My son sat on the floor and listened. Occasionally he’d readjust my words to better make the thoughts fit into his head. We call it family time.
The discussion concerned morals and ethics: how they’re developed, maintained and managed. We were talking about the fact Ethics and Morality are subjects more and more relegated to the musty, dusty halls of academia than taught at the knee of the parent instructing the child.
My wife and I believe in growing the soul by interacting with it. It’s the pathway to the humanity of the person. It’s not something to be handed off to an academic or a theologian. Values are personal. They’re intrinsic to the individual; they should lie in the core of that person after having been placed there with the love only a parent can give. The handing down of moral structure and understanding is a gift meant to be delivered by no other person. The purity of the cause is its own reward. This way family goes forth.
Initially, men of all cultures codified their concepts of right and wrong. Because of the simplicity of language and the growth-pains suffered with the birth of new concepts and thoughts; man phrased it in terms of black and white. In variant forms the thoughts were distilled into a numerical package coordinated with the fingers of both hands. In Judeo-Christian efforts they became the Ten Commandments.
Man codified the laws, and placed them before their brothers, as having come directly from God. This does add gravity to the lesson. Additionally, the laws could be taught in a way children could remember it. Number 1) Thou shalt have no God before me.
Making no judgment concerning this, it equalized the head of the household with the omnipotent nature of the sacred. The thundering hand of parental discipline was equal to the overall power of the deity in nature. This education was personalized for the student. It was real in its immediacy and delivery from parent (God-like representation) to child. In this way morals and ethics became valued lessons handed down generationally. They became a part of the student’s personal value system.
But man developed a sense of self based on things other than the quality of his character and manner he treated other men. He started basing his valuation of personal worth on acquisition as opposed to the manner he comported himself among his fellows. As he grew socially, he transferred his parental obligations to others. He handed off his responsibility for the education of his children to tutors, educators and theologians he expected taught the scholarly thoughts of others. He took it for granted they knew more than he about what he wanted the kids to learn.
That might have been a big mistake as evidenced by what we see today.
Now we have Ethics and Morality as college level courses taught as dispassionately as anything can be taught because it’s no more than a matter of credits earned. It means no more and no less; and consequently carries all of the import and enjoyment of a Phys-Ed class conducted while naked in a snow drift. We’ve rejected our responsibilities and obligations in favor of transferring them to experts knowing no more than they learned from other experts carrying forth their transfer of what they’ve learned but may not have ever known through experience.
Somewhere in the course of transfer we’ve gone from understanding the Means used to achieve a specific end should be beneficial to society; to the End justifies whatever means we use to acquire our goal satisfactorily for our agenda. And make no mistake about it: we have more agendas than we do purpose. We have more justifications for our bad actions than explanations and recognition of our self-centered, self-serving ways.
Nobody can prove mankind is better for the progression he suffers based on credentialed expert status rather than expertise gained as a parent. The wealth of knowledge to be passed on from parent to child is more important than the teachings of the great philosophers because the parent must put it all in context. And that’s the joy.
Thanks for listening
