North Carolina Society for Ethical Culture
Standing at a Moral Crossroads Reflections on Moral Authority and Ethical Culture
Presented by Randy Best, President, North Carolina Society for Ethical CultureA platform talk on May 13, 2001
Some of my sources for today’s talk are:
The Religion of Duty by Felix Adler published in 1905
The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ethical Movement published in 1926
The Art of Happiness by the Dali Lama published in 1998 and
Why Christianity Must Change or Die by John Shelby Spong
For musical inspiration framing the opening and closing of my talk today I have chosen two songs from Laurie Anderson’s album Strange Angels which came out in 1998.
Laurie Anderson is a musician and performance artist. I first heard her work when I lived in New York. One of my most memorable concert experiences was her four-hour United States concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
I like to use music as part of my talks because music is poetry and these songs speak to me. I hope that they speak to you too.
Strange Angels by Laurie Anderson .As Laurie Anderson said:
Old stories – They’re haunting me
Big changes are coming
Here they come
Here they come
I believe that we are in a time of technological and cultural change.
Today I feel that our culture stands at a moral crossroads and must make a choice about which way to go.
Old stories haunt our society. Many people are finding that the old stories do not fit today’s problems. As John Shelby Spong says:
One cannot speak cogently to the ethical concerns of this generation by quoting two-thousand-to-four-thousand-year old authorities who claim to represent God’s final word on these subjects.
Where do my morals and ethics come from if I do not accept the Devine revelation of the old stories? Here are my thoughts…
I look inside of myself, down into the depths of my humanity.
I look deep inside and I ask myself:
What do I truly value?
What inspires me?
What brings me happiness?
What connects me to others,
…to nature,
….to the environment?
What enhances my life and spirit?
What is beautiful and good?
What makes me who I am?
This inward exercise produces an ethics based on the experience of human-ness, on connections with others and experience of the world.
When the Dali Lama looked inward he found an ethic based on happiness and compassion. He wrote:
In generating compassion, you start by recognizing that you do not want suffering and that you have a right to have happiness. This can be verified or validated by your own experience. You then recognize that other people, just like yourself, also do not want to suffer and that they have the right to have happiness. So this becomes the basis of your beginning to generate compassion.
We begin, then, with the basic premise that the purpose of our life is to seek happiness. It is a vision of happiness as a real objective, one that we can take positive steps toward achieving. And as we begin to identify factors that lead to a happier life, we will learn how the search for happiness offers benefits not only for the individual but for the individual’s family and for society at large as well.
The Dali Lama touches on how an internal ethical search grows outward and extends to relations with others.
This ethics that comes from within is personal – freely chosen, based on one’s own search for happiness, extending outward to caring for others and promoting the common good. Such an ethical system cannot be developed in isolation. We each engage in relationships that sustain us: relationships with family, with local communities, and with the global community… relationships with nature and with the earth.
These relationships are critical to developing ethics. An internal ethics is without meaning unless it is acted upon in connection with others. It is in this interaction with others that ethics are tested, challenged, and improved. It is through this process of social interchange that moral progress is possible.
John Spong wrote on how a type of ethical objectivity could emerge from this process.
He suggested that there is an objective wrong-ness to seeking to cause or increase the pain in another life. This wrong-ness serves to balance our exercise of individual freedom.
Other objective ethical values identified by Spong are the values of increasing knowledge and the wrong-ness of continuing to defend or to act on the basis of one’s ignorance.
He found value in wisdom.
Ethical Culture is one of the communities that sustains me. It provides me with a safe place where I can test my ethical ideas and benefit from the insights of others. It affords me opportunities to act on my ethical values in service to others.
I can express my ideas and ponder the ideas of others in our discussion groups.
I can have my attitudes challenged by another member’s talk as I did last October while listening to Tova Wax’s talk on "The Disability Ethos: Inclusion or Integration?"
I can explore values with children in the ethics school and learn as much as I teach.
I can listen and learn as Chris Kaman shares his insights on Buddhism.
I can rise to Kate Lovelady’s challenge to act on our values by helping others in our community.
I can join in community Thanksgiving by making Stone Soup and celebrate the winter solstice with story, music and song.
I have developed, tested and nurtured my ethical values in this community. And I thank each of you for your contributions to developing my better self.
Felix Adler identified the social nature of morality in his book The Religion of Duty.
Adler’s morality was not individualistic, but democratic – the product of diverse voices creating a moral ideal that transcends the contributions of each of its members. He wrote:
The moral ideal is a social ideal. It includes types of excellence that we cannot think of as existing together in the same person; the excellence of man and woman, of the aged and of the young, the special types of moral excellence that are particular to the different vocations. It can be represented only by a vast and differentiated society. The sum of moral excellence requires contributions from all traditions.
Another central concept of Felix Adler’s is that of human worth.
Every person has inherent worth and is unique. We affirm the dignity and worth of all human beings, however different their abilities and backgrounds. Worth is independent of the idea of value. Value is dependent on the contribution a person makes to society while worth exists independent of one’s contribution. From the idea of universal human worth flows the right of every person to food, shelter, clothing, health, safety, education, work, play, respect, and affection. Every person is unique and different, and the development of each person is related to nurturing their distinct qualities and talents.
This is how ethical values are developed from within each individual and woven together with the ethics of others into a moral society.
Armed with this model of internal development of personal ethical guidance I again approach today’s moral crossroads.
At the crossroads I see some who choose to look backwards and embrace an authoritarian ethics based on devine revelation.
To one side I see an ethic based on self-interest, corporate greed, and selfish indifference to those less fortunate.
On the other side I see rampant consumerism advocating that we use up more and more while the rest of the world goes without. I see the adulation of celebrity replacing the adulation of high ideals. If we follow this path the highest that we aspire for is our 15 minutes of fame on Who Wants to be a Millionaire or Sally Jessie Raphael.
The path I choose is one that moves toward a consciously evolving morality, with an ethics based on human experience, on deep human values and aspirations. A life-affirming ethics of human potential, with reverence for life, nature, and the earth.
For me, Ethical Culture is continuously engaged in defining this morality: reflecting on society as we find it, drawing insight from those who work in the many disciplines, envisioning a better society, and working to achieve it.
This was eloquently stated by William Salter, who founded the Chicago Ethical Society in 1883:
We assert the independence of morality. We do not rest on dogma, because there is something in us closer and more constitutional than dogma; we do not rest on history, because we believe that within us lie the springs of history, and that history’s greatest movements started from no inspiration that we cannot draw on equally well today. The modern world talks of progress: we believe in moral progress, that the ideas of righteousness are not stationary, but capable of endless expansion; that there can be no final statement of ethics; that we may get scruples in the future that we have no thought of now.
The evolving religion was also espoused by S. Burns Weston who founded the Philadelphia Ethical Society in 1885:
What the world needs today is a religion that is able to direct and inspire and uplift us. Such a religion will gradually create for itself new forms of expression and build up new institutions – not for the sake of glorifying supposed supernatural personalities, but in order to do the best work for humanity. The religion of the future must be of and for humanity.
I agree with Harold Dean when he said:
I believe in a creative power at work in the universe. In the mystery and wonder of life. In the redemptive power of love. In the increase of knowledge through the use of reason. In the honoring of those who fought for new ideas. In the possibility of a better world. In respect for my own thoughts. In taking responsibility for my own actions and in reverence for all that is good and true and beautiful.
Harry Snell, the President of the British Ethical Union, echoed these sentiments in a poem:
What we believe in waits latent forever,
through all the continents,
Invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light,
is positive and composed, knows no discouragement,
Waiting, patiently, waiting its time
Its time is now.
I chose to embrace a vision of myself that extends to the greater human family.
I must reflect, discuss and make choices. I must decide how to live an ethical life.
What do I know for sure? I know that to be able to do anything I must believe that I can trust my senses and learn from experience.. I know that human experience comes in many flavors: life observations, scientific explorations, psychological delving, artistic ramblings, emotional reactions… and even, or perhaps, especially, our mistakes. I know that it is from these human experiences that all of us form our intertwined models of reality.
What I know for sure is that it is up to us to solve our problems.
It is up to us to improve the human condition.
We stand at a Moral Crossroads
I urge us all to challenge those who are imposing their authoritative dogmas on others.
The Taliban in Afghanistan.
Our own religious right.
Our President’s "Faith-based Initiative".
Counter these views with a positive humanistic moral vision.
Speak up and pose this alternative ethical perspective at every opportunity.
I ask you today to help me create our common ethical vision. Engage in the dialog of inquiry, review and action supporting our common evolving ethical vision.
It is our duty to ourselves and to the future.
To close I will now play Ramon by Laurie Anderson.
Please listen and reflect on what I have said today.
Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak with you.
