Hardly!!
I've stopped counting the number of times throughout the history of our species that such an assumption is made, only to lead to people being disappointed or even horrified.
Yeah, the old assumption... Intelligence + Education = Morality.
If only it were so, but it is not so.
Frightfully enough, intelligence and education only increase the lethality of a corrupted soul. But therein lies the rub, eh? What is moral? What is immoral? How do we determine the reality of whether or not a soul is corrupt?
Reality is ultimately based on perception. So, this means we are contending with juxtapositions of perception like individual -vs- collective, individual -vs- individual, collective -vs- collective, and so on. Add to that these questions: "Are there moral absolutes?" versus "Is morality relative?".
Hooray! What fun! (well, okay, not for everyone - just for nerds like me who care about understanding the real-life impact of morality, ethics and philosophy)
Well then, where do any of us go from here? It seems that the only solution is to engage in dynamic dialogue while thinking for ourselves as autonomous individuals. Strong, healthy individuals make for strong, healthy communities. Thus, we must develop ourselves without becoming isolated, and we must engage in community without succumbing to "group think" mentality. Dogma would have no place in such circumstances, as people would need to be free and willing to ask questions.
I can only imagine that such a situation would be a very fine environment for people of all ages to learn about morality.
Hopefully this rambling emulates some semblance of usefulness.
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By Prince Rahman
2 comments:
You are the company you keep. Keep moral company?
This is a start, yet it still begs the question of how does one judge the company one keeps to be moral.
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