‘Source of moral values’? ... or ‘one long celebration of violence’? 5th June 2012
The Positive Speaking Quotient (PSQ): Sachs 63%; Moses 21%; Jesus 66%
The following are my reflections on a recent newspaper article:
The Times (2012) In a time of trouble we look to Moses for wise leadership.
Saturday May 26, p. 83. Lord Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the Commonwealth.
Why I am interested
the Word of God? ... or the Word of Sachs?
What Sachs said
What the Song Of Moses says
What Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount
The Positive Speaking Quotient (PSQ): Sachs 63%; Moses 21%; Jesus 66%
Steve Pinker: the Word of God? ... or ‘more modern principles’?
The consequences for violence of different moralities
The democratic peace? ... the Deuteronomic war?
Key points
Why I am interested
I am interested in this article because it concerns religion, value and the norm of goodness. Religion is of interest in that religious differences are a feature of some conflicts and also religious groups are promoters of resolution in some conflicts. Value is of interest in that it is a central concept in relationships and conflicts. The norm of goodness is of interest in that norms instruct us to take an interest in them!
the Word of God? ... or the Word of Sachs?
Which is better: the Word of Sachs? or the Word of God? Sachs promises me ‘compassion’. In contrast, The Song Of Moses (Chapter 32 in Deuteronomy, ‘one of the great texts of all time’ according to Sachs) delivers me ‘anger’, ‘sword’, ‘blood’ and ‘revenge’. Deuteronomy is part of the Jewish Torah, the Christian Old Testament and the Islamic Tawrat. Sadly the different readers of Deuteronomy in the Middle East and elsewhere are in violent conflict with one another. Is Sachs correct in pointing to Deuteronomy as the solution? ... or might it not be the problem?
Notes:
The Torah (/ˈtɔːrə/; Hebrew: תּוֹרָה, "Instruction", "Teaching") is the Jewish name for the first five books of the Jewish Bible.
The Old Testament is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred by both Judaism and Christianity. The books can be broadly divided into the Pentateuch, which tells how God selected Israel to be his chosen people ...
Tawrat (Tawrah or Taurat) (Arabic: توراة) is the Arabic word for the Torah. Muslims believe it was a holy book of Islam given by Allah to Musa (Moses).
What Sachs said
I read the article by Sachs and was interested in his advocacy of goodness and his statement that this idea was to be found in Deuteronomy – so much so that I looked up and read Deuteronomy (see next section). I was particularly drawn to Sachs’ list of ‘the values and ideals that permeate society: justice, compassion, welfare, social responsibility, love of neighbour and stranger and care for the poor, the lonely, the disenfranchised.’
Rereading Sachs I picked out certain key words and phrases. I was particularly interested in words referring to positive goodness and words referring to negative badness. Taking a mathematical approach we can ask: which did Sachs talk about more? There were 19 instances of positive goodness and 11 instances of negative badness – giving The Positive Speaking Quotient (PSQ) of 63%. Here I am using my own concept of positive goodness and negative badness. Sachs appears to be advocating what I consider to be positive goodness and counselling against what I consider to be negative badness. Here are the words and phrases I picked out.
‘Leadership, leader as teacher, miracles, freedom, signs and wonders,
Miracles solve the immediate crisis but not the long-term one:
‘The people don’t change. They remain querulous, quarrelsome, ungrateful, unstable, ready to despair at the slightest setback, unfit for the responsibilities of freedom.’
‘... in Deuteronomy, ... a series of speeches given by Moses in the last month of his life ... it is to me one of the great texts of all time ... Moses stops performing wonders and becomes instead a teacher, an educator of the nation’
Patiently, deeply counterintuitive; challenges are affluence, not poverty ... freedom, not slavery; national identity more important than power; memory more significant than history; education most important parents’ teaching;
Not strength, military or demographic, but the values and ideals that permeate society: justice, compassion, welfare, social responsibility, love of neighbour and stranger and care for the poor, the lonely, the disenfranchised.
Great leaders have been teachers ... reading, thinking, learning, writing, studying the past to understand the future ... made speeches, wrote articles and books, coined vivid phrase and told stories ...
People’s altruism, sacrifices borne equally, everyone contributed, no patience for own advantage at cost of others, no promises they could not keep, negotiate change successfully, trust, empower, speak to people’s better angels
Leaders ... less clever, more wise; less tomorrow, more next generation; unafraid to shame those who take but do not give.
What the Song Of Moses says
(Deuteronomy, 32, 1-52)
I turned to Deuteronomy wanting to find out more about the wise leadership of Moses. I focused on the Song Of Moses (Deuteronomy, 32, 1-52) which Moses spoke to the people of Israel just before his death.
Again I picked out certain key words and phrases, noting words referring to positive goodness and words referring to negative badness. Again we can ask: which are talked about more? There were 20 instances of positive goodness and 74 instances of negative badness – giving a Positive Speaking Quotient (PSQ) of 21%. Moses appears to be advocating what I consider to be negative badness. Below is a list of the words and phrases I picked out (the number refers to the verse in which the words are mentioned). Just before that is a table giving the negative words which occurred more than once.
Table 1 The frequency of occurrence of repeated negative words
word frequency of occurrence
anger (& wrath) 4 (+1)
enemy (ies) 4
vengeance (revenges) 3 (+1)
jealous 3
provoke (ing) 3
sword 3
poison (venom) 2 (+1)
arrows 2
destroy (destruction) 2
devour (-ed) 2
foolish 2
kill (slain) 1 (+1)
hate (abhorred) 1 (+1)
fear (terror) 1 (+1)
bitter (gall) 1 (+1)
4: perfect, judgment, truth, without iniquity, just, right
5: corrupted, perverse, crooked
6: x, foolish, unwise
15: fatness, forsook, lightly esteemed
16: provoked, jealousy, abomination, anger
18: unmindful, forgotten
19: abhorred, provoking
20: hide, no faith
21: jealousy, provoked, anger, vanities, jealousy, anger, foolish
23: anger, mischiefs, arrows
24: burnt, devoured, destruction, teeth, poison
25: sword, terror, destroy,
26: scatter, x
27: fear, wrath, enemy
28: void of counsel ... nor understanding
29: wise, understood, consider
30: chase, flight, sold, shut up
31: enemies, judges
32: gall, bitter
33: poison, venom
35: vengeance, recompense, slide, calamity
36: judge, repent, power gone, x
37: trusted
38: protection
39: kill, alive, wound, heal, deliver
41: sword, judgment, vengeance, enemies, reward, hate
42: arrows, sword, devour, slain, captives, revenges, enemy
43: rejoice, avenge, vengeance, merciful
46: command, absent, law
51: trespassed, not sanctified
52: not go thither
What Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount
Disappointed with Deuteronomy, I recalled the Christmas service which I had attended in which the vicar had contrasted the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament. It occurred to me that Jonathan Sachs’ words might be echoed in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew Chapter 5, 1-48).
Again I picked out certain key words and phrases, noting words referring to positive goodness and words referring to negative badness. Again we can ask: which are talked about more? There were 35 instances of positive goodness and 18 instances of negative badness. – giving a Positive Speaking Quotient (PSQ) of 66%. Jesus appears to be advocating what I consider to be positive goodness. Here are the words and phrases I picked out (the number refers to the verse in which the words are mentioned).
3: blessed, poor, spirit
4: blessed, mourn, comfort
5: blessed, meek, inherit
6: blessed, hunger and thirst after righteousness
7: blessed, merciful, mercy
8: blessed, pure in heart, see God
9: blessed, peacemakers, children of God
10: blessed, persecuted for righteousness sake, kingdom
11: reviled, persecuted, say evil falsely for my sake
12: rejoice, glad, reward, persecuted
13: salt of the earth
14: light of the world
15: light
16: light shine, good works, glorify father
17: destroy laws, prophets, fulfil
18: law
19 x
20: righteousness
21: no kill, judgment
22: angry without cause, judgment; fool hellfire; council
24 reconcile
25: agree
27: adultery
28: lust
29: eye for an eye
30: hell
31: divorce
32: adultery
33: swear
34: swear
38: eye for an eye
39 other cheek
40: steal
41 complie
42: ask, give; borrow, give
43: love neighbour, hate enemy
44: love enemy, bless who curse, pray for who despise persecute
45: evil, good; just, unjust
47:
48: be perfect
The Positive Speaking Quotient (PSQ): Sachs 63%; Moses 21%; Jesus 66%
(in The Times; Deuteronomy 32; Matthew 5; respectively)
Thus the Positive Speaking Quotient (PSQ) gives Sachs 63%, Moses 21% and Jesus 66%. A number of qualifications are in order. The measures are based on selected texts which represent just a small part of the person’s sayings. The application of the method has been rather rushed and so a more careful analysis would give some modifications to the numbers (although probably not by much). A more sophisticated methodology would take more careful account of what was being said. For example is the sentence ‘bad behaviour is bad’ to be counted as two instances of badness (the word, ‘bad’) or one instance of goodness (the condemnation of bad). Are praising goodness and condemning badness to be counted the same?
Steve Pinker: the Word of God? ... or ‘more modern principles’?
Steve Pinker’s thesis is that there has been a decline of violence in history. Chapter 1 is entitle ‘a foreign country’ and opens with the quotation ‘the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’ (L. P. Hartley). He looks at previous eras and notes the violence which they involve:
. Human prehistory
. Homeric Greece
. The Hebrew Bible
. The Roman Empire and Early Christendom
. Medieval Knights
. Early Modern Europe
. Honor In Europe and the Early United States
. The 20th Century
The Hebrew Bible is discussed on pages 6 to 12. ‘... the bible today is revered today by billions of people who call it the source of their moral values. ... Yet for all this reverence, the Bible is one long celebration of violence’ (page 6). ‘In Deuteronomy 20 and 21, God gives the Israelites a blanket policy for dealing with cities that don’t accept them as overlords’ (page 8). The overwhelming majority of contemporary believers ‘do not sanction genocide, rape, slavery, or stoning people for frivolous infractions. Their reverence for the bible is purely talismanic. ... the Bible has been spin-doctored, allegorized, superseded by less violent texts (the Talmud among Jews and the New Testament among Christians), or discreetly ignored. And that is the point. Sensibilities toward violence have changed so much that religious people today compartmentalize their attitude to the Bible. They pay it lip service as a symbol of morality, while getting their actual morality from more modern principles’ (pages 11 to 12).
The consequences for violence of different moralities
The prescriptions made by Sachs are different from the prescriptions made by Moses. What is the status of these two contrasting prescriptions? Is only one of them a valid morality and the other not a valid morality? – or are both valid moralities?
One way to answer these questions is to seek to derive moral validity by a process of inferential reasoning from first principles. Another approach is to consider the empirical consequences of believing a given morality: does a given morality have desirable consequences or undesirable consequences? In particular does a given morality have the consequences of increasing the likelihood of violence? ...
The democratic peace? ... the Deuteronomic war?
Peace research contains a substantial literature on the democratic peace. The hypothesis that war is less likely between democratic societies has been argued theoretically and has received some empirical support. Would it be possible to consider similarly the hypothesis of the Deuteronomic war: that war is more likely between Deuteronomic societies? Of course this might arise due to proximity. But in addition to this, just as democratic beliefs and processes are argued to promote peace, might Deuteronomic beliefs and processes promote war? The low Positive Speaking Quotient (PSQ) for the Song of Moses together with the broader arguments of Steven Pinker give at least a suggestion that the hypothesis may be true – as do the terrible centuries-old conflicts involving Christians, Muslims and Jews both across these religious divides and within each of the three faiths.
Key points
(1) The Positive Speaking Quotient (PSQ) can be used to provide an objective measure of the amount of positive speaking there is in a text and hence an objective measure of the differences in positive speaking amongst a set of texts.
(2) As Pinker notes, the positive speaking in contemporary religious discourse may be much greater than the positive speaking in centuries-old revered texts.
(3) If centuries-old texts are flawed sources of moral values where should be look to find the ‘more modern principles’ on which ‘actual morality’ is grounded?
(4) What are the consequences of different moralities?
(5) How might we theorise and empirically test the Deuteronomic war hypothesis?
Reference
Pinker, S. (2011) The better angels of our nature. The decline of violence in history and its causes. London: Allen Lane.