Making the World a Better Place - Motivation vs Model

In the podcast with Lex Fridman, Michael Malice, who is a podcaster himself, says "to be a good person is to have the motivation to make the world a better place." This is a good definition, not bad. At the same time this definition misses an important point, how do you know what it means to make the world a better place? What does this better place look like?

If you asked the Romans empire they would say that the way to make the world a better place is to have everyone worship the Roman Emperor as God, and then they would become a part of Roman Peace, have the Roman Roads and move to become a prosperous place. In order to get there Rome had to spill a little blood here and there, have a system of slavery so what, this is all for making the world a better place.

This logic is not ancient, it happens often in history. In fact in the podcast Michael Malice refers to a book called Red Famine. In that book the author talks about how the journalists in the West knew about Stalin starving millions of people to death. Walter Duranty was the Moscow bureau chief of The New York Time between 1922 - 1936 when the Bolshevic massacre was going on. Duranty was given the Pulitzer Price in 1932. In spite of knowing about the Boshevick wanted the experiment of communism to go on so that they would final reach the utopia. So what if a few million had to die in the process?, that was their way of making the world a better place.

This is the problem of trying to define goodness in terms of what is means to make the world a better place. Is there a way out?

G.K.Chesterton says in his book, What is Wrong With the World?, "we all agree about the evil, it is about the good that we tear each other's eyes out." In fact Walter Duranty impugned the reputation of Gareth Jones, a fellow British journalist who attempted to expose the mass starvation in Soviet Union. Gareth Jones would later be kidnapped for ransom and then executed by his kidnappers in what is suspected to be retribution for his attempt to expose. Duranty thought he was doing good in helping Soviet Union have a chance at creating a better society, he was hopeful that the Soviet communism would create a world.

Both Lex Fridman and Michale Malice are trace their families back to Soviet Russia. Michael Malice in the Podcast interview with Lex Fridman says that the journalists in the West who experienced the economic depression that happened in the 1930s in the West want to find a solution in Soviet communism. So they wanted the Soviet communist experiment to succeed. Duranty's intentions were good, he just couldn't see all the variables.

How do we make sure that we don't commit the kind of well intentioned mistake as Duranty?

Christian theology has a unique answer to this question. Christian theology says that we are made in God's image so we can try to figure out the answers to the riddle of life, we are wired to take joy in doing so as in Proverbs 25:2 says, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings." It is good to explore the world and come up with plans to make it a better place. But we also have to do so with humility, for we do not see the whole picture of life. In many ways this is the kind of humility which the philosopher Wittgenstein was led to when he said, “The solution to the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time.” Wittgenstein attempted to solve the riddle of life, to figure-out the nature of reality and good and evil through study of mathematics and language. But he was humbled in the attempt and ended with the recognition that the solution has to come from the outside.

From the point of view of Christian theology, we call this solution from the outside, revelation of God. The Professor of Government at Georgetown University James V. Schall, who is also a Catholic, says, "God so loved the world that he took the risk that good could and would attract us to something other than ourselves and our own definition of good and evil." If we have to decide good and evil for ourselves, we would be tempted to do so in narcissistic ways, which is what Stalin was doing in Soviet Russia, and Walter Duranty was providing cover for because he really thought he was doing good. In contrast to this way of defining good and evil, God in the form of Jesus shows us the model for self-giving love as the way for ultimate good, so that we are drawn away from our self-centered way of defining good and evil.

Unfortunately, when we look across at history, Christian have not always lived according to the Christian ethic of following Christ-like way of self giving love. There are many places where where Christian sought power to control people instead of Christ-like way of self giving love, resulting in a world of violence instead of love and peace. But there are also examples of Christians living the way of Christ, resulting in a world of love and peace in the early Roman Empire where the Christians in towns which had plague stayed behind to minister to the dying people even when it meant they too would die. The sociologist Rodney Stark in his book The Rise of Christianity details multiple examples of this kind. In contrast to the Roman empire trying to use power to make the world a better place, these Christians used the love of Jesus to make the world a better place.

Michale Malice is not wrong to say people should have the motivation to make the world a better place. But the problem is without a comprehensive model for how to make the world a better place, misplaced motivation can easily destroy the world in the name of making the world a better place as we see with Stalin and Walter Duranty. Christian theology points to Jesus being the best model to making the world a better place through self-giving love, in as much as Christians follow the way of Jesus, we will truly be making the world a better place.