You have a dilemma. The world is running counter to your principles. Why are people you thought were “on your side” adopting principles antagonistic to your own? You know your principles are right, but you have to contend with all these nuances implicit in the principles of others. It isn’t a matter of personality. You like many of those who hold different principles, but you feel almost constant pressure to conform to the principles of others or to blend your principles with theirs. Right and wrong is turning into “Well, it’s okay if that’s what you feel.” Or, “Hey, it’s the way of the world; learn to accept it.”
Trying times, right? But these times are no different from any other with regard to principles. “What could it hurt to eat a piece of fruit from this tree?” The story suggests that even ancient people recognized the dilemma. We have always been “under pressure,” as the lyrics of the song go, “pushing down on me/Pressing down on you.” The Dilemma of Principle: Every ethical principle has its counter principle or set of nuanced interpretations.
So, what’s your choice: Take the extremes or find a blend? Is the blend a failure of our principles? No, not necessarily; the failure might be what we were born for: A constant search for a common ground, a universal ethics.
Blending is a practical, if difficult, challenge. Finding a common set of ethical principles to guide human life in each generation or age has been the human condition. For brief periods and in localized places, extreme adherence to principles prevails. Then something in the nature of humanity urges a change, a nuance, a contradiction. It’s happened repeatedly. Principles become a pattern for life style. Inevitably, someone or some group adopts a variation, and style is under attack.
Societies everywhere establish a framework of principles. Take the Transcendentalist community of Brook Farm in the nineteenth century. Like every communal leader from the founders of the Order Fratrum Minorum (Franciscans) to Jim Jones of the People’s Temple (whose members all died in a mass suicide), George Ripley believed that a perfect society was possible and convinced others that he was correct. Ripley belonged to a New England society of like-minded thinkers, the Transcendentalists, who took their lead from Ralph Waldo Emerson. In the spring of 1841, Ripley and his wife Sophia moved with 15 others (including novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne) to a farm they renamed Brook Farm. Nine miles from Boston and in the midst of beautiful “unspoiled” countryside, the little community farmed the land and pursued intellectual matters. The principle seemed sound. Everyone understood. The society grew to 120 people. Very rational. Very ideal. The axioms were understood; the theorems awaited the proof.
In practice, theoretical anomalies arose in situ. What if someone simply relied on others to do the farming and the thinking? That’s what happened. So, Ripley, assuming everyone needed some help in following the principles, added a schedule and specific duties. He did what he could, but the society began to fall apart because he could not, at the outset, account for the anomalous aspects. He even tried to redo the society on the basis of social reformer Charles Fourier’s principles. Fourier’s own conjecture, unproven and not so self-evident as a Euclidean axiom, was that people are innately good and that they simply need an encompassing, well-planned social structure. By 1846 Ripley’s perfect society had disbanded. Fourier’s assumption has yet to be proved.
Even the monks of St. Francis underwent a pattern change. They began their society as the “little brothers,” or friars, in the thirteenth century. The principles had to change subtly. Over the course of just its first century of existence the order underwent changes. Some thought the original structure of the community was too lax, and then some thought it was too strict. Strict, lax, strict, lax... Now, centuries later, there are different groups who still claim the name (Franciscan) or its heritage: the Friars Minor, the Friars Minor Conventuals, and the Friars Capuchins in the Catholic Church and three orders in the Anglican Church.
So, maybe your being “under pressure” is not unusual. Maybe, being “under pressure” is the human way. And maybe, as the song's lyrics suggest, the only ethical principle that can give us a chance at reconciling all the different principles is love.
Trying times, right? But these times are no different from any other with regard to principles. “What could it hurt to eat a piece of fruit from this tree?” The story suggests that even ancient people recognized the dilemma. We have always been “under pressure,” as the lyrics of the song go, “pushing down on me/Pressing down on you.” The Dilemma of Principle: Every ethical principle has its counter principle or set of nuanced interpretations.
So, what’s your choice: Take the extremes or find a blend? Is the blend a failure of our principles? No, not necessarily; the failure might be what we were born for: A constant search for a common ground, a universal ethics.
Blending is a practical, if difficult, challenge. Finding a common set of ethical principles to guide human life in each generation or age has been the human condition. For brief periods and in localized places, extreme adherence to principles prevails. Then something in the nature of humanity urges a change, a nuance, a contradiction. It’s happened repeatedly. Principles become a pattern for life style. Inevitably, someone or some group adopts a variation, and style is under attack.
Societies everywhere establish a framework of principles. Take the Transcendentalist community of Brook Farm in the nineteenth century. Like every communal leader from the founders of the Order Fratrum Minorum (Franciscans) to Jim Jones of the People’s Temple (whose members all died in a mass suicide), George Ripley believed that a perfect society was possible and convinced others that he was correct. Ripley belonged to a New England society of like-minded thinkers, the Transcendentalists, who took their lead from Ralph Waldo Emerson. In the spring of 1841, Ripley and his wife Sophia moved with 15 others (including novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne) to a farm they renamed Brook Farm. Nine miles from Boston and in the midst of beautiful “unspoiled” countryside, the little community farmed the land and pursued intellectual matters. The principle seemed sound. Everyone understood. The society grew to 120 people. Very rational. Very ideal. The axioms were understood; the theorems awaited the proof.
In practice, theoretical anomalies arose in situ. What if someone simply relied on others to do the farming and the thinking? That’s what happened. So, Ripley, assuming everyone needed some help in following the principles, added a schedule and specific duties. He did what he could, but the society began to fall apart because he could not, at the outset, account for the anomalous aspects. He even tried to redo the society on the basis of social reformer Charles Fourier’s principles. Fourier’s own conjecture, unproven and not so self-evident as a Euclidean axiom, was that people are innately good and that they simply need an encompassing, well-planned social structure. By 1846 Ripley’s perfect society had disbanded. Fourier’s assumption has yet to be proved.
Even the monks of St. Francis underwent a pattern change. They began their society as the “little brothers,” or friars, in the thirteenth century. The principles had to change subtly. Over the course of just its first century of existence the order underwent changes. Some thought the original structure of the community was too lax, and then some thought it was too strict. Strict, lax, strict, lax... Now, centuries later, there are different groups who still claim the name (Franciscan) or its heritage: the Friars Minor, the Friars Minor Conventuals, and the Friars Capuchins in the Catholic Church and three orders in the Anglican Church.
So, maybe your being “under pressure” is not unusual. Maybe, being “under pressure” is the human way. And maybe, as the song's lyrics suggest, the only ethical principle that can give us a chance at reconciling all the different principles is love.
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