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folktale. |
In
the Presence of Mystery By Michael Horace Barnes Selection from a chapter on morality Some argue that the most basic value any morality should serve is human well-being. But this leads to the question of how anyone can know what is really the most basic value. A way to approach this is to ask about the motivation behind it. Discovering the motivation for accepting human well-being as the most basic value, in fact, can shed light on the nature of morality in general. It is possible to affirm that human well-being is the most basic value on the grounds that God or society or neighbors will reward the person who affirms this and punish the person who denies it. In that case it is a taboo morality motivation at work. Or a person could support human well-being only because that is one of the commandments of the group to which a person belongs and is loyal. This is allegiance morality motivation. A universal laws morality is built on a kind of conformity also, but in this case to the supposedly objective and universally valid laws of the universe. A person can achieve a sense of true and valuable identity by making one's own character conform to this universal set of laws. Evidently there can be more than on motivation for upholding the basic value of human well-being. There is one more motivation that may in fact be the strongest one at work in a true basic value morality. That is a sense of sympathetic compassion for others. There is a kind of compassion for others that exists in most people from a very early age. A child sees a puppy hurt and cries with it, imagining the puppy's hurt as its own. This compassion is not very deep. The same child may torture a bird out of curiosity. An adolescent has a compassion for some people that is sometimes intense: a friend or classmate in trouble, a person's suffering reported on the evening news or described in a work of fiction. This compassion is also often limited, though; not all people will be able to earn the adolescent's sympathy. The adolescent is equally likely to issue strident condemnations of those whose motivation seems foreign or hypocritical or inadequate. Most adults also have some inclination to shallowness or restriction of compassion for others. Basic value morality usually represents a fuller compassion, one grounded in a sense that we are all human together. We are all confused, limited, frustrated; have hopes and dreams, needs and aspirations; look for love and are lonely. We all search for happiness and learn to accept less than what we can imagine. The person next to us is like that too. As we become increasingly sensitive to the humanness we share, we can begin to feel a personal pain from other people's pain and a personal happiness from other people's happiness. Every person, no matter how much a criminal or a sinner, no matter how boring, obnoxious, disappointing or weird, is you and me; partly who we really are, partly who we easily might have been. We all hurt in various ways. We all need the same understanding and acceptance. |