My doorway into this whole topic was via American author and Psychologist Howard C. Cutler, who met on many occasions with the Dalai Lama. From the archive of their conversations emerged a book called “The Art of Happiness”, a book I’m happy to share a link to on the basis of the personal value I took from it. I took to principles of Buddhism like a duck to water, as a source of logical wisdom whose roots are ultimately philosophical. This set me off exploring the mindful world of what you might consider to be the deeper stuff of life, and after much pondering landed upon the notion of a condensed mindfulness which I call the Code of Human Principles.
Such a code needed to be concise but simple. Principles which could be used in the first instance to support right minded education and continue to be of use beyond that to become a life tool for the individual, for inquiry as to the virtue of personal choices and/or actions, as well as a scheme which could successfully underpin the broader demands of community. So armed with the principles you might hope to effectively head off problems before they arise, a kind of pro-active approach to living which would hope to justify and argues for the merits of solution goinfg forwards. Life of course still would come with its problems, which cannot be processed away, adn yet those situations too can probably be helped by such a set of ideas. Rather than weighing societies down with unwieldy laws and systems of governance which become ever more complicated and intricate, to the point that your everyday citizen cannot hope to fully understand or comprehend the matter (in addition to the actual problem), I wanted to find a scheme which could be considered an active form of engagement, principles which would force a crucible for debate such that each and every “issue” gets the individual respect needed, for getting to truths and a path towards genuine solutions rather than a process hamstrung by a set of baked rules which fail to have the needed flexibility and consideration for individual circumstance.
I. It is the right of every individual in society to live a life of peace and self-determination, where such actions do not contravene the responsibilities of Article II.
II. It is the civic duty of every member of society to reason and act with compassion, empathy and tolerance towards oneself, other citizens and living entities (natural and artificial), and to exercise a prime duty of care to the natural environment.
III. It is the responsibility of the system of community to afford reasonable opportunity and resources for every citizen, to enable and support their natural talents, such that the individual will know a means to maintaining their personal mental and physical happiness and wellbeing, and in so doing allow that value to extend to the benefit of other citizens, with an overall beneficial impact upon the extended community.
IV. It is the right of every citizen to hold (or not) to religious and/or spiritual beliefs in accordance with Article I, free from interference from fellow citizens. It is incumbent upon the practitioner to take personal responsibility for those beliefs and any actions so arising, in accordance with Articles I and II, respecting the rights of others as a priority of civility and peace for the extended community.
Arguably the CODE OF PRINCIPLES sets a higher standard of social behavior than the American CONSTITUTION (I, being AMERICAN ), however one might choose to live as Sartre rather than Madison.
ReplyDeleteReally the core ideal, if there really is one to this, is to ensure that people appreciate the value and power of their own capacity, and the responsibility which goes with that. It's often argued that freedom demands vigilance from the people within the system and this is just an attempt to bring some simplification to the table. One interesting thought which does occur is that one of the main points to this endeavour is to recognise that you cannot allow the system to arbitrate causality, meaning that said responsibility must derive from better education and recognition that people are utterly responsible for what happens. By this I mean that when the system itself is allowed to dictate (or be used to argue/justify) the reasons for an event or circumstance then you have a set up which is pretty much pre-destined to fail everyone. That's also the reason for embracing simplification of the "rules", though I use that term loosely. So much of what we lack is because people don't hold themselves up to a high enough standard, but to get that right also requires independent freedom of thought and inquiry, and not any one person dictating their opinion over others, as met by articles I, II and IV. Basically people have to get real about life. That will best be served by having proper clarity and meaning in education, rather than the p**s-poor situation we have presently whereby people are trying to include such matters in the chaos of others panicking about accountability to arbitrary numbers and spreadsheet charts. Such measurements ought to derive from the results of society's oft talked about but little truly appreciated "happiness" quotient.
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