and Visionaire Africa's Objective Global Morality.
The FNB strategy to alert government about crime was aborted at the last second. In my view it had the potential to alert government that crime is a real problem for us plebs. But, listening to the State of the Nation Address, the aborted campaign did cause some discomfort amongst the political executives. ENB did succeed in generating dianetic energy into a patient that has been sick for a long time if one take note of the supportive rapports in news media , from PSG, Remgro, Solidarity and others. Congratulations!
The main question in the president's mind seem to be, why? Why did ENB do it, and why outside the established forums? One answer is in the wheelbarrow brigade that will carry the cries of help to a leader who publicly questioned the existence of the e-mails. What this wheelbarrow demonstration proofs is that the president is a brilliant politician and is well skilled in the game of ambiguous communication. Contradicting talk and politicizing is not the required medicine for a patient that has been very sick for more than a decade. More so if it is about the grief and fear of millions of people. That sir, in my humble view, is the answer to your question.
The government has forced lots of ‘Grande Scheme' medicine down the patient's throat and publically quantified its percentage of improvement, but ignored the patient's senses of his or her own health. Everybody's own specially extracted reasons and accusations for crime as well as their isolated solutions to crime do not help either. We must accept that anti-social behaviour such as crime is a phenomenon that naturally emerges within a complex and conscious society and so is assigning reasons for such behaviour. We are incurable pattern seekers. Unfortunately, creating cause-and-effect patterns and then putting forward one reason, no matter how valid, is of little value in a complex context. We need to highlight each modus and its connections - a more holistic approach. Just listing causes and consequences of crime have limited value. To create value we need to distill simple rules from it with which to empower every one of us to change the status quo from within ourselves. We need to be aware of what is ethical and what not, and we need to know how to apply the rules in order to illuminate the twilight zones. It is time for us to formulate a new moral lifestyle and to popularise it throughout society.
At Visionaire Africa we have been developing such proprietary training material since 2003, using simple parameters to guide us. In view of the ENB move we now make our parameters available to everyone. Use it as is to develop your own material or change it if you can improve on it. This was our effort to structure a reasonably universal moral lifestyle code and you can flesh it out or amputate from it.
Parameters for an Objective Global Morality
1. We need a moral imperative based on a rational logic
2. We need a moral code that accounts for human emotions and perception
3. We need a moral code that is simple enough to become habits of behaviour
4. We need a moral code that is in line with our complex self-adaptive nature
5. We need a moral code that balances rights with responsibilities and competencies
6. We need a meta-ethic that is rooted in diversity, but bears common fruit
7. We need a meta-ethic that reflects its history, its inherited diversity
8. We need a meta-ethic that is fit to battle with globalization dilemmas
9. We need a meta-ethic that has a double-pointed arrow of influence
10. We need honesty and discipline on all levels of scale
Please note that these parameters can be used to structure the training material as ‘personal development'. Doing it in this way puts it outside of the SETA jurisdiction. Although Visionaire Africa has SETA accreditation, at the time of posting this, for an ethic related course, and although I have SETA accreditation as assessor and moderator there are many reasons not to accredit such a course. Unfortunate, but true.
Elucidation of the parameters
The plea for a rational logic excludes circle logic but not emotional reality. We are emotional beings shrouded in subjective feelings but which can't be quantified for good measure. It must promote structured debate and discourage stale rationalization.
The plea for recognising our human state of being sculpts the context of our everyday reality. A model of morality can only be sustainable if it does not deny the illusive character of our senses of being conscious, of having a conscience, of possessing free-will and intuition. All these subjective attributes support our cognition and influence our behaviour.
The plea for simplicity is also the first plea for a model that will be universally accepted. We need only a few sentences that can easily be understood and memorised as well as easily recalled and interpreted when the need arises. If it is simple, there is no need to guess, resulting in less stress and less emotional turbulence. We literally take raw emotions (qualia)out of the moral dilemmas. We must not be fooled to believe that a few simple rules can only result in a few simple behaviours, because if we see it like that, we have forgotten that we are dealing with complex systems. In these systems a few simple rules can definitely trigger an array of sound moral decisions and accompanying effective behaviours.
The plea to recognise our complex nature adds to our rationale for context. Fact is, we are self-adaptive systems in a competitive environment. We need the moral model to allow for extensive connectedness, computationality and feedback loops. A moral rhythm. Teleology is an example of a computational ethic.
The plea for balance is a desperate attempt to attract attention to a disastrous trend in western ‘civilization'. The philosophy that ‘more is always better' imprinted on the concepts of equality and justice is sweeping through all levels of social structure. This psychological pathology is the belief that ever more equality and justice are good and never reach a saturation point or a turning point where more is bad. In reality the right to freedom of the innocent is now being curbed and the criminals are, true to human nature, taking advantage of this. The letter of the law still stands but spirit of the law is sacrificed. The new reasonable ethic must find a better balance by adding and subtracting weights at both sides. Balance freedom with discipline, responsibility and competence. Balance reward and punishment. Balance the rights of the victims of crime with the rights of the criminal. Balance the rights of the person who has to fend-off a surprise attack during a state of emotional turmoil with the person who planned and willfully executed the attack. Calculate the financial burden to victims and potential victims in a morally defensible way. Declaring that it's acceptable because the loss suffered is covered by insurance, is nothing less than corrupt thinking that can serve as a measure to calculate the level of immorality of the thinker. Add to this that the state collects taxes for the protection of its citizens according to an ancient agreement. If due to the government's incompetence these citizens are now urged to barricade themselves in and to employ private security. The moral deterioration is significant, because the payment of protection money to others is an old racket. Even in its new legal cloth it is only a small step for such an organization to manipulate the crime situation in a self-serving way. This is already happening in South Africa. Stop questioning people's loyalty to this or that, because in this new model of morality it is important that loyalty must be earned just like integrity.
The plea for a morality that can operate on all levels of the human state of being is also the second plea for universality. Moral growth can only succeed if we first account for the full cultural, religious and gender diversity and simultaneously explore commonalities. We need this meta-ethic to exploit the richness of the many theologies and cultures and bring it to fruit.
The plea to honour the historical development of ethics is to find the ultimate synergy by exploring all past human efforts. We need to acknowledge past efforts even if ancient and contradictory. We can be provocative and still put in effort to ensure that sharp differences in past thinking gravitate closer together.
The plea for a morality of high fitness is yet another cry for universal acceptance. Technological advancement and the closely coupled shrinking of the modern human's space and time experience, as well as the always present drift in social values can antiquate moral rules rendering them ineffective. Fitness will therefore mean less specialisation and more versatility.
The plea for a double-pointed arrow is to increase the versatility of the moral model. Currently people have a ‘follow the leader attitude' when it comes to moral behaviour. This trend to follow the example of leaders and other celebrities is unhealthy and we need to redistribute the weights in favour of the common human. No more: ‘ Look, if they can do it why not me?' or ‘What's good enough for them is good enough for us'. By training plebs on all levels we can force our executive to follow our lead. The reference to plebs is a spectrum that includes workers on grass-roots level and middle management. For this to happen the moral rules must be easy and widely applied and therefore implies mass training and development. The goal is not to create stronger political opposition in the form of new competing ideological parties, but to empower people to demand more of their existing political leaders. The right to vote has no value if leaders just manipulate the emotions and opinions of the masses. Voters must demand to be listened to and for the leaders to also be followers of the values of their constituents.
The plea for honesty at all levels is to focus on those power grabbing, above the law politicians whose corrupt practices are leaving citizens impoverished. But it also covers the everyday trivial things, like being late for appointments or hiding incompetence.
