|
In 500 BC, Heraclitus had imagined that each component of the world had its own counterpart and that these opposing forces maintained a permanent
interplay within the great eternal movement which could be of two types: harmony and chaos. He couldn't foresee that 2500 years later, chaos would become the cornerstone of fractal geometry and would be considered
as the most logical component of the complex organization of the world.
At the time of Heraclitus, chaos was conceived as an unorganised jungle. Although man is the most sophisticated component of Nature and the most able
for perceiving its spirit, he first lived according to the original chaos. Men had for a long time, lived in wild hordes ruled by the strongest and the most brutal. Human beings were being killed as mercilessly as
animals. Neither life nor death mattered.
One hundred years after Heraclitus came Socrates. As a lay prophet, he realised and taught that each human being was a part of nature and of its
animated dimension. Equipped with animal instinct and a brain function called intellect, he could, if he had integrated them, create a third one: individual responsibility.
The ”know yourself, be conscious of yourself, have control of yourself” was the precursory principle, not only of psychoanalysis, but of psychological
development. The ”do not do to others which you would not like to be done to yourself”, was the foremost principle of Human Rights and of Justice.
These principles were not dictated by Gods. Socrates was a lay prophet. The source of the behavioural directions that he was teaching and the source of
his inspiration, was Nature. Nature is unique and obeys
a unique spirit, whether the expression be physical, chemical, biological; otherwise it could not persist as it does. Thus, human behaviour which obeys the laws of Nature can only do good, just as any behaviour which does not follow Nature can only do bad.
In the reign of polytheism, Socrates was in fact working for monotheism and democracy: Nature obeys
a unique spirit; every citizen has the right to think and to act according to himself: each is, as André Gide would declare, ”the most precious of all Human beings”.
Though Socrates’ moral attitude attacked neither the established religions nor the political system, their leaders had a sense of the dangerous
risks involved which the implementation of such moral would carry with it. He was committed for trial, charged for some obscure reason and condemned. But the judges made him understand that he could escape before he
was put to death. He drunk the lethal poison.
It is interesting that the second prophet preaching the same moral, forced his society to crucify him, and also that Mishima who preached a pure moral
to his people influenced by the American way of life, committed hara-kiri. They accepted that death was the price to be paid and the most important way of convincing people. Hence, the tolerance of self-defence and
of defensive war.
Socrates’ greatest successors did not deny the spirit of his moral. But Aristotle and Spinozza thought that, for its world-wide implementation, it
would have to be adapted. In orderly circumstances,
humans will willingly be good and not bad, even though the cost of this is to give them liberties with some desires, hatreds, pulsions... Moreover, many are pathologically suffering from obsessional or pulsional neurosis, hysteria, mania, paranoia.
Rather than studying moral rules, Aristotle and Spinozza chose to study its science, called ethics. Ethics considers morals as too strict and leading
to boredom. Moral indicates where not to go. Ethics indicates where one could go a little too far. Of course, religions, justice, and politics defined their own ethics. Nowadays, people tend to give precedence to
ethics over moral. National, regional and professional committees are in charge of ethical matters. Their ambiguous conclusions prepare public opinion for voting for morally wrong legislations.
Thus, the legalisation of abortion would certainly have been less controversial if it had been discussed by such committees, as for example, are the
bills on fertilisation nowadays. One way to committ some totally immoral acts, consists of the legislator or the ethical committees neither legalising nor prohibiting them.
One of the most immoral such acts concerns medical experimentation. Most people are unaware that 500 patients are chosen at random to
receive a ”placebo”, while 500 others are given an experimental drug. Euthanasia will soon be discussed and it may be submitted to the same strategy as randomised experimentation, which is neither legalised nor
prohibited.
Thus ethics prepares the evolution of public opinion for the disappearance of the moral prohibitions of yesterday and their transformation into legally
approved practices. The institutions such as Ethical Committees are not mentioned in the State constitutions.
Corporations which do not have ethical committees, have their own ethics: thus the ethics of the racing cyclist, was to increase the records of the
participants with special drugs; that of politicians to increase their political party and their personal fortune with the so called ”public goods”; that of sexual amateurs to abuse children. This last problem is
not the only one which Ethical Committees could study: one imagines the need for the diverse expertise of the members.
Today there is an urgent need to restore moral. Religion and justice have failed to deal with these issues and are involved in political corruption.
The ethics of corporations mean nothing either. The Ethical Committees have too much or not enough power in the decision making process. I think that nothing will succeed in restoring morality, if the past teaching
of moral is not re-established in primary schools, where elementary auto-psychiatry should also be taught.
this article in french
top
|
