McDermott The Social Ethic

 My final paper for my honors seminar was about how Americans form their moral compasses and one of the things I researched for it was called the “Social Ethic.” It describes the tendency to submit yourself, as an individual, to the whims of the group, such as religious organizations or political parties.

I think that myth can be a tool of the social ethic – in this sense, reason can function as an organization or group. Reason relies on imagination (we perceive the senses through it), and while too much pure logic can be bad, so can too much imagination. For example, back when the pandemic hit there were a bunch of people who said that they were immune to covid because they didn’t have the right “waves” for it to transmit to them because their political party and the people within it told them so (a view relying almost entirely on imagination with very little science to back it up, if any at all). It was almost like mob mentality.

We saw this happen in Big Fish. The son was affected by the social ethic in that he allowed the “reasonable man” to sway him into disliking and going no-contact with his father, who embraced the imagination. His father existed outside of scientific society (the group) as an individual, while the son was originally just believing what scientific science believed – there was no big fish, or conjoined twins, or town of Spectre, or anything else. They were just made up daydreams with no backing in reality, and it wasn’t until the son allowed himself to use his imagination that he finally realized they did have real grounds, even if exaggerated slightly.

We saw this in Till We Have Faces, as well, when Orual allows herself to be swayed by Mr. Fox and believes that the God of the Mountain is just an outlaw tricking Psyche. It isn’t until she hears the myth of Psyche at the temple and uses her imagination to perceive it (through the gods) that she finally sees the truth – just like the son, she too is swayed by scientific society and the “reasonable man.”