“We are what we think.” My Swannanoa friend and neighbor Kenneth Selden  made this point in a letter printed May 7, 1999 in the Asheville, NC CITIZEN-TIMES. Ken referred to the recent killings at Columbine High School near Denver. The young killers had imbibed from “our freedom-loving culture” “many sick and destructive values.” Ken urged that every child “develop the ability to reject these many unhealthy, unholy, and destructive values.” For it is by perceiving values and choosing among them, that teens form their personal characters. 

Mr. Selden alluded both to ethics (the science of what is right and wrong) and asceticism (techniques for creating habits of good behavior).

Ethics is a rational, action-oriented set of beliefs about good and evil. Such systems are normally first thought through by philosophers. Ethics also shows how humans can live peaceably in society. Like verse making, ethics making can be done either well or ill. 

Think tanks publish and both businesses and State governments buy “how to” books on topics such as  medical ethics, business ethics, political ethics and sports ethics. One such popular textbook is 

BUILDING DECISION SKILLS: A CURRICULUM ON ETHICAL DECISION MAKING DESIGNED FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL AND HIGH SCHOOL, by Patricia Brousseau and Paula Mirk. 

There are good scholars associated with the Institute for Global Ethics. They prepare background materials for those who teach BUILDING DECISION SKILLS. Such scholars acknowledge that “their” ethics has one great enemy:  ethical relativism. Those scholars therefore prepare readings  to prevent prisoners, school children and others from embracing relativism .

There is common sense in both the simple and the more complex materials used in North Carolina. Bear in mind, however, that those texts represent some author’s or some committee’s choice among competing value systems. The differences can be extreme. As one of those scholars, Carl Hausman, wrote in his 1992 sketches of various ethical systems, 

“Essentially, he (Friedrich Nietzsche) rejected EVERYTHING and suggested, more or less, that superhumans invent their own morals.” 

Let us stipulate that readers of the Asheville TRIBUNE agree on a core set of moral values. But mere sharing of an abstract ethical system is not enough for building either good individuals or a good society.  Ken Selden’s letter spoke of a Spirit within children which controls their will. Others call that Spirit  “conscience.” Conscience is something constantly taking shape in a process of a person’s choosing among competing values.

There is another, time-honored way to flesh out Ken’s insights. In Fourth Century Egypt the Desert Fathers developed and passed to us a Christian practice which we call Christian “asceticism.” It is methodical self-control, self-discipline and self-denial in the name of a higher calling. Like ethics, asceticism takes many forms and need not be Christian.

The ascetic tradition spread from east to west. Its spirit was caught in Italy by  Benedict of Nursia who founded the Benedictine Order. In the early 16th Century a Spanish Basque, Ignatius of Loyola, first lived through then wrote down and taught the SPIRITUAL EXERCISES--his Jesuit Order’s signature method to this day for drawing people closer to God.

Asceticism,  whether Christian, Qumran, Buddhist or other, escorts ethics out of the classroom and puts it to work for real people. Alcoholics Anonymous teaches one form of self-control. Jesuits and Calvinists teach others. There exist tried and tested ascetic methods for all temperaments, for beginners and for the advanced. Athletes accept the need for exercise. Those who try to develop muscles grit their teeth and chant “no pain, no gain!” Character, too,  is built by repeating good actions.

Masters of asceticism insist that women and men guard their senses. More than we might have dreamt possible or desirable, we are taught to control what we see, hear and eat. Ignatius of Loyola wrote, 

“When I wake up, I will not permit my thoughts to roam at random, but will turn my mind at once to the subject I am about to contemplate.” 

Many religious people deny themselves through practices of PENANCE, giving up good or harmless things entirely suitable to their lives. Thus, in Lent some Christians give up ice cream or movies or watching basketball games on TV. But the United States of America is a nation-state, not a church. We cannot, therefore, demand penitential practices of citizens.

What ethics does expect of all of us is TEMPERANCE: enough discipline to diminish evil. Temperance means giving up or cutting way back on things which are positively bad for us or other people. 

--First, we look for and stop doing things which hurt others: neglecting our children or spreading untruths about our neighbors. 

--Secondly,  through the very act of looking at our bad  actions  with an eye to correcting them, we simultaneously learn to direct our thoughts. 

Boys do not plant bombs in schools who have not first built bombs in their minds. Nazis did not exterminate gypsies, homosexuals, Communists and Jews without first imagining, savoring and planning systematic evil. To avoid bad actions, we must guard our senses. We must keep evil raw materials from entering  our senses. For we cannot be tempted by what we refuse to receive or imagine. Good people require both good ethics and  no-nonsense asceticism.

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for Asheville TRIBUNE