Everyday Ethics: Core principles, shared values
I grew up loving to read science fiction authors, from Isaac Asimov to Robert Heinlein.
I was fascinated with questions about whether life existed elsewhere in our universe or if aliens might already have visited us. These issues stirred my imagination, which is why I think now they were so compelling to my young mind.
One of the early concepts that excited me was that of parallel universes, ours being one in the network of many others. Writers teased my mind with stories about another universe where someone just like me was living my story in another dimension.
What was once science fiction is now science, at least with some scientists thinking about what is called the multi-universe. The theory suggests that after the Big Bang that began it all there were many universes starting, wherever the requirements for life such as water were there.
The idea of parallel universes still excites my imagination, but these days I see a different application of the concept — our culture and politics — where people living in the same country seem to hold such different views of what is going on.
It’s as if we live in different worlds where we exist side by side, but occupy seemingly separate dimensions.
We seem to be a nation of tribes living side by side but not understanding one another at all.
Culturally, economically, spiritually and politically, each tribe has its dominant worldview, enforced by our own preferences for what television stations we watch, magazines or newspapers we read, even what friends we chose.
But no nation can exist without a set of core principles and shared values. For us, these principles and values are expressed in our constitution, a founding document many cite but few study.
When I think about the divisions in our nation these days, it leaves me feeling anxious about whether our democratic republic can survive.
I feel like the scientist studying the origins of our universe who said that now he had solved the beginning and end of time, all he needed to do was make it to Friday.
One thing seems clear to me if we are to survive as a democracy, a republic governed by its citizens. We need to learn an ancient art from an earlier democracy, Greece.
We need to practice how to engage in dialog with one another, not to find fault with those who do not share our views, but to seek common ground.
The art of dialog requires
It’s as if we live in different worlds where we exist side by side, but occupy seemingly separate dimensions. We seem to be a nation of tribes living side by side but not understanding one another at all.
us to admit we don’t hold the entire truth, that others can offer insights. This requires what I call empathetic listening, hearing others without prejudging them, trying to find agreements and not differences.
Democracy requires that we do so which is made more difficult with fake facts and propaganda spread over the Internet, sometimes by us and sometimes by other nations hostile to our democracy.
There is a story that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was asked what sort of government the delegates had created. He said: “A republic, if you can keep it.”