Loyalty and Purpose

One of the persistently loveable snarky political lefties over at Bad Attitudes speculates that John Kerry might be privy to some of G.W. Bush's most private secrets, because they were in the same secret society at Yale. They see this access as an asset to the Democratic campaign, should the political debate sink to smear tactics (something they don't doubt will happen).

That gives me pause. If, hypothetically speaking of course, which is the only way these things could ever be discussed, I had been in a secret society while at Yale, would I use something I knew from those days to prevail over a political adversary, to achieve a cause I truly believed was Noble? I pose the question as though it's something to ponder but in fact it's not a dilemma to me, it's just a moral temptation. I wouldn't tell. No way. And I'd be a little bothered if either candidate did, even to win for an urgent, Higher Social Purpose, which no doubt everyone who is running thinks they have access to.

The philosophical question -- when should personal small-scale morals give way to Noble Goals -- is presented really well in an elegant novel: Amsterdam by Ian MacEwan. As a novel with realistic characters it fails but as a tidy and nicely layered moral parable it is quite good, and I realized when discussing it in book club that I liked it much more than I'd thought when I closed the cover.

I got a wonderfully thoughtful email from a practicing attorney in response to my uneasy post following the forcible entry and detainer hearing. He talked about his own sense of uncertainty about his profession, and about the people he knows who are certain in their lives. It's too complicated for me to summarize, but one point was the satisfaction of living a principled life on a small scale. Seems important. I'll be gnawing on this stuff for a while; don't expect to have it figured out just yet.

[....upon reflection, I think I sound too certain about the choice to tell or not to tell. I am certain; I KNOW I wouldn't tell. But that's easy for me because I'm not pursuing a Larger Social Purpose -- the life I have chosen is entirely built on small-scale love and loyalties, and it's that personal failure to do more to Make The World A Better Place that makes me feel lousy hanging around in the seedy neediness of the district court. I obviously want leaders who have made a different calculation, whose balance between domestic and personal relationships and Mission is tilted more heavily toward Mission. So maybe those guys really should think long and hard, and maybe I'd support them if their choice were for Purpose over Loyalty....]

Comments

[Scipio]

So, this is really a question of when it's appropriate to use assymetrical information obtained through a common pact of confidentiality and personal loyalty to advance an agenda that you, but not necessarily anyone else, believes is for the greater good. I'm pretty sure that it's a bad idea. But that's just an intuition.

Reason tells me that if I use assymetrical information gained through a common pact of loyalty, I can no longer depend on the loyalty of persons who make similar pacts with me, since they will always doubt my honesty. Further, I may not be able to ever make such a pact again with anyone, because of the doubts my violating the initial pact would raise in those who would want to make such pacts with me.