Thoughts on how to make the world function better
Establishing global goals for education, for children and adults – proposal:
These proposals will require adjustments in the economy, its institutions, laws related to banking, etc..
۰ “Do to others as you would have them do to you” has to be used with caveats: what you want is not the same as what others want and often you and others want things that are not good for them; also there is one of you and many others. This includes:
– being honest, reliable, respectful, appropriately patient, generally helpful;
– making efforts to always be benevolent even towards adversaries;
– observing basic cleanliness, avoiding the spreading of diseases, and leaving a place at least as clean as one found it.
۰ Learn and always consider basic ethics, including living simply and no us-against-them thinking: giving is better than receiving, forgiving than vindicating, cooperating than competing, being compassionate than being callously selfish, including distant, different people and distant future in thoughts than having a narrow, short-term scope of thinking; compassionate, cooperative thinking includes never allow impulses towards ‘us-against-them thinking’ to evolve; living simply, is more ethical and beneficial than pursuing high material living standard and status; these attitudes, ways of thinking and behaving are contagious and lead to caring, supportive relationships.
۰ Learning that pursuing simple, ethical living largely coincides with pursuing health and happiness: Pursuing cooperation rather than competition should lead to avoidance of any us-against-them thinking; nobody should be considered an enemy.
۰ Learning broad compassionate empathy – sympathy, feeling like others within a group, is natural and spontaneous; empathy, efforts to perceive others mood, feelings, emotions, physical pains, fears, aspirations, grief and effects of bad memories, etc. is largely learned; we learn it by listening to people, identifying with different people in reading biographic literature, fiction, theater, movies, etc. However, empathy can be misused, for instance when trying to sell things or when wanting to punish, using an understanding of others’ sensitivities and vulnerabilities.
۰ Watching out regarding and largely avoiding us-versus-them thinking since it greatly diminishes sympathy and empathetic thinking; observing people who are seemingly too different to readily feel compassion and empathy, but still learning to be compassionately empathetic towards those ‘others’ (examples teen boys versus girls; people of different socioeconomic classes, ethnicities, and/or cultures).
۰ Since humans have always good and bad aspects, we need to work on presenting our ‘good side’ and pursue being on the ‘good side’ of others, fostering their ‘good side.’ Avoiding the attitude of us-versus-them, and particularly us-against-them thinking.
۰ Accepting and dealing with negative feelings and emotions directly, countering them with positive emotions, gratitude, thinking of loved ones and beauty in nature; avoiding unethical behaviors that alleviate negative feelings and emotions.
۰ Making efforts not to show emotions in most situations, they are your own problem. Apparent insults and injuries are primarily the others’ problem, should, as feasible, not be taken personally. Usually they are primarily caused by factors not directly related to you. Showing immediately that one likes someone may be abused – the other person may expect to be treated as a trustworthy friend when hardly known. Learn to never act out negative, hostile feelings and emotions, never respond with emotional cruelty or physical aggression.
۰ Distract from bad influences, peer pressure, advertisements, wanting to own more have higher status, etc. Instead, work towards being recognized as an appreciated, respected, good person.
۰ Always seek common-sense-thinking, efforts to follow valuable experiences and scientific knowledge, always consider foreseeable and likely consequences in any decision.
۰ Never allow ‘false realities’ to determine thinking, religions must not offer teachings of facts that are ‘alternate truths’ that compete with scientific ‘truths,’ truth mean a model of reality that 1. explains things, 2. has predictive values; experiments ‘prove’ validity of a model of reality must be reproducible. We must make efforts to recognize when family traditional values and group traditions, and/or professional learning include false realities, false moralities, etc.
۰ Cultural morals are often unethical, honor and consequent vindication are not ethical; patriotism and loyalty are only ethical when they coincides with generally broad ethics. Religions generally include moral mandates that are not ethical – religious moral teachings divide people and tend to support grossly unethical behaviors. As the Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg (UT Austin TX) said “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion.”
۰ Autonomy and individualism must be balanced with needs of families, communities, and world population, present and future. Automobiles, a symbol of autonomy, should be rarely used. People do not do well with too many options and high levels of individualism. The “not in my backyard” attitude prevents the efficient realization of much that societies need. Much that has to do with health, for instance science-based treatment of a needed family member and immunizations, must not be up to individuals’ (misguided) beliefs.
۰ In all decision-making, we should screen our knowledge concerning all that are affected by it – thinking shortly, as feasible, about all affected beings with some compassion, including humans and particularly animals humans are involved with, present and future.
Older children and adults should understand that ethics is not related to religiosity, a belief in a god (religions, even if basically traying to positively influence people’s thinking and attitudes, usually incorporate unethical traditional beliefs, mandates, and traditions); the bases of ethics are:
– People do not want to suffer and do not like to see suffering in people they care about. People feel sympathy.
– People generally want to be good, at least “right” in accordance with their culture or subculture; and they generally want to improve themselves.
– As they hope to be treated well, an inherent sense of reciprocity leads to a feeling that helping is a natural obligation.
– It appears obvious that ethics has to be broader than being based on sympathy with people that are close by; we are part of a global community and we are closely related with our animal relatives who appear to have emotions similar to us.
۰ Abuse-addiction: People must learn about ways to recognize and avoid developments towards abuse-addiction disorders. They are a major worldwide problem that generally include untreated other mental disorders and also ethics violations. Abuse may be defined as doing something to feel better when having knowledge that it is not good, for self and/or others. Typically, people want to justify the behavior and lines of cultural expectations, laws, and ethics may be overstepped; if not addressed early, addictions that are serious mental disorders, may develop. Much overlooked are psychological-behavioral abuse behaviors: gambling, food for comfort and to alleviate anxiety, credit buying, enjoying and pursuing unethical fantasies and conspiracy theorizing, pursuing wealth and power, etc. There needs to be a worldwide acknowledgment that these conditions are pathological, require treatment, and should exclude persons being eligible for any leadership positions and positions in which they represent others.
۰ Giving is sometimes problematic since the recipients status is diminished, particularly if reciprocity in the future appears impossible. The giving persons have to be sensitive. People often feel some shame about being in need.
Some additional issues:
۰ Wanting to alleviate fear in children should not include “white lies,” like “it will not hurt” when a procedure is very painful, or “I will be with you” when the mother is not allowed to go into the room of a surgery – children may be very traumatized by the apparent deceipt, the parental figure no longer being trustworthy.
۰ Buying with credit should be avoided: if bought on credit, the good can be lost when it is not possible to pay according to contract, and/or one has to pay high interests to banks; credit it enslaves people and inability to make payments, becoming severe indebted leads to loss of self-esteem, anxiety, depression, decreased cognitive functioning , propensity to substance abuse, crimes, and suicide.
۰ In adulthood, people should aspire to materially rather low living standard, smaller houses, one small room per person, maybe a study serving also as library, not much storage encouraging less clothing and things one does not or no longer need; access to nature, at least plants, small patio or balcony; human powered or electro-assist vehicles. As Gandhi said: live simply so others can simply live. Today this obligation is also important because of global warming – we have to save energy and resources in every way possible.