Mind Your Own Business Part 1/3

This post was originally published February 17, 2013.

Good afternoon,

The world is flat. The concept is archaic — in fact, downright nonsense. The Earth is an oblate spheriod. No, I mean the way in which we interact is very much flat.

A favorite example: A company in the US creates a product design. They upload it to their ERP system. After the employees head home for the night, it is broad daylight in Asia. The Asian affiliate company downloads the design from the ERP system, produces a trial model and has the product flown to the US the same day.

Due to the various freedoms guaranteed through the Bill of Rights, along with the incredible flatness of the world, this is undeniably the most free generation to have ever existed. Communication is fast and easy. It is no longer impossible to contact someone almost anywhere in the world — immediately. And so, it is the Information Age, where access to limitless data and information is readily at hand.

I am no culture expert (and I doubt anyone else is, really), but over time, with our access to vast data resources, short term consequences have been more or less separated from behavior. That in turn has led to hedonism — the focus on individual maximization of pleasure. In essence, society is connected in so many ways, but individuals are no longer responsible for each other. The moral obligations of duty, honor, respect, labor, etc., no longer apply. Who today, other than myself, actually talks about so called “moral duty?”

And what is morality anyway? What makes certain behaviors require a sense of duty? Morality, according to the dictionary, has to do with character or the observance of a law. Well, where do we get our law? (I’m afraid that if I keep asking these questions, I will end up committing the sin of circular reasoning.)

Morality must adhere to a law because it is a law. Today’s society finds its moral foundation in the gratification through self, or even salvation through humanity (otherwise known as humanism). If this is the case (which it is for most mainstream society), then the only “moral duty” is to self.

But, by mere inference, if duty is to self, then morality is entirely relative. It is impossible to apply any law to every group. Society is stuck and cannot progress. In fact, society would not exist because society implies some sense of order, and order requires adherence to a set of universal laws. But, nonetheless, society does exist. It does have laws (giving very expansive freedoms, as well!).

And so, individuals have to reach beyond themselves for a universal moral law. But what about this conundrum that has become a society focused on self, while law and order in society requires moral duty beyond self? Can we really mind our own business, generate individual morals and actually have order? That is the topic of my next blog.