Confession?
Probably one of the easiest sins we are at least prone to commit is gossip. It is probably especially easy when you can join a multitude to do evil – the Twitter mob, for example. Ann Applebaum recently published a very in-depth commentary on that. She has her expertise on the skullduggery of the former Soviet Union and the pall their strategies have left on many of the eastern bloc countries, but I think she nails it pretty well.
It is the sort of nonsense that we can, if we chose to, participate in that is plenty vailed enough that we can both benefit from it and largely hide our tracks in the flood. Of course, it is a double-edged sword. When you’re in the position you wanted so badly, don’t be surprised if people do that to you as well. Who hasn’t said or done something outrageously dumb at some point in their life?
I remember a work by Kai Nielson titled “Why should I be moral?”.
[Kai Nielson “Why Should I Be Moral?” Methodos, XV, NO 59-60, 1963] I cannot find an original copy of it. Anyway, one thing he poses is that if you do something immoral
… for limited patterns of behavior, no decisively good reason can be given to some individuals that would justify their doing the moral thing in such a context [i.e., doing something immoral]. (It would be another thing again if they repeatedly acted in that way. Here the case for morality would be much stronger.)
Of course, this presumes that there is only this life, and then it is done; that you won’t have to answer to God for your amoral egoism in the great beyond. All the “costs” are figured based upon knowable probabilities and consequences.
Another problem with this notion is that sin usually has a progressive quality about it. You don’t start out as an embezzler by stealing large swaths of cash. It starts with the pennies and moves progressively to nickels, dimes, quarters, dollars, $10s, etc. Eventually, you are very likely to become too confident and greedy.
So, even from a rationalist egoist’s standpoint (putting myself in those shoes), I am not sure that this is as valid an argument because of our general human nature. However, it is hard to argue that an unscrupulous person couldn’t get away with murder if it is done in an errrrr “well-thought-out” and calculating way and only on very rare occasions, especially if the person has no regard toward the things of heaven and considers this life the only one that is.
It does suggest to me why religion plays an important role in mitigating such behaviors. Even the nihilist or the egoist might back off if there is some inkling that some severe and indeterminant consequences might be meted out in the great beyond.
by Grace we proceed … indeed