What does the moral code of idealism look like?

[Eugene I]

I disagree. Strongly. There is a worrying and unwarranted arrogance and pride in thinking our localized consciousness is more wise than the archetypal forces which selected for our corporeal survival over vast timespans simply because we live in a later age.

Simply knowing we are sick is not sufficient to adjust our behavior properly if it was that behavior which made us sick. In fact I would claim that is the precise purpose of guilt - to distinguish to us what sickness results from "external" causes and what results from our own mental habits which can be modified with sustained effort.

Without that, we may actually be justified in attributing all pathology and alienation to external causes and that is when resentmemt and desires for revenge truly express themselves in the most harmful ways, as we can see quite clearly in the modern world today. People feel guilty but cannot identify the source within so they project it outwards onto everything but themselves.

Lets look at the Buddhist approach for example where the pathology is not attributed to any external forces at all but identified as purely internal problem: the pathology of the delusional and self-centric state of consciousness. There is no sense of guilt, evil or blame involved whatsoever, but this is viewed as a spiritual decease that causes suffering to oneself and others and therefore needs compassionate approach and healing. All Buddhist practices are healing in their essence with the attitude to people as being sick and suffering from their spiritual decease that needs help and healing.

But once a spiritual tradition starts exploiting the senses of guilt, blame and evil (which are simply instinctive emotions of evolutionary origin), what happens is that they start unconsciously projecting them towards the world and other people. It is inevitable. If you feel guilty and evil in yourself, you will see people around you as guilty and evil by a simple work of psychological projection. Monotheistic religions largely exploited and amplified those feelings. In the Bible is says "do not judge" on one page and "evil, sin blah-blah" on the next. How can you not judge people for their wrongdoings if you are intoxicated with the sense of evil, blame and guilt? It is psychologically impossible. This is one of the most dangerous and damaging human emotions and mechanisms that we evolutionary inherited from our ancestors. All major conflicts, genocides and wars in the human history were driven by the senses of blame and evil towards specific groups of people. And of course that includes all religious wars. The fact that Christianity and Islam are refusing to accept this fact I consider to be outrageous. Why would not Christians and Moslems, instead of getting into a denial mode of "let's forget that history and renew our faith", accept that there was a psychological reason for the atrocities by crusades, conquista, inquisition, witch hunt, execution of thousands of heretics, Islamic wars and conquer etc? Why those people committed those atrocities? Because they were wholeheartedly fighting for the "true faith" against the people that they portraited as "evil" and "sinners" and the enemies of the "true faith". Accept it and try to rectify it and change their approach if they really want to renew their faith and make it less dysfunctional and more appealing to modern people. Unfortunately, that requires humility, and the sense of superiority and arrogant conviction that "out tradition is the most superior one" (and therefore can never fault) works against that.

[Ed Konderla]

I agree I think! In the tradition I follow the focus for "sin" is 100% personal. You can't fix another person's sin However you are free to act on another person's action if their actions cause harm. As an example the executioner might weep for the condemned but personal responsibility requires the execution. So he performs the execution with great empathy and respect.

[AshvinP]

I disagree. Strongly. There is a worrying and unwarranted arrogance and pride in thinking our localized consciousness is more wise than the archetypal forces which selected for our corporeal survival over vast timespans simply because we live in a later age.

Simply knowing we are sick is not sufficient to adjust our behavior properly if it was that behavior which made us sick. In fact I would claim that is the precise purpose of guilt - to distinguish to us what sickness results from "external" causes and what results from our own mental habits which can be modified with sustained effort.

Without that, we may actually be justified in attributing all pathology and alienation to external causes and that is when resentmemt and desires for revenge truly express themselves in the most harmful ways, as we can see quite clearly in the modern world today. People feel guilty but cannot identify the source within so they project it outwards onto everything but themselves.

Lets look at the Buddhist approach for example where the pathology is not attributed to any external forces at all but identified as purely internal problem: the pathology of the delusional and self-centric state of consciousness. There is no sense of guilt, evil or blame involved whatsoever, but this is viewed as a spiritual decease that causes suffering to oneself and others and therefore needs compassionate approach and healing. All Buddhist practices are healing in their essence with the attitude to people as being sick and suffering from their spiritual decease that needs help and healing.

But once a spiritual tradition starts exploiting the senses of guilt, blame and evil (which are simply instinctive emotions of evolutionary origin), what happens is that they start unconsciously projecting them towards the world and other people. It is inevitable. If you feel guilty and evil in yourself, you will see people around you as guilty and evil by a simple work of psychological projection. Monotheistic religions largely exploited and amplified those feelings. In the Bible is says "do not judge" on one page and "evil, sin blah-blah" on the next. How can you not judge people for their wrongdoings if you are intoxicated with the sense of evil, blame and guilt? It is psychologically impossible. This is one of the most dangerous and damaging human emotions and mechanisms that we evolutionary inherited from our ancestors. All major conflicts, genocides and wars in the human history were driven by the senses of blame and evil towards specific groups of people. And of course that includes all religious wars. The fact that Christianity and Islam are refusing to accept this fact I consider to be outrageous. Why would not Christians and Moslems, instead of getting into a denial mode of "let's forget that history and renew our faith", accept that there was a psychological reason for the atrocities by crusades, conquista, inquisition, witch hunt, execution of thousands of heretics, Islamic wars and conquer etc? Why those people committed those atrocities? Because they were wholeheartedly fighting for the "true faith" against the people that they portraited as "evil" and "sinners" and the enemies of the "true faith". Accept it and try to rectify it and change their approach if they really want to renew their faith and make it less dysfunctional and more appealing to modern people. Unfortunately, that requires humility, and the sense of superiority and arrogant conviction that "out tradition is the most superior one" (and therefore can never fault) works against that.

And the Christian tradition is a more complete form of the Buddhist healing tradition. Once people develop a strong sense of interiority, as they did in the centuries approaching the Incarnation (see Barfield essay on "Philology and the Incarnation"), the exterior communal norms which allow a mere apprehension of 'sickness' are no longer sufficient. Healing is always necessary but it is no longer sufficient - now we need transfiguration. We need a deep inner impulse of evolution to provide the impetus for Self-knowledge and Self-transformation. Again, it all comes down to whether we take the evolution of consciousness and the existence of higher realms seriously.

If we don't, then we maintain artificial divides between spiritual traditions and misdiagnose a modern perversion of the tradition for the tradition itself. We treat the archetypal forces which shaped our inner being as mere placeholders for unconscious processes. That is idolatry. We maintain the unexamined assumption that archetypal forces of evolution are mindless and purposeless, just like the materialist does. We have to answer the OP's question by saying our moral imagination looks no different than the materialist or dualist or any other secular worldview. Everyone believes in mere healing, but very few believe in repentance and transfiguration.

[Eugene I]

And the Christian tradition is a more complete form of the Buddhist healing tradition. Once people develop a strong sense of interiority, as they did in the centuries approaching the Incarnation (see Barfield essay on "Philology and the Incarnation"), the exterior communal norms which allow a mere apprehension of 'sickness' are no longer sufficient. Healing is always necessary but it is no longer sufficient - now we need transfiguration. We need a deep inner impulse of evolution to provide the impetus for Self-knowledge and Self-transformation.

Again, it all comes down to whether we take the evolution of consciousness and the existence of higher realms seriously. If we don't, then we maintain artificial divides between spiritual traditions and misdiagnose a modern perversion of the tradition for the tradition itself. That is idolatry. We maintain the unexamined assumption that archetypal forces of evolution are mindless and purposeless, just like the materialist does. We have to answer the OP's question by saying our moral imagination looks no different than the materialist or dualist or any other secular worldview. Everyone believes in mere healing, but very few believe in repentance and transfiguration.

We are again getting into "Christianity vs Buddhism" discussion, but just saying, in the Buddhist tradition enlightenment is exactly complete transfiguration, the healing from dysfunctions is not enlightenment by itself, but only a prerequisite of developing a new "transfigured" and enlightened state of consciousness opening the gates to the existence on higher realms (don't get me starting talking about Buddhist higher realms and Pure Lands ).

[Ed Konderla]

What if there are no right or wrongs in idealism ? What if that belief just points to an inner need to justify our actions and give meaning to our lives? If we are truly connected can we really hurt someone else? In reality we are just hurting ourselves. My personal feelings are that we are here to learn a lesson and that lesson has no correct outcome. There is no reward or punishment but only the lesson. I think for humans this is a very scary place to be. There is nothing to resist and we are more comfortable fighting against something. Planting our flag on the moral high ground. To follow a path with heart is all there is and the learning, the wonder and the satisfaction we get from following that path is all the reward there is. If what I think is correct we are a tool for mind at large that is used to 'experience' and there is no intrinsic moral value in that experience. There is no good or bad to mind at large only the experience. But for the experience to have intensity and substance there has to be extremes for us to react to and evolve from. That dictates that there will always be good and bad, joy and suffering etc. etc. At least until mind at large decides the opportunity for new lessons from this particular journey are exhausted.

[AshvinP]

And the Christian tradition is a more complete form of the Buddhist healing tradition. Once people develop a strong sense of interiority, as they did in the centuries approaching the Incarnation (see Barfield essay on "Philology and the Incarnation"), the exterior communal norms which allow a mere apprehension of 'sickness' are no longer sufficient. Healing is always necessary but it is no longer sufficient - now we need transfiguration. We need a deep inner impulse of evolution to provide the impetus for Self-knowledge and Self-transformation.

Again, it all comes down to whether we take the evolution of consciousness and the existence of higher realms seriously. If we don't, then we maintain artificial divides between spiritual traditions and misdiagnose a modern perversion of the tradition for the tradition itself. That is idolatry. We maintain the unexamined assumption that archetypal forces of evolution are mindless and purposeless, just like the materialist does. We have to answer the OP's question by saying our moral imagination looks no different than the materialist or dualist or any other secular worldview. Everyone believes in mere healing, but very few believe in repentance and transfiguration.

We are again getting into "Christianity vs Buddhism" discussion, but just saying, in the Buddhist tradition enlightenment is exactly complete transfiguration, the healing from dysfunctions is not enlightenment by itself, but only a prerequisite of developing a new "transfigured" and enlightened state of consciousness opening the gates to the existence on higher realms (don't get me starting talking about Buddhist higher realms and Pure Lands ).

Then the traditions are a lot closer than even I thought They are not parallel streams of thought but nested within each other as we would expect under objective idealism and evolutionary process. What they have in common is much more significant than what separates them. But any worldview which sets up an opposition/dichotomy between internal nature from evolutionary process and human meta-cognition and moral purpose is falling prey to Cartesian and Kantian divides. That oppositional framework is the clearest and most easily identifiable indicator. It doesn't really matter what we call it, Christian, Buddhist, or whatever, because every spiritual tradition has its version of that modern era pathology.

[Eugene I]

Then the traditions are a lot closer than even I thought They are not parallel streams of thought but nested within each other as we would expect under objective idealism and evolutionary process. What they have in common is much more significant than what separates them. But any worldview which sets up an opposition/dichotomy between internal nature from evolutionary process and human meta-cognition and moral purpose is falling prey to Cartesian and Kantian divides. That oppositional framework is the clearest and most easily identifiable indicator.

Such opposition is actually quite strong in the traditional Christianity and other monotheistic religions. But looking at human condition as developmental and evolutionary is much better and healthier approach, I agree. And this is where the evolutionary psychology also helps, even though it is limited by its scientific approach, yet it can bring a lot of useful insights (as any well-done science) and expose the evolutionary origin of many of our human character traits and cognitive-behavioral patterns that were previously viewed only from mythological or archetypal grounds.

[AshvinP]

Then the traditions are a lot closer than even I thought They are not parallel streams of thought but nested within each other as we would expect under objective idealism and evolutionary process. What they have in common is much more significant than what separates them. But any worldview which sets up an opposition/dichotomy between internal nature from evolutionary process and human meta-cognition and moral purpose is falling prey to Cartesian and Kantian divides. That oppositional framework is the clearest and most easily identifiable indicator.

Such opposition is actually quite strong in the traditional Christianity and other monotheistic religions. But looking at human condition as developmental and evolutionary is much better and healthier approach, I agree. And this is where the evolutionary psychology also helps, even though it is limited by its scientific approach, yet it can bring a lot of useful insights (as any well-done science) and expose the evolutionary origin of many of our human character traits and cognitive-behavioral patterns that were previously viewed only from mythological or archetypal grounds.

Agreed, hence my post about Nietzsche's critique of Christianity. But it is only most visible in Christianity because that tradition permeates everywhere in the Western world and most places in the non-Western world too. Most people simply cannot avoid it. But when I visited my Hindu relatives, their oppositional view of the world was just as obvious. Most places in the West just got to that impasse sooner, i.e. they are farther along in the evolutionary process.

The evolutionary approach is much more powerful than most people realize. Hoffman has used it to form a rigorous scientific dispute of physicalism at its very core and who knows what he may develop out of his "conscious realism". When you think about its empirical results carefully and without modern blinders, we see clearly that conscious human individuals and cultures and spiritual traditions, as reflected in the mythology, can and have become the dominant "environmental" selection mechanisms. Therefore even the materialist cannot deny a conscious purpose to the process.

[AshvinP]

What if there are no right or wrongs in idealism ? What if that belief just points to an inner need to justify our actions and give meaning to our lives? If we are truly connected can we really hurt someone else? In reality we are just hurting ourselves. My personal feelings are that we are here to learn a lesson and that lesson has no correct outcome. There is no reward or punishment but only the lesson. I think for humans this is a very scary place to be. There is nothing to resist and we are more comfortable fighting against something. Planting our flag on the moral high ground. To follow a path with heart is all there is and the learning, the wonder and the satisfaction we get from following that path is all the reward there is. If what I think is correct we are a tool for mind at large that is used to 'experience' and there is no intrinsic moral value in that experience. There is no good or bad to mind at large only the experience. But for the experience to have intensity and substance there has to be extremes for us to react to and evolve from. That dictates that there will always be good and bad, joy and suffering etc. etc. At least until mind at large decides the opportunity for new lessons from this particular journey are exhausted.

I think this gets to the heart of the matter, pun intended. We all experience the pangs of guilt-conscience when acting in certain ways or encountering other people acting in those ways. The question is whether we want to deny that experience with an assumption that it is meaningless, even though it seems extremely meaningful to us when we encounter it, or we embrace it as revealing something incomplete yet still very real. The former denies good-evil as real forces in the world, thereby accepting moral relativism, and the latter accepts that we are simply not in the best position to judge what is good-evil in many situations, although we can certainly identify evil at its extremes. The former is a nihilistic path to go down, as Dostoevsky saw clearly in the 19th century, and as we ourselves have seen clearly in the 20th century.

[Ed Konderla]

I think assuming it is meaningless would be the greatest mistake. But what is important in my mind is where does the meaning come from. As an example if someone wrongs me I must register that wrong for a whole host of reasons. Now if I am a super developed intellect (which obviously I am not) I might could actually forget that wrong, fair enough. If however I fail to right that wrong because I am afraid of the consequences then I absolutely must confront the wrong because the greatest sin would be giving in to fear. At the very least I have an obligation to call my cowardice what it is and not lie to myself. So the wrong that I perceived started a sequence of events that forces me to deal with and learn from. There is nothing in here about extracting justice from the wrong doer. The confronting and taking action against the wrong doer only has meaning in the lesson I learn from it about myself and life. What lessons or consequences the wrong doer experiences is his problem.