Moral Compasses and the Good Life
The pursuit of the True and the Good is stunted by the modern world's complacency and apathy.
Written by Evan Kamakana Gates
I am a recovering high school debater. I debated for all four years of high school, from Lincoln Douglas and Public Forum to Parliamentary. I competed in dozens of tournaments, won state titles, and represented Hawaiʻi at the national level. So, I understandably enrolled at Harvard with the intent of continuing this trend by joining its debate team, which travels around the world arguing on resolutions from colonialism to universal basic income.
Speech and debate is one of the more popular extracurricular activities in the U.S. Thousands of schools around the nation participate in it every year, bringing along tens of thousands of students. Many celebrities and government officials, including Chadwick Boseman, Elizabeth Warren, and United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito, engaged in the activity and laud its impact on their lives. You can often hear its proponents praise the confidence that the activity instilled in them or perhaps the friends they gained along the way. Most commonly, at least for debate, you will hear them speak about the “critical thinking skills” that it imparted, the ability to research a topic, form opinions, and articulate those opinions in a persuasive manner.
Despite all of this, when I now speak to high school students, I caution or even explicitly recommend against joining debate. Why? Because debate, how it is often performed today, neither teaches one to think rationally nor to research. It does teach people to speak, and therein lies its ruin. Debate teaches students not to think but to rationalize, not to defend but to attack, not to answer but to deflect. I quickly learned in debate, without anyone ever telling me, that successful debaters treat the pursuit of the Truth (I use the capitalized "Truth" to emphasize an ideal greater than any individual true statement) as sport. That is, if you want to win an argument, employ the time-tested strategies of vomiting as many arguments as you can at your opponent, strawmanning your opponent’s arguments, and obfuscating fact to be in your favor. Personally agreeing with the argument does not matter. What does matter is winning. Debaters do not find arguments that resonate with them; they find arguments that win. There’s a reason why debaters now speak as fast as they can: the goal is not to persuade but to win, and to win requires thrift and cunningness.
Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
Many debaters leave high school with the dangerous ability to speak confidently on any side of any topic. In doing so, debate’s cardinal sin is that it teaches students to separate belief from action. It ruptures the unity of conviction and virtue. Debate, then, represents much of what is wrong with the modern world. We have the ability to pursue the True and the Good, yet we lack the integrity to do so, instead opting for the lazier and unfortunate option of doing that which is expedient, that which “wins.” Instead of questioning what is good, we simply accept what we feel to be good, often temporal success. We have gained the world yet lost our souls.
I believe that this is a modern problem. The modern world in many ways is more internally focused than the ancient world. Whereas previously ethics and virtue were matters that were often influenced by outside forces such as the state or religion (if they were distinguishable), we now determine what is right by what I think is right. That is to say, we have an absolute belief in our own moral consciences. We believe that untrained individuals can objectively decide what is good.
I pose the following question for us as leaders to consider: is the conscience a moral compass? Can we trust that which we feel to be true or right?
Many of us, at least implicitly, emphatically believe that the answer is “yes.” We are the therapist generation. We believe we should accept our feelings and who we are, rather than question them. We appeal to “common sense” without much idea of what that means (or whether it is even common), and more than anything, we fear social judgment. Thus, we push against standards and norms that can feel oppressive or challenge our identities. We believe that everyone ought to decide for themselves what is good, mind their own business, and believe in my truth.
And what does the modern world think a conscience is? Most, I think, feel that the conscience is autonomous and objective, a compass which always points towards the Good when we are faced with a moral dilemma. Most importantly, we think that the conscience is not something that is trained but rather something that is in tune with the eternal Good. When our conscience tells us something is wrong, we may decide to not follow it, but we never question whether our conscience is correct. This is why we believe so strongly that individuals know what is best for themselves and that the questioning of another’s feelings or beliefs is disdainful.
I hope to show you that the answer to these questions are likely not as obvious as we initially think, that the conscience is neither inherently good nor rightly oriented. Rather, our consciences are reflections of our moral beliefs and must be intentionally trained. Thus, if our ethical beliefs are mistaken, then so too will our consciences be mistaken, so the conscience should not be a moral compass unless we first properly orient it.
For the sake of clarity, I offer that the conscience is not one’s set of moral beliefs but rather the part of us that applies those abstract beliefs to a particular action. An example will help. Say that I am parking at Sandy’s for dawn patrol on an early Sunday morning. As I am about to pull into a spot, a tourist zooms into it, cutting me off and nearly causing an accident. I now am faced with a decision: should I say something, rather vulgar, to this stranger, or should I quietly take one of the many other open spots? Pure reaction may lean towards the former out of anger, while a weighing of the potential consequences (maybe he will escalate the situation) may lean towards the latter. But conscience is neither impulse nor reason alone. My conscience is the moral determination that I make about the decision. It applies my moral principles to this situation and renders a judgment, perhaps that I should be forgiving and move forward, but I can choose to either follow or disobey my conscience. In essence, the conscience is not our abstract principles themselves but the projecting of those principles onto an individual decision. Once we understand that this is the nature of the conscience, we can understand why the conscience is not always a moral compass.
Consider the fact that those who commit terrible atrocities say that they are following their consciences. How can this be true if the conscience is infallible? Are they simply lying? I do not think so, because they have little reason to do so. Are they just crazy? I am not convinced by this either. In fact, if you listen to or read the writings of those who perpetuated systematic horrors across the world, what will strike you is not how crazy they are but how lucid they are. Their systems are effective because they have a logic to them, even if it is abhorrent. One can be incorrect but not crazy. Thus, we must accept that the conscience is not objective but rather dependent on one’s beliefs. If a child is indoctrinated in schools and a broken culture, he will have misinformed beliefs and thus an errant conscience. For this child, it would be better that he should do the opposite of what his conscience tells him!
Despite this, we still hear the adage “follow your conscience!” Obviously, there is something to the idea that we should follow that which we believe to be right, but why is there so much less emphasis on figuring out what is right in the first place? I think that people do not need to be reminded as much to do what they believe to be good as much as to reconsider what they believe to be good.
As alumni of CTL, we believe that we, the leaders of tomorrow, must guide Hawaiʻi to a brighter future, which will be accomplished by doing what is right. We believe in vision, seeing what is right despite how far away it may be, and integrity, doing what is right when no one is looking. To navigate uncertain times, we surely require a moral compass to guide us in our journeys, to point us towards that which is good.
But I fear that we only have vague ideas of what that means. I fear that we have not yet equipped ourselves with proper moral compasses. I fear that we have fallen into the same trap that the modern world has: as my favorite author put it, what is wrong is that we do not ask what is right. We actually tend to agree on what needs to be fixed. We incessantly talk about problems with the economy, homelessness, housing, and the cost of living to the point of exhaustion, but have we really moved any closer to a conception of what needs to be done? Two people can agree that housing is too expensive in Hawaiʻi, but one may believe that the solution is to urbanize the islands while the other may think that we just have too many foreigners, leaving us no closer to the proper course of action than before the conversation began! Yet we still indulge in these cathartic vents as if they do much good for us or for Hawaiʻi.
I am afraid that we simply do not think enough about that which is good, that we are not grounded in anything beyond the aphorisms and platitudes that social media have force fed to us since we were in grade school. I fear that we, like debaters, do not pursue truth for its own sake but for the purpose of “winning” social approval, if we pursue it at all. I fear that we may actually be too forward thinking, that we think too much about our grandchildren and not enough about our grandfathers. Are we well read enough in the great works of literature, history, and philosophy to lead? Have we spoken to both our intellectual friends and foes? Do we actually reflect on what a vibrant Hawaiʻi looks like beyond the platitudes? Or do we pridefully think that we know it all, that we can blindly follow our consciences?
As I exited high school, I realized that essentially all of my peers and I knew little to nothing about the greatest minds of history. We had never read Plato, Thomas Aquinas, or Confucius, yet we thought we knew what good government meant. We may have read but certainly did not understand Homer, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, or Austen, yet we thought we knew what was beautiful. We knew little about the lives of Kamehameha, Liliʻuokalani, or John Burns, yet we thought we knew what Hawaiʻi needed. Now that I am soon finishing college, I am not much more convinced that we know these things. This is especially unfortunate, given the fact that almost all great leaders have put extensive time into understanding the best that has been written or said in world history.
In the past, we had the excuse of simply not having access to these great materials. However, the wide-spread availability of the internet has completely dismantled the argument that humans would pursue the Truth if they simply had access to it (much in the same way that the infinite freedom that the pandemic lockdown period offered dismantled the idea that I would work out or engage in other productive habits if I just had the time). In the developed world, we now have infinite information at our disposal, yet we mostly use the internet for social media and profane pleasure. We must do better.
We have a weird taboo against discussing what is the Good. We are scared of bringing morals or religion into politics, but in avoiding those topics, we ensure that we will create the current polarization that we see. When we refuse to discuss fundamental problems, we are doomed to talk past one another and fail to solve them. To resolve the housing issue, for instance, we must discuss the foundational question of what is the proper balance between preserving the natural beauty and cultural values of Hawaiʻi and housing our people. But this question is fundamentally about what is good (which is defined by our moral beliefs and religions), so if we shy away from engaging with the core of our political problems out of a fear of judging others or being judged, then we will never make progress. But the etymology of “judge” is simply to say or to think, so when we avoid judging we are simply avoiding thinking. To be leaders, we need to face the fact that the ethical beliefs we have long held may be wrong, just as the morals of others may be wrong. We must have a humility about even our deepest beliefs.
To follow my own advice, I would like to paint a picture of what I think the Good in Hawaiʻi would look like. One thing I think we ought to continue doing is to talk about what we love about Hawaiʻi, as this points us towards what we hope to sustain and create more of. Moreover, I wish that our conversations were less about complaining about the status quo and more about asking what the ideal Hawaiʻi would look like. I do not mean that we should be talking more about solutions and less about problems; solutions are too concrete. I wish that we spent more time in the abstract in our conversations, for this would allow our actions to be more concrete. Right now, we have concrete conversations and abstract action.
I also wish that we as leaders engaged in more of the great works, despite the fact that some believe that there are no such things. We ought to do this because there truly is nothing new in this world; all that is new are simply fragments of that which is old. So to read the great works is to prepare for the future. Beyond these works, I wish we had a greater intentionality about the media we choose to consume: the books, shows, movies, music. I must admit that I also indulge in what my friends and I call “trashy” shows or books. The problem with the modern world is not that these forms are engaged in widely but that they are engaged in exclusively. I believe that our time would be better spent if we lived a more contemplative life, reading even just one more book a year that is good for our minds. And not just to read passively but to engage, to discuss, to question, to judge.
Lastly, I wish that we engaged in one another’s creeds and values. One thing that I can truly say I appreciate about my closest friends is that we know each other’s beliefs through and through, despite any disagreements. We challenge each other to think deeper about our beliefs, to question why they are true, and to consider whether they align us towards the Good. It is my hope that we, the future leaders of Hawaiʻi, can similarly challenge each other without fear of offending one another. We have different ideas of what the Good in Hawaiʻi looks like, and it is time we start talking about that. It is time that we stop blindly following our consciences and instead focus on informing our consciences. It is time for us to pause on our incessant posts and conversations and engage in a quiet contemplation on what matters to us most. I promise to join in that endeavor, challenging even my most closely held beliefs, and I assure you that I will be waiting afterwards for the spirited and thoughtful conversation that we as leaders and friends alone can enjoy.
