Nov 27 Duty, how is it created and accepted?

Next Wednesday at the Ideas Cafe, we will be discussing duty.

Is duty just a way of getting us to do what we otherwise will not do or want to do?

A justification when the action is counter intuitive to our self interest?

Let's examine the various ways in which duty is justified.

1.  As told by an authoritative figure.  Whether it is god, our parents, our government, or Confucius,  we are told that we have duties to perform and there are consequences if we don't.  There is little further explanation other than it just is the way it is.

2.  As part of a community or collective.  If we value the community that we are in, we have to play our part in protecting the community and help to make the community flourish.  Some of these activities may be counter to our self interest but our desire to better the community outweigh our self interests.  Duty to our community or the greater good of the collective becomes a simplified code towards this goal.

3.  Kantian morals. Logical frameworks such as Kant's imperative about not lying bind us to a "duty" not to lie so as to be consistent with our logic.  If one lie makes us a lair and we cannot trust a lair then logically it follows that we cannot ever lie.

4.   Accept consequence for our actions.  Parents have a duty to properly raise their children to adulthood since it is the parents that cause their children to be here in this world.  We have a duty to fulfill our promises and contracts. 

Of these justifications, the authoritative figure is the most questionable. 

Just because Confucius is reputed to be a great scholar, is that enough reason for us to accept his social code of deferring authority to age and family rank? His teachings are full of what one should do but little in why one should do it. 

It is a great way of maintaining social stability and the status quo, letting the powers to be continue and the less powerful looking forward to the day when they reach the age and rank to be powerful just through the passage of time.

Maybe that is the real reason for duty and that is to maintain social stability at all cost because the alternative of a chaotic society is so disruptive and unproductive.

Better to be in an ordered society even if the basis is somewhat questionable rather than chaos.

But dictatorships and authoritarian regimes are very ordered and they try hard to maintain that order and suppress chaos.  What is the difference?

In the Confucius social code case, there is a path for the duty bound to become the privileged someday.  Sons with duties to their parents become parents and there is the government exams allowing theoretically the possibility of anyone who study hard enough to become a government official and nobleman.

The members of the privileged class in a dictatorship are still in fear of the ultimate leader who can change the rules at any time.  The general public is cynical about ever getting a share of that privilege.

So it is a stabilizing social code with possible general participation that has the broad appeal, not just the order from chaos.

How does this explain the fascination with royalty?  When birthright bars most of us from being royals, why is there such support for royal families?  Are the royals a symbol of the community that we want to belong to? Or, are citizens simply ignorant of the various financial and social costs of having royal families?

As Jonathan Haidt, the author of "The Happiness Hypotheses" suggested, we are part individual and part bee in a bee hive.  We want our individual freedoms and pleasures but we also want to belong to a community with duties to the collective.

We need that queen bee?  but want our individual freedom?

Have our cake and eat it too?