CHAPTER THREE -- A Arthur M. Jackson
Copyright 2001, 2003, 2006
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CHAPTER THREE To the degree that the views herein expressed are correct, they must be universally welcomed -- causing the formation of the organizations and techniques to ensure acceptance by everyone. If they are not one hundred per cent satisfactory it is hoped that they are open to modification in that direction. If correct, they must be able to replace or absorb all other worldviews. However, an ethical System fails a person only when it is found to be inadequate in some unacceptable way. The foregoing often takes years to come about if an individual is enmeshed within a Pre-Enlightened Community that promotes beliefs and practices that appeal to their raw "tribal" propensities. As a result most persons die without even discovering that their views were deficient. Also, if a person is stopped at some stage of development by adoption of an inadequate ethical system they will have to be awakened to their potentialities before they can advance beyond that System. Individuals who have been misguided from birth and are attached to certain beliefs supporting a Pre-Enlightened Community will undoubtedly have much difficulty escaping the web that holds them.SPREADING MEANING: A NEW FOUNDATION FOR CIVILIZATION
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However, any inadequate ethical system has practical, painful effects for the believer's life. Every worldview utilized by a group provides its followers a reason that attempts to justify their pain, and that calms their mind initially. But, at some times, in some areas the explanation doesn't fit and/or work. As a result there are always festering wounds that at certain times open the person to change so they can explore ways to reduce the pain or increase the joy. The current extensive use of illegal drugs -- and legal drugs for that matter: alcohol, tobacco, Valium, Prozac, etc. -- in America gives a hint of just how desperate many persons are. If a Center for the Practical Application of Wisdom can provide ways to effectively deal with this pain, hope for a better life becomes possible. This step may help the individual see how other areas of their life can be improved that had not even been recognized as deficient. To the degree that a Center for the Practical Application of Wisdom provides the right stuff these persons can be helped and moved in the direction of their own best self.
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Since people's worldview is essentially shaped by their childhood experiences, examining one's childhood becomes critical if one is to overcome this early conditioning, childhood trauma, and other effects that limit or distort brain development. But as stated before, a person can only discard core ideas if they find better ideas to replace them unless a discordance with reality becomes so obvious they cannot ignore it. If the ethical System proposed in this book really approximates the necessary hypotheses for setting up an Enlightened Community, it must be able to replace any Pre-Enlightened Community. And, of course it must accomplish all the necessary functions that original society performed. In addition it must eliminate the Not-Yet-Enlightened Community's worthless, ineffective, or harmful parts, and improve its inadequate structures. A Pre-Enlightened Community can never be wholly adequate, not even for one of its members. Any System that is completely adequate obviously cannot, and need not be replaced since there is no reason to replace it. The ideas in this book must help all people if they are correct. They must be able to displace every individual's inadequate philosophy/religion (world view) with a better and more rewarding one. However, the foregoing can only be achieved as the necessary organizations are developed. And here we are confronted with the problem that an individual can only become an Enlightened Person if they are part of an Enlightened Community. And an Enlightened Community can only be produced by Enlightened Persons. Therefore, progress can only be made through successive approximations as it has been doing over the past 10,000 years.
The theories expressed in this book are supposed to discourage corruption and other self-destructive behaviors. Instead of establishing an authoritarian structure claiming absolute TRUTH, they require an empirical process aiming to achieve congruency with each other and with objective reality. They are only as binding as the evidence on which they are based can support. They are believed to carry within themselves the mechanism for producing necessary changes. These ideas include the claim that persons can and must be helped in terms that they accept as valid for them; that ideas that do not produce beneficial results are inadequate; and if they produce bad results are wrong. The killer, psychotic, and idiot cannot be written off, ignored, or sacrificed as defective merchandise, or part of God's plan. For a Science of Ethics the individual human being is the focus for society's ultimate concern, and society's role in "failures" as well as "successes" must be acknowledged, understood, then improved in so far as is possible.
A Center for the Practical Application of Wisdom focuses upon individual human beings. Each of us depends solely upon our fellow humans for a sustainable belief that our life has meaning. If these people seem inadequate, we must search to learn how improvement is possible. And we cannot stop searching until every person has achieved a sustainable belief that their life has meaning.
The foregoing thesis may be difficult to accept. It seems necessary for people to have a scapegoat or excuse to explain crime, and other anti-social, or ineffective behavior in general. Scapegoating appears to come more naturally than looking for an answer in the realm of cause and effect that can then lead to prevention or correction of such behavior.
Universally, people who are financially successful tend to look upon the poor as being so because they are lazy or inferior in some way. The pseudo-intellectual says that the "average" person is too dumb to advance much in life and enjoy the "higher" things. The "average" person says that "too much" intelligence causes insanity, that money brings the wealthy more pain than happiness, that the simple things in life are what count. The athlete regards physical perfection as the highest value; the artist places aesthetic experiences above all other things. The aristocrat believes that one's parentage is the measure of worth; the "low born" say that accomplishment is what counts. Orthodox Jews know that they are the chosen people; Mormons are sure that only their religion is right. The "skin head" prizes white skin; the Polynesian, brown. The religious fanatic condemns the "sinner"; the disillusioned say that humanity is a failed species and there is no hope for it, the skeptic smirks at the rest of humanity for believing in anything.
So currently each person's position is too narrow to embrace all, hence their world-view must fail all. Only an ethical system of sufficient depth and breadth to include all people in the most basic and essential ways can prevent individuals from forsaking their fellow humans and therefore themselves.
[p. 3]
Even the most despicable, hateful, ignorant person you know of must be capable of becoming a productive, charming, compassionate person; an Enlightened Person. The foregoing is the challenge! In a Science of Ethics there is no support for "us" and "them" within the human family. Every Modern Human is "us." We must do whatever is necessary to achieve this state and maintain it.
Where Thomas Aquinas and most other religious philosophers were primarily concerned with supporting their System which they adopted through blind faith, a Science of Ethics is primarily concerned with creating an ethical System which is grounded on science and open to change with new knowledge. Folk religions always function so as to maintain the status quo to allow the perpetuation of the existing power structure. Science of Ethics must work to alter any system in which even one person unjustifiably suffers. But more specifically it would work to prevent the kind of suffering Steinbeck describes below:
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FROM THE GRAPES OF WRATH
By John Steinbeck
"The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. People who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. People who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow.The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be.
How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And people with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit -- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.
And the smell of rot fills the country.
Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out.
Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
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There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate -- died of malnutrition -- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.
The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath, in the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."[1]
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I believe that much of humanity's difficulty exists because "...while saints are engaged in introspection, burly sinners run the world."[2] Of course I only accept "saints" and "sinners" in a metaphorical sense. "Saints" are persons working to develop the "wisdom" potential, and "sinners" are persons who are functioning out of their raw "tribal" propensities: who are greedy, power seeking, deceitful, hypocritical, etc. Corporate executives, labor leaders, fundamentalists, corrupt officials, etc. are not actually sinners because there is no sin. They primarily are misled and/or ignorant of the important facts. They are ruled primarily by their us vs. them and their dominance/submission propensities. The wise people of society who are attempting to rise above their raw "tribal" propensities, too frequently, get caught in sophisticated aspects of the belief in magic and the power of wishing "tribal" propensity and end up being so removed from life and humanity that they do not understand the path necessary to develop their "wisdom" potential. As a result, essentially all persons are forced to make decisions without sufficient knowledge and wisdom, or support to allow them to work toward satisfying their own long-term self-interest; i.e., understanding what is in their long term best interests.
A Science of Ethics is intended to promote change in individuals in society. It is meant to re-shape the world. It should, when properly developed be available to all persons, and aid them in making difficult decisions. Science of Ethics would allow them to bond so firmly with our species that they could not feel alone in the darkest corner of the Universe. It would not be from a position of ignorance and blind faith that they attained the previously mentioned sense of well being. They would gain peace of mind based on their life experience and knowledge, hence from a position of infinite strength. No search, no question would be forbidden (unless this behavior caused physical harm to others). All knowledge or exploration would be open to them. They would have not only the theoretical power to change inadequate structures, but the actual power to do so.
If any person comes up with answers different from those usually accepted, they would be welcomed into the New Ideas, Revolutionary Insights, And/Or Unique Answers Institute. They would become a resource to stimulate the advance of society toward better answers, better ways to help humanity. To the degree that their answers were found to contain truth and wisdom, the bands would be played and the crowds cheer for they are a great person and this is greatness. The goal would be to recognize and reward them in life rather than after death; to utilize their ideas rather than diverting them into a wasteland.
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The above is only possible in an Enlightened Community. Rapid improvements could be made because the members of an Enlightened Community are Enlightened Persons and do not have subconscious attachments to a tradition that prohibits thought and change. The foregoing should make it clear that the views in this book are expressed tentatively. They are thought to avail themselves to the methods of scientific proof at least at key points; i.e., in the Ways of Wisdom. But the bottom line is that nothing here can be accepted with any more conviction than the evidence merits. This means there will always be an openness to rejecting errors and accepting other approaches. Without the foregoing we would only be discarding one set of irrationalities for another. The primary hope in creating a Science of Ethics is that an ever-increasing number of people will be helped to live at an ever-expanding level of mental development and well being.
The only relevant way to test these ideas is by demonstrating their value in the rehabilitation of individuals using the proposed techniques as modified by experience. If these theories are correct, there is a mammoth task to be accomplished. There is a world to be won and consolidated. There are probably not more than a handful of individuals out of the billions on this planet not in need of rehabilitation, even though in many cases it would come easily, be little more than an awakening.
When these ideas are widely accepted and used to change societies, then our species will at last have reached the new stability (a dynamic equilibrium) congruent with our "wisdom" potential towards which we have been aimed for the past 30-60,000 years. At that time humanity will be able to take its true place in the universe. The foregoing can now happen because we have entered the first zone of utopia. There are now areas of freedom where we can speak freely and we have enough data to see the outline of that utopia. Science has given us an expanding personal wealth. We now have the possibility to communicate with those willing to involve themselves in this seminal effort. It is within our grasp to make the world -- for now and for eternity -- a decent place for every person to live.
Our goal must be personal power for each person. It must not be considered enough to give a person food and shelter, and teach them how to endure pain till they are released by death. They must be given their "soul" so they can understand and achieve the meaning of their life. They must be helped to develop so they can see their opportunities and responsibilities. They must be helped to see the path to tread and have their fellow humans ever available to support them in time of need. Humanity must be taught how to actualize love and compassion, and not mere hollow expression of them. Humanity must be shown that all we have to do to solve the "unsolvable problems due to the original human sin" is to discard the metaphysics and theology that perpetuate these "problems." Those difficulties resulting from "the human condition" are solvable. We can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. We can now understand the broad outline of how to integrate the needs of the individual and the community in a way congruent with our language ability.
For all these reasons we can now begin to visualize utopia -- a perfect world. Yet every direction we look we see persons expressing the clear message: "Human beings are too dumb, too selfish, too short-sighted to work together in the way required to create a perfect world." As indicated before I propose that the perfect world is almost now within our grasp. Some will say, "absurd." Others will tighten their lip, and declare, "Impossible. Crazy. Wrong. The statement of a fool!" Perhaps, all these comments are true. But consider the perfect world as this: One in which the ignorance of the day can be corrected by human thought and action; by peace, not bloodshed, where it is recongized that there is no essential conflict between the needs of the individual and the needs of the society.
In any society that is controlled by fundamentalists of any folk religion, or other authoritarian rulers, peaceful changes will be difficult. So, these areas are part of the "almost" in "The perfect world is almost now within our grasp," in the above paragraph. Also ignorance is rampant in all parts of the world so this is part of the "almost." However, there now exists a wondrous opportunity. Many places exist today in the world where a Science of Ethics could be introduced. In none of these places could one expect exponential growth and development. But much of this is due to the current formulation of Science of Ethics. As experience is gained, growth will increase in speed and size.
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The technique here recommended for getting from the hope of today to the achievements of tomorrow is the thoughtful, planned steps of dynamic evolution. Each society must be helped to make careful steps as conditions allow. But our effort must be relentless in every possible sphere.
We must lay the groundwork for change and not try to abolish or transform current social structures until we have something better to replace them. The foregoing process may take time, but it is the only process that is consistent with the principles of Science of Ethics. And, it is the only process that has any chance of being successful at least in the long run. To destroy is easy. To build is difficult. Knowledge has given us the power to destroy civilization. Ignorance has given us the potential to destroy it.
It seems to me that the first step toward Science of Ethics should begin with the setting up of Wisdom Groups. When a few people get together the first danger is that one or several of the members will fall into the dominance/submission model and attempt to run things in the traditional way -- grabbing for control. This won't work; i.e., result in a successful Wisdom Group. Once it becomes clear that this person/persons cannot be reformed then the next step would be to eject them from the group. If this can't be done then it will be necessary to drop out and start a new group.
Another serious problem the Wisdom Group will encounter is errors in the theory. Some of the ideas about how a Wisdom Group should function will turn out to be totally erroneous. Others will be insufficiently clear to be followed. Some will be good ideas, but difficult to implement with the resources of time, money, and knowledge currently available.
But whenever such a group becomes strong enough and well enough organized it should assemble a Center for the Practical Application of Wisdom. Very likely many Wisdom Groups will encounter an overwheliming problem, or problems before it is able to set up a Center for the Practical Application of Wisdom. These problems may require some members to split off to try again. It is important that as many of these experiences be recorded and shared as possible to help others avoid the same mistakes. Hopefully, at some point some group will get all the necessary ingredients together and establish a Wisdom Group successful enough to organize a Center for the Practical Application of Wisdom. Starting a Center for the Practical Application of Wisdom will not be easy. It may not even be possible to do so. However, if it is possible, almost certainly it will take several attempts before an organization close enough to what is needed is established, and can begin to function along the lines of the theory (as revised with experience). At that point other groups should be able to follow the successful group's model.
There are two somewhat separate areas in which one can pursue the Science of Ethics message. One is the academic, and/or research domain. This is the realm of study, research, and teaching. The other area which would draw from the first, and vice versa, is the implementation of current understanding by starting with a Wisdom Group and building from there. Science of Ethics in its scientific/ academic efforts can proceed somewhat independently from the implementation activities.
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Of necessity teachers and researchers, as well as those forming Wisdom Groups will have to be persons who have not yet achieved a sustainable belief that their life has meaning. As a result of the foregoing Wisdom Groups should be slow and careful in proclaiming individuals to be Enlightened Persons. The foregoing is a critical point and a tricky point, one that could spell success or failure for a Wisdom Group. Can individuals refrain from setting themselves up as absolute tyrants when this is at least theoretically possible? Progress, or failure rests on this point. The original founders of a Wisdom Group must lean over backwards to avoid mistakes in graduating Enlightened Persons. The loss of not proclaiming someone an Enlightened Person, will be minor in comparison to the potential for a major catastrophe in doing so wrongly.
A primary goal of a Wisdom Group after initial formation should be to determine how to produce Enlightened Persons and failsafe ways of determining when an individual has reached this state. Perhaps, it would be wisest to proclaim those who start the work "Heroes of Humanity" and save the title Enlightened Person for those who come later.
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