Exploring the moral dimension

To be human is to moralise – to try to draw lessons from prior experience, to consider how we should behave in future.

This is the nature of complex brain structure – it is not sufficient to do, one must think about doing and think about thinking. Sophisticated neurology reflects complex environment. Conversely, as brain cells proliferate and associate, the environment of affect becomes more diverse and linked in unexpected ways. The more you are able to see, the more you see. Equally, the more we are able to use the power of our intelligence to modify our environment, the more vulnerable we become to unforeseen or deliberately neglected consequences of our actions and habits. We are the agents forcing change – our responsibility proportionate to our freedom of action.

Conscience is not some spooky superego always looking over our shoulder, it is what it says on the tin: “together-knowing”ie joined-up thinking. This does involve hearing what we might call 'the voice of the other'. Morality is the product of dialogue never decree. Moral development is a process of increasing permeability of self, of listening for once rather than always speaking to some on-going agenda.

In the course of this journey, the self comes to be seen as a construct or cultural adaptation, which is to say, the evolutionary advantage of imagining that one has a self is to the degree that it supports continuity, adaptability and sustainability of behaviour.

At some stage one has to contemplate the essential vacuity of self. I am not who I thought I was. I am not any of the labels attached to me, neither the social roles I act out, nor the fictional narrative I tell myself.

The realisation of non-reification – I am neither a thing nor an agency – is the key to the gateway of reality, the beginning of true freedom. Humanity is a condition, a species and a possibility. It is unfinished business. We do not know what it might be to be truly human on a truly humane planet because we haven't been there yet.

"There is a life that consists of a quantity of energy, and there is a life that consists of the meaning of the Dao.
The life that is a quantity of energy is created by the universe and is conditioned, 
the life of meaning of Dao creates the universe and is primordial."

Liu Yiming, commentary on hexagram 47, in The Taoist I Ching trans Thomas Cleary

To speak of "energy" is to imply the possibility of change and development and to indicate the necessity of work, momentum, drive, capacity, direction. Liu draws our attention to the constant presence of what he calls original sane energy in all situations of life; sufis talk about universal intelligence, aqli kulli - which is the first creation and the basis of all subsequent evolution.

The ecosacral vision of the human condition is in analogy to plantlife - just as plants photosynthesise physical light and turn it into sweetness and nourishment on which all life depends, so the true human captures spiritual light for the sustenance of all.

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