There are generally two elements to consider. What is the right thing to do and how do you develop the emotional control to do the right thing? I shall be focussing here on the first part of this question.
Unless you are comfortably sitting in a government committee meeting deciding whether to use military intervention, you are most likely to need a decision made on your use of violence in less time than it takes to blink. This is why you need, not only, a general principal to work with, but also to have considered a number of scenarios in advance, so that your application of your general principal can be considered. If you consider a scenario imaginatively enough, with your response worked through, it becomes part of your memories and experiences. This enables you to act fast in the future if a similar situation arises.
The result of not doing this can leave you worrying after an event whether your actions were right. You may suffer guilt that you should have done something, or that you shouldn’t. Worse, indecision at the time could render you unable to act at all, frozen in what is sometimes call analysis paralysis.
If you don’t have some mastery over your emotions, your moral choice could be irrelevant as you either freeze in fear, or become too violent from anger.
By the way, in case you weren’t familiar with the terms, Ethics is the study of principal and theory about right and wrong, while Morality relates to the practical behaviour based on such theory. However, the terms are often used synonymously.
While I don’t want to write a book on ethical theory, some consideration of how you should behave is relevant here. If all you learn from training in Kung Fu is how to fight, we might as well have just sold you a gun. A real master makes those around feel safer for his/her presence.
Every increase in power must be accompanied by a proportionate increase in integrity.
Let us consider how you might arrive at an ethical system. Bear in mind that most people have several ethical systems running simultaneously and this can be fine unless the systems offer different outcomes and then you have yourself a moral dilemma. It is likely that you make some moral decisions based on traditional religious views that are so culturally ingrained that you have not considered where they came from. You may continue to hold these morals even though you don’t believe in the religion yourself. Such views are very resistant to change as they form part of the very structure of the universe for us and make us very uncomfortable to even consider questioning them.
Let me summarise most ethical theories for you. As you enact a moral choice you are likely to be considering either the past or the future. You may be referring to a rule laid down in the past, or considering the outcome in the future.
A Deontological Ethical system (deon meaning duty) is code based. You could have been given a set of commandments or rules. These are usually hierarchical or put in an order of preference to avoid contradictions, for example if telling the truth will get an innocent person killed, then it might be morally right to lie. Action is therefore predetermined as moral or immoral. This way of thinking takes away the anxiety of making a decision as, for most situations, the decision is already made and is set out in a rule.
A Teleological Ethical system (teleos meaning goal) looks to the likely consequences of your actions to determine if they are right or wrong. When you get to the event you make the decision based on your best guess. And there is the problem; you cannot foresee all outcomes. These systems vary, mainly, by the criteria by which you are judging the outcome. For example, are you aiming to do the thing that produces the most loving consequence, the most happiness, contentment, prosperity or converts to a religion? A more sophisticated version of this asks, what would be the consequences if my considered action were universalised, i.e. would I want to live in a world where everyone did what I’m about to do? The simple, and almost universal, version of this is simply to ask, would I like this done to me, or if you find it hurtful, don’t do it to other or treat others as you’d like to be treated. This is asking you to consider the outcome and to prioritise other’s feelings as equal to your own. This gives us a sliding scale of personal responsibility from an injunction to do no harm, through, do good when presented with the opportunity, all the way to deliberately look for opportunity to do as much good as you can.
Most law has to work on the basis of pre-decided rules, even if the rule is intended to produce a particular outcome.
Most of us, most of the time, use a combination of such systems. We might use a written code to choose a desired outcome even if we can’t follow the letter of the law, but what we might consider to be the spirit of the law.
A major problem is caused by people using a law intended for good to cause harm. Also, people get very upset when they intend to cause one consequence but the actual outcome is quite different or even the opposite.
If you are a professional in a legal system, one of the biggest headaches you will encounter is determining people’s intention. You could forgive a poorly considered act if the person’s intended outcome was sound, or at the very least their intention might be considered in mitigation. But I am not writing about legal systems here.
In this, I am aiming to help you develop your own moral compass rather than suggest a system to judge all moral choices of all people. I want you to be able to evaluate your own moral choices and be comfortable with them, both before and after you act. This will help you avoid prolonged hesitation or guilt and self-recriminations.
You are not a computer with perfect knowledge of everyone’s intentions, or of every potential future outcome. This makes ethics much more like an art than a science. But all arts require practice and can be done with more or less skill.
It seems self-evident to me that you should judge yourself by your intentions, you know your own intentions even when you don’t know another’s. While it is natural to consider your own interests and those of your loved one’s as priorities, don’t let those interests be at the expense of others. Give all people equal consideration. Remember the ‘all people’ includes you. If you can do no more, at least do no harm. Remember that doing deliberate good or deliberate bad for or to others will ultimately benefit or injure you, affecting your psychological development in a way that will determine whether you have any joy and contentment in life. If, to protect some from the deliberate actions of others, you have to harm those others, do the least harm, but remember that your actions in doing so are the consequences of their choices and intentions. These are axioms, meaning I can’t and don’t intend to prove their validity. However, I think you will find that if you try to construct arguments against them, you will find that you feel uncomfortable in the effort and have to question yourself as to why you would even want to.
One of the greatest difficulties in developing your own moral compass will be in finding that you are out of step with your own culture. “When they see you dancing to music they can’t hear, they will think you mad.” It can take more courage and strength to be go against the cultural flow than merely doing what you think is right. We are herd animals and crave, at a very deep level, the sense of fitting in and being accepted by our tribe.
A word about pacifism. As a high principle, being a pacifist always sounds very altruistic; the idea that even in the face of personal attack one would offer no violent response. I’ve even heard martial artists say that they would only use defensive techniques. Strategically that doesn’t work. If you only blocked incoming blows, all you do is postpone your defeat. If you want to win or more importantly, not loose, you will have to use an attacking technique. If you want to inflict the minimum harm and you have the necessary skill, you can deliver a strike that will render your attacker unconscious or temporarily unable to continue. Trust me, that takes a lot more skill than simply disabling or killing your opponent. Hence, the more altruistic you want to be, the more passive you want to be, the more skilful you need to be.
The other problem with being totally passive is that evil prospers when good men stand by and do nothing. Should you intervene to stop another being hurt or killed? If you do nothing to stop evil, when you are able to, you might be reasonably considered a collaborator; perhaps not as guilty as the perpetrator, but certainly partially responsible. Protecting yourself is Self-Defence. Protecting others is to be a true Warrior.
I mentioned earlier that you can visualise scenarios so clearly that they become an experience in their own right. If you watch the news, read novels, listen to stories etc, you will find that there are many opportunities to consider scenarios where you have the chance to consider how you should and would respond. Practice the thought process for every situation that you hear about and aim to reach clarity as to your own intentions in any situation.
What is often the harder aspect of acting morally is not the theoretical response that you think you would like to have, but the very practical response of your emotions. Anger can cause you to react with too much violence, fear can cause you to freeze.
Both anger and fear are reasonable, rational and all too human reactions to many situations. Over the weeks and months of this program, we will look at how you can learn to control and focus your emotional reactions in a way that will enable you to respond in a way of your choice, not entirely dictated by your physical emotional reaction.
