UBC Okanagan, Kelowna, B.C., Canada  (aerial view from south) 



I need to say, readers, that I have gone back to university - again - at 66. I sometimes think there is a sado-masochistic relationship going on between myself and my education. I suffer in universities, and I have been to three of them for long stints over the years. I grow desperate listening to the talk I hear in academia. I have since I was 17 when I first went to University of Alberta in Edmonton so long ago. "Why would this be?" you ask. Good question.

Our desperate - yes, I say "desperate" - problem in this century is learning to live with the scientific technology that we have created and not end up blowing ourselves up or cooking our planet or using our technology in some other careless way that dooms our whole species to extinction, sudden and merciful or long and agonizing. This is the theme of so much of our best modern literature. Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles", in particular, comes to mind. He warned of our being overwhelmed by our technology a long time ago. "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley contains a similar warning. These authors knew that we are facing self-inflicted catastrophe - though they had no answers.

And yet, and yet .... What do I get at the uni.? Same old answers.

"Moral relativism."

"Ideas of right and wrong are culturally determined."

"There are no universal moral standards."

  
                             

WE WILL DIE IF WE CONTINUE TO THINK THIS WAY. 


Sorry. A whole sentence in large font capitals is rude. I'm just tired and disillusioned once again. But why wouldn't I be? The supposedly smartest people we have and they dodge the question of our times like daydreamy adolescents or outright cowards.

If History tells us nothing else, it tells us this: it is utterly human to slip into chauvinistic, jingoistic, xenophobic ways of thinking. We have done it, in all societies, over and over again. From that point, our sliding down the long, greasy slope into war with those we fear, and feel superior to, History shows, is as natural as our learning to talk.

But, though war has been our species' way of toughening ourselves for centuries, our science and the technology that it has given us have made this practice unsustainable. We have to find another way.

My point in this blog is to claim that there is another way. I am trying to show that way. 

We can make a solid logical case for moral realism, for a moral code that is grounded in material reality and so can work for all of us. One that is built up from the foundations of the cosmos. It's there. If you read my earlier posts giving the latest draft of my book, which I have posted in pieces over the months since the summer, you can read what I think that code should contain and why I think so. I also invite you again to send me an email with your contributions to what you think a new moral code for our whole species should contain.

<drwendell49@gmail.ca> 














I am very serious in this. It is axiomatic for me that a new moral code for humanity must be built up democratically. We'll gather opinions, perhaps over decades, millions of them if we have to, and have public debates online, and keep refining our code till we distill it down to a few basic principles that can effectively guide us all to live together in peace. People will accept it, buy into it, practice it, and teach it to their kids because it will make sense. The logic of it will be unassailable. It will, most importantly, tell every human being "You are worthy. You have an inalienable right to be yourself and to choose your own way in this life as long as you are not directly harming anyone else."  

Yes, it is a Western democratic view, but I point out again: democracy works. Its processes are hard, long, and slow, but it works. It makes strength and happiness over the long haul.

So I'll close by pointing out one more time: if this seems hard to you, think about the alternative.