The Ethic of Rejection

"Why?" Perhaps the most important question that arises in the quest for meaning, “Why?” is the standard for action and belief. By asking it, we can arrive at the validity of our logic.

Why, for example, do I choose to be a kind person, or why do I choose to be dirty...basically, why do I choose anything? Choice is a necessity, surely, but the chosen is queried or ought be. It is the mark of the examined life, it defines our position in the moral universe, so to speak.

The most basic form of the question is why am I alive? Why do I exist? These questions are fundamental in the quest for meaning and identity. Despite being essentially unanswerable with any certainty, the questions put us in the position of having to justify our existence and help define the quality of our lives.

When we act, when we choose to act in a given way, when we choose to be ethical it is because the question “why” informs us that our choice has inherent meaning for the kind of person one wishes to be.

From this beginning I want to explore the choices that flow from the asking of why.

In particular, I wish to explore the “problem of choice” and the nature of offerings, temptations and desires. In the attempt to find or construct meaning, I must choose carefully, and it is here that the issue of acceptance or rejection enters into the discussion.

Our world is a realm of choice. When we in the West speak of freedom, we mean freedom of choice, the biblical variant that allows us to choose between good and evil, specifically. But choice extends from the base of good and evil to the store shelves that display a myriad of products. Do good and evil apply to these quotidian choices? Does choosing a soda instead of a fruit juice amount to an ethical choice? Does brand loyalty imply moral characteristics? Is choosing one product over another a choice of one way of being over another way?

On the face of it, it seems a dubious proposition, afterall, most economic choices are a matter of price and affordability. But when we choose to boycott a product or manufacturer for use of slave labor or inhumane work conditions, the economics flow into ethics and morality. Buying products that cause physical harm to the workers who produce said product is a choice that some would call evil. Buying FSC trademark lumber can be seen as good. But where does this lead? In a consumer culture, the availability of new model goods seems to be the defining quality of choice. The latest phone or game console, the new model car or fashion item hardly seem to require much soul-searching. However, as the boycott represents a moral choice made through economics, the choice of any product is fraught with grave ethical consequences.

In the larger context of culture, choice has great import. Whether one chooses a given political ideology, party or policy is a matter of life and death in some cases. Nazism remains abhorrent, except to those who choose racism and genocidal policies. History is replete with ideologies that have been relegated to the ash heap. Our time seems to be no different as regards these choices.

Our age of consumer capitalism has already shown us that we choose deforestation, strip-mining, nuclear power and sweatshop manufacturing. We generally choose for these things in an act of willful ignorance, much the way “good Germans” chose the evil of the Nazi reign of terror and war.

The consequences for such willful ignorance was the destruction of Germany and it's subsequent partition. The choices made had dire consequences indeed.

Bringing us back to today; the economics of our lives should be a constant reminder of the necessity of making the good choice and not just the affordable, popular or trendy choice. Despite our thinking that our money is honestly earned, we fail to consider how easily that can become blood money.

I am not interested in writing a moral diatribe against our way of life, but I may have little room for anything less. Though I am loathe to agree with the extreme judgment that we are all just so many “little Eichmanns”, working at the levers of a system of death and destruction, the choices we make and pay for are inescapably tied to this system. As surely as pulling the trigger on an M16, buying Israeli products helps injure and kill Palestinians. I am not intentionally ascribing to antisemitism any moral authority, on the contrary, I am suggesting that the immorality is of our own making. By choosing to support economically the State of Israel, we choose to support its policies and practices.

To avoid such moral turpitude requires a firm commitment to an ethic of rejection.

What is meant by ethic of rejection? “Ethics” is the start of morality. The choices we make for ourselves, the choices that tell us who we are and what kind of person we are derive from acceptance or rejection of ethical premises and imperatives that are intimately tied to our quotidian practice.