Is it possible for Western individualists to even think ethically any more?
If generalizations are permitted, western individualists, ethically speaking, are ethical egoists. That is, their morality is simply self-serving. They behave to help themselves. That is a version of what the Bible calls ‘sin’.
But to make things worse, such a stance is simply regarded as normal. The world is our oyster; it is there, ripe for the picking. What's in it for me? Why would I behave in any way that does not further my own interest?
And it gets worse. In her book Death, Sin and the Moral Life, Bonnie Miller-McLemore argued that western individualists almost automatically think psychologically but have lost the ability to think ethically. She points the finger, in particular, at the modern version of Stoicism proposed by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and her many disciples in the health professions. Kübler-Ross's attempts to help people come to terms with their own death as a natural part of life have been influential beyond the field of death, dying and bereavement.
Kübler-Ross's Stoicism is basically ethical egoism. Whether all the blame can be laid at her feet is, of course, an open question. But she has certainly contributed greatly.
What will make me feel better? What will make my life (or my death) a better experience? What will serve my needs? What will be most productive, enriching, fulfilling for me? The real test of how firmly such ideas have taken root is when we realize that many, if not most, western individualists will simply see such questions as normal—unexceptionable—completely the right questions to be asking.
Little wonder we don't have a clue about building society. When our radio DJ says, “If people don't agree with gay marriage, the solution is quite simple: don't marry someone who is gay”, there is absolutely no sense that ethics ought to be public, good for, and constitutive of a good society. If ethics served more than the ego (i.e. an individual), then the issue of gay marriage (and many other issues) would be discussed in terms of its society-building potential, and so on, rather than as an issue of individual rights. That would make the discussion look markedly different.
But can we do it? Or have western individualists—by virtue of being ethical egoists deeply at core—any ability to think ethically at all?
