The Dalai Lama has brought himself into the
spotlight yet again with a Facebook and Twitter post 2 weeks ago stating, in
brief, that “grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate.” He’s brought
praise from atheists and humanists, to say nothing of preaching from Christians
and others who insist that you can’t have ethics without a spiritual or a
religious basis. I spoke in part about Gyatso’s text “Beyond Religion: Ethics
For A Whole World” which he referenced in a Facebook post I spoke about in “An Ethics For Everyone” These claims are controversial, but a remotely objective look at them, without
presuppositions on either the sacred or secular, we can see there are commonly
held values that we can utilize in a shared ethics and morality. The
distinction between ethics and morality is difficult, but I have one
perspective I’ve read on that is both concise and accessible. It is also
pertinent to lay out these shared ideals about right and wrong, of good and
evil, and elaborate how they make sense in a secular worldview, with no
recourse to divine revelations. And finally, the supposed inconsistency of
absolutist and relativist ethics can be resolved by a moderate point of
realism, or even pragmatism if we want to be more philosophical. Ethics and
morality are complex areas of life, but we shouldn’t needlessly complicate them
with unnecessary or otherwise irrational factors that aren’t pertinent to our
basic determination of what is right and wrong.
Ethics can be explained as an individual’s code of
what is right and wrong, developed through experimentation in a sort of
practical fashion. Morality, on the other hand, is a shared societal or
cultural code which people are expected to conform to. The former is more
individualist, but not so opposed to collaborative efforts, while morality
creates a sense of collectivism that is concerning, but doesn’t deny
individuals to a certain extent. In short, ethics are personal tenets and more
experiential in nature, developed by an almost scientific methodology, while
morality is a cultural set of beliefs concerning what is good and bad, almost
to the effect of mores and norms, which are closer to taboos; related to
acceptability instead of culpability. The distinction of individual and group
values could potentially create a polar dichotomy, where each opposes the
other. But instead I would suggest a prioritizing of the individual without
eschewing the collective, more specifically, the community of which we are
inevitably a part of in one way or another. Any community is composed of
individuals to begin with, so the nuance is recognizing that there will be some
disagreements, but there will also be common ground that exists by necessity of
the average human being functioning remotely normally (i.e. not a sociopath).
In that way, you have coexistence without conformity to the letter of the law.
The spirit would still be recognized, so that’s not gone either. A society
where one can have ethics that don’t necessarily conflict with morality, but
morality doesn’t override ethics is an ideal and possible existence we can work
out.
The values that are essential to ethics, according
to Tenzin Gyatso, are: love,
compassion, patience, tolerance and forgiveness: and can be found and discerned
outside of religious authority. Objectors will claim that in scientific and
secular reasoning, since ideals and values are non material things, they can’t
be verified or demonstrated in the way we demonstrate gravity or other things
with clearly physical properties. The problem with that argument is that it
applies to numbers, yet they are believed to be extant in their own sense, just
like concepts of truth, justice, even logic, which are immaterial and abstract
in their nature. The verifiability and falsifiability of something isn’t strictly
limited to the physical, especially when, by its very premise, it is admitted
to be non physical. It’s more important in some cases whether it has practical
value or relevance to human affairs. Love, compassion, forgiveness, patience
and tolerance all have some basis in neuroscience, no doubt. But our experience
and practice of them is more important in considering their universal value to
everyone. When you love, you can understand compassion; when you are
compassionate, you can practice forgiveness; when you practice forgiveness, you
gain patience; when you gain patience, you develop tolerance. The interrelation
of these values is complex, no doubt, but I would say the basis is compassion,
which is a form of love that is nuanced, not granting it without some degree of
reciprocity, but nonetheless understanding and not becoming either selfish or
abusive. With compassion, you understand love, forgiveness, patience and
tolerance, since they all have their connections to compassion, the core value
and the one commonly misunderstood as passivity, but should be an active
practice.
Ethics can be objective, true regardless of our
opinions one way or the other, without being absolutely and ultimately true,
which would suggest no critical thought on our part. And they can be
subjective, dependent on the individual’s perspective, without being hard
relativist, where there is no underlying ground for making claims of truth and
fact to begin with. This is a hard position to convey with people tending to
have fairly simplistic ideas of how right and wrong or good and evil work,
thinking many times in black and white, but ironically admitting of grey areas
when it comes to their own gain or loss. That entails we acknowledge in some
way the relativity of ethics, but only when it applies to self interests. If it
involves much more people, we try to sound more consistent and morally upright,
but our hypocrisy cannot be pushed away. To accept the relativity of morality
and ethics is not to abandon them as binding on us in any sense. It’s a basic
necessity of human life to have rules that restrain us or otherwise guide our
actions. But we shouldn’t take them as unquestionable or not subject to
alteration or even abandonment if they merit it. Cultural influence on the
acceptability of something should not be the primary voice. Popularity is not
an acceptable standard, especially if it’s just based on conformity instead of
critical thinking. Our voice of reason, even a sort of innate common sense or
conscience, should guide us, especially when the practice being judged as
condonable is, in fact, damaging in one form or another. Dehumanizing people
through slavery or even trying to appear equal through such a thing as civil
unions contrasted with marriage is not ethical and should not be painted as
such for the sake of social expediency. We should work hard at always improving
our ethics and not letting them remain easy for us to follow. As the proverb
goes “Familiarity breeds contempt”. Skepticism about ethics shouldn’t go to the
level of nihilism, but it shouldn’t be abandoned because it might breed
insecurity or fear. It’s how we face the fear and insecurity that further
tempers our future principles.
Of course it will be difficult for many people, who
tend to only be philosophers when it comes to things that have already passed,
mulling over them. Or we fixate on religion and spirituality as something of
more philosophical import than the fundamentals: logic, ethics, metaphysics,
aesthetics and epistemology. Speculating on the mysterious and awe inspiring
can be done right or it can be wasted contemplation without underpinning it with
sound thinking. Understanding things and also recognizing the limits of our
knowledge of them are both essential to having a well thought out and realistic
worldview. We shouldn’t live seeking to merely go through every day in
security, especially if it ruins any possibility of change, innovation or
progress. Of course, not all progress is good, not all innovation is beneficial
and not all change will make things right. It is our response to these things
is reflective of our character. Patience is a virtue and compassion is the
ideal from which we develop that. And we don’t need any supernatural
underpinning to discover compassion’s importance. Until next time, Namaste and
aloha
