Hullo Gavin, Rod,
Thanks Gavin for your well presented thoughts. I understand what you are
saying about "the moral hierarchy in the moq should not be seen as
personally *prescriptive*. this is not its role. its value lies in
*thinking* about morality - explicating moral issues (many of which are
very complex)". And I largely agree with you that "on the personal level
we usually don't need to think at all to know what we want - what is
good. indeed thought just gets in the way or becomes 'rationalisation':
justifying what we know is wrong/bad. the moq is a *descriptive* moral
system."
I think that my concern is that a descriptive moral system is only of
'value' if it in some way furthers moral decision making. This was the
point of my rather cryptic closing comment which Rod has challenged me
to expand. I said "Isn't it time to explore what might be the highest
values accessible to people, rather than continue playing with an
inadequate evolutionary 'explanation' that really explains nothing?"
I'm finding it very difficult to flesh this out. My thinking in this
area has evolved very much in line with Ken Wilber's perspective of a
holarchic developmental process, in which each level brings together
unresolved elements of the lower level into a newly reconciled whole,
while at the same time bringing to light new difficulties and
ambiguities that will only be reconciled by another level yet to be
accessed. Each level produces a new realm of data, previously
inaccessible, which both consolidates the newly acquired wholeness of
the new level, and creates the tensions which will lead eventually to
the need to transcend the current level. This makes it very difficult
for anyone to conceptualise more than one level above their current
dominant level.
However I am also reading a lot of writings from the mystic perspective,
and what I get from them is that morality is a function of
enlightenment. Put crudely, when I am able to see and experience reality
directly, unmediated by past learning and experience, and without
expectations for the future, then my action which flows from my
experience of reality is shaped not by morality, but by the situation.
This is very similar to the definition of health in Gestalt therapy. To
be healthy is to let the situation dictate. As Gavin said above, thought
just gets in the way.
So my concerns are at two levels. One, I would like to focus on how
individuals become more open to experience, instead of filtering it
through social and personal learnings. The premise is that the very
immediacy of the experience allows dynamic quality to emerge, hence the
appropriate action just flows from that.
Secondly, because I am an intellectual by temperament, I am interested
in talking about all this, but increasingly frustrated by the
limitations of thinking about moral issues. So how does thinking about
moral issues in a "a new and better (than dogmatic religion and amoral
science) perspective" help? Who does it help? Does it matter?
Regards,
John B
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