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This I believe
We are in a race for civilization because the world can no longer hide science that puts tremendous power in the hands of anyone who learns to use it. There is no guarantee civilization will win, but hope glimmers for the first time since 399 BC, when misguided citizens of Athens killed Socrates in the name of good character. When one masters logic, it masters you, igniting a spark of learning and continuous renewal at the core of acting with virtue and--thank goodness--of growing civilization.
Socrates believed ethics wasn‚t teachable, like geometry, but it was teachable in a way -- but for 2400 years, ethics struggled:
- Fixed rules were too simple, conflicting, and required faith.
- Universal principles couldn‚t be proved.
- Ethics imposed by power needed police everywhere, and who would police the police?
- Philosophers looked everywhere: Happiness--What is that? Greatest good--Who decides? Popularity-- Tyranny of the majority.
- Finally, ethics mired itself in relativism.
While such solutions haven‚t worked, rather than retreat to the Law of the Jungle where there are no rules, careful thinking can manufacture a compelling alternative.
Experiences in different cultures can lead to identical conclusions that bridge cultural gaps to form a sturdy foundation for ethics. For example, culturally different people can recall in their own experience occasions when they thought they were right but discovered later they were painfully wrong. When people recognize they do not carry reality in their minds, but only a map of it--and that their plans are only as good as their map--they discover humility. Humility--understanding that sometimes people think they are right when they are not--transcends cultures as if it were universal and helps people consider how it is in one's long-term best interest to act.
The problem is, while people may have the ability to project consequences, they often don't have the habit. What should seem simple and obvious often isn't because lack of sense is a fog that dissipates when sense is used to see it. To say it another way, when one shines a light in a corner, the corner may appear lit, but only because one‚s light temporarily shines there. Consider this:
- The genius of democracy is that one small voice may regularly suggest a better way of doing things. Where is it taught?
- Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric--the Trivium of the Liberal Arts-- are tools for thought that hone the process of thinking. Do people gloss over them in schools?
- Working with others helps overcome the untrustworthiness of one‚s own understanding. Where is that value learned?
- All of us are afloat on a sea of uncertainty, better served lashed together for our safety and mutual advantage. Do people engage others to expand that awareness? Do people challenge others to look at their own experience to discover:
- "A sense of others" --that others live their life as acutely, just as they do; and
- "A sense of time and their place in it"--that others live their lives for brief moments in time, as they do.
Conclusions from this process thinking are generalizations known as "virtues." Virtues are shorthand for the conclusions learned projecting possible futures. Regrettably, instead of processes that result in virtues, shorthand conclusions themselves are often pushed on others as a substitute for thinking, meaning the best of intentions lead to little understanding and greater confusion. Far better would be:
- For respect, teach a sense of others;
- For truthfulness, teach the map of reality;
- For forgiveness, teach the possibility of being wrong;
- For joyfulness, teach time and one's place in it.
- For courage, help people understand not what to do, but why.
Understand why, and the process becomes compelling. Whatever the culture, mastering this logic becomes as compelling as surely as mastering two plus two equals four. When one master logic, it masters you. It ignites a spark of learning and continuous renewal that is at the core of acting with virtue and--thank goodness--of growing civilization.
Stephen Waters
October 2005
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