Followership

Over time, it has come to be the case that while I tell a significant number of people—my students and children—what to do, there are few people who tell me what to do. My Department Chair rarely tells senior faculty what to do—though he does make suggestions. The higher administration may pass policies, but rarely do they tell tenured senior faculty what to do, in the way I tell my students. My parents advise but don't command.

All this is an unfortunate state of affairs. One of the human virtues is that of obedience, a virtue particularly well suited to teaching humility and guarding from pride and arrogance. I confess to finding the exercise of authority to have a fair amount of pleasure about it, and to enjoying not having much authority exercised over me. And while there are genuine goods here, and goods are to be enjoyed, my enjoyment is nourished by and nourishes vices as well.

It is not uncommon for this to happen as one ages. As one gains seniority, the ratio of authority exercised over one to authority one exercises often shrinks. But the greatest of the vices is pride, and obedience is a genuine virtue. It is important to fight the authority imbalance.

Being a religious superior who had few people to tell him what to do, St Philip Neri talked of the value of at least having his doctor to obey. Those of us in the envied but aretaically unenviable position of commanding much more than we are commanded need to make an effort to come to be under various authorities, to seek out activities where one will be under the authority of others, however much that may grate the old Adam. Join a club or fraternal organization but don't be an officer. (Particularly valuable might be a setting where much younger people get to tell one what to do.) Get a personal trainer. Serve in one's parish while avoiding positions (official or unofficial) of authority, except when one's parish really needs one.

Perhaps such things can help develop a habit of wanting to obey rather than be obeyed, a habit that will make one's exercise of authority always be appropriately reluctant.

This has snuck up on me.

Orate pro me.

Horrendous evil and moral development

Suppose I end up at a concentration camp for a significant amount of time. Here are some possible moral development outcomes:

1. becoming really bad (e.g., informer, kapo)
2. becoming heroically good (e.g., Viktor Frankl, Maximilian Kolbe)
3. becoming bitter
4. remaining non-bitter

Obviously there can be overlap—you can become really bad and stay non-bitter. And they're not exhaustive because you might come in bitter. But nevermind all that. The above will be a classification of the most common cases of the most notable aspects of resultant moral development. (Thus, for the person who remains non-bitter but becomes really bad, we classify them just as becoming really bad, because that's more notable than remaining non-bitter.)

Now, I think we have no reason to think that A's outnumber B's. (It would be great to have empirical data.) Moreover, the average A is less morally bad than the average B is morally good. The reason is that there is an asymmetry here: the pressures that A's and B's are under in the camp decrease the culpability of typical A's but increase the praiseworthiness of typical B's. (There will be partial exceptions, like maybe the person who becomes needlessly cruel or the person who becomes virtuous because he's St Maximilian's cellmate. But even these exceptions are not going to be complete exceptions.) Furthermore—and again data would help—I suspect that some of the A's repent of their badness afterwards (some never do, and for some there is no afterwards), while few of the B's repent of their goodness afterwards. So, if all we know about x is that he is going to be an A or a B, the expected value of x's moral development hange will be positive.

What about the C's and D's? This is, I think, the really important case, as they'll probably be a larger group than the A's and B's. Now, it is a much greater virtue to remain non-bitter through a concentration camp than it is a vice to become bitter through the concentration camp. Part of the reason is the culpability point from the previous paragraph. Making one bitter is the "natural" tendency of horrors, and it is not a great vice to fall into that. So, unless there are way more C's than D's, we have positive expected value of moral development.

Now, add the following thesis: In terms of value, a moderate amount of positive moral development trumps a very large amount of suffering. (Socrates would say—and I think he'd be right—that any amount of positive moral development trumps any amount of suffering.) If this thesis is right, even when we add the amount of suffering, we may still have positive expected value for a random individual who suffers horrors like those of a concentration camp.

The real problem of evil, I think, is not about expected values, utilities and the like, however. The real problem is deontological. Does God have the right to allow someone to suffer so much given the expected value of moral development? I think the answer is positive. Suppose I knew that by preventing a great suffering to myself I would be losing an opportunity for significant positive moral development. Would prudence permit me to refrain from preventing the suffering? I think it would. Nor would such a refraining from prevention be morally wrong. But God is closer to me than I myself am, in some relevant sense. If I would not be imprudent or immoral to permit a suffering to myself, it would likewise not be wrong of God to permit it to me.