Bird Droppings July 20, 2010
I am right and you are wrong

I went out on my back porch for a few moments early in the wee hours of the morning I have been fighting a head cold and have been having a hard time sleeping so I took the dog out into the cool. It had to be about sixty five degrees or so and felt like the coolest morning this season yet. There were mu usual chorus of crickets and tree frogs keeping me company for a few moments this morning. Over my head Orion’s belt clear and bold and a half moon glowing in the sky. My dad showed me that constellation so many years ago maybe when I was five or six over fifty five years ago. It was still a good start for a morning and a good memory.
Another teacher who I was discussing curriculum with brought a book down to see if I had read it telling me how good it was this was after a discussion on why non-Christians have a hard time in the US a few days ago. The book known to be extremely conservative I will not mention but written by a backwards thinking individual who ended up with a best seller. So much of our daily lives lately is dictated by individuals with only greed on their minds and a narrow view of what is in front of them. I have a hard time with a hammer and sickle on a bill board blasting our current president and knowing there are people voting for this fellow as a potential state legislator. Does this man even know what communism is? Today is primary election I am keeping my fingers crossed and the bill boards and rhetoric will be gone tomorrow.
I will start the morning with a two translated quotes from a passage of what was originally written in the beautiful and artistic calligraphy of China.

“To keep away from all evil, cultivate good, and purify one’s mind is the advice” Buddha

“If the action is likely to cause happiness and no harm can arise from such a deed, do it again and again.” Buddha

On several occasions I have been very thankful that my wife and I had only boys. That does not mean had we had a girl I would have given the baby away by any means. After working with students in high school and being in the middle of she said she said and he said he said is usually easier to deal with the guys. Several months back two visitors in my room were talking, one was wanting to see a photo from the previous nights basketball game the other girl dates the first girls brother and he is in jail for two more weeks and then ten years probation on a drug related incident and theft. What was interesting was morality came up and it wasn’t about the brother and all he had done or one girls obsession with this guy who has been nothing but trouble for four years or more. It was abut how a girl was stealing a boyfriend and the morals of it.
I have learned girls and boys see the world differently sort of the prescription on the glasses is totally different. “Mr. Bird what do you think?” A very scary question when you are closely tied to all parties and I really try and be neutral. But Mr. Bird’s theory of relative morality “To do no harm to another” shot right over one girls head and the other looked at me and smiled it hit a nerve but in a good way. Occasionally that happens.

“The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.” Aristotle

“Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.” Isaac Asimov

So often we tend to look at rightness and or wrongness of any given issue and try and make it concrete, solid, and clearly defined. I have found over the years there are gray areas that tend to crop up. That clearly defined line may not be quite the same as the book from an Ethics class in seminary I recall “Situation Ethics” by Joseph Fletcher. The book’s advertising comments read

“This is a new edition of Joseph Fletcher’s 1966 work that ignited a firestorm of controversy at the time of its publication. It was hailed by many as a much-needed reformation of morality–and as an invitation to anarchy by others.” Overstock.com

As I think back to my seminary days many contrived that Fletcher was pushing more towards anarchy. That he was pushing towards a goal as you do ethics and morality that all is relative although I did say that yesterday “morality is relative”. Sometimes I can get caught up in the heat of the moment and will stick my foot deeply down my throat. Sort of like licking your own knee as the country saying goes.

“I cannot believe that this country cannot come together around some values what these kids need is a moral life… the issue is not ideas, it is conduct. The real question is how we reach these young people morally, and what do we bring to them.” Robert Coles

“Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.” William J. Durant

OK, it is alright to deplete the ozone layer until we have to go to a sunscreen of 80 or so and summer temperature at the Jersey shore exceeds an average of 125 in the shade. Years ago I recall a comedian George Carlin talking about teenagers and sex and how we were taught premarital sex causes blindness, talk about old wives tales, and the comedian offered up well what about till you need glasses. Amazingly as he looked about the audience those with glasses were slowly slipping them off and he said and there a person over there and one over here.

“Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.” William Hazlitt

“However great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue.” Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

I was discussing Moses coming off the mountain carrying the Ten Commandments and how he smashed them to the ground on his first go round a few years back. In Hebrew law ten rules eventually became about 685 exceptions.

“There are few things more disturbing than to find, in somebody we detest, a moral quality which seems to us demonstrably superior to anything we ourselves possess. It augurs not merely unfairness on the part of creation, but a lack of artistic judgment. Sainthood is acceptable only in saints.” Pamela Hansford Johnson

“Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.” H. L. Mencken

As I was sitting here pondering as I do I was thinking back on some reading from a few years ago? Dr. Temple Grantin is a lecturer and authority on livestock handling considered even by SPCA and PETA as the expert in ethical and moral handling of livestock. Over seventy five percent of the world’s commercial livestock slaughter facilities use her ideas and designs and she is still considered by PETA as the authority on humane killing of animals. That is an interesting concept but when you take in to account Dr. Grantin is also autistic it even becomes more interesting. She has a condition called “Asperger’s Syndrome.

“Asperger’s Syndrome, also known as Asperger’s Disorder or Autistic Psychopathy, this is a Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) characterized by severe and sustained impairment in social interaction, development of restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities. These characteristics result in clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.” http://users.wpi.edu/~trek/aspergers.html

Dr. Grantin had to learn how to respond to other people. There was no inherent ability to understand emotions in her make up and then in literally her morality. Her efforts in dealing with livestock came from her efforts to deal wither own conditions and interactions. Animals move around a curve better than angles was a first design breakthrough. But what does this have to do with morality? We learn from those around us. We see examples of rightness and wrongness and we learn.

“Don’t be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of so much life..” Henry David Thoreau

“Moral power is probably best when it is not used. The less you use it the more you have.” Andrew Young

It is not through some genetic code we are moral it is through what we have learned from those around us teachers, parents, and friends. We are the ones who will set the pace for morality; this can be a heavy burden as I look back. Take a moment and look around you at how many sets of eyes are looking and watching and learning from you right now. As I thought back to recent graduate school readings and my conversation about non-Christians earlier, how is it we learn to be one religion or another? We are not born into religions yet each say theirs is right.

“Our founding fathers set this country up as a religious state” was a recent statement I read somewhere. However, if you look careful and read documents of the founding fathers there are interesting things that abound. The father of our country refused a priest as he was dying saying “I never attended church alive what do I need you now for”. I am not against religion by any means but all to often religion becomes as Marx once said “The opiate of the people” and far too many are sedated by others words and rationale and in turn that becomes the standard. A local pastor who is running for state legislator use of a hammer and sickle on a bill board as a scare tactic is a great example. Many foreign nations are looking at the USA as doing this now letting religion into national policy. It is no wonder when a national leader in a conservative religious group is found to not be doing what they preach on Sundays, Monday through Friday or say several times a month for three years according to a witness recently. Please also remember to keep all in harms way on your mind and in your heart.
namaste
bird

PS. For many years I have read and reread this passage from Albert Einstein and each time it still hits me harder how can we make our teaching so potent?

“The real difficulty, the difficulty which has baffled the sages of all times, is rather this: how can we make our teaching so potent in the motional life of man, that its influence should withstand the pressure of the elemental psychic forces in the individual?” Albert Einstein