In these dispiriting times where observable personal interest overrides aspirational considerations of responsibility and humanistic empathy, we have elected to reprise our views on the metaphysical source of interpersonal virtue and plain old goodness. We find ourselves besieged with news and observed experiences of self-interest, and lack of personal empathy for the feelings and well-being of others; notably exemplified by the media’s quotidian demonstration of the disgraceful behavior of our political representatives.
The metaphysical origins and lifelong curation of humanistically moral behavior are tied to our life experience and our accumulated development of a self-image. It has been our understanding that one’s self-image, ultimately, is the resultant product of our societal interactions and accumulated reactions to our perception of, and by others. The nuanced self-image, so developed, is our referential guide to our behavior.
Sophomorically construed, ineffective programs of rewards and punishment programs are haplessly practiced in raising children and, at relevant times, in a futile attempt to encourage perceived moral rectitude in contemporaries. As will be further elucidated below, positive moral choices, to be meaningful, must, appropriately be founded upon an intrinsic, inner direction. Actions motivated by reward, or refrained from, for fear of punishment, whether earthly or “heavenly,” can be morally evaluated as behavioral quid-pro-quo; performed with a self-interested motivation; and, accordingly, not qualified to be seen as performed on moral principle. Moral action based upon anticipated reward is tactical, not morally mandated; antisocial acts, refrained from execution, solely in fear of punishment, are self-interested and prudent, but not based upon moral principle. Only inner-directed moral choices merit valid humanistic kudos. We will elucidate by a previously written, hypothetical example.
If I were foolish and selfish enough, in a rare moment of confused intention, to steal the reader’s wallet; then, the following day, ruefully return the wallet with apologies such as “Please forgive me, I do not know what possessed me, I may be the recipient of your charitable response, “Dont worry, we will forget all about it.” However, I am not able to recollectively forget it. thinking, analytically, “What kind of person am I, to have stolen the wallet in the first place?” The valid source and appropriate dynamics of our sense of morality are our developed and referable self-image and not the consideration of external consequences.
It is our confident declaration that the plethora of exhibited miscreant behavior on the part of individuals, notably, those in politics, is based on the insalubrious absence of a maturely developed, humanistic self-image. It is only, (if ever,) that Mankind universally develops such a referable moral self-image, that he will be enabled to eschew repugnant inclinations and behavior, such as are daily demonstrated, by the Trump-MAGA adherents.
=p.
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