AN OPEN MIND OR MORAL MIND?
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 7, 2020
A moral dilemma occurred seventy-nine years ago today when the Empire of Japan made a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands on December 7, 1941, killing 2,403 US military personnel while sinking most of the US Seventh Fleet. This resulted in the Congress of the United States declaring war on Japan and Germany with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt calling it "a day that will live in infamy." This war would change American society and that of the world forever. TED WRITES One philosophical nugget of which I am fond is "No learning can take place in a certain mind." I like it because it reminds me to attempt to remain open minded and at least consider alternatives.
Unfortunately, it leaves me with the question can we ever properly allow ourselves a certain mind?
To that enquiry there is this - some years ago during a meeting at which we were to pick a controversial topic for a book discussion I suggested the death penalty. One of the others involved said he didn't want to do that.
When asked why, he said, at his age (roughly my age now) he had been through the topic many times and his mind was made up and he wasn't going to change it.
The man’s comment left me in another quandary, "At what point, if ever, does it become proper to adopt his attitude?" Can we ever examine a topic enough to say we have exhausted all chance for new nuance of meaning?
If we do find new considerations because of our stalwart open mindedness are they worth the thought, or are they just versions of the old philosophical idea of considering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, a bit of mental game playing we would be better off without.
Shouldn't we at some point get to make up our mind with certainty on a subject, or any number of them, without the dreaded charge of being closed minded being applied? Shouldn't being open to new thought on other topics suffice to allow us to continue with honor as open-minded warriors for good thinking?
Take care
Ted
I RESPOND Ted,
Some focus on an open mind; others on a moral mind; still others on both minds. Plato is best known for his moral mind whereas Aristotle for his open mind.
You have a history of finding purchase in both minds as you have headed for many years THE GREAT BOOKS CLUB of The Temple Terrace Public Library in this century. Much earlier, 1960 to be exact, I was a member of THE GREAT BOOKS CLUB of The Broadripple Public Library of Indianapolis in which the late William Ruckelshaus (1932 – 2019) chaired the group.
Ruckelshaus is best known for his part in the October 20, 1973, “Saturday Night Massacre” as an assistant Attorney General under Elliot Richardson, when both resigned rather than carry out President Nixon’s order to fire Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Cox sought the “Nixon tape recordings” that would incriminate the sitting president.
Ruckelshaus, as I remember him, displayed an open and moral mind and a gracious disposition. THE GREAT BOOKS CLUB of Broadripple was loaded with Ivy League colleagues, which I found somewhat intimidating as they all seemed so much more knowing and knowledgeable than I was, a person then in my twenties and a chemical sales engineer for Nalco.
Your discussion group colleague who didn’t want to discuss capital punishment may have been neither of an open nor a moral mind but wandered into the group to have something to do, which happens to many elders no longer gainfully employed.
I choose to see individuals such as yourself as “Think Tank” enthusiasts where your think tank may be of a solitary member. You influence others simply through the passion of your own inquiry.
The late French American Jacques Barzun (1907 – 2012) I’ve often thought of as a “Think Tank” of one. He came to my attention some years ago when I read his “House of Intellect” (1959). It was a precursor to his magna opus, “From Dawn to Decadence” (2000) that I read last year. I mention these two books sixty years apart because Barzun predicted the culture wars in academia and politics, education and commerce, but apparently, to no avail as the political, societal, academic and cultural skirmishes, he defined in the 20th century, continue unabated in the 21st. My wonder is if well established and even prestigious “think tanks” have any more impact than solitary ones.
Barzun wrote in “The House of Intellect” of the posturing exclusivity of the intelligentsia (art), the regressive effects of the humanities (science) that in turn cultivate demeaning equality and psychology of help (philanthropy), which he calls “the three enemies of the intellect.” On the other hand, what gives “From Dawn to Decadence” a human touch is Barzun’s admitting that “a few intrepid souls will turn with new curiosity to the neglected past to use it to create a new present.”
My sense is that Plato’s moral mind and Aristotle’s open mind are in good repair in your quest for balance and to know.
My sense is that Plato’s moral mind and Aristotle’s
open mind are in good repair in your quest for balance and to know. We develop values over a long life which are
based on perceptions, which I see as a Sense of Self (Our Personality), Sense of Place & Space (Our Geography) and A Sense of Self-Worth (Our Demography). We need not apologize for
nor feel the need to proselytize such mindedness. It is part of the content of
our character, and although fallible and malleable, demonstrates a consistency
that life experience has taught us.
Your friend may have feared being called “an old foggy” for believing or not believing in the death penalty. Sociological research has shown that the death penalty has never proven a deterrent to crime. Others may feel abortion at any stage in terms of pregnancy is a moral issue and has nothing to do with an open or closed mind. Given these and similar controversial topics, it is obvious sentiments have changed in the American culture before WWII as opposed to what they are today, suggesting morality is in the mind-of-times. Indeed, the evidence would suggest that behavior today is driven more by “what is legal” than “what was considered moral” yesterday.
In my case, as a Peripatetic Philosopher and pedestrian empirical researcher I tend to use that source as the foundation of what I hope is an open and moral mind using both nonfiction and fiction to illustrate my pondering and findings.Take
DEVLIN, THE NOVEL, where the protagonist finds himself caught in a moral dilemma in which 20 percent of the white population subjugates the 80 percent black and brown population to draconian rule with the rationale of moral justification that “it is for their own good.” An exchange between Devlin and a waitress in a restaurant within the mammoth confines of the
Johannesburg Train Station is offered to illustrate this point.
THE JOHANNESBURG TRAIN STATION Winding through the downtown streets zigzagging without any particular destination only to find himself in front of the gigantic Johannesburg Train Station. He parked his car in front of the low-slung main terminal building, grabbed his briefcase from the back seat, got out and looked around.
There was a trickle of Bantu natives moving toward the terminal from three different directions, mainly on foot, the sun following them as if a giant spotlight. He obligingly joined their ranks into the terminal as if drawn by a giant magnet, going from lightness of the afternoon sun to the dreary darkness of the terminal interior. Everything seemed smoky gray, the lighting poor, but that could also be as Devlin’s eyes had not yet adjusted to the change in light intensity.
The terminal resembled the 1930s Chicago & North Western Depot only seemingly several times larger. Like that depot, the Johannesburg station had marble-tiled floors and low-slung mahogany benches. It was the kind of place you might catch a glimpse of as you rushed towards the streamliner, Twentieth Century, to spirit you off across the American continent with the conductor picking up the steps to your compartment and slamming the door shut on you. He saw the same desperation in these black faces now.
The pushing and jostling was maddening as he found himself dodging terminal workers and their baggage carts bellowing what he suspected was “Get out of the way” in some African dialect. He was then knocked off balance by an overweight woman clutching her bulky bags seemingly aghast to find a white face blocking her progress. He tipped his hatless head to her in apology, then smiled to himself. Apartheid didn’t rule the waves here.
He looked around and could see the massive movement of people was increasing, calculating that men now outnumbered women. They would give him a quick glance and then move on leaving him with the image of their tired faces, pained filled eyes, and weary legs while never lowering their tempo. They didn’t look around, check their watches, or stop to greet or chat with a companion. This was a routine cauterized in their hard wiring if not their souls. They knew where they were going, where they had been, and were not about to tarry.
Their ages ranged from young, say in their twenties to forties but not much beyond. Despite obvious fatigue, they all looked fit, vigorous, virile, and surprisingly well dressed. Unlike Devlin, none of the men were wearing ties and none of the women high heels. The men were dressed comfortably in casual cloth coats, colorful sweaters, pants, shirts, and shoes, with all the ladies wearing dresses, coats and sensible shoes.
Devlin moved out of the flow to a kiosk selling newspapers, magazines and paperbacks. The Rand Daily Mail, The International Herald Tribune, and The London Times came to his office, but he picked up a copy of each and paid the seller, looked at the books and was surprised to find many written in Afrikaans. He reminded himself to see if W. H. Smith was the only proper English bookstore. To his right he saw a small restaurant, went in and sat down at the counter. He was the only customer with scores of people streaming past the window.
“Yes?” a young lady said with false joviality, her smiling lips failing to reach her boring eyes. The place had the feel of an Amsterdam pub with tobacco-smoke-stained walls and ceiling. The eatery was drab and dark like a dungeon, cold and clammy, too, and Devlin loved it. The woman was small, fiery he suspected, with short brown hair, a round face full of freckles and the deep throaty voice of a smoker. She had the exiled look of the Irish, as he expected he did as well, white and melancholy, and out of place, but that was only a guess. He was having trouble making out the South African accent, which might sound English one moment, Australian the next, Dutch, or even German. It was best to be discrete.
“Sir,” she repeated. “Do you know where you are?”
He smiled sheepishly. “The Johannesburg Train Terminal. I came to get an American cup of coffee.” She smiled with her eyes, amused with the lie. While she was getting his coffee, he picked up a menu, which was written in Afrikaans. To cover his embarrassment, he pointed to a sign and said, “Does that sign say what I think it does?”
“And what might that be?”
“Whites only.”
“Yes. What about it?”
“Nothing,” he hedged. My God, woman, he wanted to say, hundreds and hundreds of people are streaming into this place and this restaurant is not for them; if not for them, for whom as you and I are the only white people I see?
Reading his face, she said, “You have come here at a bad time. Over the next few hours there will be thousands of Bantu flooding the station to make their scheduled trains for SOWETO.
“SOWETO?” he said playing dumb.
“South West African Township where they live.”
“Have you ever been there?”
She put her pretty hands on her hips and looked at him with contempt, “Now what business would that be of yours?” She seemed to tremble at the thought. “Really!” She said in disgust.
Devlin chose to change the subject. “Why the rush? There hasn’t been an exodus like this since the sacking of Rome.” She looked at him incomprehensively. “Ah, when the Huns and Visigoths invaded Rome and …,” seeing the hole he had dug himself into, he added, “it was in a movie I saw.”
“Oh! They don’t have a choice. They carry green pass books, and if they’re in the city after their curfew, they could go to jail.”
“Jail for what?” Devlin felt somewhat phony for asking, as he knew the answer from his reading, but wanted to hear it from the lips of an authentic Afrikaner.
“For violating curfew.”
“You don’t mean jail jail?”
“I mean precisely that.”
Oh, no, he said to himself. It is as bad as the books say.
“Are you sick?” she said, noticing him resting his chin on his hands, and his color becoming ashen. “Do you want me to call a doctor?”
“No, no. I’m all right. Just a little tired.” He felt insincere for admitting this, although it was true he felt a little faint. This didn’t match the pain of what rumbled beyond this sanctuary.
“You’re American, aren’t you?”
He nodded, still with his head in his hands.
“You must be important.”
Why does everyone think that? “No, I’m not important. I’m just an employee like you.”
“Yes, sure you are!” She looked at him hard. “I can see it in the way you’re dressed. I’ve seen clothes like yours on models in style magazines.” Then she added suspiciously, “What are you doing in a place like this?”
“Getting a cup of coffee.”
“You shouldn’t be here. This is not a place for a foreigner to be.”
“I didn’t know there were restricted areas.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I meant foreigners avoid the Bantu, and well they should.”
“I didn’t know Bantu areas were places to avoid.” How could he tell her he wasn’t your typical foreigner, and that if anything, he preferred Bantu to his own kind?
“Well, SOWETO is one of the places. I don’t mean to be rude. I am just being candid.”
“I’m new to this country. I’ve only been here a few months.”
“That is pretty obvious.”
“Will you tell me more about these pass books?”
“Not much to tell. Typically, a person from SOWETO answers an ad for a job in the city, is hired and is given a passbook sanctioned by the Afrikaner Government. The worker’s employer pays the worker in terms of the agreed contract and signs off every day. A Bantu worker must never be without his passbook. The passbook stipulates when and for how long this worker is authorized to be in the city, and beyond that time, the worker is considered delinquent, and in violation of the law, and subject to prosecution, which includes serving jail time.”
“Could a worker be jailed if he lost or forgot his passbook?”
“Oh, yes, indeed he could. That is an old excuse. When his work is done, he is not meant to loiter, but to return to his home.” She said this with a flat confidence that nothing could be more logical.
“A few months ago, I visited a goldmine in the Transvaal. Is it true these workers stay there for weeks if not months?”
“Oh, yes, they are residents of the mine. They couldn’t very well come and go from their homelands and get any work done. Why, they’d be traveling most of the time. That would be expensive. Pardon my candor but quite stupid, don’t you think?”
He ignored mention of homelands and the logic of the requirements, and said instead, “You seem very knowledgeable of this policy,” taking pains not to mention apartheid, “and speak excellent English.”
Not impressed with the compliment, she looked him in the eye, “That’s a polite way to say, ‘for an Afrikaner’.”
“No, I meant no offense. I envy you being fluent in English and Afrikaans, but yes, I assumed you were an Afrikaner. There is a pleasant lilt to your English.”
This softened her gaze but not her retort. “Of course, I’m an Afrikaner. It’s my country.”
“A beautiful and splendid country it is.”
“Thank you, thank you very much. We’re very proud of being Afrikaners, very proud of our country.”
“Would you tell me more about the jailing of these people?”
“Why are you asking these questions? Are you writing a book?”
“I’m new to this country, and just want to get a feel how the country manages law and order, civil and business practices.” Then stopping to see how this was registering, encouraged by her pensive pose, he continued. “I think it is necessary for me to know as much as I can to do my job, which requires I understand the culture. Could I explain my difficulty?”
Her gaze hardened folding her arms over her chest but saying nothing. Encouraged, Devlin continued. “Imagine if I have a Bantu working for me whom I kept working over his designated time, say a couple of hours, and he missed his scheduled train, and I failed to clear this with authorities, or to make the proper notation in his passbook, what then?”
“Well, that would be devastating for that Bantu. First, authorities wouldn’t believe him or her because kaffirs lie all the time. Nor would authorities be likely to check with you, a foreigner. Besides they’re used to such excuses.”
“How do you get used to jailing people for something not their fault, something so insignificant, and certainly something not criminal?”
“But it is criminal, don’t you see? It’s a violation of the law. Separate development of the races is right. It is fair. Blacks are different than we are. They are people who believe in witchcraft and the tokoloshe and the spirit of their forefathers. When I was a little girl, my father took me to a place where they lived.”
“Was it SOWETO?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. The streets were dirty, glutted with trash, the houses little more than shacks, and no one had a garden. I asked my father why they didn’t have gardens. He said because they have so little pride. He then said the government gave them separate homelands because they murdered each other so readily. But why, father, I asked, why kill anyone? It is because they couldn’t be more unlike us, he answered.” She paused surprising herself with this outpouring. “Your country applies sanctions on my country. You criticize us because you don’t know us. You don’t understand us. You don’t know our black people. You think our blacks are like your blacks.”
“Like ours?”
“Yes, I see your blacks in your movies and they are always happy, funny and entertaining. Your blacks speak the same American English, wear beautiful clothes, and play such roles as Othello. Ours are different. They destroy things, never smile, always angry and unfriendly. They speak a hundred languages nobody understands. You’ll see. They’re not one people but many different tribes: Xhosa, Zulu, Tswana, Bapedi, Swazi, Ndebele, Venda, I could go on forever, and they’re all here, coming through this station.”
“But miss, they are human beings, are they not? Surely, you can see they are people who love their families and their homes modest as they may be. To take this from them for violating a passbook or green card, and to go to prison for it, don’t you think that is a little extreme?”
“They get used to it,” she said folding her arms again over her chest. “And it’s not extreme. It’s necessary.”
“How do you get used to jail for something . . . so venial?”
“Well, they do. After all, they’re children and we are their grownups. We tell them over and over again this is the law, this is what you do and what you don’t do, and yet they do it just the same, like children. This is the consequence if they break curfew. It is as simple as that. But they don’t seem to get it. We have literally thousands in prison.”
“For how long?”
“How long?”
“Yes, let’s say I’m a Bantu and I’ve broken curfew, picked up by a policeman, my green card is delinquent, and I’m rushed off to jail. How long will I be detained?”
“Oh, I see your point. The law says they can hold you up to 90 days.”
“Three months? You can’t be serious.” But he knew she was. “On what charge?”
“There doesn’t have to be a charge.”
“They can hold me for no reason other than having a delinquent green card?”
“Yes, but it is for your own good.”
Incredible, for my own good, and she believes this! He decided to take another approach. “Let us say, I’m in jail. What would I be doing?”
“You would be placed on work details according to your capabilities or the needs at the time. There is a lot of literature on this. I’m certainly no expert.”
“You’ve been most kind, and I appreciate your candor. But to be equally candid, I think I will have difficulty getting my mind around all this.”
“I don’t agree. Apartheid is a perfectly logical policy. It seems obvious to me that my government is doing what is best for my country.”
“And for the Bantu?”
“Especially for the Bantu.”
Devlin’s headache was now approaching a migraine. He thanked the waitress for her patience with him and the information. He gave her a generous tip and left. Just as he was leaving, and as she had predicted, hordes of humanity were rushing to the train station with serious faces, their heads down with tic like glances at the giant clock on the terminal’s dome, which looked down on them as if the Face of God, monitoring their movement in intoxicating waves as they blanketed the parking lot and swelled through the terminal doors.
The terminal was transformed into a green island in a black sea of humanity rushing through the fissures of Devlin’s mind pulsating with a throbbing rhythm and intensity that might explode his brain at any moment. He grabbed a railing for support.
Individuals were transmogrified into a collective black sea undulating through this green island not prodded by pitchforks or guns but by a draconian law that was accepted as socially just by ordinary good people such as this young waitress. Devlin had read Alan Paton, his lone critical source to date on this society. He would now read other South African authors to gain some purchase of this strange and wonderful land.
He fought through the crowd to the kiosk and bought another notebook, which he would lock in the glove compartment of his car. He would write in it at home, sitting by the fireplace while Sarah and the children were fast asleep, and pour his heart and soul out in cryptic code. These scribbled notes, triggered by his memory and imagination, were sentinels to his sanity.
These notes would be aspirins to his soul, he thought, while his temples throbbed as he left the terminal. He walked leisurely to his car through the people who opened a path for him, and then closed it behind him as they threaded their way towards the terminal. He unlocked his car, fell into the seat, sat there for several minutes, started the engine, and then drove slowly away from this beautiful experience. Would his life match this experience, he wondered, would it keep constant the bond he now felt?
Is South Africa my prison? Am I in a cave of my own making doomed to be forever lost in this assignment? Thoughts of his da now invaded his mind. Am I anxious because he died so young at the age of 50? I won’t be that age for twenty years. Will I make it? He rolled the Sisyphus rock up the hill only to be buried by it again and again. Is that everyman’s plight? He suffered for my arrogance and I suffered for his humility. Both are aspects of the same coin. Perhaps that is why there is no escape.
Devlin thought his education mattered; that his success and rise to power and influence mattered. But did it? Weren’t his four healthy children evidence he had escaped Sisyphus? Was he not better educated, more cultured and attuned to the rhythms of the universe than most men? So why did he feel Michael the Archangel was engineering his fall from grace? Was he trying to mask his arrogance with false humility? Did this poison his spirit? Why did he always think of his da when he felt incomplete? God help me! I am as lost as these Afrikaners are in their apartheid!
He drove past the office and headed for home, hoping Sarah and the children would be out on some soiree so he could visit with Josiah the Bantu gardener without having to explain why.
* * *
Afrikaner Apartheid ended in 1994 or 46 years after it was instituted in 1948 when South Africa became an independent Afrikaner nation. Twenty six years later, it is struggling to bring the Bantu and Coloreds into a common stream as a nation although of many Bantu ethnicities. I found apartheid reprehensible in 1968 when I lived there, not in terms of an open or closed mind, but as a morality issue.
As you point out, there is benefit to having an open mind to discuss issues, which helps people clarify why they think as they do. This brings us back to the matter of conscience, which I cover in another missive.
An individual need not apologize for a moral philosophy, but that same individual should not insist that his morality is absolute. As Jacques Barzun campaigned for a more open mind with his
"House of Intellect" (1959) and
"Dawn to Decadence" (2000), Chicago professor Alan Bloom described eloquently
“The Closing of the American Mind” (1987) yet little has changed.
* * *
Then there is the case of the architect of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and President Harry S. Truman who authorized the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 to end the Second World War in the Pacific. They differed decidedly in terms of an “OPEN MIND” & “MORAL MIND.”
The meeting between Oppenheimer and Truman on October 25, 1945 did not go well. It was then that Oppenheimer famously told Truman that
"I feel I have blood on my hands", which was unacceptable to Truman, who immediately replied that that was no concern of Oppenheimer's, and that if anyone had bloody hands, it was the president.
Oppenheimer felt as though the future was in the balance, and that the American government was using/would use the bomb as a political tool against the Soviet Union. Actually, the employment of the bomb as a part of American foreign policy was a new affair, and the application of it as a sort of
Pax Atomica was a wholly new development.
That meeting in the Oval Office indicated in terms of "open mind" and "moral mind" that the president had little use for Oppenheimer's "hand wringing" and moral questioning of the president's use of the bomb, seeing the scientist second-guessing his decision.
A coldness descended in the meeting, as Truman later told David Lillenthal that he
"never wanted to see that son of a bitch in this office again." Truman would retell the story in different ways, but with generally the same result, waxing about how he dismissed the
"cry-baby scientist" (see American Prometheus: The Triumph & Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin, 2005).
Thank you for your pondering,
Jim