Personal And Social Ethics In An Interdependent World

May 1981
Lakeland
Port Charlotte

What ought I to do? What moral principles should be reflected in my behavior? How should I deal with that explosive word, “conscience?” In one sense, this is a follow-up of my talk “Too Many Saviors.” In that talk, I suggested that we are responsible persons who do not need special saviors, whether religious, political, economic. But as some of you suggested, such a proposition is easier to assert than fulfill.

Ethics is the code of principles or statements about what my conduct, my goals, ought to be. Although I hesitate to use the word “ought” in connection with anyone but myself, usually ethics is applied also to what the conduct of others ought to be. We speak of ethical behavior, usually meaning an adherence to ... standards that have been proposed as necessary or beneficial for transactions between people, for the survival of the human venture or the proper functioning of a profession. [CJW note: or unethical behavior as a disregard of such standards]

This is an attempt to deal with ethics as impinging on us personally, as impacting on us in wider social contexts, what is conscience, and the need for transpersonal ethics in an interdependent world.

Personal ethics is a necessary part of all our lives. We observe certain rules of behavior in relationship to others in our immediate and closed circles. We do not deliberately cheat a friend; we try to achieve fair-dealing with those we know. If we contract a financial debt, we attempt to pay it and on time. Civil behavior is the standard of our conduct to those we know.

Of course there are those who violate such trust. Perhaps they acquire “guilty” feelings or have a “bad” conscience. But on the whole, the experience of most of us is that we deal ethically with our family, friends, merchants, employers, employees, and expect a like response.

But in the field of social ethics there is uncertainty, deep division of opinion and perils to the human family. Now while all personal ethics are social, I am using “social” in the sense of the wider community with which we have little or no immediate personal contact or close relationship. Social ethics, in this sense, applies to such questions as crime and punishment, issues of national importance (such as I cited two weeks ago), and the sensitive and hazardous nature of our dealings with other nations.

I assume that I shall not have to argue at length that this is an interdependent world. The Detroit automakers are alarmed about the number of automobiles Japanese manufacturers are selling in the United States. Should a social ethic deal with this? Canada is unhappy with the amount of smog and pollution which winds bring to their land from the large industrial centers in the United States, in the Midwest, particularly. What is a proper attitude, a social ethic, which will grapple with this? American fishermen complain that the huge factory ships of the Soviets and Japanese are depleting the fishing grounds which are in proximity to our shores. What is the proper ethic to understand and deal with these questions and many others? Perhaps it would be more pointed to speak of the need for a world ethic.

Can we be content to trust conscience? There are many who would say that if we obey conscience, we will do the right thing, behave ethically, whether personally or in the wider areas of social relationships, decisions, and actions. Would [that] this were so! But it is not! In the more complex areas of problems and issues there is no consensus of conscience. One illustration: before the South Sea Islands came under Western influence, “The Fiji Islander who killed his aged parents had the same good in mind as we who support our aged parents. Parent-killers and parent-protectors are at one in seeking advantage or happiness. The Fiji-Islander happened to believe that persons carry their infirmities with them into the spirit world, and so the aged parent is assured of greater happiness after death if he/she dies before becoming decrepit. Americans do not hold this belief, and so they think that the prospects of happiness are increased by caring for parents instead of killing them.” (See P. C. Sharp, ETHICS, p. 177). [CJW note: “Honor thy father and mother” - two applications]

So if “the voice of conscience is the voice of god,” then there are many gods with differing voices.

The formation of conscience is more likely attributable to upbringing than some pure force innate within us. As children, “good” is that which is praised; “bad” is that which is punished or frowned upon. Emotions, wishes, desire for approval, repetition, and verbalization in childhood plays a large role in forming what is called “conscience.” As one social scientist observed, (ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, “Morals”), “Virtue or morality consists of conformity – right conduct is not commanded because it is good – it is good because it is commanded.” In the second verse of his poem, “London,” William Blake wrote,

“In every city of every man,
In ever infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles, I hear.”

There is an old story about a U.S. Senator who visited one of his elderly constituents. The Senator talked to him about some of the great things that had come to their state during their life-time. The old man listened and then said, “Yes, they all came, and thank God, I was agin all of them.” The mind-forged manacles!

Yet, why is there change at all? At least two reasons – I believe the mores and manners implanted in us to not clearly indicate what we should do in novel situations – new situations where ingrained customs do not help. For example, all the customs of the ways of living and the ways of war can not deal effectively with atomic bombs because they have brought a new condition and terrible dimension to the price for warfare.

Secondly, the human animal (at least) possesses or has the capacity for intelligence. Other persons would include intuition in the power we have to criticize, to re-examine and revise principles, ways, attitudes, either because of something new, or a fresh look at policies that could not and should not have been maintained. The institution of human slavery is an example. [CJW note: Hamlet - “There’s nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so” - not amoral relativism; key word is “thinking” about values, consequences] Imagination, intuition, intelligence, are the forces that substantiate something John Dewey once wrote, “Morality is a continuing process, not a fixed achievement.” (MORALS AND CONDUCT)

These faculties are a heavy burden. As one observer (Yonker, p. 12) noted, “Because our basic beliefs give us psychological security of one kind or another, we tend to become dogmatic about them.” But such dogmatism may mean destruction of the fragile world in which we live.

The ethical question that will be with every one of us til our dying days, and with our children and our children’s children, is “can there be a trans-world ethic which will be embraced by enough persons to allow human life to survive with ever-increasing self-realization?”

Right here is where the ethical question has always become confused and awry. What we may be unwilling to do on a basis of personal ethic, we acquiesce in larger, more confusing situations – national and international, for example. This is one of the insights that Reinhold Niebuhr contributed in his classic study, MORAL MAN AND IMMORAL SOCIETY: (as summarized by Mason Olds, THE LIFE OF CHOICE, p. 15): “Groups and institutions behave differently from individuals; that is, the morality of groups is different from the morality of individuals. In the case of the individual, appeals to reason and a commitment to justice might work, but these appeals seldom work in the case of groups. The reason is that groups almost universally defend their economic interests. Seldom will rational persuasion change them; thus they have to be challenged....”

What then shall we think and do? Immanuel Kant proposed a moral imperative in two parts: a) So act as if you would be willing for everyone in the world to act in the same circumstances; b) act so as to treat humanity always as an end, never as a means.

There are flaws in this – many criminals and dictators would be willing for everyone in the world to act the same in the same circumstances.

The 20th century philosopher W. T. Stace (RELIGION AND THE MODERN MIND) proposed three common human purposes which are the source of universal rules of conduct:

1)Self-preservation. The survival of life. Who does not share that value?
2)Physical health.
3)Happiness - “This may also be called by such names as welfare, richness of living, self-realization, health of the soul.”

There is a corollary question, I believe, in any consideration of ethical behavior in this small, shaky world of ours: the question is not only what should we do – the prior question is “What is going on?”
We will not break the mind-forged manacles unless we know what is going on. Khoren Arisian writes in a paper, “Ethics is like the (physical) sciences, it begins with problems. Problems to be solved.” There can be no solution without knowledge; No ethics without knowledge.

For many, knowledge of the world and its tensions and problems is confined to the short eruptions of encapsulated news fitted in between commercials on the tube. I do not know of anybody who would argue that knowledge on which to base ethical decisions can be acquired in such abbreviated form. When we are uninformed, we will be unimpressed with the scope and complexity of issues, and be unable or unwilling to take a stand. Pre-packaged answers handed to us are likely to be biased and self-serving on the part of someone who has an interest to protect.

There are many who are willing victims of ignorance. Thus, it seems to me that there is an ethical obligation to secure information. To be informed. The usual sources are not enough. We, fortunately, live in a nation where a free press is one of our safeguards. Newspapers are free to print, and also free to omit. Adlai Stevenson once said, “Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff.” I’m sure now, Stevenson had a twinkle in his eye when he said that. But the point remains – if we wish to become informed we will use several sources and compare what is presented as fact, look for axes being ground and judge for ourselves whether what is asserted fits our sense of ethical values.

But in so doing, again, we must look at ourselves. What do we insist on knowing – finding out? Did you ever say, or hear someone say, “If it’s bad news, don’t tell me?” Abraham Maslow, the late humanistic psychologist wrote (quoted by Marilyn Thompson, THE AQUARIAN CONSPIRACY, p. 146), “fear of knowing is very deeply a fear of doing because of the responsibility inherent in knowledge.”

None of us can be completely informed on everything. But all of us can know about something important. [CJW note: Ethical assertion is a large step away from futility and frustration.] In sharing, in pooling our assessment of a situation, we can attempt to discover if the problem conflicts with our ethical standards. Then make that contradiction known to the decision makers. Can fatal blundering be avoided? One necessary condition is that the quality of our free interchange of information and discussion must improve.

Earlier I said that the world is interdependent. Another way of conveying the same idea is, “the whole world is our moral environment.” Therefore our ethical obligation is just as planetary. Easy? No way! As John Bennet said in THE RADICAL IMPERATIVE, “Living with a sense of wrongs to be righted and with full knowledge of the complexity involved in finding ways to right them is our fate and our responsibility.”

Before opening this subject for your discussion, two quotes, one from 19th century playwright and one from an historian of today.

In Ibsen’s PEER GYNT, the self-centered Peer Gynt is confronted at the end of his life (as Erich Fromm puts it) with his unrealized potentialities: [CJW note: impersonal objects, forces]

The Threadballs (on the ground)

We are thoughts;
You should have thought us;
little feet, to life
You should have brought us!
We should have risen
With glorious sound;
But here like threadballs
We are earth-bound

The Withered Leaves:

We are a watchword;
You should have used us!
Life, by your sloth,
Has been refused us.
By worms we’re eaten
All up and down,
No fruit will have us
For spreading crown.

A sighing in the air:

We are songs,
You should have sung us!
In the depths of your heart
Despair has wrung us!
We lay and waited;
You called us not
May your throat and your voice
With poison rot.

Broken Straws:

We are deeds
You have left undone
Strangled by doubt
Spoiled ere begun.
At the Judgment day
We shall be there
To tell our tale;
How will you fare?

Barbara Ward [CJW note: died two weeks ago] (quoted by Washington Spectator) wrote a couple of years ago in a Canadian newspaper:

“I can conceive of a religious ethic that regards it as essential to share. That might mean clean water for the world; it would certainly mean an agricultural policy for the world. We must stop our incredible waste....

“We must never contaminate the cradle of life.... What’s happened is that the planet is beginning to say, ‘Don’t abuse me. I’m not unlimited. I’m fragile. I must be cared for. I must be loved,’ which in a sense is a very religious approach, and the men of science are beginning to believe it.”

And one could add, more and more women and men, scientists, statesmen, corporate managers, and all the persons like you and me, “better believe it.”