I’ve been looking for a universal morality, some kind of proof that there are standards that every people group has had across time and across culture, proof that some version of the 10 commandments stands in every society and that these natural laws are part of human make-up. I’m not sure why I was doing this, maybe as an effort to retain some of the biblical foundation that has guided my decision making process for so long. I’ve discovered that even though most religions have the same basic do’s and don’t's, I can’t believe that this is transmitted through human nature, or that these laws are enough when making moral decisions. I knew this before, of course, but was looking for an ideology to attach to, seeing as I no longer let the Bible or a preacher’s interpretation of the Bible make my decisions for me.
I was introduced to Jeremy Bentham while reading The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong. His idea of morality is that an action is judged by its consequences. Sounds both just and pragmatic. The only problem is how to know what the consequences of an action will be? He said that the best decision is that which will cause the most happiness (long term, not short term). That has to work better in a democratic country like Canada, where you can generally count on hard work and fair acts paying off. It might be harder to predict in an unstable country. When it is easy to predict, it still must be a guessing game without some underlying framework to guide people. So now I am back at the beginning, wondering how it is that people are guided to make good decisions.
I know how I try to make decisions, even if I don’t know where it fits. With compassion, justice, equality and generosity in light of power relationships between people, institutions and nature. A messy process compared to the black and white thinking I’ve slowly been moving away from. I’ll leave that to Star Wars.
