Designing the Link Between Conduct and Morals
A Guest Post by Michael Hartoonian
Introduction
Have you ever wondered why some people are simply nice to be around? They are also good for business and for all the institutions in which they live, work and play. Have you ever noticed their connections with happiness, manners (etiquette) and wisdom? Addressing these questions demand engaging the arts, as understanding this behavior is only possible through metaphor.
To begin, individuals who know how to “dance” are likely to be in this group of nice to be around because they understand that the dance respects history, traditions, contemporary rhythms and exhibits an innate aesthetic, manifested in an exquisite balance. The ancients used dance to chronicle culture and to tell the next generation what was expected of them. The dance provided an identity and the practical knowledge to survive. These performances were not unlike the honeybee’s “dance” that communicate the information needed to keep the hive prosperous. The dance, like theater and other forms of art, reveals through performance the meaning, truth and relational balances needed to sustain and enhance harmonious culture.
Design as Performance
Emerson’s words give us a good starting point for understanding performance: “I can’t hear a word you’re saying because who you are is speaking too loudly.” In other words, your performance is out of balance. Your principles and practices are out of sync. Something more is needed. That something more is the understanding that nature is dynamic – in constant motion – and without accounting for speed or change, you have no graceful flow. You stumble, turning opportunity into embarrassment or worse. What knowledge is necessary here and what attending conduct? How does one establish and retain balance in civil and civic relationships?
Balance, Design and the Triad
Design is the key to achieving balance and it starts in the triad. There are several interesting triad designs that can illuminate the relationships between acts or performances and transcendent ideas upon with actions are based. Here are some important, three-part harmonies. Consider the integer triples which satisfy the Pythagorean equation, C2=A2 + B2. The most well-known examples are (3,4,5) and (5,12,13). Then, there is the debate of the trinity of God.
“In Buddhism, the trinity of body, speech and mind are known as the three gates, three receptacles or three vajras and correspond to the western religious concept of righteous thought (mind), word (speech) and deed (body/hand). Islam considers the concept of any “plurality” within God to be a denial of monotheism and foreign to the revelation found in Muslim scripture.” Rich Wilkinson, author of Creation: Theory and Theology, notes that: “Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Church of Jesus Christ of LDS, Iglesia Ni Cristo, Christadelphians, Christian Scientists. Also, Unitarians believe that the Father is the sole deity and the Savior was not God. Virtually all other Christian believe in a trinity.”
While interesting to think about religion and mathematics in this context, the more important wisdom comes from nature and the triads of classical Greece and the 8th century, during and after the reign of Charlemagne, king of the Franks and Emperor of Christendom. It is not without reason to draw the connections between Athens and the conceptions of the world of early Christianity. While much maligned as simply pagans by St. Augustine and other early Christians, the ideas of Plato and Aristotle played a large role in conceptualizing the transcendent trinity. Plato’s notion of the nature of human nature was based on his understanding of natural law, meaning the essence of “man” was to be found in reason, passion and Volition (will). To Plato, this was simply the soul of a human being. This is a wonderful design of the soul and the inherent tensions among the three points that define the soul.
There is another element of human nature that is based on natural biomechanics – walking or running. Walking could be defined as a dynamic series of falling and reestablishing balance with each step. Here, because of movement and speed, balance is in the triad. The balance is achieved by the plain established by three points: (1) the point of the stationary or planted foot; (2) the point from which the moving foot just left; and (3) the point that the moving foot will land. This three-point balance is a wonder of physics, as it provides stability on an uneven surface because the natural design of a human in the act of walking always puts the three contact points in the same geometric plane. The primary rule of a mountain climber is to always have three points of contact with the mountain.
Is there a natural design among the three elements of the knowledge of etiquette, the wisdom of morality and the conduct necessary for a civil society?
A Design of Human Conduct
This design presents the disciplined relationships of people who (all) live at the intersection of nature and culture (human-made environments). This human/environmental interaction defines needs, which are satisfied through the construction and evolution of institutions, all of which serve to meet the needs created by specific cultures and special earth locations. Need is a function of culture, plus nature, N=f (C+N). For example, political institutions are constructed to meet the need of keeping order and to allocate power, resources and values. But depending on the culture, its history and the location of a particular society, the governmental structures will look quite different, one from the other, because the needs will be different. The same would be true for economic institutions or religious and education ones. They address needs specific to the culture in question. It should also be clear that institutions within the same culture complement each other at times, while at other times, conflict with one another. If they are perceived as not fulfilling human needs, particularly needs of intimacy, economic well-being and identity, they will be forced to change or vanish.
All institutions operate within dominant economic complexes. These are overlapping sequences of economic settings, dominated by hunters and gatherers or farmers or industrial employees, knowledge workers and so forth. The dominant economic complex is directly tied to the nature of the culture/environmental interactions and the resulting institutions. However, institutions that hope to shape democratic values must develop and sustain environments where people can achieve ethical conduct and interinstitutional moral relationships. This is the definition of sustainability. As much as most people want these settings or traditions to remain in place, they are always challenged by individual ignorance and social laziness, by new inventions, by invasions, by changes in climate or disease horizons or different ideas that find their way into culture. These changes, in turn, cause complications that change the very nature of civil society which, in turn, change the culture, the environment, the needs of people and thus, the institutions, leading to new changes in (the dominant) economic activities. What must continue, however, is a dynamic consistency to understand and preform the moral dance, without which civility, citizen, city and civilization atrophy.
This is a model that suggests how people (through time and place) have addressed their needs. First, they construct institutions and then reshape those institutions as changes seem to dictate – struggling to hold onto what they have, while at the same time, responding to what we believe will happen in the future. As a species, we have and always will deal with questions of meaning, beauty, ethics, health, death, power, justice, sustainability and growth, always trying to decide what of the culture to keep, what to throw away and what to build anew. There are attending moral questions of the design, pictured below. These are questions that community and members of institutions must address with honesty, mutual trust and reciprocal duty. Without these three values, the culture forfeits its future.
1. How should we interact with our environments?
a. Why/what do people name elements in nature?
b. How do people use the natural resources around them?
c. How/why do people create communities (inhabitable places)?
d. How/why do people continue to construct new knowledge about the natural world?
2. Question 2 is where culture begins – How should we rear our children?
a. What are the relationships between parent and child?
b. What role(s) do children play in the home?
c. What responsibility do children have for their learning (education)?
d. How long are they intentionally taught?
e. What do they study?
f. What kinds of work and play do children do?
g. What role does the environment play in the worldview of children?
3. What kind of work do men and women do?
a. How/should the work of women differ from the work of men?
b. Who makes the decisions about social, economic and political questions/issues?
c. How does science and technology define work and changing work roles?
4. How/why do we worship?
a. Do people attend group or formal worship functions?
b. In what do people believe?
c. How do people find meaning in worship and life?
d. What are the differences between religion and spirituality?
5. How do people bring beauty to their lives? The place of art in the human experience is fundamental. Once you address aesthetics, everything else seems to function and quite well. In a 2017 book by Rick Rubin, The Creative Act, he argues that creativity and the production and conduct of art is not a rare ability, but a human condition available and necessary to all of us. Harvesting this magical data, as Mr. Rubin calls it, can be a blissful process.
a. Why/how do people create art?
b. How do people use art in their daily lives?
c. What is the relationship between cultural identity and art?
d. How do people understand the differences between technique and artistry?
6. How should we communicate with one another and our culture?
a. How do people use symbols in their communications?
b. What are the different ways in which people speak to one another?
c. What role does architecture, mathematics, music, art and literature play in communicating cultural aesthetics?
d. Why/how do people create meaning in their lives?
e. What role does language play in the structure of the ethical community and in the creation of meaning?
f. How can formal subject fields like science, social studies, mathematics, etc. aid, as well as hinder, communications and understanding?
7. How should we provide for social order, peace and justice in all people’s lives? a. How does geographic location influence how people construct their communities and their understanding of responsibility?
b. What systems of government do people need to practice enjoying a measure of freedom and prosperity?
c. What role should people play in rulemaking and rule-judging?
d. How can/do people change their government and for what reasons?
8. How should we deal with time?
a. Do all people believe in a past and future? How can we tell (know)?
b. What terms/units of measurement do people use to describe time?
c. Are older people seen as wise because they have experienced more time than younger persons? Why? Why not?
d. Why is a sense of the past useful to define self and society?
e. Should a sense of time be related to the natural world? For what reasons?
f. How should/can people understand future time?
9. How should we organize ourselves to provide basic needs and wants?
a. How are goods and services produced?
b. What kinds of markets do people create and use?
c. What kind(s) of money (exchange) do people use?
d. Why should people create and maintain economic justice?
e. How does/should technology alter the ways in which people live?
f. How does/should technology (tools) change the ways people use human capital?
g. How does technology change the ways people see the world?
h. How is technology related to science, religion, philosophy and wealth?
i. Why is the economy a moral enterprise?
10. How do people care for one another?
a. How do people deal with illness?
b. How do people deal with and understand death?
c. How do people celebrate (special) events, people and ideals?
d. How/why do people construct systems of laws and ethical principles by which to live?
e. How do people/groups demonstrate reverence to each other?
f. How do people/groups resolve conflict?
These questions are, first and foremost, questions of morality and attending conduct. Therefore, any designed system, framework or model that involves people and the environment must establish an ethical and moral DNA within said design, based on relationships of honesty, trust and reciprocal duty. Without these three modes of conduct, there is no civil or meaningful future.
Can Morality Be Designed?
This is not a question about making soup or building a home, although it’s similar because people and the environment are involved, but it’s also quite different. To understand the difference, we must engage the majestic magic of the metaphor. Here, the dance will do nicely. The dance is designed from notions of step, rhythm, balance and harmony. When learning how to dance, each element is broken down and the novice practices and practices until each technique is learned. It’s habit-forming or what we call muscle memory. However, this is not the dance. The dance appears when technique morphs into artistry. To put it in terms of simile and metaphor – we might say that life is like a dance (simile). Metaphorically, life is a dance.
In a similar way, moral design is the evolution from technique to artistry, muscle memory to moral conduct. How can this happen? We do it through practice. We practice the elements of manners and etiquette. Its starts with “please” and “thank you” and “I’m sorry.” And it starts early in life. The temple of morality can only be entered through the courtyard of manners. The etymology of moral begins with manners (from the book of Job; from Cicero; “proper behavior;” from the Latin “mos” meaning “custom;” from Confucius; “Tao” meaning “moral force” or “Tien” (heaven). Perhaps Norman Maclean said it as well as any “… all good things… come by grace; and grace comes by art; and art does not come easy.”
Now, some might be quick to say that manners and morality are culture specific. One can have manners without being a moral person. History has many examples of this contradiction. But I contend that this belief/behavior is simply an arrogant way to say that you or any person is too important to act properly and too lazy to teach children the grace of living in cultural harmony. When it comes to morals, the child is, indeed, the father of the mam. This is the case regardless of cultural context. Within a family, tribe, company or community, relationships are a prerequisite. And those relationships must be imbued with morality or harmonious relationships decay.
A Working Design
We might deduce from the discussion above that sequences in life are sufficient to turn children with manners into moral people. This assumption would be incomplete and insufficient. Causality here is not linear. It is a function or correlative view of causality. The function view may be represented thusly, x = yz or y = x/z or z = x/y (where X = honesty; Y = mutual trust; Z = reciprocal duty). One element must be defined and acted upon in concert with all other elements in the triad.
This notion is not unlike the trilogy advanced by Plato regarding the concept of justice. In the dialogue between Meno and Socrates (e.g., Jowett, 1937), Socrates defines justice in terms of temperance and courage. He asserts that an understanding of justice is possible only within the context of temperance and courage; that to be just is to be courageous and temperate; that to be courageous is to be just and temperate; and so on. The defining qualities of one value are held within the other values. This notion of defining one value in terms of other values holds for the qualities of moral relationships, as well as for the elements developed within the discipline of philosophy (see any edition of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Plato’s Republic and their other works). If we address the three values of honesty, trust and reciprocal duty as an inclusive set that defines the necessary attributes of moral relationships, we can better understand, create and sustain harmonious relationships.
All people tacitly and naturally know this, but hubris and ignorance often and always destroy meaning, love and of course morality. Another thing that people naturally know is that personal happiness, within the context of morality, is a contradiction in terms. Human happiness, that is, public happiness, is only possible within the inclusive design of the value triad of truth, trust and duty. These three points of contact are necessary to perform the moral dance.
The Design in Action
How is the design of the moral triad made operational? The beginning of an answer to this question is to understand that every culture, every city, every family and every company is a school. If this is not clear, nothing wonderful will happen. We are educated every time we walk down the street; every time we dine with family or friends; every time we make a business transaction; every time we are used by social media; every time we speak or listen to each other; every time we drive a car or fly an aircraft; every time we celebrate the achievement of others; and every time we love. This is where and how we learn to be a moral actor. It’s simply and profoundly the education we receive. We pretty much get what we learn (forgive the pun), either trash or treasure. Trash comes without effort or thinking, while treasure evolves from intentional work. Not “What is my job?,” but “What is my life’s work?”
If I’m correct in my assertion about the “school,” what should constitute the curriculum? What is the knowledge of most worth that should be taught by the city, the family, the company, the media and so forth? Well, we could just say truth, trust and duty should be taught. That should be the content for every lesson, of every institution and the larger culture. And the question of every instructional design is “How is the triad of truth, trust and duty taught?”
First, the dynamic triad is foundational to the teacher and learner. From learning and preforming music, art and history, to learning and preforming science, mathematics and economics, every story, lesson and performance must engage truth, trust and community and individual duty to content and persons. Secondly, being a moral actor demands a moral context. Like learning to be a democratic citizen, it can only happen within a democratic setting. Morality, like citizenship, is a contextual enlightenment and like morality, it cannot happen – it can never happen – individually. The individual alone can never be moral. In classical languages, the individual acting alone was known as an idiot.
This idiocy the moral capitalist understands and develops the company into a learning institution, where individualism is developed withing the team, using the triad of the moral design. Within this understanding, wealth (excellence and worth) is created simply as a by-product of the moral design.
Michael Hartoonian is Associate Editor of Pegasus, the newsletter of the Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism.