WHAT IS THE "RIGHT" THING TO DO?

It appears that we're heading into weeks, if not months and years of high moral challenge.  The norms that many people have accepted and now consider accepted practice, are turning out to have consequences that we don't like at all.  If I had a little cookie everytime someone said to me, "I don't pay any attention to that.  They're all crooks and always have been." I would be fat.  (Er, fatter.)  The original premise of a democracy, of course, is that we would pay attention and do something about injustice.  We aren't just ignoring it -- we're suppressing and denying it.

So here's a review of moral principles as I was taught them in seminary by Don Browning, an exemplary man who would not necessarily agree with the way I have used them in my own life.  

RULES:  To many people this IS morality: the rules you were taught as a child.  "Wash your hands.  Say your prayers.  Look both ways.  Don't hit people."  These grow up into the high school handbook, the university rules, and finally the laws of the country.  Some people give precedence to rules from a Holy Book.

PRINCIPLES;  The New Testament of the Bible moves from rules to principles.  "The Golden Rule.  Do the most good for the most beings as you can.  Above all, do no damage."

FOLLOW WORTHY ROLE MODELS:  "Do what Jesus did.  Would Buddha do this? Mohammed is an example."  (An alternative is following the worst people without considering where they end up.)

START FROM THE BEGINNING:  Be true to your origins.  Maybe it's family or maybe it's the intention of the founders.  Be the best version of what started out.

AIM FOR THE END:  What are you trying to be?  Where is the goal?

CONFORMING TO YOUR CULTURE:  This is a little risky because the situation might not be usual, but as a rule going along with the way things are done by your people is pretty safe.  But you might be called a pervert.  What if your culture is the mafia, as is Trump's.  Several coherent societies develop in the interstices of bigger cultures and may be considered criminal.  Evidently this is possible secret spaces of representative democracy.

STRIKING OUT FROM ZERO:  Philosophy has to be based on one's experience, so it requires a bit of age and adventure, and a big part of the work is talking to others and LISTENING to them also.  But some people have done this with a lot of resulting positive impact.  Others have caused chaos, but might claim that is their goal.

ORGANIZED SYSTEMS:  The most prominent of these will be religious denominations but also there are Masonics, the military, and other groups with formal codes.Two "practices" of evolution are that 1) everything that changes is based on whatever happened before, and 2) pre-existing and functioning structures and functions are often converted to something that was never done before -- sometimes that changes everything.

ADVICE FROM ANOTHER WORLD:  This can be woven into religious systems but also can come from sci-fi or a different culture, as when the early sailing ships brought back Buddhism to Boston.  It includes "other worlds" for which there is no proof and no access except simply believing in it.

Many people mix their moralities as is convenient or as they learned them, sometimes because they seem to emerge from the subject, but this defeats their purpose and can make them much more of a rationalization, a way to make something SEEM to be motivated by thought when it isn't.  Probably the most unsuccessful of these are those between cultures, which tends to unhinge them from their organic sources and remove their rationale and connection to ecological beginnings. Trying to justify what is prohibited in one culture by taking one element out of it, transplanting it to another, like "homosexuality" (which is a Euro-invented concept anyway since sexuality -- in my morality - is fluid) might change both the question and the answer.  

Migration has confused everything and encourages the demonization to extremes of competing systems, which aren't really competing but rather "unfitting" under new circumstances.  Clothing, for instance, stops being simply cloth.

Some issues become so emotional that they distort into injustice.  For instance, pedophilia has become a killing offence in prisons (which are justified to some by the effectiveness of violence that they consider the only redemption of crime).  This breaks the relationship of act to consequence.  On one hand they are too "radioactive" to address and on the other the sweet Hallmark Pollyannas deny every tiny symptom and become victims.

Joe Biden's penchant for showing up at little microphone ceremonies of congratulation involving families -- with the man at the mic and the wife and children in a little cluster to one side -- has encouraged him to approach the small handful from behind, hold them by the shoulders to keep them in place in front of him, and dip his own head in affectionate contact while staying attractive to cameras.  This is not perversion -- it's simply invasion.  That's only a small impropriety, but such an obsession with one's image can be a step towards something much worse.

A conscious reflective morality is best served by connection to the environment and particularly the ecological patterning it supports.  Survival is still the necessary goal for those who see safety as their goal and guide.  This level of FITTINGNESS is the ultimate morality, so that we survive on what the land can give us, what the society will support.  But we are accustomed to the economic control of people by nations and that can interfere with the simple justice of eating.

We are faced with the task of creating a new culture as well as accepting what persists from surviving societies.  Food and music are sort of entry points.  Consciousness is the first step to effective morality.