Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

The Value of an Institution is the Heartbeat of the People

Don’t look for morality in a State. A state isn't alive. Only people have a sense of morality and it isn't hard wired into the DNA. Morality is a sliding scale, a slippery slope and people see it in different terms depending on the conditions of their lives. It is something we have to keep reminding ourselves about until it becomes a habit. It is a sense of righteousness that finds a level among men and becomes what it is. Mankind is inclined toward good and each of us as individuals uses it as best we can to regulate and give direction to our lives. Humanity has survived because it learned to network. The human brain is too small to accomplish much on its own. Our creator believed in a distributed database rather than a hive and for better or worse that is what we’re stuck with.

Our ability to work together collectively and network our minds and skills requires at times subordinating our individuality to the focus of a larger enterprise. This larger enterprise is called many things, a family, a tribe, a community, and a state, a Nation. These structures are designed to achieve a tradeoff between our desire for self-actualization and our needs to survive and acquire a decent quality of life. Collective networking creates a framework of mores, regulations and laws that protect the young, provide for basic needs, higher needs and promote the common defense. It’s a social contract that guides endeavor, balancing an individual's right to choose with the needs of society.

It might be comforting to think of a “Collective” as a living entity but it isn’t. Only the people who comprise it are alive. The structures and rules are as lifeless as the materialism that raises and fills the world around us. At best a government reconciles personal and collective needs and at worse it doesn’t. Like anything else a social structure is made up of elements arranged in a manner to promote the public good or protect the self interest of those in power. It can be liberating or enslaving. In these arrangements we will never be truly free but we will be alive… but what is life without freedom?

To think that a Collective has a heart, or a sense of righteousness, or some sort of morality that goes beyond the decency and fairness of people is nonsense. Collectives are amoral, and if the collective rules do not capture that elusive sense of decency in a spiritual code, laws, rules and regulations it isn’t going to be evidenced by the culture. If it demonstrates these attributes it is because these are the values of the individuals who make up the society. For the state to survive from one generation to the next the people must buy into, believe in and express their support for these values. These are what make us who we are and not the collection of operating laws, rules and regulations we happen to be read in on at a given point in our history.

If we believe that the laws that regulate our society are necessary we need to obey them. These laws represent the minimum standards below which we will not suffer our members to behave. However, the law is a low standard designed to make the hurdles something every citizen can manage. Obeying the law should be second nature and not something to feel self-righteous about. Then there is the higher law, those positive behaviors that are difficult to codify but which make the world a truly fit place to live. When I talk about morality those are the high standards I'm referring to.

Some examples are love your neighbor as you love yourself. Let those without sin cast the first stones. My personal favorite is “What would Jesus do?” These are the standards that separate the pretenders from the real deal. Families, governments, and institutions are important but they are not alive. Only people are alive.