Equanimity — SteemCN

Equanimity, denoting stability and calmness leading to balance in each individual’s life and in society, is yet another essence of Exoneratism. This intellectual balance will allow mankind to survive just as the balance in nature allows animals to survive.

In Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest, imbalance has been observed as a determining factor in the deletion of species. Too little or too much of anything is no good in nature and the same holds true in society, the one difference being that the human species is able to take the responsibility to determine this balance in his life and in his society in order to prolong his species.

Emotions play a large part in determining ethical judgments. The self-interest of Rand’s characterization of John Galt pushes Galt to ruin the very society that has afforded him his chance at success. He is content to stand on the achievements of those who went before him, but unwilling to even so much as recognize his debt to his society. This unbalanced viewpoint is contradictory to the Exoneratist’s ethic of equanimity.

Equanimity temporizes the Exoneratist’s emotional reactions to changes in his own predicament as well as that of society. In determining any ethical questions, Exoneratism pragmatically focuses on the final outcome to be realized. It is an accepted law of nature: any living creature or environment is always in a state of change.

Ethics likewise are involved in our natural intellectual upheavals as we explore new ideas and therefore we must presume to place these new ideas in a proper perspective. Just as Darwin’s concept of evolution of species spanned centuries, we recognize the ongoing evolution of ethics, beginning with the first existent notations of mankind and proceeding into the predictions of the 22nd century.

Serenity requires balance. Each individual must be able to pursue his own goals at a level acceptable to him – not that society must assure him success – not that society must assure him equality, but merely that his “right to pursue” must be protected by society. For his own well being then he must seek to protect his society.

Here is a reiteration of the earlier quote from Reuben Fine regarding guilt: “In civilized society . . . aggression is internalized by the procedures of education and results in a heightened sense of guilt. The loss of happiness through such increase in guilt is now the price of progress in civilization. Hence, too, guilt is the most important problem in the evolution of culture.”

In the mid-nineteenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter depicted the guilt-ridden lives of Arthur Dimmesdale, minister, and Hester Prynne, adulterous lover of Dimmesdale, in colonial Boston in the late 1700’s. Hawthorne expressed the unhappy life of Dimmesdale in this passage:

“It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the spirit’s joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole universe is false, - it is impalpable, it shrinks to nothing within its grasp.”

No joy, no serenity and surely no inner peace in his life, Dimmesdale met in the forest with Hester and she suggested they should run to Europe and escape from colonial Boston’s puritanical condemnation of their affair. But so filled with the overpowering guilt he felt, Dimmesdale shunned Hester’s resolution to this dilemma, admitted his sin and took his own life. Hester was left to suffer in Boston and to minister to other women who were guilty of immoral acts.

Robert Penn Warren, (1) writing nearly a century later, interprets the motives of Hester from an American viewpoint that did not even exist in Colonial America: the view point of sexual freedom and women’s emancipation:

“This, we must observe, is at the farthest removed from penitence, for the message that Hester, by implication, gives the suffering women is not that they are “sinners” in need of redemption, but that they are victims of a social order that violates nature.” (2)

The guilt experienced by Dimmesdale and Hester in Colonial Boston has, two centuries later, been transferred to society at large.

As we approach the 22nd century we will encounter ever more radical changes and ever more constant changes in our ethical interpretations. A vociferous denial of culpability has been and will be a natural response to the continuing progress and pursuits of modern man. It is as natural as the cynic’s misanthropic distrust of human nature.

Cynicism is to Exoneratism as disillusionment was to Nihilism. It is the generating force for change. Greylord, Watergate, 3 Mile Island, consumer fraud and child molestation in the Catholic Church tend to make Americans cynical, as the nature of man is the root cause of political and social problems. Cynicism becomes the Exoneratist’s yardstick to determine propriety when confronted with the innovations surrounding him and through the practice of equanimity the Exoneratist asserts his intellect in the realm of ethics without the loss of innocence.

(1) Robert Penn Warren 1905 - 1989, American novelist, poet, critic and scholar.

(2) Twentieth Century Interpretations of the Scarlet Letter, collected by John C. Gerber, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1968, p. 105.