Drama and virtue

Dramatists have to write narratives that connect with their audiences who actually know, at some level, that Hobbes' view of the world is not accurate. We are not simply the result of evolution's survival of the fittest.

Capitalism is built on private greed for the sake of public advantage. Corporations boast that they have only their shareholders in mind and act accordingly. Multinationals, almost universally, arrange their affairs to attract as little tax as possible thereby starving the countries of funds they need to operate the infrastructure that these companies depend upon.

Much of the aims of post-Enlightenment Europe have been the pursuit of ever increasing individual freedom. This has given rise to liberalism that recognises only the isolated individual and his unopposed exercise of will. The final result of the philosophies of Hobbes and Locke is the shattering of a common psyche that recognises the deep nature of humanity in its connections to the other. Liberalism tells us that we are quite right to pursue negative freedom. That if we have lots of money there is nothing amiss in leading a lavish lifestyle, that if we can take advantage in technicality then we are right to destroy our competitors. In Hobbes' view this is only to be expected. We expect the war of all against all.

One of the problems with this understanding is that it breeds legislation: the attempt to make society perfect by law. Hobbes' view of society demands that Leviathan (government) takes a paternalistic view of citizens because citizens do not have a common mind about what constitutes human flourishing. They only have a view of freedom, often, negative freedom that cuts them off from the neighbour. This is a breeding ground for legislation written to protect minority groups.

Negative freedom (often justified by rights language) is freedom to take advantage whenever it presents itself no matter what the consequences for the other. The Good Wife shows this up to the full. Of course it is a program about lawyers but we wonder at the lives so portrayed in which being smart is the primary virtue and subpoenas fly like confetti. Friendships are broken, trust is flayed, love dies and the prize goes to the agile. This is an account of Hell.

As a society we need to make up our minds about how the grain of the human universe runs. Does it favour the survival of the fittest and the self-obsessed or does it favour friendship, community and good will? Does the assertion of mythical rights build up community or dissolve it? This decision has nothing to do with being religious or not, nor is it to do with a false opposition between faith and reason. It is a matter of lived experience, the witness of the Christian tradition and the culture that that has produced.