I’ve begun watching the first season of the HBO series True Detective and I have to confess that I’m greatly enjoying the compelling story lines and complex characters in the series.  But even more than that, I’m really intrigued by the fabulous dialogue, written by Nic Pizzolatto.  It certainly came as no surprise to me to discover, as I did recently, that Pizzolatto was a former philosophy major at Louisiana State University, because the series, perhaps more than any other I’ve seen in a long time, is chock full of philosophical ideas at every turn. 

The third episode in particular blew my mind with its fairly sophisticated treatment of theism and organized religion (see the clip below).  To set the scene up, two detectives, Rust Cohle (played by Mattew McConaughey) and Martin Hart (played by Woody Harrelson) are investigating a ritual murder that leads them to an outdoor evangelical service.  As they listen to the preacher give his sermon, Rust, an atheist and skeptic, shares his cynical views about the nature of religious belief to his fairly devout colleague, Martin, who feels compelled to offer a defense of religion.   As the scene plays out, we see these same characters later on as they continue to reflect on the debate that occurred between them a decade earlier. 

From Rust’s perspective, those who believe in the existence of a supreme being are basically pathetic, irrational suckers who are so fearful of life that they are willing to accept ridiculous fairy tales as truth.  Martin, on the other hand, sees religion as a positive element in society, without which we couldn’t survive as a species. 

Rust’s position is basically a contemporary spin on the psychological critiques of religious belief developed by the great 19th century “Masters of Suspicion”—Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud.  Although their positions on religion differ slightly, all three see the origins of religious belief in fear of the sufferings of this world and anxiety over the inevitability of death.  Because we are basically cowardly, weak and childish, we create the illusion of a benevolent father figure (God), who loves us unequivocally and who offers us the soothing balm of eternal life with him after death.  True maturity, these thinkers argue, demands that we learn to accept the world as it truly is—full of pain and suffering, Godless, and terminal—and start taking our lives here and now much more seriously.

Martin response is more sociological in nature than theological.  Notice he never argues directly for the existence of God or the truth of religious belief, but instead makes the claim that we need religion for three reasons: (1) It’s a binding force, enabling some semblance of community to exist among individualistic human beings; (2) It keeps us from acting on our more vicious natural instincts by instilling in us the fear of divine punishment; (3) It helps us to function in everyday life, by enabling us to overcome the existential fear that all human beings—even atheists—possess and which otherwise would cripple us.

What is missing in this debate is a truly theological or philosophical defense of religion of the kind that we find in great theistic thinkers like Anselm, Aquinas, or even Dostoyevsky.  The only remotely theistic argument in the scene is the one made by the preacher, who seems to appeal to exactly the kinds of fearful, narcissistic longings that Rust criticizes so well.   So we’re left in the end with two very cynical options:  (1) religion is basically a con game that needs to be rejected outright, though there may be nothing positive in the end to take its place (Rust’s position) or (2) Religion needs to be embraced, not because it’s necessarily grounded in anything true, but because a world without it would be too horrible to contemplate (Martin’s position).    

Perhaps the absence of a strong theistic defense of religion in the series is intentional.  I don’t know what Nic Pizzolatto’s own views are, but it could be that he gets the religious zeitgeist of the times pretty well.  In the end, we don’t really give a damn whether something (i.e., God, the afterlife, original sin, etc.) is true or not.  The only legitimate question for us seems to be “does it work for me?”  If I feel better about my life by believing in a Supreme Being, then  I’ll believe in one.  If I think that it’s necessary for society to be grounded in religious institutions in order to function effectively, then  I’ll support organized religion.  But when religion suddenly starts to seem like something bogus to me, or when it no longer seems to fulfil its pragmatic function in society, then I’m going to ditch it like a handful of smelly dung. 

So maybe, like the characters in True Detective, we don’t really care about religious issues at all.  All we really care about is feeling good.  And if religion makes us feel good about ourselves, then it automatically is valid; and if it makes us feel badly about ourselves then it is just as assuredly invalid.  But, if this is all that religion really represents to the theists and non-theists alike, it seems to me a fairly silly, superficial thing….a kind of spiritual pop psychology for those who lack the ability to think critically and rationally about the human condition.

Or am I, like the main characters in True Detective, missing some important piece of evidence here? 

“The human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum. . . . it is only an inveterate habit -- the habit of inferiority to our full self.” (William James, The Energies of Man)

I came upon this quote by William James recently, and it struck me that the existential crisis that James described in the early 20th century is even more of a problem today than it was in his own time. 

How do we fall prey to the “habit of inferiority to our full selves” in the 21st century? I can't help thinking that our preoccupation with the seductiveness of technology is what is preventing us from realizing our true potentials as human beings. We’d rather make quips on Facebook or text one another about some inane topic than actually embrace life in all its messy complexity and grandeur. 

Cicero describes the most meaningful human relationships in terms of seeing ourselves reflected in the face of the other. If that's true, then many human beings probably don't have deep relationships at all, because they hardly ever spend enough time just being present to their fellow human beings. The use of 21st century forms of technology—the cell phone, the computer, the Ipad—creates an artificial separation between human beings that makes it impossible to see ourselves reflected in the other. And without access to the “mirror of the self” that the other represents, it is very difficult—if not impossible—to mature as a human being. 

The same is true with our disconnection from nature. Time alone in nature offers human beings the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of life and our connection to the planet as a whole. By separating us from nature, technology, therefore, stunts the kinds of introspective musing that makes philosophical wisdom possible.

I’m not trying to suggest that we can or should revert to a pretechnological society: that would neither be possible nor beneficial at this point. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t recognize that the benefits of any form of technology always come at a cost. And the price we may have to pay for our overdependence upon contemporary forms of technology may be the inability to develop a truly mature sense of self.

I came upon the following sentiment in the New York Times Magazine and it seemed to capture my own feelings about why physical books are so important:

Reading on-screen tempts us to see things only through the pinhole of our immediate curiosity.  I don’t mean to sentimentalize the Reading of Books, but as a practical matter, when you hold a book in your hands, it is very different from what happens when you are [reading something on] a glassy, featureless screen.  Online, your experience is personalized, but it is also atomized, flattened and miniaturized, robbed of its landscape.  Physical books require you to literally hold some of the context of what you are reading, and that is a crucial dimension of understanding.”  (Maria Bustillos)

Most of my well-educated friends have abandoned physical books and have been reading almost exclusively on Nooks or Kindles, or Ipads.  In recent years, I’ve gone in the complete opposite direction:  not only have I rejected digital texts completely, but I now buy only those books that I can get in handsome hardcovered version.  These are usually first or second edition books with clean pages, tight bindings, and unmarred jackets.  I search for the books I want on Amazon and buy used editions that usually cost less than either an e-version or paperback version of the book.

There’s nothing quite like the pleasure involved in holding a beautifully-made book in your hands.  I actually think that it makes the act of reading infinitely more pleasurable than reading the same text in an inferior print or digital version.

I’ve decided that I only want books around me that I know I will want to re-read in my old age—in the twilight years between retirement and death.  To this end, I’ve been ruthlessly selling my paperbacks, worn hardcovered editions, and those books that, while considered classics, I know that I will never read (sorry Herman Melville).

In my dotage, I see myself in a large spacious room, surrounded by wall-to-wall bookcases, each of which is filled with sumptuous editions of the works that I love.  Shakespeare is there of course, along with Kierkegaard, Jane Austen, Seneca, and Henry James….but so is John Kennedy O’Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces), J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings), and of, course, Helene Hanff (84 Charing Cross Road, the ultimate book about lovers of beautiful books).

As I picture my own death, I’m reading an old favorite—Heller’s Catch 22, perhaps, or maybe Nietzsche’sZarathustra—in a typically handsome edition.  As I near the end of the book, my heart simply stops and I slump forward, my bald head resting falling gently onto the pages of the book I have been reading. 

Could there possibly be a better way to go?

There was a time not very long ago when I believed that most human beings could be reached through reason.  You know:  you make what you consider a solid and persuasive argument, back it up with hard facts, and you assume that the average person will agree eventually with what you have to say.  And if they don't agree, you would hope that it's because they had solid arguments themselves to back up their own positions. 

But as I've gotten older I've begun to realize that human beings are influenced much more by things like strong emotions (fear, anger, indignation), ideology, and social prejudices than by logic, reason, or rationality.  Case in point:  The South.  The Huffington Post had a wonderful article recently that shows just how backwards the entire region we call the South is on just about any measure of social progress: 

The South is poorer, less upwardly mobile, more unhealthy, and much unhappier than the rest of the country.  One would think that the people who live in these southern states would welcome any sort of governmental assistance that they can get, but that's not the case.  In fact, southern states are at the forefront of the movement to cut government programs that assist the most vulnerable members of the society (children, the handicapped, the mentally ill, substance abusers, the elderly, and pregnant women).   Reason all you want with a southerner who thinks that government is the problem, but it probably won't convince him that many of the social difficulties that he experiences in his state are in fact the result of too little government, not too much. 

Prior to the last presidential election, film-maker Angela Pelosi tried to understand the anti-governmental attitudes of people in Mississippi, one of the most backward states in the Union, according to the data in the Huffington Post article. While the people she interviewed may be more extreme than the average Mississippian, the attitudes expressed seem to be typical, insofar as the citizens of this state continue to vote consistently against their own self-interest:

I'm not trying to pick on the South here.  I'm sure that there are many fine, decent people living south of the Mason-Dixon line.  And I don't think that the cult of the irrational exists solely in the south.   For example, Pelosi also interviewed citizens of New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy to ask anti-government folks there what programs should be cut from the federal budget.  The answers that she received to this question were as painful as they were funny:

Keep in mind that these were all people who thought that the size of government ought to be cut substantially, but, when they had to explain exactly which government programs ought to be cut, they seemed to become transformed all of a sudden into New York liberals.  Once again, ideology and self-interest trump logic and reason.

So, if large segments of our American population seem to be totally impervious to rational arguments and even self-evident facts, how is it possible to persuade such individuals of the "truth"?  Either one has to resort to flagrantly rhetorical appeals to emotion (hardly philosophical) or one attempts to engage in rational discourse, knowing that his or her arguments will inevitably fall on deaf ears.   

In short, how can philosophical argumentation work at all in a society where the average citizen hasn't been educated to understand the value of reason in the first place?  It's a dilemma that I don't have any easy answers for.  I can't help thinking, however, that this great love affair that we Americans are currently having with the irrational doesn't bode too well for the future of our country. 

Ten years ago if you asked me if I watched TV, the answer would have been a contemptuous, “Are you kidding?” Television in the late 1990s and early 2000s was what it had pretty much always been: a wasteland of vacuous entertainment, aimed primarily at the lowbrow tastes of cognitively-challenged Americans. Actually, television had gotten even worse by the early 2000s than it had been in the past, with an endless parade of inane reality shows—remember “Jersey Shore” and “The Real Housewives”?—that served to do little more than make viewers feel morally superior to the crass and callous individuals whose train-wrecked lives they were watching unfold on their TV sets. Men and women with any degree of taste and sensitivity ignored television entirely and turned to film or fiction if they wanted any kind of intellectually stimulating entertainment.

But I have a confession to make: I’ve becoming addicted to television again, for the first time perhaps since I was a high school student. Now, I’m not talking about watching shows on network TV, which is still filled with banal drivel (ever see “Two and a Half Men” or “How I Met Your Mother?”). No, what I’m talking about is the veritable renaissance that is occurring on cable TV—what has rightly been referred to as a new golden age of television, one that, in my estimation at least, may actually surpass those two other “golden ages” that occurred in the early 1950s and early 1970s. In fact, Cable networks like HBO, Showtime, and AMC and the Internet giant, Netflix, are producing series that are infinitely richer and more emotionally engrossing than anything that has ever been produced for television in the past.

There are far too many great programs now on cable TV for me to talk about all of them. Instead, I’ll focus on three in particular that millions of Americans like myself just can’t seem to get enough of: “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men,” and “House of Cards.” What these series have in common is that they rely on complex story arcs that span over multiple seasons, focus on complicated, morally compromised characters who evolve as these series progress, and have an almost philosophical preoccupation with exploring the meaning of our human condition.

But there’s something even more important that they all have in common: these series all have at their centers main characters who gleefully embrace lifestyles that can only be described as morally reprehensible and even evil. Walter White (“Breaking Bad”), Don Draper (“Mad Men”), and Frank Underwood (“House of Cards”) are men driven by pure egoistic self-absorption, who don’t give a damn about other people’s feelings or needs, and who will do just about anything they need to (lie, cheat, break the law, and at times kill innocents) to get what they want (sex, money, prestige, and power).

None of these characters would exist, of course, if David Chase, the creator of “The Sopranos,” hadn’t first demonstrated that audiences could come to care about—even love—a completely immoral central character, provided that character was endowed with realistic motivations and feelings that the audience could relate to. Tony Soprano was not just a vicious mobster—although he certainly could be extremely nasty at times. He was a man who was forced to live up to the legacy of his father, had to care for difficult family members, and had his own web of neuroses and insecurities with which to contend. In short, Tony was just like you and me, although his job frequently compelled him to kill people who got in his way. 

But what is it that we love so much about characters like these who, by all counts, would be considered sociopaths were we to encounter them in the real world? Besides being somehow relatable, all of these characters have one other thing in common: they’ve made the voluntary choice to pursue their own selfish wants, needs, and interests at all costs. Don Draper may have an attractive, desirable wife, but that certainly doesn’t stop him from having numerous sexual relationships with other women. When his daughter catches him in flagrante delicto with a neighbor’s wife, it doesn’t cause him even a moment of introspection or generate any desire at all within him to change his ways. He sleeps around with women—single or married—because he enjoys it and because he can….And morality simply does not enter into the equation.

Walter White, on the other hand, seems to be driven at first by the quite understandable desire to care for his family after he is diagnosed with lung cancer, but this, as we all well know, is just a façade. In a telling scene that occurs towards the end of the series’ run, White meets with his wife, Skylar, one last time in order to provide an explanation for the actions he took that destroyed their family:

     Skyler: If you tell me one more time that you did this for the family...
     Walt: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was, really... I was alive.

Manufacturing and distributing drugs, killing off the opposition, even manipulating those he supposedly cares about—Walter does all these things not out of necessity, but because he loves it, because being a drug kingpin gives him the kind of cool rush and inner satisfaction that nothing else in life can. 

What we’re talking about here is Nietzsche’s will to power taken to its logical extreme. In a world in which the decks are stacked against the ordinary individual, where power, money and sex provide the ultimate meaning in life, where God is dead, and morality is a cruel hoax, the smart person lives completely for himself and does whatever he has to to ensure that his own emotional and physical needs are met. Since other human beings are merely pawns to be used in this process, they are completely expendable. Even an innocent child killed during the commission of a crime in “Breaking Bad” becomes little more than collateral damage in Walter White’s never-ending quest for—dare I say it?—self-realization. 

Without a doubt the character that best embodies this unabashed, unrestricted will to power is “House of Cards” Frank Underwood. Completely understanding the logic of existence in a morality-free universe, Frank has managed to eradicate from his personality any vestiges of humanity and compassion that might make him weak or vulnerable. There is simply nothing that Underwood won’t do to achieve his goal of becoming the most powerful man in the world, and this includes murder if necessary. In Frank Underwood’s universe everyone exists to be used and the ability to effectively manipulate others becomes the highest virtue of all.   

So again why do audiences love these completely despicable, utterly ruthless characters so much? The answer, I believe, has to do with the unique times in which we live. In the first decade of the 21st century, the economic crisis that has continued unabated (at least for the bottom 99%) has made ordinary Americans feel like helpless victims in a cruel and uncaring world and totally impotent to effect any positive changes in their own lives. Say what you want about Walter White, Don Draper, and Frank Underwood, but they are certainly not victims and they definitely are not impotent. I think that what we love so much about these characters is that in a world in which most people are inert whiners and complainers, these men DO SOMETHING. They take charge of their own destinies and are willing to do anything and everything necessary to ensure that they will never be part of the anonymous herd.

Because they act while most human beings remain passive and because they are willing to take risks to master their fates, we are willing to forgive just about anything these characters do, no matter how despicable it might seem. Is it any coincidence that each of these men came from humble origins and had to overcome tremendous odds to achieve what they did? Subconsciously, I think that viewers relate to these anti-heroes because, compared to an economic elite (the top 1%) that caused the entire American economy to collapse and which has actually benefited financially from that collapse, the actions of men like Walter White, Don Draper, and Frank Underwood almost seem reasonable. It’s like one of our own getting back at “the system,” and that, I think, is what makes us root for them. 

By comparison, consider the female characters in each of these shows and how unpopular they are with audiences. Skylar White and Betty Draper—like Carmella Soprano before them—are viewed by audiences as passive but also morally complicit in their husband’s immoral activities. None of these women intentionally choose the life of evil; they simply accept the social and economic benefits that accrue to themselves because of the more deliberative choices that their husbands make. They may bitch and moan, but they don’t DO anything. 

In this sense, Claire Underwood fits somewhat outside the mold of the poor, beleaguered anti-hero’s wife. She’s definitively Lady MacBeth to Frank’s MacBeth. Like Lady MacBeth, Claire is an active partner in her husband’s political machinations, but, like Lady MacBeth as well, there seems to be a limit to how far her conscience might enable her to go (Can you imagine Frank shedding tears after destroying someone who stood in his way?). Since the show is still in its infancy, it remains to be seen if Claire Underwood will prove more popular in the long run than her female counterparts. 

Television viewing at its best is a cathartic experience. In the 1950s and 60s we wanted television to soothe us. We wanted to feel like the world was an intelligible place, that our social and political leaders had our best interests at heart, and that hard work and dedication could lead to upward social mobility. Today we know that none of this is true and we question whether anything we do in life—whether individually or collectively—will make any difference at all. Apparently, we need men like Walter White, Don Draper, and Frank Underwood to convince us that, despite appearances to the contrary, the individual still matters and the deliberative choices a person makes can actually produce beneficial results. 

In the end, I would argue, it’s not the darkness per se of these characters that we love, but their willingness to act on the great stage of life…whatever the consequences. That’s what separates them from the rest of us, and that’s the source of our unquenchable fascination with them. 

I’ve spent the past twenty years thinking about happiness. My Master’s Thesis was on focused Stoic ideas about happiness, my doctoral dissertation dealt with the evolution of Augustine’s understanding of happiness, and more recently, I’ve been doing some work on Hindu and Buddhist conceptions of happiness.  You’d think that, after almost 25 years fixated on the question of happiness, I’d know by now what happiness is and what the best way to become happy would be.  The sad truth is that the more I explore this question, the more my own thinking about happiness evolves and mutates.  Happiness, I’ve discovered, is one slippery concept and there’s a reason why philosophical questions about its attainment have been debated since ancient times.

But the more I study the problem of happiness, the more I come to realize that we Americans have some particularly screwy ideas about happiness that may in fact get in the way of our own long-term happiness.  In particular, we seem to think that real happiness is measured almost exclusively by our present economic conditions (stuff + now = happiness).  Happiness is typically linked to GDP (Gross Domestic Product), a measure of how much we are producing and consuming at a given time.  The presumption is that the higher the GDP, the happier the people of a nation must be.  Americans have one of the highest GDPs in the world, so naturally, we must be among the happiest people in the world, right?

But what if the very lifestyle that we are living in the present is a threat to our long-term sustainable happiness and well-being?  Imagine that we Americans are like heroin addicts.  An addict needs his fix all the time in order to be happy, but the approach that he takes to achieving this happiness (abusing drugs) all but ensures that he can’t sustain his happiness in the long-term.  What if our happiness is like the happiness of the heroin addict?   In fact, using GDP to measure a people’s happiness is like asking a drug pusher whether an addict is happy while he is dwelling in a drug-induced state.  The addict may think he’s happy, and the pusher would say he’s happy, but would anyone of sense really believe that this is sustainable happiness?

Fortunately, there’s another way to measure the happiness of people rather than simply by using GDP.  Nic Marks of the New Economics Foundation has developed what he calls the Happy Planet Index.  Marks takes for granted that things like a person’s present perception of happiness and his or her life expectancy are important criteria of happiness.  But he also takes into consideration the impact that an individual’s lifestyle has on the planet when determining whether that individual’s happiness is ultimately sustainable.  The formula he uses for making this determination looks like this:

• Experienced well-being:  people around the world are asked to describe on a scale of 1-10 their experienced state of well-being, with 0 representing the worst possible life and 10 representing the best possible life.
• Life expectancy:  based upon the 2011 United Nations Development Report.
• Ecological Footprint: basically examines how much of the world’s resources are used by individuals in different nations to sustain their lifestyles. 

Here’s the way Marks explains his approach to happiness during his 2010 Ted Talk.

So, if instead of thinking about happiness purely in terms of the ability to consume in the present, we think about happiness in a more sustainable way, how does the United States rank compared to other nations of the world?  The Happy Planet Index has a nifty traffic light score to rank individual nations:  green (good), yellow (middling), and red (bad).

http://www.happyplanetindex.org/data/

As you can see, the results are radically different depending upon which criteria for well-being we are looking at.  But if we’re really concerned with sustainable happiness, we need to look in particular at the HPI map.  As you explore this map, consider which are the best countries to live in for sustainable happiness and which are the worst.

I’d like to propose that what Marks says about the happiness of different countries applies to the happiness of individuals as well.  Think about your own life, for example.  Do you perceive yourself to be living a happy and healthy life?  If you do, that’s terrific, but, as Marks points out, you also need to consider whether your happiness is ultimately sustainable.

To determine this, take a few moments and complete the following Ecological Footprint survey.  Try to answer the questions to the best of your ability, and, if you’re uncertain about the answers to any of the questions, just make the best educated guess possible.

https://www.powerhousemuseum.com/online/bigfoot/

At the end of the survey, see how many hectares it takes for you to live the lifestyle that you do.  1.9 hectares would be ecologically ideal, but anything under 2.5 hectares would indicate a more or less sustainable lifestyle.  What was your score on this survey?  How many planets would it take to sustain the kind of lifestyle that you live if everyone on the planet chose to adopt it?

The question that we all need to ask ourselves in the end is whether the perceptions we have about our own happiness correspond with the reality of whether or not our happiness is ultimately sustainable.  Marks seems to suggest that, if there’s a real dichotomy between the two, our happiness is based upon delusion—a delusion that I would argue is similar in many ways to the delusion an addict would have about his own happiness.  At the very least, becoming aware of this dichotomy should make you start to ask some very fundamental questions about the validity of our Western, materialistic notions about happiness in a world characterized by an ever-increasing scarcity of resources.  

I’ve often heard students of mine say things like, “you’ve got to support your family no matter what” or “friends have got to stick together no matter what.” When I hear statements like this in class, I can’t help being impressed by how important the idea of loyalty to friends and family is among the members of the Millennial Generation. I certainly don’t recall members of my own generation—Generation X, if you must know—being all that loyal to anything other than the idea to have a good time in life. So, on one level, I’m greatly pleased that a virtue as important as loyalty is making a comeback in American society.

However, as a teacher of ethics, I find myself somewhat concerned about the “no matter what” clause that Millennials often attach to their commitments of loyalty. As worthy a virtue as loyalty is, I can’t help but believe that this virtue could never be absolute in the real world. There’s got to be some natural limits to our loyalty, or the fidelity that we show those we care about becomes a kind of blind fanaticism.

So when ought our commitment to support our friends and family members come to an end? I’m inclined to agree with both Aristotle and Cicero that an intimate relationship of any kind must be terminated if the other party involved turns morally bad or wicked—that is, if they begin to act in such a way that they are causing harm to themselves or to other people.

Let’s begin with the issue of harm to others, since that’s less controversial. Let’s imagine a friend that you’ve had since childhood suddenly becomes obsessed with money and has developed a scheme to rob UPS trucks of their packages when they are left unattended by their drivers. Your friend has become quite successful at this and has managed to make thousands of dollars from his crimes. He confides in you about his activities one night. What should you do?

 Assuming that you yourself have any moral standards, the answer would be that you should attempt to convince him that what he is doing is wrong and try to persuade him that, at the very least, he has to stop his criminal activities. But what if he chooses not to? I think at that point, were you to continue to remain loyal to your friend, you would be complicit in his crimes. Instead, you’ve got to tell him that, unless he stops what he’s doing immediately, you can no longer continue to see him or be his friend. Any obligations of loyalty that you have towards your friend subsequently would come to an end, until such time that you friend decides to change his ways.

This is a very dramatic example, of course, but I think that the principle holds in less dramatic ones as well. If your friend was a bully, a bigot, a chronic liar, a cheat, a manipulator—if he repeatedly engaged, in other words, in activities that caused harm to others, especially innocent others—then you would likewise have no choice but to end your friendship.

The example of self-harm is a bit more problematic, but I think that the principle I’ve laid out holds here as well. Image that you have a friend who has developed a serious substance abuse problem. His behavior is causing him to neglect his job and his responsibilities to his family. You try taking to him about his issues, but he refuses to even acknowledge that he has a problem. So what do you do at that point?

Certainly, there are those who would argue that it’s wrong to abandon a friend in a time of crisis like this one—that you ought to continue to stand by him and remain loyal for as long as he needs you. But I think that this just makes you complicit in his act of self-destruction. The right thing to do in a case like this is to try as much as possible to get your friend to change, but, when it becomes evident that he has no intention of doing so, you have to put an end to your friendship for the sake of your friend. And any loyalty that you have towards him must be suspended until he agrees to do something about his problem.

The examples I’ve used above involve friends, but what I’ve stated about the limits of loyalty apply to family as well. If a family member—a parent, a sibling, or a child—becomes to engage in activities that cause harm to themselves or others, I think that we have a moral obligation to terminate our relationship with these family members in order to help them become morally responsible individuals again. To think otherwise would be to imply that family relationships trump all moral duties and obligations that we have in life, and this is simply not true.

I also think that if we really care about people—whether they are family, friends, or less intimate acquaintances—we would be as concerned about their moral welfare as we are for their physical, financial or social welfare. And the closer individuals are to us, the greater, I believe, are our obligations to care for their moral well-being. In this sense, we should have even higher moral standards for our close family members and friends than we do for other members of society…not because we want to treat them harder than we do others, but because we care about them even more.

I know that there are those who would reject the position that I’ve laid out on the limits of loyalty. Some would probably argue that I am being overly ridged and moralistic and that no one could adopt the kinds of moral standards towards family and friends that I’ve argued for here. If that’s the case, feel free to challenge what I’ve said in this piece. But consider first how you would respond if you discovered that a friend or family member was involved in the kinds of situations that I’ve described above. And then reflect on whether the continuation of your absolute loyalty towards these individuals—supporting them “no matter what”—would be better or worse for them than the kind of tough love that I’ve argued for.

I remember reading Pascal’s wager as a freshman in college.  Even back then I thought there was something cold and calculating about the argument.  After the extraordinary leap of logic that Anselm makes in his ontological argument and the majestic cosmological vision of Thomas Aquinas’ five ways, Pascal’s wager seemed like a middle class banker’s approach to the question of God’s existence.  I wish that I could say that Pascal’s argument has grown on me over time, but, if anything, I hate the argument even more now than I did as a freshman.   Let’s start with a brief summary of what Pascal claims are our options with respect to belief in the existence of God: 

Our first option, he says, is to assume that God exists and live our lives accordingly (i.e., with as much faith, hope, and love as we can muster).  If God does exists, says Pascal, we’ve won the big prize—eternal life with him in heaven; if he doesn’t exist, on the other hand, nothing much is lost.   

The second option is to live our lives assuming God doesn’t exist.  If, in fact, he doesn’t, then there’s no problem.  But there’s also the possibility that God does exist, and he may not take kindly to those who have rejected him (Just think about how hot the fires of hell must be and how interminably long they’ll last….Yikes!).   

According to Pascal, the sensible betting man, then, will always choose option 1 (belief in God), since the rewards for belief are great and the penalty for unbelief is too horrible to even consider.   
In an attempt to show where Pascal goes wrong, I’d like to offer my wager-like argument.  My wager makes the exact opposite point of Pascal’s, but I think that it stands up much better than the French logician’s argument does.    

Once again, let’s assume we have two options:  (1) believe in God and live out our lives with faith and devotion or (2) reject the belief in God and live out our lives as atheists.   

Let’s start with the second option first.  If we reject belief in God as a silly superstition of a bygone era, there are certainly consequences to holding this belief, as Pascal maintains.  But what exactly are those consequences?  If God doesn’t exist, then we are free to live out our lives with enlightened self-interest.  There would be no rules we would be forced to follow, except those leading to our own happiness and the happiness of those we love, no transcendent commands hanging over our heads, no life lived in fear of damnation.   Certainly, all this will come to an end with death, but at least while we’re alive we’d actually be living, instead of postponing our ultimate happiness to the next life.  And our lives would probably be a heck of a lot more fun while we’re here, because we’re living for ourselves instead of in observance of some antiquated religious precepts.   

But what if God does exist and we’ve opted not to believe in him?  Isn’t the danger involved in this choice so great that it is best to be avoided at all costs?  That may be true, but only if we believe in a very nasty and vindictive sort of God—a petty potentate who punishes his followers who fail to acknowledge his greatness by unceasing acts of submission and groveling.  Is that the kind of God who really can claim the title “Supreme Being”?  He certainly doesn’t sound all that supreme to me.  I like to think that a Supreme Being, if he does in fact exist, would be at least as moral as the most moral human being imaginable—a Gandhi or an Albert Schweitzer, for example.  It’s hard to imagine our most moral human being behaving like a petty potentate when he encounters those who refuse to acknowledge his greatness.  Rather, our most moral human being would probably respond to resistance the way a bemused parent does towards difficult children—with tolerance, sympathy, and, ultimately, forgiveness.  So, if our God is actually more like Gandhi than Benito Mussolini, the consequences for not believing in him—if we are following our consciences, at least—would probably not be all that horrible.   

Now back to the first option: we opt to believe in God.  If he exists, there seems to be no problem—no problem, that is, if he really is the petty potentate who demands obedience, even at the cost of the conscience of his followers.  That sort of God would certainly reward blind faith.  But again, let’s imagine that our God is at least as moral as the most moral human being that we can imagine.  Would such a superior being reward his followers for believing in him and groveling over him out of fear, or ignorance, or the desire for reward?  I think not.  In fact, if our God were at least as enlightened as the most moral human being he would probably respect the conscientious atheist much more than the groveling sycophant who simply is covering his bets in order to reap the big reward (eternal life in heaven).  

Finally, let’s say we believe in God and he doesn’t really exist.  Pascal would say that this is no problem really, because we’d still be living a much more moral and decent life than the non-believer.  But one could argue that possessing faith in the absence of a legitimate object of faith is the height of folly.  You’d be wasting much of your life praying, going to services, doing devotions, and following commands, duties, and obligations that don’t make any sense in the absence of our petty potentate-like God.  Even if you only spend three hours a week engaged in worship and acts of service—and this would seem to be the bare minimum amount that any serious deity desiring the devotion of his followers would expect—that would mean that you’ve spent 11,520 hours over the course of your life focused on appeasing a being who doesn’t actually exist.  In that amount of time just imagine all the wonderful things that you could have been doing instead—spending more time with family and friends, enjoying nature, working to make the world you live in a better place, or just sleeping an extra 42 minutes a day (some people would kill to have that extra time in bed!). 

Now, I am certainly not arguing that God doesn’t exist; nor am I arguing that the life of an atheist makes more sense than that of a believer.  The point of this exercise is to show that if we opt to follow Pascal and use a wager-type approach to religious belief, the argument for unbelief is as strong—if not stronger—than that for belief.  In the end, the gambler’s approach to matters of faith is as foolish an exercise as playing roulette by always putting all your chips on black rather than red, because you’ve heard that black has a higher probability of winning than red.  Even if you do win in the end, the experience of playing this sort of game is simply not all that much fun.  If, however, you actually derive some deep satisfaction from the act of gambling itself, if you leave a casino feeling like you life has a greater meaning and purpose, than by all means continue to gamble.   

Of course, my analogy here is that religious faith makes sense if it brings greater meaning, purpose, and happiness to one’s life.  And this is true regardless of whether or not God exists.  So believe and enjoy, believe and find peace, but please, don’t believe simply to hedge your bets.