In the first part of the chapter, the author argues humans flourish when they operate in line with their design. But people increasingly reject the idea of design, and its implied existence of a designer, and are thus left to determine morality without a direction.

One Way We Go Wrong

As we muddle through life today trying to be good people, we struggle first to define what "good" means because we do not acknowledge that there is a perfect form we are designed to move towards. If there is no one perfect form, then we are not clear how we should develop ourselves, nor are we comfortable saying what should hold for others.

A very common piece of advice starts with some version of "be true to yourself" because that will help you develop self-esteem, self-respect, and be happy. It is all very self-focused.

Google AI suggested this as an explanation to me of what that means.

Being true to yourself means living authentically and acting in ways that align with your values and feelings, rather than those of others. It can also mean living by your own standards and rules, and not worrying about what others think of you.

So, you should live by your feelings and values. You should do what you want. We've been doing that for at least a few generations now and it seems happiness is decreasing.

If Brown is right, that could be because people are choosing a variety of actions that do not align with their design because the idea of being designed has been largely discounted.

In other words, when how we function is disconnected from a discussion about how we are meant to function, questions about identity (who we are) and action (what we do) become less about reality, and act more as a menu for us to choose from. (p. 28)

With every option open we struggle to define what is good as a general standard for all, and even what is good for ourselves. We turn our gaze inward to try to determine what feels good without any guidance.

The risk is a life that is incoherent. We want to be good, but we have only a vague sense of what "good" means…We lament the trajectory of our moral values, but when asked what moral excellence is, we shrug our shoulders. (p. 29)

So how do we function if there is no agreed-upon morality? Brown created the E-3 paradigm and says that without an agreed-upon morality "people use 3 primary guideposts to determine what is good." (p. 33)

• Efficiency: good is the action that produces good consequences
• Equity: good is equality and fairness
• Enforceability: good is what is legal

Brown will investigate each of these later in the book. He says that it is not that they are bad criteria. The problem is they are not connected to "a larger moral vision." (p. 33) Without that, they are inadequate and corruptible.

Brown cites data from a 2015 Gallup poll that showed 42% of Americans considered the overall state of moral values in the country to be poor. Further, whatever level the people estimated it to be, 74% thought it was getting worse.

Thus, 3 out of 4 people thought the country was deteriorating morally. It does not sound like this self-definition experiment is working out that well.

How Do We Make Moral Judgments?

We don't have a definite definition of good, and yet we feel something is off. How do people make these sorts of moral judgments?

Brown discusses two different viewpoints: rationality and intuition.

On the rationality side, Brown says much of Western philosophy has been built on the idea that we should not rely on our intuitive, emotional response. We needed to use careful, rational reflection to discern what is the correct moral judgment. (p. 21)

Siding with intuition, psychologist Jonathan Haidt thinks people have an intuition for what is right or wrong and then use their reasoning to rationalize it.

In one experiment Brown cites, Haidt offered to give $2 to atheists who would sign a contract saying they would sell their souls. Since they do not believe in God, hell, or souls, the rational decision is to take the $2.

When the 77% who refused the contract were asked why, they would say they did not want to do it but could not give a reason why. (p. 21)

Haidt found this kind of irrationality in many of his experiments leading him to conclude that people make decisions first, based on intuition and emotion, and then they seek to find a reason why, if possible.

As an evolutionist, he thinks our intuition is sensitive to disgust because those who avoided things that were disgusting prevented contamination and thus had better survival. (p. 22)

For more on Haidt, you should read this article that goes deeper into his work.

Brown differs from Haidt on the source of our intuition. He thinks that it comes from an inborn sense of the telos, which is our designed purpose.

But what if our intuition is telling us something else? Something more? What if our visceral, emotional reactions were not simply adapted survival instincts, but an impulse toward an order? An inclination toward the way things should be? An appeal to a standard outside of ourselves? (p. 22)

Conclusion

At the start of the chapter, he told of two news stories from 1993–94. One involved a family in a train crash that plunged the train into a river. The parents managed to save their children even at the cost of their own lives.

The other story was about Susan Smith, the mother who strapped her two toddlers into the car and then pushed the car into the lake reportedly because she thought her new boyfriend did not want children.

Both stories tend to cause a strong intuitive sense of appreciation and admiration for the love of others demonstrated in the first story and a sense of disgust and revulsion for the love of self demonstrated in the second story.

Brown's point is why do we have these reactions? He says it is because we have a sense of order intuitively.

The Christian narrative suggests that our moral judgments need not be random emotional reactions, but rather, reflect an order that exists outside of us. According to this belief, our intuitions confirm the presence, not the absence, of a moral reality. They tell us that we are reacting to something real, present, and fixed when take in the world around us. (p. 23)

Further, we will only find fulfillment when we live in a way that is in line with how we were designed.

Only when our function (the actions we take) is in line with our design (how we are meant to act) will we find fulfillment. The self-definition we have been experimenting with for the past few decades apparently does not result in feelings of fulfillment.

This would mean then that it is the study of our telos, of how we are designed to function, that should be the guiding moral vision that will bring us closest to human flourishing.

Our telos is to love God and love others.

The first story of the parents dying to save their child is the ultimate example of loving others so it is good.

The second story of the mother killing her children for her own benefit is bad.

In the next chapter, Brown dives deeper into the 3-E paradigm to look at how each "works" to an extent. However, he says any success it has is really a "mirage" if they are employed apart from a consideration of our design. (p. 35)

References: Brown, Kevin J. Designed for Good, Chapter 1, "The Perfect Version of Ourselves." Hendrickson Publishers, 2016.