Introduction —

The three tables below illustrate 81 Degrees of Socially Sustainable Moral Decision-Making involving the individual person, organizations, and associations of organizations.

Individual (I). The individual is the key to a moral society. It is the individual who carries morality into their family, employment, organizations, the branches of government and its agencies, and into corporations. It is the individual whose decisions and actions result in positive, neutral, or detrimental outcomes to him/herself, other individuals, organizations, and society.

Organizations (O) and identifiable groups of individuals. Organizations would include, for example, a home owners association, places of employment, all governmental organizations, non-profit and philanthropic organizations, and all corporations whether registered or not, and a local chess club. All have the capability to make positive, neutral, or detrimental moral decisions.

Associations of Organizations (AO) would include for example the national association of governors, international associations of national governments, any international organization including multi-national corporations, and many more. All have the capability to make positive, neutral, or detrimental moral decisions.

The first table illustrates how each of these 3 participants interact with each other to produce a total of 9 relationship interactions.

I=Individual, O=Organization, AO=Association of Organizations

	3  Responsible Participants = 9 Interactions
1	Individual
	I-I	I-O	I-AO
	Organization
	O-I	O-O	O-AO
	Association of Organizations
	AO-I	AO-O	AO-AO

 

The second table shows the 9 interactions of the first illustration as being affected by the 3 core values to produce 27 moral interactions. Because these values are universal to all people, the morality of social sustainability becomes universal to all organizations. In other words, in the first cell an Individual can make decisions and take actions that affect the quality of life, growth, and equality of another individual, organization, or association of organizations. In the second and third cell, it is the same for organizations, and associations of organizations.

	9 Interactions X 3 Values = 27 Moral Interactions
2	Quality of Life
	I-I   I-O   I-AO	O-I  O-O  O-AO	AO-I  AO-O  AO-AO
	Growth
	I-I   I-O   I-AO	O-I  O-O  O-AO	AO-I  AO-O  AO-AO
	Equality
	I-I   I-O   I-AO	O-I  O-O  O-AO	AO-I  AO-O  AO-AO

 

The third table offers 3 valuations { + ᴓ – } to qualify the 27 moral interactions in the second illustration to produce 81 moral interactions. Each decision-maker has a potential to make decisions and take actions that affect the quality of life, growth, and equality of others by making value-adding { + } moral decisions; neutral value { ᴓ } amoral decisions; or devaluing { – } immoral decisions.

	27 Defining Interactions x 3 { + ᴓ – } Valuations = 81 Degrees of Moral Decision-Making
3	(+ ᴓ –)   Quality of Life
	I-I   I-O   I-AO	S-I  O-O  O-AO	AO-I  AO-O  AO-AO
	(+ ᴓ –)  Growth
	I-I   I-O   I-AO	S-I  O-O  O-AO	AO-I  AO-O  AO-AO
	(+ ᴓ –)   Equality
	I-I   I-O   I-AO	S-I  O-O  O-AO	AO-I  AO-O  AO-AO

 

Moral, Universal, Uniform, Consistent,
        And Integrated Moral “Common Law” —

While 81 degrees of moral decision-making may seem tedious, any moral issue that becomes defined by them will take on the characteristics of the values that define the 81 Degrees. It is predictable that such a moral definition would provide the moral integrity that is necessary for any court, organization, or governmental agency to assess the potential moral benefit or potential moral detriment of a case in its rulings, opinions, executive decisions, and policies, for example. The 81 Degrees also provide the means to assess the benefit or detriment of past policies, statutes, bylaws, commitments, or decisions.

With the 81 Degrees no one and no organization is exempt from making socially sustainable moral decisions and their implementation. Adopting the 81 degrees provides that every individual and every organization has well defined moral obligations in a society that has chosen to move toward social sustainability. With this type of morality all executives of all corporations are morally responsible for his or her decisions and the effects of those decisions. This makes the corporation as responsible and liable as the executive. If an individual is morally culpable in the corporation, then the corporation is morally culpable. If the corporation is morally culpable, then those who made the decisions that resulted in the corporation’s culpability are personally culpable as well. The only protection for a corporation would be the publication of its acceptance and full adherence to the 81 Degrees, while forbidding any and all of its employees and contractors from engaging in decision-making that violates any of those 81 Degrees,; and training them so they do understand.

81 degrees of moral action ensure that all decisions of individuals and organizations are accountable for the sustainability of the existing generation and all future generations. These 81 degrees ensure that future generations have as much right to their sustainability and existence as we do today. For companies and corporations that waver to voluntarily leap to this moral level, the Schematic of Social Sustainability Validation (see LINK) will provide them with a very rapid method of becoming morally competitive with other corporations that have already made that their chosen route of growth.

There really is no room for delaying or distancing oneself, government, or corporation from the responsibilities of accepting the necessity of making decisions and taking actions that lead to the sustainability of society. It takes everyone acting together to sustain peace and to maintain social stability. But it takes a thoroughly unified, integrate, and universal morality for a society to begin its slow evolution to the social state of peace and stability, with generational perseverance to become socially sustainable.

No Wiggle Room —

Because there are no integral, unified, and universal ethical and moral standards of Old Era politics, a huge amount of wiggle room exists for the influence of corporations to take influential control of Congress and state legislatures. If we were to use the 81 Degrees of Moral Decision-Making to assess any infractions of traditional politics in any democracy, we could make lists many meters long. Traditional Old Era politics has been and still remains a means for public executives, including those who were appointed, to grant “special” favors to big campaign contributors, lobbyists, and many others who are not in alignment with the 81 Degrees.

The “wiggle room” that has been available to public executives as a public trust has been eroded to the point where the trust of the public for their public executives to make moral, socially responsible decisions has vanished — a valid definition of Old Era politics. Now there is no trust. Using 81 Degrees of Moral Decision-Making, politicians and all those who are hired, appointed, or elected to public office could be held to the exacting standards as a teller at the bank, for example. The “wiggle room,” the sweetness of being able to “fudge” the moral responsibilities of office holding needs to be gone forever.

One of the arguments for implementing the New Era morality of social sustainability will be that decisions that affect the public and future generations of citizens are far too important to leave in the hands of easily manipulated members of congresses and parliaments. The aggregate intelligence of the publics of democracies is far too great to squander on an antiquarian limit of elections day every two years! Today’s technologies are easily powerful enough to provide citizens with the opportunity to include their choices, options, and preferences for social policies without the fickle nature of “public opinion” from high-jacking proven democratic processes that protect social, political, and economic stability.