On Avoiding 'Moral Squint' or Tolerance

By Andrew M. Greenwell, Esq.
1/24/2013
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Another word for "moral squint" is tolerance. Tolerance, of course, is touted by the secular liberals as the preeminent virtue. Secular liberals who are moral relativists would have all of us adopt "moral squint." If we are to be called benevolent, they would have us be blind to moral reality. If we are to be considered loving, they would have us be deaf to moral truths.

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CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) - As best as I have been able to determine, the term "moral squint" comes from Punch's Letters to his Son, the British humorist Douglas W. Jerrold's parodies of Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son, written by Philip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield. Chesterfield's book bore the descriptive subtitle "On the Fine Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman." It was Jerrold's intent to write a sort of burlesque of Lord Chesterfield's "man-of-the-world" wisdom and pragmatic morality.

Jerrold was right to take after Chesterfieldian morality. Lord Chesterfield's morality is a morality unworthy of the name, and it slides quickly into purely temporal self-interest, which is clearly not the same as morality. It is apparent that being moral is sometimes against one's temporal self-interest.

The upshot of pragmatic Chesterfieldian morality is that, while it is eminently practical and tolerant, it is nothing less than moral pabulum. By nimbly dancing around the moral questions it leads to the lack of moral conviction, to moral indifference, and even moral relativism.

Samuel Johnson famously excoriated Lord Chesterfield's morals as the "morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing-master." Like a whore, Chesterfieldian morality is not faithful to any one moral vision and is not wed to one moral truth. Like a dancing master, its entire repertoire is a number of arbitrary steps intended artfully to dance around the fact that it is a moral strumpet.

While Chesterfieldian morality perhaps avoids the evils of hypocrisy, it does so by jettisoning any pretense to objective morality and hence virtue and vice. As Oscar Wilde famously defined it, hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue. And that, of course, requires that virtue mean something. When everything is measured by a tolerant and easy self-interest, there is no virtue to which vice can give its oblique compliment.

In any event, the reference to "moral squint" is found in Punch's Letter No. XI, where Punch excoriates his son for the way he had treated the rich, affluent, and well-connected Alderman Bilberry who had lied to a musician asking for a tip telling him that he had no change. The son reminded Mr. Bilberry that he in fact had change in his pocket because he had just received some from the bartender after having ordered a glass of ginger beer.

"My son," the father tells his son, "never see the meanness of mankind. Let men hedge, and shirk, and shift, and lie, and with faces of unwrinkled adamant tell you the most monstrous falsehoods, either in their self-glorification, or to disguise some habitual paltriness, still, never detect the untruth; never lay your finger on the patch they have so bunglingly sewed upon their moral coat, but let them depart with the most religious persuasion that they have triumphantly bamboozled you."

Never detect the moral truth. That's the heart of Chesterfieldian morality. Dance around it. "By these means," the father continues, "although you are most efficiently assisting in the hypocrisy of life, you will be deemed a sociable, a most good-natured fellow."

"Be stone-blind," the father continues, at least insofar as it involves moral things, "and you will be benevolent" to those with social influence. To moral truths "be deaf," the father advises, "and you will be all heart" to those with political and financial influence.

"To have an insight or at least to show you have it into the dirty evasions of life," Punch continues, "is to have a moral squint."

The Chesterfieldian "moral squint" is therefore defined as the ability to overlook, tolerate, and even treat as good and outstanding the "dirty evasions of life." By being stone blind to moral reality, one will be called benevolent. By being deaf to moral truths, one will be considered a loving fellow, all heart.

In Chesterfieldian morality, to live life with open, honest moral eyes-without "moral squint"-is in fact the iniquity. "To lay your finger upon a plague-spot, is to be infected with malice. No: though you meet with men scurfed with moral leprosy, see not the scales, but cry out lustily, 'What perfect gentlemen!' To discover meanness in men, is, in men's opinion, to be strongly tinctured with the iniquity."

If one has developed "moral squint," then even though there be immoral wasps nests all around, the father notes, one ought not to cry "Wasps! Wasps!" If we do so we will seem to be regarded as the "malicious, evil-minded fellow." No. By squinting we can call the wasps' nests honeycombs! By being half blind, men can look like trees walking! (Cf. Mark 8:24)

This, of course, ...

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Martha
4 months ago
So true about our school systems and their desire for conformity. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were thought to be "addled" or in today's terms ADD/ADHD. Our real boys are frowned upon in school for their inquisitive minds and challenge of the norm. What even thirty years ago was "boys being boys" is now a sentence for Ritalin, Ridicule and Retention. "Where are our leaders....where are our priests?" It takes real men for these roles, but our society is crushing those very souls. I know because my little boy is one of them. .
Paul-Emile Leray
4 months ago
This piece is both comedic and tragic, depending on perspective. It is true. It is, as usual, excellent writing.

While some degree of air in the tires makes for a less bumpy ride, the fact is that the more honest, truthful, open, clear, sincere, a person is; the more likely he is to be ostracized or self-select towards the life of a quasi hermit in some cases. Why? Most of society is operating on illusions, ego, and numbness of heart.

A child who is inquisitive and questions authority, pursues a straight path, is likely at high risk of getting kicked out of school or spending lots of time in the principal's office. Most so called "education" is rather "instruction" towards a socialization process based on cult-ure and perceived future necessities to survive in that cult-ure. What if the cult-ure is nuts? Then, the A and B students are possibly those who will fit in best in the cult-ure of death, secularism, moral relativism, cultural relativism, subjective truths therefore not true truths since not objective and timeless.

Most world leaders have so called educations (instructions) from the best brand name schools on the planet. Yet, wars (using a broad definition of war) and chaos all over the place to varying degrees exist; evident, but not so evident to those sleeping.

Live and let live attitudes are very popular. The phone will practically be ringing off the hook. Trying to be at least half serious? Fewer invitations. Trying to be very serious? Get a shovel and start digging out a cave in the wilderness to live in isolation and as a hermit, because either people will be bored by you or you will be bored to tears by most. (this is an exaggeration, but there is some truth to this) It seems to lead to a sort of solitary existence that is actually very happy, filled with extreme highs and painfully isolating stretches as well; yet with moments of wild outbursts of laughter when realizing with high awareness how funny it is to be trapped inside this human body.

Impossible to escape from oneself. The limiting factor is the body. The heart, spirit, soul, mind, thoughts, words, (such as spoken and written) can travel around so to speak. The body? The body, even when moving, can not be escaped from. In other words, nature seems to be designed to challenge us to having those most important acorn seeds grow so that the tree eventually pierces through the 'cloud of unknowing' so to speak. And with some effort, grace comes. Or, perhaps more accurately, grace came first to then result in the effort?

More grace seems to come with more effort. Yet, human will power is limited. We can't will power ourselves into the cloud. Therefore, we need to submit our wills at the foot of The Cross so that in getting out of our own way the will of The One can work through us. Then? Then, fasten the seatbelt because things can really move fast when The One decides to take you for a ride. Easy to write. Somewhat difficult to understand. It is very difficult to do, consistently, to perpetually get out of our own way. Well, if practice leads to higher perfection (even though full perfection is impossible in this life) then the sooner one begins the better. Being one of the boys at different moments in life feels good, but the more one walks the narrow path the higher the risk of being thrown off a cliff by one of the boys! Haha! Why? Because the majority is nuts. The group is the tribe and the tribe is often lead off the cliff by some gang like mob leader. (who in some cases was elected, legally)

To be a statesman and a saint; what an achievement and example we have in St.Thomas More.

To think many people wish to be popular; that very wish and potential reality alone ought to raise the question as to why people are popular? What are the reasons, motives, roots, realities? Who is setting the standard? In a room filled with drunks, the guy buying the next round is the hero until everyone's glass is empty and it is time for the next round once again. Hey, this sounds like a democracy to me. Majority rules! (even when the cult-ure is DRUNK on secularism)

If it is the nature of truth that it often separates itself from the crowd, then how to possibly reconcile this in a democracy when majority opinion matters? If the majority is usually wrong, then a democracy serves to keep us all enslaved in a perpetual cult-ure of chaos on some levels?

I mean, look at the type of bone-heads and clowns throughout history who have run for public office. It's a complete farce, in many cases. It brings forth not reason, often, but rather celebrities. There's one guy in a certain Asian country, a few years ago, who was a pro wrestler and literally kept his mask on inside the government structures while serving as a politician. I didn't follow his policies and don't know his position on issues, but the point is that it seemed like mostly celebrity grand-standing.

To think I actually spent much of my youth looking up to politicians. Now? I view them as inferiors. I honestly, in open writing, do.

I also, openly, although it feels outrageous to write this and even believe this, do not believe in campaigning and do not believe in most democratic processes as they exist in this period of so called his-story.

A democracy? A mobocracy. The will of the MOB who have chosen a gang leader representative.

And as with a school-yard filled with boys on a sports-field, the one with the loudest mouth and biggest stick is usually the captain because the others are either petrified of him or are simply too tame to challenge him.

Paul-Emile Leray

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