In my prior essay, Acid Wash, I talk of the secular impasse.  We take God out of the universe, then we realize that He takes the sacred with Him.  This is unbearable, so we fish around for another external and objective source for the sacred and for right and wrong, but utilitarianism is the only thing we can find.  Utilitarianism is the new source for the old morality, and Sam Harris’ utilitarianism-by-another-name is the latest greatest model.

 

I’ll summarize Sam Harris’ thesis.  Science can define and achieve an objective human morality.  All humans share the same biology and psychology, therefore, some things are true for all humans everywhere.  And what is most true and most important for all humans is well-being.  Science can determine the things that lead to well-being for all humans, so science will give us an objective and external morality.  Science will build a society based on a rational, external morality that demands such thoughts and behaviors of people as will lead to the greatest overall well-being.

 

In sum, Sam Harris believes that science can answer every moral question based on what leads most to human well-being.  And here we see his two faiths, one about the end and the other about the means.  Faith: global human well-being is the ultimate value and the proper end of morality.  Faith: science is the means to the end, that is, science can define human well-being and then tell us how to achieve it.

 

Mr. Harris doesn’t define well-being, rather, he leaves it to “science” to define well-being and decide how to get it.  Science will define human well-being, which means… human well-being will be confined to the limited set of things that science can see.  And because science can only see material things (It things), therefore, Mr. Harris has condemned human well-being to the world of It. 

 

It can only see It.  That’s where I’m going.  Sam Harris is an habitual analyzer-- he looks at everything from a distance, separated in his third-person perspective, shining a cold light on the objects of his dissection.  In his gaze, you and me are It, we are biological machines bereft of soul, and so is Mr. Harris himself when he focuses his gaze inward and analyzes himself.  By taking this stance, he relates to the world (and himself) as I to It; he sees only It-things to be controlled and manipulated.  

 

This is the stance of science, to separate myself from the world making it an object for analysis.  When I take the perspective of a scientist, I objectify the things in the world, reducing them to particles in motion, machines that are locked in material chains of causation.  By this stance, then, I only see material things and nothing else, and so I assume there is nothing else.  I say to anyone listening, "certainly spirit doesn't exist-- it's just a story you tell yourself."

 

It's game over when I take the It stance to the world.  I-to-It is a closed, circular worldview, an assumption that determines all of the conclusions that follow.  Which is why, when in It, It’s all I can see.

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Let’s go back to Sam Harris.  His heart’s desire is to create an objective scientific morality.  Now, all you need do is tell me that Mr. Harris wants to build a scientific morality, and I’ll predict his system.  Mr. Harris’ starting point is to use science as the only permissible means to achieve the end of morality.  So he’s in the I-and-It stance.  What about the end?  Well, because Mr. Harris’ stance to the world is I-to-It, therefore, the end must be a material, quantifiable thing, ergo, his “well-being.”  Could Mr. Harris have chosen love as the proper end? No, because love can’t be quantified.  And because science is the means to the end, utility must be the sole standard for judging morality: to judge the moral value of an action, just measure whether it increases or decreases the total units of well-being.  Mr. Harris says, you want morality? I’ll give you morality! -- just calculate the numbers and see what gets the highest score in bringing about human well-being.  Assumptions are destiny.      

 

Sam Harris lives in a place that Dante called Limbo: the first circle of hell.  It's really not that bad.  Imagine a place of endless well-being with no suffering or joy or meaning, like a chocolate fountain in a cheap buffet restaurant.  For caring humanists and sincere utilitarians, this is home.

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Please don’t think that I belittle Mr. Harris and his I-and-It stance.  I don’t.  I accept that a large part of morality should consists of rules: rules to enhance our collective well-being, rules to control other people, and rules to help me behave.  And I’m grateful to I-and-It every time I turn on the faucet and clean water comes out.

 

At the same time, I might not share Sam Harris’ faith that a global and quantifiable well-being is the ultimate end.  A vague collective well-being is good, I guess, assuming I knew what it meant.  But global well-being, like peace on Earth, might not be my highest good.  There’s something higher that calls me, something sacred, and it’s real.  Martin Buber says that I freely go to my destiny and I meet it, I-to-Thou, in mutual respect.  Yeah, that’s what I want.  I want meaning, not numerical units of well-being.  I want to become more.  

 

“Becoming” is a special word.  But before I go on becoming, I’ll spend the next few essays doing a little more Its and Thous.