The Sunday News
Cetshwayo Mabhena
Power that is not accompanied by morality is power that is bereft of the ultimate meaning of power, glory.
Power without glory and all its magnificence and majesty is worse that powerlessness. It is like stolen food that is not enjoyed but endured as it is consumed with a running heart and turning eyes.
Resultantly, even the monopolists of evil and contractors of the Anti-Christ itself deeply desire the reputation of being the doers of good. Perhaps the highest form of evil in the world, evil that has given birth to many other evils, is the enslavement and colonisation of one people by another; and the genocides and extractive crimes that went with it, and still go with the aftermaths.
The flourish of philosophy and science in the European Enlightenment was described by some of the philosophers as the “death of God” and the birth of Reason. With scientific discovery and philosophical prowess on his own man was going to conquer and master the universe.
Nature was quickly reduced to a natural resource not the beautiful garden of possibilities that it was, where rivers had names of people and mountains were believed to be God’s thrones. The scientific and philosophical murder of the Divine was also the death of ethical political values and the fear of doing evil. At a world scale, slavery and colonialism were artefacts of human beings that considered God dead although they were willing to use his name and did not fear any consequences.
The Enlightenment in its enworded claim to bring some light into the world was a true beginning of darkness in the globe, a beginning of violent western imperialism that accompanied itself with festivals of pain and suffering of some for the power (never the glory) of others.
In a strong way, the people who are supposed to have brought God to the enslaved and the colonised of the world are in the majority missionaries who believed the stubborn death and persistent resurrections of the Divine, merchants who did not care about nothing except profit; and Empire builders whose true god and religion was power.
Combined, missionaries, merchants and Empire builders have built a world ruled by technological and military might, driven by the pursuits of and passions for big money, and covered in fear and insecurity of all. The global ecological crisis, worldwide terrorism that goes by many different names depending on who is committing it, planetary poverty and naturalised social pain and fear are teaching both the powerful and the powerless that the protection of morals was necessary, a living rather than a dead God was needed and that philosophy and science do not buy security and happiness. No doubt both the terrorists and those who claim to fight them are produced by a faulty and mistaken world that once thought ethics were dead and that morality was a waste of everybody’s time. The bad global news is that everybody and everything needs something (ethics) or somebody (God) to fear before doing anything. People must love something and fear somebody for the world to be a better and safer place.
The Boast and the Cry
Not just the nihilists but also the objectivists among Western philosophers have over the centuries used their erudition and sophistry to defend all evils including slavery and colonialism.
As late as 1957, the Russian and American philosopher Ayn Rand was considered a classicist when she defended “the virtue of selfishness” in her demolition of the values of charity and ethics of altruism. It was the highest wisdom for people to live for self-interest and for countries to secure their right to conquer and dominate others.
Rand’s defence of the selfishness of peoples and Empires as a virtue was no different from Nietzsche’s lazy but all the same celebrated idea of 1886 in The Gay Science, that between evil and good there was no difference but one goal from the same impulse pursued in different directions.
Evil and good were just two different roads leading to the same destination. In other words tyranny and democracy would be the same as long as the result is peace or at least silence in the land. Some simplistic persuasion to that the ends tend to justify the means, whatever the cost of the means to human beings.
Empowered by such defence and rationalisation of evil in the world, Cecil John Rhodes the Empire builder could opine that as the British conquerors “I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race.” Rhodes could boast “Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimen of human being, what an alteration there would be in them if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence, if there be a God, I think that what he would like me to do is paint as much of the map of Africa British Red as possible.” The real trouble with a murdered god is that anyone can do anything in his name.
In the absence of fear of consequences for evil an evil doer and genocidist like Rhodes and his like can be so certain about the correctness and rightness of their evil.
When God is believed dead, or his existence doubted, and the importance of morality suspended, ethical politics and leadership is considered a nullity, evil doers can publicly threaten and perform their evil. It was only at the end of his life, overtaken by insanity and sobered by pain that even as a nihilist, Friedrich Nietzsche could on behalf of many western willers to power regret the death of God, suspension of morals and the lack of ethical thinking and leadership in the world. Nuclear bombs, big money and knowledge may give us power, a dying Nietzsche must have considered, but it cannot deliver glory, hence the cry : “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?
What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
Political Ethics: The way out
Zizek might be right after all that the point is silly for big capitalists to spend their lives chasing big money and killing multitudes for it then wish to die and be remembered as communists, generous givers and philanthropists. The manufacturers of nuclear bombs, invaders of countries and overthrowers of other regimes, the ones whose wars have produced millions of stateless and nationless refugees and exiles, whose violence has produced angry and suicidal terrorists, want to be known as fighters of terror and peacemakers in the world.
It is not even mathematics but commonsense that there would be no refugees and no washed out terrorists in the first place if world thought and world government was based on the rule of morals and the fear of doing evil for power. Ethical leadership is when philosophers and scientists master the universe but do so with beauty.
Ethical leadership is also when politicians, soldiers and merchants build Empires and dominate the world with power and also with the glory of not having murdered and stolen. In that world that is ruled by morals and the fear of evil, no one would need to be so afraid of anyone.
The differences, political, social, religious and cultural, among the peoples of the world would be an opportunity and a wealth of diversity and not a source of fear and conflict. The fear and troubles of this world will force us to vote for ethics before power and victory.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from South Africa: [email protected]
