Why is a Socially Evolved Morality Needed? —
First, a sustainable, proactive morality is needed because traditional morality was not designed to include the moral behavior of organizations, governments, or corporations. Further, it does not provide a universally level playing field for all people, of all races, cultures, ethnicity, nationality, and gender for all times.
Second, the old morality, being reactive, punitive, and retrospective does not provide positive, proactive direction for the social decisions of individuals, families, communities, local and national societies, and global societies to form sustainable communities and societies.
For civil government, a sustainable morality would expand its vision far beyond the routine of civil maintenance, to include a larger civil role as a contributor and upholder of social stability and social sustainability of its communities. One of the greatest problems of civil governance is that when the status quo is accepted as normalcy, widespread mediocrity of performance soon follows. With a vision and model of social sustainability to fulfill, communities and cities, for example, will have a vision to always work toward. The status quo, standing still, and maintaining what is already in place will become a historic reference to the mediocrity of the past. Our traditional morality protects the stability of mediocrity as a social model that now is aiding the disintegration of our societies however moral according to traditional morality.
Third, a sustainable morality is needed that proactively assigns and adds value to the individual as a social asset and value-contributor to their community and to the global community. That morality also assigns to the individual his or her responsibility to determine how they will live their life as a contributor. When all actions of a society are determined by a sustainable morality to contribute to the sustainability of all individuals, it becomes very visible when an individual makes choices and takes actions that are detrimental to the social sustainability of other individuals, the community, or the larger society.
Fourth, the benefit of a sustainable morality will be of immense importance to guide all strategic planners in developing short term goals that demonstrably contribute to long term goals. Long term goals will be consistent overall for all social and global entities as they take social sustainability into account and validate the morality of those plans. Planners today have short term and long term goals, but these are almost totally oriented toward material maintenance and operation without consideration for the long term social sustainability of communities and societies. To guide the development of short term goals that make a social contribution toward sustainability, there must be a moral code that provides a guide for decision-making that is consistent with the long term vision of our species and socially sustainable societies.
Fifth, societies until now have not had a rational argument for dealing with individuals, social agencies, and global agencies who choose to work against the sustainability of individuals, communities, societies, and the national public. Having the Schematic for Social Sustainability Design and Validation, (page 31), will guide the development of laws and social policies that support social sustainability is essential to bring the decisions of tens of thousands of social agencies and thousands of global entities into complemental alignment.
Traditional Morality as “Bad Code” —
The word “morality” in the context of this book is defined simply as an integrated “code” for making consistent decisions. Think of it as a “social computer language” for solving social problems, similarly as computer code is used to solve mathematically based problems. The traditional morality of western civilization for the last 4,000 years is a form or morality that is “bad code” meaning that it may solve some problems but not others, and it may solve problems inconsistently depending upon who is using it. As you can imagine, because there are literally tens of thousands of social problems being handled in civil and criminal courts each week, there is little consistency for understanding “what is fair,” how to determine “social justice,” and “social equity,” or “the common good.” And, as we know too well, raging social, political, and economic controversies without understandable resolution continue unabated.
Evolving computer codes began before FLOW-MATIC invented by Grace Hopper, to COBOL, BASIC, Pascal, C, and contemporarily to SQL, Java, JavaScript, C#, and Python to name a few. Yet the “social computer language” of many billions of people has languished in its most archaic form for many centuries. To make a vast understatement, wouldn’t it be interesting if we could invent a new social computer language that could actually be written as computer code to help humans make moral decisions that inherently bring about the general good for everyone? What must occur first is to understand the “language of human motivation” the motivation that is indigenous to each and every Homo sapiens who has ever lived and all those who become the next generations on our planet.
Individuals who are interested in computer languages and solving complex social problems may find this a challenge, but a very beneficial one when they discover how easy it is to use. This morality provides a means for option-development, choice-making, decision-making, and action-implementation that supports material and social sustainability. Essentially it is a decision-making process that is consistent with the best attributes of our species and benefits social evolution.
Social decision-making logic tree. In the social context of a world that is changing rapidly, where predictability of the future is becoming less and less sure of what the next year and months bring to us, a timeless and universal code of decision-making that produces uniform, humane results is desperately needed. It is not beyond our imagination to conceive of a social decision-making code that uses a very simple “logic tree” to create decisions and promote peace and a socially sustainable future.
Moral cognitive dissonance. Because the values that have sustained our species were not identified until 2008, very few people can speak easily about them and the repercussions involved in using them. The socialization, enculturation, education, and training of all people of all western civilization have been based on an inconsistent system of values. Billions of people accept this inconsistent, incongruous set of rules of behavior as normal!
Cognitively, the morality of social sustainability is as similar to traditional morality as trigonometry is to basic arithmetic. …and you remember what a cognitive leap that took to get your mind around! The words are the same, but their new relationship usually causes a cognitive break in the thought processes of listeners and readers. The usual response is a blank stare by the listener, then “Huh?” and a gap in the conversation. What follows requires a much higher rationality of thought than the traditional knee-jerk moral responses of past centuries.
The historic, perennial failure of all organizations. Using the morality of social sustainability bears down upon decision-making. Decision-making in the 3rd millennium will become far different from the decision-making of all preceding millennia of human history. Why? Simply because there will be no organization, society, or nation that will survive without making far more effective and proactive decisions that lead organizations and societies to become self-sustaining, peaceful, stable, and eventually socially sustainable.
Historically, the moral code of western civilization has changed little over the last 4,000 years 8 from the time that Sumerian King Ur-Nammu of Ur (2112-2095 BC) wrote it. It was later adopted by Hammurabi and Moses, among others. It was written as a means of preserving and maintaining social stability and the functioning of society through a uniform standard of social conduct, i.e., a moral code.
This old moral code was designed as a personal morality within a small community. It was never codified as a social morality to guide the moral conduct of social processes, organizations, governments, or corporations. Neither was it intended as a global moral code for nations of the international community. The development of our traditional moral code was an incredible advancement in normalizing social relations based on the artificial values of what Ur-Nammu thought would work at the time. Because it was not based on the timeless, natural, and organic values that are innate to humans, it was not able to keep pace with the social evolution of people.
Invalid Assumptions. This moral code is punitively based. One of its assumptions has been that the punishment of immoral behavior would cause citizens to become moral in order to avoid the subsequent punishment(s). We know all too well from the history of four millennia that punishment is not an effective deterrent to immoral behavior.
Tragically, we have come to assume that punishment is a process that oxymoronically “rights wrongs” so that citizens and the general society believe everything is working fine. It is seen as a social mechanism, a “balance of justice” to keep social stability functioning. This fallacious assumption is at work when it requires an “eye for an eye.” 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 wrong with this moral code? Nothing really, as long as it is applied as an unevolved person-to-person morality. But when it is applied by a social agency (courts of law, juvenile, divorce, and custody litigation for example) its performance comes up short. What is missing is an evolved morality that empowers social agencies as the courts to determine the sustaining needs of litigants and of society.
Historical Corrections. Perhaps the greatest fallacious assumption of the traditional moral code is that it corrects the behavior of the wrongdoer, a very familiar theory of “modern” criminal corrections. When we look more closely at its “corrective” function, we soon realize that it proposes the ludicrous notion of correcting the faults of the past. Because punishment occurs after the fact of the immoral behavior, it is truly 100% ineffective. Further, Ur-Nammu’s moral code does nothing to improve our societies. It simply punishes the wrongdoer with the victim, family, community, and the public no better for the wrongdoer’s punishment. Said another way, the incarceration of a murderer does not bring about an improvement in the social sustainability of the community from which he or she came.
Reactive, Not Proactive. The traditional moral code provides only a moral accounting of righting wrongs, never urging citizens to aspire to higher moral standards of living, or to add to the quality of their life, or the lives of others by the decisions they make. The old morality provides no incentive for proactive good behavior, other than to avoid getting caught.
Because the traditional moral code has not been proactive to work toward social sustainability, after centuries of its use we have begun to see the moral and social disintegration of whole communities in our larger cities due to drug use, violence, property crimes, and sexual, physical, emotional, mental, and social abuse of infants, children, and the elderly. Social status and economic elevation have not exempted members from family abuses, community delinquency by adults or fiscal malfeasance by executives with their victims numbering in the tens of thousands.
It seems obvious, at least to me, that the moral decay in this nation is becoming endemic, with social decay and disintegration having the appearance of permanency, and incapable of remediation — social healing. The old paradigm of morality is not capable of serving a higher standard of social conduct. You don’t need to be a historian or futurist to discern that if we continue doing what we are doing, we will see this decay as an early stage of the decline, collapse, and disappearance of national societies.
Evolving Morality —
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. Consider these references:
- Good people proceed while considering that what is best for others is best for themselves. (Hitopadesa, Hinduism)
- You shall regard your neighbor as yourself. (Leviticus 19:18, Judaism)
- All things that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. (Matthew 7:12, Christianity)
- Hurt not others with that which pains yourself. (Udanavarga 5:18, Buddhism)
- What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others. (Analects 15:23, Confucianism)
- No one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself. (Traditions, Islam)
The Golden Rule describes a positive morality for personal behavior as it contributes to another individual with the hope that it would provide an example, a model of social behavior to the other person. It is a wonderful tenet of a personal morality for one-to-one behavior. It shows us that morality can evolve, and must evolve to match the growing moral needs of evolving societies and cultures.
“Pay It Forward,” Not “Payback” has much to say about the social and moral evolution of our species. First, it provides the most recent proof that morality can and does evolve and can become proactive. Second, it offers a proof that human consciousness is evolving to accept the holism of humanity. Third, it 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. Fourth, it 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.
“Pay It Forward” is the example of a magnificent evolutionary step of a personal morality that can be adopted by social entities as a community, school, and organizations, for example; and, could be adopted by global entities as nations and an association of nations to voluntarily do good to another without any expectation of a return for their effort. Further, compared to the moral code of Ur-Nammu, “Pay It Forward” offers hope to individuals and societies that the whole of our global society can and will have the capability to bring a better world into existence.
Yet, “Pay It Forward” is dependent upon the initiative of individuals to proactively decide to do good to others. The next evolutionary step of this wonderful moral social action would be to see it as part of a proactive morality and build it into the enculturation that takes place during the earliest years of everyone’s childhood. Then millions of decisions would be made every hour worldwide that would “Pay It Forward.”
Anticipating an inherently proactive morality. With that hope also comes the anticipation of a morality that offers a holism to all of human behavior — one that draws individuals, families, communities, national societies and our global civilization into a socially sustainable future. To do that it must be applicable to the billions of daily decisions made by billions of citizens. Only a proactive morality as that is capable to creating endemic positive social and cultural change, a first stage of social evolution and sustainable peace.