The DisUnited States Devoid of an Ethical Core

This essay is dedicated to my beloved Sarah who has been an unfailing inspiration in the creation of it...

Puny in age and common sensethe DisUnited States not yet even 250 years
old!is burdened with an overwhelmingly onerous responsibility that,
ironically, it unwittingly assumed on its own at the end of the Second World
War when the world was parceled out to its liking, thus permitting it to
conform to its Can do optimism that boasted it could keep an ecumenical
order for allfor all time. Oh, how silly are these Americans! That they could
forge for the planet some pie-in-the-sky, happy-go-lucky political arrangement
intent on the commercialization of French fries, fried chickens, NBA jerseys,
often violent Hollywood extravagancesthese Trinkets of Vulgarity!and
now this social media investment in which some early investors have been
paid off with expectancies of Fortune, Fame and Friends encouraged by later
ones in order to further more and bigger possibilities in the hope of
accumulating more and more and more FFFsthis Harvard dropout's Ponzi
scheme! Things have turned out so badly, we cannot even give the Americans
a thanks for trying.

Make America Great Again. But, was it ever great? Or, at least as great as
Americans thought themselves to beand how much they tell us they are?
This baby nation advising the world how it should go about governing itself!
Telling countries with histories of thousands and thousands of years how to
do it! Just do it! As w e say you should! This nation with a puerile mentality
bordering on the ridiculous, and itself incapable of ruling its very own self!
And, it is not so much that the Americans are not sometimes offering good
advice. Au contraire! It is more how they tender their proposals: arrogantly,
oppressively, self-assuredly, and impatientlythese classic symptoms of
insecurity and impulsivity. Americans are a wonderful peopleif they aren't
bombing you.

How can we help these Americans to lose their cockiness, to mature, to

become bona fde citizens of the world? To begin, we must revert to one of
Western Civilization's most well-thought-of philosophers, Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804). IK is famous for his categorical imperative, about which he left
us a remarkable personal account. When he was contemplating marriage to
his beloved, he decided to make a list of her merits and demerits. When the
itemization was fnished, he discovered that there was one fault more than the
beauty's deservingnesseshe refused to marry! Many students of philosophy
mention IK to be the Prussian David Hume (1711-1776) in that DH would
have felt his way through some romance, it is supposed, thinking that
knowledge is the assurance arising from the comparison of ideas. Somewhat
softer than IK and perhaps even more romantic. Nevertheless, we must now
think the following about our cockamamie Americans: What if we designed a
questionnaire requiring participants to formulate a listing of the merits and
demerits of the Americans applied to the Americans' conception of
themselves as holders of the title, Leader of the World? How would the
Americans fair after the international set of questions for obtaining
statistically useful data was flled out specifcally intended to measure the
Americans' standing and qualifcations in the eyes of all peoples on this
planet? What would be the results? The Americans are special as having the
best French friescrunchy and succulentthe best t-shirts, the best pop
music, the best basketball players, the best knock-down-and-drag-out flms,
ad infnitum. But, serious people want more from their political leaders and,
especially, the highfalutin Americans! They demand substantive leadership
qualities that render credibility and funny inside feelings (charisms!) regards
those who are charged with their security and well-being. Those flling out the
forms in all parts of the world, want to respect these point men. They do not
want to be afraid of them. If you think these applied mathematical fndings
would favor the Americans and you are an American, you better fnd another
place to live in, my dear reader! Melbourne, Vancouver, Toronto, Vienna,
Hamburg....Who in his or her right mind would really have confdence in the
Americans ruling this world? The American snot-nosed response: Well, if
you can do a better job, it's all yours! From my own personal perspective, I
would prefer the Icelanders or the New Zealanders to rule the world instead
of these spectacularly greedy and disgustingly corrupt Americans.

What I fnd most revolting about the Americans, is their serious lack of the
virtue of pity which accounts for their atrocious propensity to be inhumane
even to themselves. Pity, the feeling of sorrow and compassion, is a worth we
all value in varying degrees. Therefore, it might be wise at this point to defne
this quality more elaborately. To do this, let us seek the advice of two grand
philosophers who can assist us in this endeavor: Mencius (372-289 BC), the
Confucianist Chinese philosopher, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778),
the Genevan-born philosopher who inspired the leaders of the French
Revolution. M believed that human nature is originally good. He advocated
humanity and righteousness. He was the frst philosopher to raise
righteousness to the highest level in moral values. He believed that evil or
failure is not original but due to the underdevelopment of one's original
endowment. M said, The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of
righteousness; the feeling of deference and compliance is the beginning of
propriety; and, the feeling of right and wrong is the beginning of wisdom. J-J
R offers us a detailed description of pity. It is a ftting predisposition for
creatures as weak and subject to as many ills as we are, a virtue all the more
universal and useful to men and women because it precedes any kind of
refection in him, and so natural that even the beasts themselves sometimes
show discernible signs of it. It is certain that pity is a natural sentiment
moderating the action of self-love in each individual and so contributing to
the mutual preservation of the whole species. It is pity that sends us
unrefecting to the aid of those we see suffering; it is pity that in the state of
Nature takes the place of laws, moral habits, and virtues, with the added
beneft that there no one is tempted to disobey its gentle voice; it will deter a
robust savage from robbing a weak child or infrm old person of his hard-won
sustenance if the savage himself can hope to fnd his own elsewhere; it is pity
that, in place of that sublime maxim of rational justice, 'Do unto others as you
would have then do unto you,' inspires in all men that other maxim of natural
goodness, much less perfect but perhaps more useful: 'Do what is good to
yourself with as little possible harm to others.' (J-J R's own We are born free,
but everywhere we look we see people in chains is also pertinent.) In short, it
is to this natural feeling, rather than to any subtle arguments, that we must
look for the cause of the aversion that every man and woman feels to doing
evil, quite independently of the maxims of education.

If J-J R had had a Twitter account, he would have marveled at his observation
that even the beasts themselves sometimes show discernible signs of it (pity).
Amazingly, social media account holdersall of them wanting to save the
bees, the trees and the seasoffer us spectacular vids of cats and dogs. Still,
I've never seen anyone with a pet pigthat perennial Wall Street mascot!
These beasts merrymake with toddlers only a few months old. See that four-
month-old baby boy caressing and hugging and kissing the family's German
shepherd or doberman pinscher? Look, the dog is licking the face of the tike!
Oh, how wonderful! What a lovely image. Will it go viral? Wait until you see
the cat who knows how to log into FACEBOOK! What an incredible event!
Have you heard about that mother who viewed her three-month-old girl
frolicking with an eight-foot diamondback rattlesnake in their backyard in
Oklahoma? The mom looked frantically for her camera, and when she fnally
found it, she was so disappointed that the snake had slid all the way into her
neighbor's backyard. She was willing to bet the vid would have gone viral all
over the world. (The Chinese say that poisonous snakes, scorpions and spiders
will not attack newborn, defenseless infants.) Have you ever seen a new-
sprung babeso helpless, so innocent, so cute. The only things they can do
with any aplomb is defecate and urinate. And when they wake you at 3:30am
screaming for you to change their diapers, that precious smile they fash your
way seems to make the sacrifce well worth every minute. And you think,
maybe my little baby girl will go to Harvard, get an MBA, and then write a
book on knowing how to inside trade and make $100,000,000,000 on Wall
Streetfrom her federal prison cell after she has found Jesus. But what really
touches me the most is the millions and millions of American husbands who
purposely do not talk to their wives, imitating their darlings' pets, in hopes of
being picked up by their spouses and smothered with hugs and kisses
something both of them haven't done since their seventh-year itches. (By the
way, have you ever made a mid-coitus stupidphone check?)

George Carlin once lamented that Americans need a catastrophe for them to
show pity for their own. Katrina? Harvey? Compare the two. What do they tell
us about Americans' practice of the virtuous pity? And, the Pentagon? Look at
their notions of pity: Atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki;
millions of North Koreans killed during the Korean War; millions killed
during the Vietnam War; Iraq I; Iraq II; and, Afghanistan. Where's the pity
for innocent children, women and the elderlycollateral damage! It amazes
me that today 80% of the Vietnamese prefer the DisUnited States to China!
The Vietnamese must be eating tons of French fries. I regret that I live only
3000 miles from the DisUnited States and not 6000 or even 9000. It is
traumatic for me to just think about getting on a plane in Rome, then being
squashed between two obese individuals who have not taken a bath in more
than a week, and having to bear and grin the robot-like Are you enjoying
your fight, sir of the fight attendant. Oh, dearest fight attendant, do you
sell oxygen tanksI can't breathe! Enough for me to have wanted to
renounce my DisUnited States' citizenship!
Listen to Chuang Tzu (399-295 BC): The pure man or woman of old slept
without dreams and awoke without anxiety. He ate without indulging in sweet
tastes and breathed deep breaths. The pure man or woman draws breaths
from the great depths of their heels, the multitude only from their throats
(CNN and Fox and MNBC!). People defeated (in argument) utter words as if to
vomit, and those who indulge in many desires have very little of the secret of
Nature. Would it not be a good idea for all Americans to just shut up for a
year and refect on what they are doing and should want to do? That all
American journalists be administered an IQ examination? That all Americans
could draw breaths from the great depths of their heels? And then, after
those 365 days, with a bit more maturity, they can for all time afterwards refer
to Ludwig Wittgenstein's famous dictum: Whereof we cannot speak,
therefore we must be silent. What a beginning for a wonderful, new world
perspective! What more proof does one need to demonstrate that Americans
are not obliged to be so fatalistically stupid?

Authored by Anthony St. John

4 September MMXVII
Calenzano, Italy
www.scribd.com/thewordwarrior
Twitter: @thewordwarrior

* * *

Ethics
Edited by Peter Singer
Oxford University Press

A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy

Translated and compiled by Professor Wing-Tsit Chan
Princeton University Press