Morality and the Saeculum

In Aristotle's ethics, four moral characters or modes of action are defined: the virtuous, the continent, the incontinent, and the vicious. Essentially, virtuous individuals desire what is right and perform right actions unfailingly. Those who are continent pay attention to right and wrong, then fight the temptation to do wrong in favor of what is right, possibly with regrets about the sinful pleasures they are missing. Those who are incontinent fail to resist these temptations and so do wrong, possibly with regrets because they have a guilty conscience. Vicious individuals simply do not care about right and wrong and act in their own interests without regard to the morality of their actions.

Perhaps examples will provide a better explanation. This is excerpted from The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'Oh! of Homer by William Irvin.

Suppose someone, let's call her "Lisa", were walking down the street and found a wallet with a substantial amount of money in it. Now if Lisa were virtuous, she would not only make the decision to turn in the wallet to the proper authorities, she would gladly do so. Lisa's desires would be in accordance with her right decision and action. Consider now Lenny, who is continent: if Lenny were to find the wallet, he would be able to make the right decision - to return the wallet intact - and he would be able to act on his decision to do so, but he would have to go against his desires to not do so. This is the mark of the continent person: he has to struggle against his desires to be able to do the right thing.

With the incontinent and the vicious types, things get worse. the incontinent person is able to reach the right decision about what to do but would suffer from weakness of will. In the wallet case, and supposing Bart is our incontinent character, he would succumb to his desire to keep the wallet and so fail to act properly, even though he knows that keeping it is wrong. With the vicious person, there is no struggle against one's desires and there is no weakness of will. The reason, however, is that the vicious person's decision is morally wrong, and his desires are fully co-operative with it. If Nelson were vicious, he would decide to keep the money...would fully desire to do so, and would actually do so.

So let us consider this taxonomy of moral character in relation to saecular theory. Aristotle defines four moral characters, which is the same as the number of social eras that exist in a saeculum. So could there be a correspondence between the eras and the moral characters? Could there be a correspondence to the four generational archetypes which drive social change during the saeculum?

Moral Character and the Social Eras

At the beginning of the saeculum, a new moral order has been established, past moral disagreements have been settled or buried, and conformity to the now recognized standards of virtue is fully enforced by law and by convention. As the saeculum progresses, generational change brings about a loosening of moral standards as people begin to question the established order and explore new definitions of right and wrong. This loosening of standards spreads to all spheres of life, and so crime rates rise, moral permissiveness rises, and manners and etiquette degrade.

Eventually this permissiveness and social breakdown becomes intolerable, and the groundwork is laid for institutionalizing the emergent altered values regime. As people demand a return to social order, whatever transformations in moral understanding have occurred over the past few generations become embedded in the new order.

It remains a question whether or not there is an absolute moral standard for evaluating the rightness or wrongness of the new values regime. That the values regime must be imperfect is implied by the fact that subsequent generations inevitably find fault with it. For example, modern humans have rejected much of what in Aristotle's time was considered morally acceptable. Aristotle himself gives us rational arguments for why it is just and necessary to tolerate slavery and to relegate women to an inferior social role. Today we find these beliefs noxious.

Setting aside the question of moral relativism, let us suppose that the saeculum's newly instituted values regime is the correct standard for judging right from wrong. So in the first turning, or High, we have a clear understanding of what constitutes morally correct behavior. The majority of people have internalized this understanding and willingly follow the established standards. So the High is a virtuous era.

As the second turning, or Awakening, unfolds, the challenge to the values regime begins. The values established in the previous Crisis are still acknowledged as the conventional standard, even as some people are now breaking the rules. But let us suppose that the majority, while tempted by the possibility of joining the rules-breakers, choose instead to adhere to the conventions of the past. Then the Awakening is a continent era.

By the arrival of the third turning, or Unraveling, the old order has been delegitmized. Nonetheless, it remains the basis for defining what is traditionally correct behavior. So people continue to hold up their actions to those old-fashioned rules, even as the majority choose to break them. Thus the Unraveling is an incontinent era.

In the fourth turning, or Crisis, the old regime is swept away. No one now considers it necessary to adhere to its definitions of right and wrong. A new agenda is underway. The Crisis is thus a vicious era.

Within each era, the social change tracks the progression from one defining moral character to the next. The High is a universally prosperous era, in which wholesomeness and decency are valued; it is virtuous. But there is a sense of a "values crisis", of a lack of a moral compass, and a feeling of a need to open up and explore the inner world. From this comes the inception of the revolution in consciousness which challenges the then current definitions of right and wrong and produces the coming continent era.

In the Awakening, the rules are broken tentatively at first, but more and more so as the era progresses. By the end of the Awakening, the rules defining social propriety are highly in doubt. It seems like a free-for-all. Thus the continent era turns into an incontinent one. In the Unraveling some shred of the old values regime remains, but the era becomes a triumph of self-seeking vanity. So it moves from the state of incontinence to one of viciousness.

In the crucible of the Crisis era, the ruthless indifference of the vicious moral character becomes an asset. It is needed to ensure victory in the conflict that forges the new social order. But wholesomeness and decency make a comeback as the conflict comes to a resolution. They are needed to give the new order legitimacy. By the end of the Crisis, the social era has evolved from one extreme of moral character (vicious) to another (virtuous). Because of this the Crisis is the most tumultuous and violent of the eras.

Moral Character and the Generational Archetypes

There are also four generational archetypes, one born in each social era. What is their correspondence to the moral characters? Each generation actually lives through all four social eras, so each encounters that era when any particular moral character is dominant. The key to the correspondence is that the different archetypal generations experience the eras during different phases of life.

The Prophet generation is born in a virtuous era, comes of age in a continent era, reaches the peak of life in an incontinent era, and provides elder stewardship in a vicious era. In the main, the Prophet generation's life straddles a continent era and an incontinent one. Granted permission to accept or reject the old values as desired, it is the generation which enjoys the greatest moral freedom with the least consequence.

The Nomad generation is born in a continent era, comes of age in an incontinent era, and reaches the peak of life in a vicious era. In the virtuous era that begins the next saeculum, the Nomad generation provides elder stewardship. Weaned on temptation, with a life straddling incontinent and vicious eras, its choice is not so much whether to do right or wrong, as whether or not to feel remorse.

The Hero generation is born in an incontinent era and comes of age in a vicious era. In the following saeculum, the Hero generation is at the peak of life in a virtuous era and is the elder steward of a continent era. With a life straddling the end of one age and the dawn of another, it is the Hero generation which tranforms the society by rejecting one values regime and embracing a new one.

The Artist generation is born in the vicious era that marks the end of one saeculum and the beginning of the next. Subsequently, the Artist generation comes of age in a virtuous era, reaches the peak of life in a continent era, and is the elder steward of an incontinent era. For the Artist generation, with a life straddling a virtuous era and a continent era, temptation comes late in life and there is never complete license to break the rules.

Since the mid-life phase marks the peak of a generation's influence and achievement, the moral character of the era in which a generation reaches mid-life logically corresponds to the archetype of the generation. So the Hero is virtuous, the Artist is continent, the Prophet is incontinent and the Nomad is vicious. This is in relation to the moral rules established for the social order of the saeculum. That is, the Hero generation is virtuous in that it upholds the newly institutionalized values regime in the First Turning, and the Nomad generation is vicious in that it has no loyalty to that particular values regime and demolishes it in the Fourth Turning. In an absolute moral sense no generation is superior to another; each is comprised of individuals of every moral character.

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