in human history has experienced.

There will not be a return to “normal”, as normal was decidedly not normal.

The pandemic is simply a baby-step dress rehearsal for the cataclysmic changes rushing toward us. The pandemic provides a preview of how capable we are to effectively respond to a known, impending catastrophe. We, in the United States, have failed. Miserably. We can’t even get cooperation on the simple inconvenience of wearing a mask. This response is a sign of a deeper unraveling of American society.

Furthermore, the life expectancies for our children and grandchildren are being dramatically altered. So too, for those of us who have come of age in the midst of 9/11, the 2008 financial meltdown, in the shadow of global warming, and, now, the pandemic.

Ethical Life Expectancy                        

Embedded in the statistical and semantic meanings of life expectancy is a third meaning: Ethical.

We now have the power to intervene in course of nature, able to change not only our biological destiny, but of that of the entire planet. It is a fearsome power with equally fearsome responsibilities. We live in an apocalyptic age. There are 2 meanings for this term. The one we are most familiar with is “the impending destruction of the world.” The second is the original Greek meaning: “A revealing of things not previously known”. This meaning beckons a response, poses a challenge to confront a new reality, to forge new paths, to plant seeds for new possibilities from the ashes of the of what has been lost.

Both definitions apply. We face the impending destruction of the world. We also are beckoned—courage, vision, and an unprecedented marshaling of the talents, energy, and collaboration of the entire human community are urgently needed.

Each of us must choose. We are at a high leverage point in time where actions now will have huge consequences for the future—even if there will be a future for our children and their children. The onrushing catastrophe of biosphere destruction, the appalling disparities and injustices between the wealthily privileged few and the impoverished many, and the societal unraveling, pose a most dire moral challenge:

“What are we going to do about it?”        

More pointedly: “What am I going to do about it?  

And, “What are you going to do about it?”⁶

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How should I Iive? What is the nature of the Good? How should we live together? By what authority? These life quandaries, often not explicitly stated, have haunted humans from the time of our cave dwelling ancestors. Religion provides an explicit, sanctifying framework that situates our lives within a cosmic horizon, providing meaning, purpose, and moral grounding. Answers to fundamental moral quandaries are conferred by supernatural powers beyond the frail groping of humans—something clear, universal, unassailable, absolute.

Christianity and morality have been synonymous in the West for nearly two millennia, the Bible providing the moral pillar supporting church, state, and the grounding for adjudicating good and evil. The worst crime in Christendom was not murder (”Thou shalt Not Kill”), as punishment could be mitigated by circumstances¹, but heresy, which usually could not. Indeed, heretics received especially intense condemnation and persecution, and for good reason. Heresy doesn’t violate a commandment. It is much more dangerous—it challenges the legitimacy of the commandments.

Not surprisingly, one of the deepest divides in contemporary American life and politics is between moral absolutists and their rivals, often called “moral relativists” by the absolutists. Absolutists, led by the Christian Right², claim the country was founded as a Christian nation and therefore should adhere to Christian moral dictates. The “relativists”, in stark contrast, allow for a multiplicity of moral codes and religious beliefs. Indeed, they argue for respecting diverse moral orientations, and strive to be open and non-judgmental, acknowledging the claims of legitimacy of many, often competing, moral frameworks. Debate and disagreement are to be expected, but no one approach is inherently superior to another, should hold sway simply because those in power say-so. What is valued is a plurality of voices and possibilities.

The absolutists raise challenging questions about this seemingly all-embracing doctrine of fairness and acceptance. How are we to arrive at any moral certainties, to find any moral basis on which to act, to discover the answers to: “How shall I live?” “What is the nature of the Good?” And how, specifically, are we to address foundational political questions: “What should be the rule of law?” “By what justification?” It is easy to conclude that the “relativists” guiding moral principle is that none should hold sway, that morality is arbitrary, that “anything goes”—simply another name for amorality. It is also easy to understand the absolutist’s opposition, even militant resistance, to this apparent decent into the moral abyss.

The absolutist code, free of the confusions of mortals, offers the promise of clarity, safety, and security. As alluring as this is, it begs the question: Whose moral code? Christians were among the first settlers to arrive in America, en masse, from Europe. Most made the harrowing journey to this distant shore because they were persecuted minorities in their country of origin, heretics to the ruling orthodoxy. Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Quakers, Mennonites, Huguenots, Catholics, and Moravians all fled to the “New World” seeking freedom to practice their unique orthodoxies without persecution.³ European history, that is, the history of Christendom, is written in the blood of the vicious slaughter of millions over disagreements about orthodoxy. The lesson to be learned from over a millennium of Christendom’s history is that Christian absolutism leads to absolute chaos, wanton murder, and brutal persecution of individuals whose sole moral failing is to believe a different interpretation of biblical text.

The framers of the Constitution of the United States, having just won a war of independence from a despotic monarch who was also head of the state church, were acutely aware of this legacy of Christian absolutism. They also were acutely aware they were creating a new order, free of absolutism. Monarchy was countered by an elected president and a system of checks and balances. Christian absolutism was countered by the first Constitutional amendment guaranteeing freedom of religion. James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, understood “that the government sanction of a religion is a threat to religion: Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?⁴ God is not mentioned once in the Constitution.

America was not founded as a Christian nation. It was founded as a nation defined by the Constitution, establishing a form of government unlike any in human history⁵; one that has become a beacon for many other peoples across the globe seeking liberty. It is a radical alternative to absolutism in its many forms. It is more than a political document. The Constitution is a Revolutionary Moral Order. It allows a multiplicity of moral codes and religious beliefs, respects diverse moral orientations, is open and non-judgmental, acknowledging the claims of legitimacy by many, often competing, moral frameworks. Debate and disagreement are to be expected, but no one approach is inherently superior to another, should hold sway simply because those in power say-so. What is valued is a plurality of voices and possibilities.

This moral order is not “moral relativism”. It embodies the values of democracy, explicitly crafted to avoid the plagues of moral absolutism, religious warfare, arbitrary justice, and the gross mistreatment of the many by the few. It is a statement of ethical principles of relationship, of respect for each person. It is the basis for justice and order of a different kind than offered by absolutists; it forbids as much as it allows. It also is not the opposite of absolutism—it is an alternative. The opposite of moral absolutism, as well as democratic morality, is anarchy, the true morality of “anything goes.”

We live in a large multicultural society with untold number of congregations and believers ascribing to diverse, often absolutists, moral codes and commandments. We are confronted with the same urgent question as the American founders: How can we live together if there is NOT a superordinate moral and political framework that allows a multiplicity of moral codes and religious beliefs, respects diverse moral orientations, and acknowledges the claims of legitimacy by many, often competing, moral visions? Democratic morality allows each of us to live a moral life, free from persecution, and in doing so necessarily results in disagreement, confusion, and uncertainty. It also can be quite distressing and disturbing, requiring strength, fortitude, faith, and humility. Living a moral life is never easy. But it is necessary. It is what living in a democracy involves. Living together peacefully, but with considerable discord, in the 21^st century requires that we embrace, with courage and conviction, the demands of democratic morality. 

Tree-in-the-Forest

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? This oft-cited philosophical question is an example of epistemology, which is the philosophical inquiry into the nature of knowledge, asking “What is true, what is real, and why can we say so?”

I first encountered this question as a freshman engineering major in an elective course I took on philosophy. I was utterly befuddled: “What are they talking about?” “What’s the point?” “Who cares?” The “tree-falling” query is also a source of ridicule about the absurdities generated in philosophy, so my befuddlement is widely shared.

I have since learned, however, the importance of questioning the truths we believe, and the reasons we believe them. The answer to the “tree-falling” question, the one that makes sense to me, is that when it falls, it creates vibrations in the air, but if nobody hears it, then it makes no sound. There are physical consequences that are independent of a human presence (vibrating air), and social-psychological consequences that require human presence (sound). So, the answer is “no”, there is no sound, but “yes,” it is an event with physical consequences.

The “no and yes” answer undermines the common assumption of a singular, imperial Truth. Rather, it points to different kinds of truth: a natural kind of truth, which is not dependent on human presence, and a human kind of truth, which arises from human presence, often within a social context.¹ What is considered real, what is deemed truth, differs greatly between these kinds of truth. Important practical, even lifesaving consequences, can result from appreciating these differences.

Germs

Malaria, tuberculosis, small pox, bubonic plague, cholera, and influenza are the most deadly diseases in human history, killing untold billions of people, bringing unimaginable suffering, and changing the course of human history. A host of other diseases, although not quite as lethal, have made their unique contributions to human misery and include AIDS, yellow fever, typhoid, tetanus, meningitis, diphtheria, measles, whooping cough, chicken pox, and polio.

All of these diseases have been cured, prevented, or their effects have been greatly mitigated and managed through vaccines, sanitation, and other medical treatments. The estimated lifespan for most of human history, up to the 19^th century, was 30 years of age. In 1850, it was 38 years; in 1900, 48 years; in 1950, 66 years; in 2000, 75 years.² Prior to the 19^th century, presumed causes of disease included the visitation of malevolent spirits, retribution rained on humankind for their transgressions by angry gods, alignment of the stars, imbalance of bodily processes, and miasmas. Cures included charms, amulets and chants; sacrifices, offerings and prayer; smoke, nosegays and herbs; potions, baths and purgatives; self-mutilation, bloodletting and witch-killing. Despite the many deeply believed causes and desperately sought cures, little worked. What did work did so by accident; the reasons were not related to the presumed cause.

What changed? Science. A radically new way to understand the material world, based on doubt, systematic methods of experimentation, and material explanations that can be objectively verified, was developed in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. When this method began to be applied to diseases in the 19^th century, germs were identified as their cause. Despite great resistance, astonishing medical advances ensued. Human life expectancy has doubled in the last 150 years!

Germs are a natural kind of truth. They are indifferent to human beliefs, have consequences that only derive from their physical properties, and are real whether we think so or not. Plagues cannot be stopped or mitigated by chanting, appeals to supernatural powers, or bloodletting. Human actions can, possibly, change how natural kinds of truth impact humans, for better or worse, but cannot change the their causal properties. The entire physical world is composed of natural kinds and causes.

Money

Money is real and has very tangible consequences. If you do not have any, you are in very serious trouble, possibly life-threatening trouble. If you have a lot, then luxury, ease, and opportunity beckon. Money has a material presence, traditionally in the forms of coins and paper, and can be counted, calculated, and subjected to the most advanced, complex mathematical analysis. Nothing could be more real in our lives, more concretely manifested, with quantifiable properties and consequences.  

But it is not a natural kind of truth. Its meaning, its value, its reality, does not derive from its physical properties. What makes money money, what confers its value, makes it real, derives from the communal belief that it is valuable. Money is money because we trust that others share our belief in its value, and trust the backing and assurances given by those who issue it. RAI stones, bottle caps, and shells are not money in our culture. They may, perhaps, be valued by some, and might be bartered, but they are not money.

During times of stability and general wellbeing, we go about our daily lives assuming the bedrock fiscal reality of money. The foundational nature of belief and trust as the source of value for money becomes distressingly apparent, however, during times of communal crises, such as war, fiscal collapse, and pandemics. Doubt about the value of money, and mistrust of the assurances and policies of those who issue it, can provoke hyperinflation or deflation, bank-runs, stock crashes, hoarding, and acquiring gems, gold and other and precious metals.³ They also reveal why trust in the leader of a society, especially in times of crisis, is so important, for trust is, quite literally, the coin of the realm, critical for surviving times when confidence and trust have been undermined or lost.

Money is but one example of human kinds of truth arising within a social context that are real, have concrete consequences, yet derive from shared communal belief. Our life is structured, organized, and populated by human kinds of truth: stop lights, building and legal codes, jails and juries, tools and toys, voting rights and election outcomes, democracy and despots, corporations, ego, intelligence—the list is endless. Many, if not most, have material properties, but their reality arise from communal beliefs and agreement.

Fatal Truths

I am amused, and deeply disturbed, when I see reports of the most recent poll assessing whether Americans believe in global warming—as if the issue is a referendum! It is not a human kind of truth; not a phenomenon that is amenable to belief. Its causal properties are not determined by popular belief or majority rule, and government proclamations banning the term will not make it disappear.⁴ Unlike money, or corporations, or election results, global warming is a natural kind of truth. It is indifferent to human beliefs. Global warming is happening, with evermore-likely catastrophic consequences. Human action can mitigate it, but only by taking the necessary steps that impact the material causal pathways governing it. Likewise, pandemics cannot be wished away, are not subject to politically opportunistic remarks, cannot be cured by beliefs in supernatural powers, or ended by leaders asserting that, “One day it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.”⁵

Failure to distinguish between natural and human kinds of truth can have dire consequences. Many deaths result when pandemics and global warming are treated as human kinds of truth. It could be called murder if decisions are made by leaders who, knowing that it is, in fact, a natural phenomenon, but because it is unprofitable or politically problematic, promote policies and practices that exacerbate and accelerate it.⁶ Leaders who understand the difference between natural and human kinds of truth and seek to use this understanding for the public good, not personal gain, save lives and rescue societies in crisis. Electing those who don’t can be fatal.

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