Living a Moral and Ethical Life
Humans throughout time have pondered, argued, contemplated, and written volumes in an attempt to define what constitutes ethics and morality. The Oxford Dictionary offers the following definitions:
Moral – of or pertaining to human character or behavior considered as good or bad; of or pertaining to the distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil, in relation to the actions, volitions, or character of responsible beings. Capable of choosing between right and wrong.
Ethical – dealing with morality or the science of ethics or questions connected with it.
Every society, every religion, has established a code of ethics and moral behavior: for example the Christian Ten Commandments; the Ten Buddhist Precepts; the Bill of Rights (10 Amendments) of the Constitution of the United States; the five Huaquas of health, hope, happiness, harmony, and humor, to name a few. Close examination will reveal that they can all be distilled to one truism – the one true and only great sin is theft.
How is that so? There is not room here to examine all of the above, so let’s take some examples from each.
The Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not commit adultery. Committing adultery robs another of love and relationship and robs ones’ self of self-respect. Thou shalt not murder. Murder obviously robs one of one’s life. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Bearing false witness, or lying, robs another of their credibility, their respect and honor, perhaps even their ability to make a living, among other things, and the liar steals integrity from him/herself.
The Ten Buddhist Precepts: Refrain from using intoxicants. Intoxication robs one’s clarity of mind, one’s ability to function, one’s self-respect, and so on. Refrain from gossiping. Gossiping robs another’s right to privacy,
The Bill of Rights is a declaration of an individual’s inalienable rights such as: freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly; right to keep and bear arms; protection from unreasonable search and seizure; and so on. The violation of these rights is thievery.
The Five Huaquas – When you do not “feed” the huaquas in your life you steal your life force energy and your shining.
In all these examples the greatest thief is the one who steals from oneself. Your thievery robs you of the beauty of your sacred self, your self-love and self-respect. You steal from yourself to the extent you do not walk in Beauty or honor your artistic originality and genius. Every time you project pretense you are stealing from your luminosity and your shining or allowing your shining to be stolen. Self thievery diminishes your character; you blow out your own candle. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is a story about the forty thieves of the soul. We perpetrate thievery on ourselves as well as invite thieves to rob from us.
Your sacred self is your true nature spirit personality, natural undiscovered self, and mirror of self-reflection. The following ceremony will help you to explore and discover the many ways in which you steal the beauty of your sacred self or allow others to do so.
The Ceremony
A Mirror of Self-Reflection Walk/Talk in Nature
Go hiking where there are lots of rocks and boulders and trees. Walk for a while without any expectation or agenda. Just let go and be fully present with all around you. You will slowly slip out of your customary box or way of being and feel a growing connection with your surroundings. Nature is our greatest teacher. The worlds of Grandmother Earth – minerals, plants, animals, humans – and the world of spirit, speak to us and reflect back to us our mirror of self-reflection. It is a pure reflection. Nature is just there and has no concern about your perception of it. You can be your natural self in nature – no pretense, no one to impress or hide from, no judgment or comparison. You don’t have to look good.
Be willing to look and act foolish, playful, exhuberant. Match the little people’s (the fairies, elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. we call toliloquey) fun as they show you the world of magick they possess. Express your individuality within that energy with no limitations. Be the voyeur to glean the deepest aspects of your thievery. Strip away the veneer of how you are. That is where you will find where the theft has been going on. Barriers you encounter in playing with the toliloquey point especially to where you steal from yourself.
Tune in and talk to the worlds. Feel where you are being drawn. If a boulder, for example, strongly draws your attention, dialogue with it. Ask the following questions and listen for answers. Continue doing this with all the worlds until you have gotten answers and insights to your questions. Journal what you get.
Mineral World – What did I steal (a physical object or tangible something) from someone that actually stole energy from my physical body? Go back through your life as far as necessary until you identify such an action. Pay attention to what comes through.
Plant World – How did I steal someone’s heart, perhaps through manipulation, and then walk away? How did I present myself as an attraction or appeal to someone’s heart – in any arena – and then did not follow through or perhaps took personal gain rather than create an encounter or relationship for mutual benefit?
Animal World – How have I been the thief of my own mind? Hymeyholsts Storm said this was the greatest of all thefts, and deception is the greatest theft of the mind. You steal from your own mind by holding on to core beliefs and unvalidated opinions without facts. In other words, ask: How have I stolen my free thinking mind? In what way does my mind need deception to know who I am? How does this define my illusory identity? How do I rationalize and justify, choosing to keep my restricted self rather than embracing my unfettered natural self?
Human World – How have I stolen the life force within my family and how have family members robbed me of my beauty and my shining? How have I allowed them to do that? Ultimately, it is us who do the stealing. No one can take from us what we are not willing to give up.
When you encounter another 2-legged during your walk/talk, step into your critical observer witness and feel how you shift back into the box of social conditioning. What takes place there is a major teaching. Then as you go on, with each step feel yourself going back into your natural sacred self.
Spirit World – How have I stolen from the beauty of my sacred self by focusing only on the material world and my acquisition of things? How have I shut down my O’larien (abilities to perceive and sense energies) and doubted my inner voice? How have I robbed myself by disconnecting from Spirit and the essence of creation in all its forms?
When you feel complete begin the process of healing. What must you do to restore what you have stolen from yourself or what others have robbed you of? Perhaps you need to do acts of forgiveness. This is not a quickie ceremony. You are out to catch a thief, perhaps many thieves. The reward is the beauty of your sacred self. When you capture that, take it out into the world and shine. That is living a moral and ethical life.
The Bill of Rights is a declaration of an individual’s inalienable rights such as: freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly; right to keep and bear arms; protection from unreasonable search and seizure; and so on. The violation of these rights is thievery.
ReplyDeleteIn order to do what is right, one must know what is right.
ReplyDeleteA strong and unbending moral will, while commendable, is not enough to ensure a moral life. Equally important is moral intelligence. History testifies that blind, misguided will and conviction can cause incalculable damage – in the crusades, the inquisition, German Naziism, Soviet Communism. And, unless we stop it, in an incipient American theocracy or secular libertarianism.
Fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist politics asks us to take the easy road: put reflection aside and follow the simple and unbending rules that God (through His self-appointed spokesmen, of course) has given us to follow. The libertarian right, though secular, adheres to its dogmas with quasi-religious fervor. Among these dogmas are the libertarians’ unqualified endorsement of unregulated free markets and absolute property rights, and their insistence that government has no legitimate functions except the protection of the inalienable rights to life, liberty and property.
The environment is the libertarian Waterloo: it reveals the flaws of the doctrine in a way that seems to ensure that no 'answer' is forthcoming... Perhaps the best thing libertarians can [do] is put their dreams of changing the world on hold while they attempt simply to understand it.
ReplyDeleteJeffrey Friedman (443)
To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Thomas Jefferson
The Declaration of Independence
The psychologist, Abraham Maslow, once remarked that "to a carpenter, all problems can be solved with a hammer." To the Libertarian, that "hammer" is "the free market" combined with inviolable "property rights." In particular, the Libertarian is convinced that this is the "hammer" best designed to solve the problems of pollution, of land degradation, and of resource allocation, both within and among generations. Market incentives combined with an uncompromising protection of personal property rights will, the libertarian believes, yield the optimum solutions to our environmental problems.
Neither theory, nor practice, nor history will support this claim. Environmental problems must be met with a "kit of tools" - a variety of rules, practices and objectives. Thus, while the free market and property rights are appropriate solutions to some environmental problems, they surely will not suffice for all.
In the following, we will examine the failure of libertarian doctrine to deal appropriately with environmental problems, and as we do so we will find renewed justification for familiar principles and practices of political liberalism – most prominently, an acknowledgment of “social goods” distinct from the summation of personal gratifications, an affirmation of shared common values (in “communities”), and the desirability of an institution which functions at the sufferance of and in behalf of the community at large – an institution commonly referred to as “government.”
I -- Libertarianism – The Elements
In a single generation, "libertarianism" has moved from the fringes to the center stage of American political-economic theory and practice, an expansion of influence and application that is not confined to North America. Throughout the world, there has been a shift to the right toward free-market economies and laissez-faire regimes-- in Great Britain, France, Germany, and most dramatically in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. These are tendencies toward, albeit far short of, the goals of the libertarians.
Accordingly, none of these governments are, strictly speaking, Libertarian, for no national electorate would tolerate so radical a system of political economy. (The Libertarian Party in the United States has never attracted more than one percent of the votes in a Presidential election). Nor would we deny that this world-wide movement toward privatization and open markets has been largely beneficial. Nonetheless, libertarianism deserves careful critical analysis, since in theory, if not in practice, it is the ideological "spear-point" of "free market reform" throughout the world. Furthermore, many of its prominent exponents, such as Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Robert Nozick, are highly esteemed by scholars throughout the world. Finally, Libertarianism bears significant implications for environmental policy; notably, the contention that the natural environment will be best preserved, now and into the remote future, not through government regulation, but through the self-interested motivations of private property-owners. Thus, while its principles may appear stark, unqualified and unyielding and its proposals over-simplistic, because of its widespread and growing influence, libertarianism must be taken very seriously.
The untrammeled intensification of laissez-faire capitalism and the spread of market values into all areas of life is endangering our open and democratic society. The doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism holds that the common good is best served by the uninhibited pursuit of self-interest. Unless it is tempered by the recognition of a common interest that ought to take precedence over particular interests, our present system ... is liable to break down.
ReplyDeleteFor a quarter century after World War II, Americans grew more prosperous and less unequal. Families in every fifth of the nation's income distribution saw their incomes double. Families in the bottom fifth actually gained income at a faster pace than those at the top. The last quarter-century is a profoundly different story. The top fifth gained while the bottom fifth lost real income. Income inequality reached record levels in the 1990s.
The members who spoke in this capital [Williamsburg, Virginia] said 'no' to taxes because they loved freedom. They argued, "why should the fruits of our labors go to the crown across the sea." Well, in the same sense we ask today, "why should the fruits of our labors go to that capital across the [Potomac] river?" . . . . We, like the patriots of yesterday, are struggling to increase the measure of liberty enjoyed by our fellow citizens. We're struggling, like them, for self-government -- self-government for the family, self-government for the individual and the small business, and the corporation... What people earn is their money. Seventy-two years after its inception, what is our Federal tax system? It is a system that yields great amounts of revenue, even greater amounts of disorder, discontent and disobedience. [Tax cheating] is not considered bad behavior. After all, goes this thinking, what's wrong with cheating a system that is itself a cheat? That isn't a sin, it's a duty!
ReplyDeleteThe East Asians' troubles, votaries argue, derive from their heretical deviation from free-market orthodoxy -- they were practitioners of "crony capitalism," of "ethnocapitalism," of "statist capitalism," not of the one true faith. The East Asian financial panics, the Russian debt repudiations, the Brazilian economic turmoil, and the U.S. stock market's $1.5 trillion "correction" momentarily shook belief in the new dispensation. But faith is strengthened by adversity, and the Market God is emerging renewed from its trial by financial "contagion." Since the argument from design no longer proves its existence, it is fast becoming a postmodern deity -- believed in despite the evidence. Alan Greenspan vindicated this tempered faith in testimony before Congress last October. A leading hedge fund had just lost billions of dollars, shaking market confidence and precipitating calls for new federal regulation. Greenspan, usually Delphic in his comments, was decisive. He believed that regulation would only impede these markets, and that they should continue to be self-regulated. True faith, Saint Paul tells us, is the evidence of things unseen.
ReplyDeleteThe Dragon at the Gate: The Media Problem. Even though the American media today are subverting our freedoms and leading us to oligarchy, despotism and economic ruin, we must deal with them more in sorrow than in anger. The media, with the power of the government they serve, can crush us in a moment if they perceive us as "the enemy." And yet they require an audience – "the public" – to exist, and that is our weapon. The progressive community should work with the media toward a restoration of the condition of honorable service to democracy and liberty, that had once made the American press the envy of the world.
ReplyDeleteFollowing the Light
ReplyDeleteOn February 21, Ted Koppel closed his Nightline broadcast with an eloquent tribute to the late Daniel Pearl, which ended with these words: "Evil, in all its forms, has no more potent enemy than light. And those of us who called Danny Pearl a colleague, have no greater debt to his memory than to follow that light, wherever it takes us."
Sadly, that "debt" to the memory of Daniel Pearl has not been paid by the American media, and there is no indication that it will be in the foreseeable future. Instead, that media refuses to "follow the light," and instead offers us ghosts of falsehood and chases after shadows of trivia and irrelevancy.
Night Falls Upon the American Democracy
ReplyDeleteAs nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
The Water Is Wide: Building a Revolution. Every sane person realizes that things must change, and soon. And yet very little changes. 'The System' continues on, protecting its own at the top. The rest of us, the 'little people,' are told to get by as best we can. Socialism for the wealthy, capitalism for the poor and middle-class. And thus, to crib from Albert Einstein, everything "has changed save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." If that's not a prescription for radical change, I don't know what is. Organize, Organize, ORGANIZE!"
ReplyDelete[Society is] a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born.
ReplyDeleteThe legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but can not do at all or can not do well for themselves in their separate or individual capacities.
Trump will finally overcome the bias of the Church, UN, EU, and our own bi-coastal elites that have continued to be a blemish on the so-called ethics and morals of this world. Just like England in 1940, Israel is our only bastion of democracy in a neighborhood whose stability has only deteriorated over the past eight years....And what if America, the gold-standard of democracy, had immediately acknowledged Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel, which it had consistently been for centuries, except for a brief interlude between 1948-1967 it was occupied by Jordan, when the individual European nations (who had previously turned their back on their Jewish citizens), and the UN, chose to ignore all morals and ethics to tolerate the capture and illegal occupation of Jerusalem by Trans-Jordan?
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