12. Traditional Moral Decision-Making

As a decision-making program our traditional morality does not support the development of social sustainability. If it were a software decision-making program, it would have been upgraded or discarded long ago. Historically, the moral code of western civilization has changed little in 4,000 years when the Sumerian King Ur-Nammu of Ur (2112-2095 BC) wrote its thirty-two laws. It was designed as a personal morality within a small community. It was never codified as a social morality to guide the moral conduct of organizations or governments. Neither was it intended as a global moral code for nations in the international community.

The traditional moral code is reactive rather than proactive. It is punitively based. One of its assumptions is that punishment of immoral behavior will cause citizens to become moral in order to avoid the subsequent punishment(s). We know all too well from the history of 4 millennia that punishment is not an effective deterrent to immoral behavior. Tragically, it assumes that punishment oxymoronically “rights wrongs.” Righting wrongs, balancing punishment for harm, and an eye-for-an-eye will leave us all blind. Society is none the better for it. What is missing is an evolved morality that empowers social agencies as the courts to serve the sustainability needs of society. Our historic moral code does nothing to improve our societies. It simply punishes the wrongdoer with the victim, family and community no better for the wrongdoer’s punishment. In a society that is moving toward social sustainability, punishment has no value as a teaching tool, retribution or remediation for harm done.

Morality evolves: The seeds of an evolving morality were planted millennia ago. The broadest historic example of a new morality is the “Golden Rule” that has been adopted by almost all cultures of the world. References to some form of it is included in Hitopadesa, Hinduism; Leviticus 19:18, Judaism; Matthew 7:12, Christianity; Udanavarga 5:18, Buddhism; Analects 15:23, Confucianism; and, Traditions, Islam.

“Pay It Forward,” Not “Payback”has much to say about the social and moral evolution of our species. It provides the most recent proof that morality can and does evolve; offers a proof that human consciousness is evolving to accept the holism of humanity; tells us that the average person accepts and understands their connectedness to all of humanity, that the one can affect the whole as the whole affects the one; and affirms the innate goodness of people, that if left to themselves they will do good to others without expectation of a return from those who benefited from them.