“Michael Sandel’s second Reith Lecture entered the treacherous terrain of morality in politics, and not just morality but religiously inspired morality to boot

That said, moral debate is risky in a plural democracy because people will profoundly disagree. This is what the liberal tradition seeks to avoid when it does not enquire into the merits of individual lives: instead it asserts rights based solely on the principle of autonomy – each can decide. And yet, if you take the risk, Sandel’s contention is that a more mature kind of politics is made possible. “A politics of moral engagement is also a more promising basis for a just society,” he concluded at the end of the lecture.”

-Link

When awareness of Good is lost, fragmented and relative perceptions of goodness replace it. While these are convenient imitations of Good, they bring only short term satisfaction. But what about the overall direction of our cultures? In the post-modernist view, there’s no direction, but instead separated perceptions of relativistic happiness in the form of legislation and private norms. Politicians avoid moral issues in the ignorance of Good, but keep a dogmatic approach to secularism and materialistic relativism as a surrogate. Supposedly, everyone knows what is just, but no one is able to define Justice, blaming the concept itself, but not our lack of intelligence.

If we wish to have an ascendant direction for our cultures, then morality and its metaphysical and teleological concerns have to become the core of politics. According to Aristotle, Politics are nothing but a complement of the Mora. In spite of the modern paradigm, Politics are transformed by ethics, and therefore a philosophical ruler, one who understands the essence of phenomena, is needed to guide the moral character of any particular society.

As an example in his lecture, Professor Sandel brings up gay marriage, and whether it has to be backed by the state. Beyond giving a response, he analyzes the fact that, in order to define the issue, moral questions have to be answered, specifically, does gay marriage support values or methods worthy of being honored? From a liberalist view, such moral conditions should be avoided, but actually, moral discussion does enrich the debate, and does serve to interpret hard data.

En Español

“Nine verses made upon an ecstasy of high contemplation” by Saint John of the Cross

I entered in, not knowing where,
And there remained uncomprehending,
All knowledge transcending.

-Saint John of the Cross

The truly mystic man knows that the rationalist outlook is a corruption of understanding, which displaces the direct and silent knowing of God, incommunicable in words. What if the inspired man wishes to speak to those who only understand words? The paradox is then in the hands of the inspired man, a tool to order the cognitive elements instead of placing them as opposites.

In this beautiful poem, St. John of the Cross speaks to us about two ways of acquiring knowing: one from the mind, and one from the spirit. Because knowing from the spirit is superior than knowing from the mind, the latter is overwhelmed, thus surrenders its privilege to spiritual knowledge, allowing a coexistence of both views in the same man. In other words, in this poem, when he ignores God and considers Him to be inscrutable, it’s because he uses his reason, and fails to grasp the totality. But as an inspired man, he subordinates his reasoning to his spirit, and so he knows even what seems to be unknowable.

Undoubtedly, it is necessary to revaluate our current priorities in knowledge, in order that they might reach a whole notion of Truth.

En Español

As explained in our article “The Problem of Technology”, humanity has lost many things through its obsession with mechanistic advancement. Here are some things we stand to win by using technology in a responsible manner, or not using it at all.

Community: While communications technology connects us to ever more distant people, it disconnects us from our more immediate environments, leading to isolation and social ineptitude. With the time you gain back by not using communications to interact with or read about distant people who are most likely inconsequential, focus on developing relationships with your family, friends, church, and township.

-Join a cultural group (choruses, historical societies, environmental initiatives, book clubs, newspapers, churches etc.) in your community and help it to flourish.
-Take a role in town politics.
-Pick and maintain close friends.
-Teach your children a useful skill, like fishing.
-Take time off with your spouse.

Environment: Much how communications technology has attached us to people with whom we have no spiritual or pragmatic relationship, it has also attached us to lands that are foreign to our own, warping our sense of cultural and geographical identity, as well as robbing us of skill sets that can only be gained through a close relationship with wilderness. Skip the irrelevance associated with being a “citizen of the world” by foregoing overexposure to international media, and instead become a citizen of your backyard and the land and streets surrounding it.

-Work and play near your place of residence, and spend time becoming accustomed to the outdoors through cycling, hiking, hunting, or the like.
-Know what crops grow well in your region, and learn how to cultivate, prepare, and store them.
-Know the game and edible wild plants of your region, well enough to be able to survive off the land alone if you had too.
-Know the streets and trails in your community well enough to give accurate directions to any thinking passerby.
-Know the history of the land you live on, why it’s important, and teach this to others.

Mental: Technological advancement has provided access to an exponentially increasing pool of data in the form of electronic media, but overexposure to this hollow information can desensitize and preoccupy us, robbing our minds of mental quietude. With the mental space that you gain by ignoring excess media like television, spend time devoting yourself to a task that exercises and improves your brain, rather than filling it with useless “facts”.

-Pray regularly.
-Take on creative projects, such as building a table for your house, or writing poetry.
-Develop new skill sets, and improve old ones. Focus on your weak areas, and learn by doing rather than reading.

It should be stated that while it is nice to think that self control alone can accomplish these goals, for many of us this is unrealistic. Do not be afraid to throw away the television, break a CD in half, unplug the computer, or even cancel your subscription to national newspapers if the temptation proves too great.

All this comes with the added benefits of money saved and time reclaimed. Plus you will have a renewed sense of self confidence at your ability to ignore modern trends, and instead forge a better path.

Additionally, while disconnecting from modernity and re-connecting with the immanent is indeed a spiritual mandate, and will reflect and augment our spiritual health, it can never replace an actual connection to spirituality in itself. We should never use activity as a surrogate for philosophical understanding, and perhaps most importantly we should not mistake one for the other.

The obvious irony of all this is that you are reading these words thanks to some form of electronic technology, and we are writing them with the assistance of that technology. As explained before(“The Problem of Technology”), this can only be rationalized as being a temporary, necessary evil, whose consequences are far less severe than the alternative. In any case, these words are written with the intent and hope that once their meaning is fully comprehended and internalized by all, then we will no longer desire the machines on which they were written.

“By organic, we mean that the different aspects of a traditional society…are not the products of one man or even one generation, but rather the products of countless generations. These traditions were given to men by the divine and persisted through many years. They were designed to fit a specific people in a specific environment, and removed from themselves conflicting elements.”

Read the full article here: The Essence of Organic Society