Resilience - Survive, interconnect, thrive, repeat

Resilience is primal law.

There is something very deep in us that considers survival not just a right, but a duty. We pity people who give up, either in spirit or by suicide. But we also judge them.

Maybe that is why I included resilience in my list of ethical principles. I didn’t mean for any of them to be judgy. But by their very nature, ethical principles are something we strive to live by.

And yet, resilience is often discussed as something a person either has or doesn’t have, and we still judge people who lack it. And to be honest, I think the jury is still out on how much of resilience we have personal control over.

Resilience is partly explained by the comic with the frog being eaten by a bird that reaches out and grabs the bird’s skinny neck in a fist while most of its body is already inside the bird’s bill. In a nutshell, that’s it. A living being has got to struggle to survive and to thrive. It isn’t just the frog that embodies resilience. It’s the bird too. That bird’s got to eat to live.

Creative Commons image by Pacheco of Flickr.com

Resilience is what I put in place of the rules about self-sufficiency and industry that crop up in some other systems. I don’t think self-sufficiency is really possible in an interconnected world. Putting it forward as an ethical goal is like saying one should try to be at the top of the food chain at all times.

Well, yes, that does seem preferable to the alternative.

It is also a warning against sloth, but most people who have touted “self-sufficiency,” “industry” and “individualism” as values were privileged and they got much of what they thought was their own “honest gains” through systems that oppressed and stole from other humans or damaged the natural environment beyond its ability to regenerate in that person’s lifetime.

Concern over self-sufficiency mostly ignores the fact that so much of our ability to provide for ourselves is dependent on the local natural environment and/or the manmade circumstances we’re in.

Sure, I get irritated with laziness, but I have never encountered laziness that wasn’t based on being in a privileged position. I have never actually met a lazy, poor person and I’ve met a lot of poor people.

I have met people sick with a disease we call addiction that looked lazy. I don’t know their fight, thank the gods. But I don’t think that is “laziness.” I’ve met people sick with despair too, but those were generally people still working their asses off.

I have met people who were lazy and complained about not having money, but invariably they lived in wealthy areas and were actually being kept in relative comfort by someone else, often their parents, an inheritance or a privileged job that didn’t require much of them.

I have traveled in some of the most desperately poor parts of the world, like Bangladesh or the back roads of Zimbabwe and Ecuador and I never met a lazy person in those places. I don’t see laziness among poor people in wealthy countries either.

Among people who struggle for the next meal or for next month’s rent, I see resilience. It isn’t self-sufficiency. People in these hard situations are always in a community, supporting one another, getting by and sending what they can to those who need it even more. It certainly isn’t individualism and sometimes health precludes outward “industry.”

This resilience is a tenacious will to survive and thrive, but it isn’t just greed and self-service. There is more too it because resilience also implies a long view and it’s requirements often extend beyond the self..

Resilience has several interlocking components:

1. One prerequisite for resilience is the understanding that failure and struggle are normal and inevitable parts of life. It isn’t that one has to be a morose pessimist in order to be resilient. Resilience walks a delicate balance between optimism and knowing that mostly life is pretty hard.

2. An old adage says, “God only gives us what we can handle,” but that is really only true for those who have been born into relative comfort. It’s a comforting thought but a false friend, which can lead to crippling despair when luck deserts us. Resilience says, “It is our purpose to keep on, even when the way is broken and there is no light anywhere.”

3. Part of resilience is the ability to get up and try again when circumstance throws you in the dirt. We love to say it to others, “Try, try and try again.” It isn’t much fun in practice, as I was reminded when I finished this post and a website glitch deleted it permanently as I was finalizing the formatting. If you’re reading this, I managed to finish it again. It’s not the most popular part of resilience, but it’s there.

4. Another part, often neglected, is the ability to pace one’s self and engage in self-care within overall focus on the goal. When my web software deleted my post, I was very unhappy. I’d spent all of my free time for several days on it and now it was gone. I started rewriting but only got a few paragraphs in when my ten-year-old finished his online schoolwork. Despite the looming deadline, I fulfilled my promise to make gingerbread cookies with him and then sat down to enjoy some with a cup of tea. This too has to be done if resilience is to be maintained.

5. Another aspect that sets resilience apart from sheer desperation is that strong community, reciprocity with the earth and a healthy local environment all enhance resilience. It is possible to be somewhat resilient even in the worst place and circumstances, but insofar as resilience is the ability to survive and to thrive even amid adversity, external conditions matter, particularly the most local conditions. Getting to a better location or improving the situation where you find yourself build your capacity for resilience.

6. But there’s a catch, if those good local conditions are manufactured through exploitation and exclusion of others, resilience is weakened instead of strengthened. The wealthy might pay for their place in a gated community or a climate-change-proof bubble, but all they gain is a tenuous advantage. The structures that keep desperation at bay through exploitation will eventually crumble, leaving those who opted out of developing strong community and a healthy environment even more vulnerable.

7. Finally, resilience isn’t just about the survival of the individual. It is about building resilience for life through the generations. A resilient plant, when threatened by extreme heat or drought will put every bit of its remaining strength into throwing out seeds. This is part of it, the urge to help one’s own kind continue. But the same urge drives us to do creative work or aid other species. Life promotes life. Resilience.

These interconnected aspects of resilience give a better understanding of why resilience is an ethical principle, rather than mere survival. Resilience calls us to survive and thrive over the long haul, not just as individuals but as a community and an ecosystem in a way that ultimately benefits the individual as well.

I’ve finished the post for the second time and I’ll take better care in saving a backup. It has been a hard year and the last couple of days have epitomized that with close friends and family angry and not speaking over online accusations and politically sensitive resentments among those who usually share the same politics. And yet it is Thanksgiving.

A lot of Americans are having a quiet long-distance holiday. It is always possible to think of something to say we are thankful for, even if we don’t feel very thankful, even if the day is bitter. I am reminded that all of these values are interconnected. Gratitude is another and it too is part of resilience. We know things are hard and that makes gratitude even for small things blossom.

They say it will be a hard winter because of the virus and the economy and isolation and climate change and political division. Our hope is for resilience. Breath. Humility. Gratitude. Interconnection. Hope.

Joy as a principle of ethical living

I’ll start backward. That seems somehow fitting. I’ll start from the bottom up.

When I wrote my thirteen practical principles for living well, I thought about a lot of things. Thirty years of thought, testing and reevaluation went into that. But in terms of which principle I put first, I wrote them in the order they occurred to me. I didn’t think of one as more important or primary than another.

I find it interesting then that they have a clear order as listed and I have no desire to change it. It isn’t a hierarchy though. I don’t see any of these principles as “number one” and none is dispensable. It’s more about the parts of life they address.

Image via Pixabay

The first three principles (balance, reciprocity and integrity) address our relationship to the earth and the cosmos, to life itself and to our spirituality. They are the biggest concepts, the ones that came to mind first because after all the years of pondering they were the hardest to nail down.

The second three (empathy, nurture and solidarity) are mostly about our relationship and actions toward other living beings, both of our species and of others. It is personal but also general. These too came quickly to my mind and developed from my years of intercultural experience and from the animals and plants I live with.

While I think society could be much improved with the first three spiritual principles, it could well become a ruthless and hard-edged world if based only on things like reciprocity, integrity and balance. Empathy, nurture and solidarity make for the kind of world I would actually like to live in.

The next three (interconnection, justice and openness) are essentially the political ones. This is about our relationship to society as a whole. Certainly any of these principles could be political but taken together these three outline a socio-political creed—one which emphasizes the needs of the whole, a world without coercion and the inevitability of constant change.

Finally, there are three (resilience, patience and joy) which are about a person’s relationship to themself. There is one final principle, of course, to make thirteen. That is mystery, which stands alone because it is the essential reminder not to be too sure, never to become a cult or adopt the arrogance of believing I have it all figured out—even when the occasional good day makes it feel that way.

So, this is why I say that beginning with joy is starting backwards. Except for mystery, which like the Fool in the Tarot doesn’t really have a place in any order, joy came at the end of my list.

Starting on the path

It has been a decade now, since I made one of the most important decisions in my life. It was not the decision to go to college or leave college or get married or have kids or leave my country or buy a home or quit my day job and start my own business.

All those were important decisions. But this one has done more to change the way I live. Ten years ago, I gave up on social approval. I didn’t give up on manners or small talk or trying to reach out to others. I just gave up on any of it actually working to make me socially accepted.

This was after decades of exclusion. As a kid, I was heavily ostracized because of my thick glasses and extreme nearsightedness. As an adult, I was able to pass for about ten years in my twenties until my vision impairment and other physical disabilities became more pronounced and visible. But even then it was a constant struggle to pass.

As a new mother in my mid-thirties I found myself snubbed in mothers’ groups because of my disability, because I was a foreigner and because my child’s skin didn’t match mine. That isn’t to say that I was universally rejected. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it was when I was a kid. I have wonderful, life-long friends who just don’t live where I do. And locally there were a few other women I connected with.

The giving up wasn’t about not trying. It was just about not hanging onto it and not hinging my happiness on social approval. Up until that time, I had truly believed that a person’s happiness could be measured in the quality—if not necessarily the quantity—of their friendships. I had also believed that goodness. honesty, loyalty and a full heart would win through in the end, that I would find those who would value me if I kept faith.

Those sound like such good things to believe. And yet those beliefs made me miserable because my experience for thirty years was that I was a failure at it, no matter what I tried. My friends and I tend to be people on the margins of society. We love one another, but because of being on the margins, we don’t generally get to congregate close together and the people I live among never fully accepted me. And I realized that they never would.

So, I let it go. And I decided to base my goals in life on something else. I decided to pursue joy.

Beware here. When I say I pursue joy and encourage others to pursue it as well. I do not mean the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure, momentary whims or entertainment. These things are not joy and pretty much always lead to eventual misery if they are over.indulged.

Joy is different. Joy is the deep love and gratitude that you feel in a beautiful moment full of life and passion. Joy is the satisfaction you feel when you lose yourself in work that it is purposeful and true to your own gifts, work you enjoy. Joy is often, but not always, in the connection with people you love, friends and family. Joy is also an open connection to other living things and to natural places.

Joy is both fleeting and lasting. It often lasts only a moment when you notice it. But it also does not destroy its own potential. Unlike the enjoyment of pleasure, which can when taken to extremes lead to addiction, destruction and exploitation, joy feels different and it doesn’t destroy.

Both pleasure and joy are sweet. But pleasure is like salted-caramel ice cream—a treat that leaves me feeling heavy but properly pampered. It costs money—a lot where I live—and I love it, but I also know that if it disappeared forever I could still survive.

Joy is like fresh homemade bread with honey. The sweetness fills my senses. It nourishes and I know that it is attainable directly through my connection to the land with work and focus. There is something in it, the real food of the spirit that I know I can’t live without.

I do use hedonistic pleasure. I eat sweets—specifically salted-caramel ice cream—to celebrate or to get through a tough time. I love to lie back and watch a good film or an old, beloved TV show. And in moderation these things are good. They just aren’t joy. They have more to do with another principle we’ll look at another time, that of nurture. Our bodies and souls need some pampering, but that isn’t what joy is about.

Joy often comes at the expense of that pampering. If you’ve ever worked for twenty-hours straight on an artistic endeavor in a fit of joyful passion, you’ll know that joy isn’t self-care and needs to be tempered by it. The same applies to that joy that comes from stunning natural places, often reached through considerable strain and discomfort.

Joy is the positive side of passion. Maybe that’s the best definition.

Essentially, I found that you can have a pretty good life in all of the ways that are supposed to matter—material comfort, respect, family, friends, purpose—and still feel empty without moments of joy or a joyful passion underlying it.

When I decided to give up on social approval the important part of the decision was that I decided to live my life for joy, even if I was not accepted.

I have continued to put energy into social things, but it is a limited amount of energy. When I reach out to people and I am rejected or dismissed out of hand, it stings but I refuse to let it derail my life again. When I try to build local community and my efforts are rebuffed, I don’t let it take my happiness anymore. I have found a great many joyful things that don’t need anyone else’s approval.

After fifteen years of building it bit by bit, there are many things in my home that give me joy. Last year, I finally had the raised bed that I have dreamed about since I was about six years old built. I feel real joy sitting on it in the afternoon sun, studying the herbs from one of the books I don’t have enough time to read very often. I also get great joy from finally finding the key to successfully making sour cherry jam, which my husband always said was his favorite.

I feel joy every morning as I walk up the hill to feed the chickens, not because I love chickens that much. But because they force me to get out and experience the morning air and light earlier than I would otherwise. I feel so fortunate to be one of those people who lives on a hillside with a view of a misty valley and mornings that are sometimes clear and sometimes rainy with a gritty wind.

The hard thing about joy

What gives you joy will inevitably be different than the things that give me joy. My husband often mentions that the things I take such joy from are drudgery to him. But then he hasn’t found his joy. So many people today don’t know what would give them joy or even believe that anything would.

It isn’t easy. I certainly spent enough years being miserable and I probably would have thought “joy” as a principle of ethical and practical living was a trite and simplistic slogan. But I’ve been living it for ten years now, and it has helped. It hasn’t fixed everything, but it has helped.

The other hard part about joy is that it is so often fleeting. Early this summer my ducks made babies in a nest right outside of my window—the one where I both sleep and read in stolen moments. It was lovely to listen to the tiny ducklings with beautifully speckled backs pecking around through my rock garden. I put food and water near the nest every day to make sure the mother duck would not have to go far.

But still they didn’t survive. I am not sure what got the babies, though I suspect a surly neighborhood tomcat that prowls loose. I could easily see the entire incident as negative, but I know the truth. There was joy. There were moments of joy both for me and the ducks. And sometimes that’s just the whole reason we live—those little moments.

A year ago, I was deeply enmeshed in Extinction Rebellion, an organization founded on good ideals and flawed humans. For a time, the local group gave me more purpose, hope and social acceptance than I had known in well over a decade. Not only do I fully believe in the vision of an equitable future and the struggle to mitigate the devastating effects of climate change, there were moments of pure joy when groups of people worked together creatively and harmoniously.

For months I was respected as a healer, a teacher and an effective organizer. And there was definitely joy in that.

But the same old prejudices crept in and eventually those who felt threatened by me and could not accept me as anything but a symbol of the group’s charitable tolerance toward a disabled person in a corner of the room held sway. I lost it all again.

And it would be easy to be bitter. But the joy that the group created and that I knew during that time was real. Sorrow doesn’t negate joy. They switch places over time or even coexist simultaneously.

A friend who also left the group recently wrote and asked me for comments. I will always tell the truth about the prejudices and exclusion that forced me out of the group and ultimately decimated the local group after I was gone, but that truth goes hand in hand with the real joy that existed for a time.

Joy is often fleeting. It is real for all that. It also lasts.

I list joy as a principle of ethics because it is a focus that doesn’t betray. If you can separate joy from pleasure, entertainment and seeking quick comfort, living with joy as a goal that provides just the sort of true compass that we need to stay on our path.

That’s what ethics should be about in the end. I don’t subscribe to a religion of angry gods or an ethical framework of “shoulds.” We strive to live ethically, in the end for ourselves. We teach our children to live ethically for their well-being. Religions that make ethical and moral laws based on punishment or even a reward after death are, in my view, fraudulent methods of control and oppression. Real ethics has as its objective, not control, but happiness and genuine peace of mind.

Seeking a code of ethics for today and tomorrow

I’ve got kids ages nine and eleven. That means they are at that age when concrete thinking gives way to more abstract concepts.

“Do your chores and homework, if you want video games” is still a house rule, but, “Why can’t I hit her, when she whispers insults in my ear every few minutes, so that no grown-ups can hear? And if I can’t hit or tattle, what can I do?” becomes a much bigger issue in which the first-grade response of, “Just ignore her!” no longer entirely serves.

Life has also become very physically and psychologically hard for my family. Even before COVID-19. life was a daily struggle. If you haven’t picked up why from my blogs, it’s a bit much to explain briefly—a combination of physical and neurological disabilities, community isolation due to prejudice and a generalized toxic culture, as well as living on very modest means.

I have lived in extraordinarily diverse environments during my life, from the heights of privilege to mud and stick huts. And I’ve noted that ethical questions are a lot easier when the next meal is assured and human contact is available.

If you have enough to feed your children and you aren’t socially outcast, “Don’t steal” is a pretty clear moral rule. If not, it is far from simple.

The same goes for more complex concepts. If you are socially strong, able-bodied, included and psychologically solid, “Just ignore her!” does make good sense. If you’re chronically excluded or significantly under-privileged, if the insidious insults come in a constant stream and you can’t just leave for whatever reason, it starts to come down to your overall code of ethics.

Image via Pixabay

With my kids these days, I too often find myself yelling—emphasizing every word, “Treat! Others! As! You! Would! Like! To! Be! Treated!”

Those who haven’t been to my house will be smiling knowingly and wagging a finger at me. Ah, but didn’t I just break that rule myself?

Not really. If I was behaving in such a way (and I did to some extent as a child), this is the response I would most like to have. At least it is the best one I know of. Emphasis does help when attention is chronically scattered.

I am glad my parents and community taught me ethical values, despite the struggle.

I would not want a parent who ignored and let the sneakiest, most mean-spirited kid’s actions stand. I would want a parent who said if five times calmly, but then eventually laid down the law with emphasis. I would want that message which is simplistic but as close to complex as a one-sentence moral code gets.

“But it’s Christian. And you’re not a Christian!,” some readers will now be chortling. When you boil your code of ethics down to its most basic form, what you get is a Christian phrase. Isn’t that a sign that you might not be on the right path?

First, we think of this Golden Rule as Christian in our society, but the truth is that some version of it is at the heart of the vast majority of human moral systems, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and so forth. One exception is the core principle of Wicca, the Wiccan Rede: ""An [if] it harm none, do what ye will."

It sounds ancient, but it only dates to the mid 20th century at the earliest. And it tries to wash its hands of ethics with a fairly flippant assertion that a person should be able to do whatever they want, as long as it harms no one else.

My fundamentally animist response is “How do they define a person?” and quick on the heels of that comes “How do they define harm?”

The Rede is the most basic reason I have never actually tried out Wicca, though I dabble around the edges a lot. On the one hand the Rede is too constrictive. If I take the “harm none” statement to mean no living being or spirit may be harmed, all action becomes paralyzed. I can’t walk or eat or do much of anything without harming some being I consider to be alive and possessed of a spirit.

But interpreted more loosely it provides almost no guidance whatsoever. If you restrict the meaning only to people, you are allowed to harm everything else with abandon. If you restrict the “harm” only to intentional harm, you are allowed to be negligent and oblivious to a murderous degree. Any attempt to argue that there is some natural nuance in the Rede is merely personal interpretation and embelishment, not a moral code that can be taught to a constantly testing child.

On the other hand, the “treat others as you would want to be treated” rule provides a much more practical teaching from the perspective of a harried mother. The kid can insist that they’d be fine with that treatment, but generally they know it isn’t true.

There are occasional situations where they might truly believe they would like the treatment, such as when playing loud music that is disturbing someone else. They might believe they would like someone else to play loud music near them. But it is not nearly such a stretch to teach children that it is the respect for the needs of the other person that we mean in the rule, rather than the specifics of the situation.

It isn’t that you put on loud music for others because you would like it. It is the consideration of how you would like others to behave toward you, if you were being disturbed by something they were doing? There is no way out of it as a functional rule.

Therefore, I’m fine with the Golden Rule as a basis for teaching kids how to navigate ethical and moral issues. I don’t call it “the Golden Rule” because that does seem to be a Christian term. But as a most basic backstop, it works.

It is still too general though. It works for close-up human relationships because we understand what the other person is experiencing with our loud music. Even if I like loud music, I can relate it to a time that another person kept turning the lights on and off for fun and that was disturbing to me.

It works less well for global concerns or coexistence with non-human lives. We don’t always know enough to understand how we we are treating others in these situations.

And there are times when we simply cannot treat all others the way we would like to be treated. I would not like to be eaten, but I eat carrots. Moreover, what I do affects future generations in ways that I can’t really compare to myself.

So, while “treat others the way you want to be treated” works reasonably well for my kids. It isn’t actually enough in the long run.

And with the expansion of the one-sentence rule, Christianity fails for me. The Ten Commandments come across like a very incomplete and oddly obsessive section of a law book.

“Don’t murder.” “Don’t steal.” “Don’t tell lies about your neighbors.” Those are fine as far as they go, but they are easily covered under the “treat others the way you want to be treated” rule already.

And much of the rest of them are not something I can get behind. I will have the gods that suit me, thank you. And I am fine with others having other gods. I’m a tad confused about the bit on idols, but either way it seems like a detail, not something for the grand code of ethics.

The same applies to taking the Lord’s name in vain. I would not be very impressed with a god or any other authority who had such a fragile ego that it needs a special rule about something that might disrespect its name.

More than that though, the Ten Commandments leave out most of the things I would consider essential to a moral code. Nowhere in there is there anything about how we should live in a fragile world, how we should treat non-human life or the earth or our children or even how we should behave toward family or toward strangers.

A moral code should give us a grounding for what really matters in life.

One of the prominent moral codes in modern Paganism is the Nine Noble Virtues subscribed to by many Pagans following Northern European traditions. This comes a lot closer to what I am looking for and is something I am very tempted to put on my kitchen wall and teach to my children. More than anything in Christianity or Wicca it provides a moral compass that is more in-depth than the “treat others” rule.

The Nine Noble Virtues are:

1. Courage: That quality that allows a person to take action even when afraid.

2. Truth: That quality which defines a fact that can be established or agreed upon.

3. Honor: Earned respect, good reputation and moral character.

4. Fidelity: Loyalty and honesty to one’s partners, family, organizations, nation and so forth.

5. Discipline: The regulation of one’s momentary impulses in the service of a code of conduct or rules one has decided to abide by.

6. Hospitality: The quality of being kind and generous to guests and strangers, as well as giving required respect to hosts with reciprocity.

7. Self-Reliance: The quality of providing what one needs for life and happiness through one’s own labor.

8. Industriousness: The value of hard, detailed and careful work.

9. Perseverance: The continued actions of work, effort and struggle despite obstacles.

It’s a decent list. It is a bit heavy on the individualism and light on compassion, but depending on the interpretation, it can serve most issues between humans. However, if we don’t explicitly discuss how we must view the earth as our host under the laws of “hospitality” and emphasize the “truth” of ecological needs, it still doesn’t cover the greater part of our ethical responsibilities.

Furthermore, history indicates that the Nine Noble Virtues are a modern Neopagan construct, not an ancient code of ethics. Heathen gods do little to further these virtues in preserved lore. Worse yet, the author of today’s version of the Nine was John Yeowell, a British fascist and white supremacist in the 1970s.

Even if this particular code was perfect in itself, its origins would call its entire moral foundation into question.

Some Native American lists of values and virtues come closer to my ideal, including a lot more about our relationship to other living beings, the earth and future generations. Yet, these are generally so specifically grounded in Native American spiritual tradition that adopting them and publicly subscribing to them might well be called “cultural appropriation.”

The seven principles of Kwanza form an admirable moral code, even if like most European Pagan traditions, it is a modern construction. The principles are:

1. Umoja (oo-MOE-jah) - Unity - Joining together as a family, community and race

2. Kujichagulia (koo-jee-cha-goo-LEE-ah) - Self-determination - Responsibility for one's own future

3. Ujima (oo-JEE-mah) - Collective Work and Responsibility - Building the community together and solving any problems as a group

4. Ujamaa (oo-JAH-mah) - Cooperative Economics - The community building and profiting from its own businesses

5. Nia (nee-AH) - Purpose - The goal of working together to build community and further the African culture

6. Kuumba (koo-OOM-bah) - Creativity - Using new ideas to create a more beautiful and successful community

7. Imani (ee-MAH-nee) - Faith - Honoring African ancestors, traditions and leaders and celebrating past triumphs over adversity (Source)

Still it is too specific for general use and also the particular property of the African American culture that built it through immense struggle and effort. It is not for the whole world.

A code for practical, ethical guidance

I am pretty solid in myself, and for my own purposes, I can pick and choose among the moral codes on offer. I feel personally grounded and even though not every ethical question is simple, I am not paralyzed by difficult questions.

But it is harder with kids or anyone else who asks about my code of ethics, when I can’t point to a ready-made list.

I am now forty-four years old and I’ve been looking for such a code most of my life. It feels arrogant to even consider just crafting my own explicit code of ethics and putting it out there for others to try on for size.

On the other hand, I find that I haven’t been given a lot of choices. We all know what our current moral codes are lacking. It is time someone put out a new set of commandments.

Here is what I have so far. I have been influenced by Native American and Buddhist values and teachings as well as those of many ancient Pagan traditions, but I believe I have not been culturally appropriative here. This list is much more a matter of learning from the past to make an ethical code that can work for today and tomorrow than it is an attempt to call upon the authority of some older tradition.

Here is the list I have come up with:

1. Integrity - I act on my beliefs and behave according to the words I espouse, despite hardship, obstacles, pain or fear. I acknowledge those things which are objectively true and understand how perspective can change things. I am grounded in my inner truth and stand by it when needed.

2. Reciprocity - A balance of give and take is the foundation of life. The purpose of an apple is to be eaten in order to spread appleseed. Our purpose is to give gifts to life—to learn, to express, to create, to do those things only humans can do. Everything that has a spirit is alive. All that we use is a gift from some living being. All gifts and all lives require respect. Mindfulness of life and the gifts of life should inform our actions moment by moment.

3. Gratitude - We cannot help but consume life and the gifts of life to live. Gratitude is part of our reciprocity. Gratitude, especially in times of hardship and scarcity, keeps us on our path. Gratitude is our connection to the earth, the primal mother and original love.

4. Nurture - We are called by our bodies to perpetuate our species. As such, our actions must reflect our best understanding of what will benefit our descendants who will live after we die. It is also our purpose to nurture and defend other species in reciprocity. My own survival and health is necessary to this nurture and I must ensure my own vitality, that I may give nurture.

5. Solidarity - When I undergo hardship, I learn to aid others. I stand with those who share my struggles. In a cold and hungry winter, I may have solidarity with a mouse. I defend those who are vulnerable to exploitation, aggression and disrespect. I am willing to make sacrifices of my comfort, wealth or safety for those who stand together with me.

6. Empathy - I see the needs of others as equal to my own needs in importance. As I attempt to avoid pain and suffering for myself, I also avert the pain and suffering of others. When faced with conflict or choice, I consider all the needs I am aware of to take the best path forward. No one can be aware of all needs. We must listen to one another.

7. Interconnection - I recognize that my survival and the survival of my descendants depends upon every other part of the living world. All that have spirit influence one another. No action is without consequence and most consequences cannot be easily predicted. Yet it is my responsibility to learn and act in accordance with this understanding.

8. Justice -With power and abundance comes responsibility. A leader is one who goes first into danger and gives first to those in need. Leadership is earned by courage and solidarity. Each spirit must make decisions freely. The oppression of one by another is anathema to the natural world. We take the lives of plants and animals to eat with the knowledge that this incurs a debt of reciprocity. We may do violence in defense against unethical violence with the same understanding. There is a price and we will pay it.

9. Openness - While I know my own truth, my mind and heart remain open and curious. New ideas, skills, concepts and perspectives are welcome. While I hold solidarity with my own, the possibility that others may enter my circle remains open. My circle of belonging is ever widening.

10. Resilience - Survival is hard. Pursuing a goal is harder. Hard work, attention and mindfulness are necessary. Failure and suffering are inevitable. Some efforts should not be forcibly continued. However, the law of life is resilience. As long as life remains, the roots take hold and regrow. If the plant cannot live, it throws seeds that the future may be reborn.

11. Patience - Those needs which are important take time—time waiting, time growing and time healing. Patience is needed with those who are lost in anger, hatred, fear or shame. Understanding and enlightenment take time and experience. My growth is my own responsibility, The growth of others is theirs and it is not mine to judge.

12. Joy - The purpose of life is the experience of joy, the pure essence of passion. While joy may not always shine on me, the seed of joy is hidden in every moment. To make beauty in all work is in the service of joy. Joy in the presence and happiness of another is at the heart of love. Joy is our right and our duty on the earth.

13. Mystery - There are many things I do not know and may never know. Seeking deeper understanding and empathy is a never ending path. Some things may never be known fully. The workings of time and the universe are great mysteries to which we are given only partial keys. Curiosity is good as long as it is guided by joy, empathy and balance. Acceptance of mystery is a virtue.

These are my values put into thirteen key words. Thirteen is a nice mystical number. I’m glad it worked out that way. I like this list better than the Nine Noble Virtues or any other similar ethical code I have encountered. It is practical. It covers those things that need to be covered while remaining flexible enough to stand the test of time.

I hope this attempt to set down my code of ethics is helpful to you, my readers. I don’t wish to preach a rigid set of values that I want others to adhere to. It is mostly for my own benefit that I have put it down here. But if I find that it is helpful to readers, I may spend several further posts exploring each of these principles in depth.

Why do we strive to live morally and ethically?

“Why can’t I have all the presents?” one of my kids shrieks.

The tone isn’t joking the way you might think. She is demanding, furious, her face red and sweaty. For a moment, she is overcome with that primitive urge that seems to defy all ethics. I call it the “me-want-now” urge. We all know it, though we don’t always admit it and some of us bury it deeper than others.

“I want everything! They’re mine, not his!” She kicks toward her brother but I pull her away. He is often ready with sibling comebacks, but this one of those moments when his older sister shocks him into silence.

Some kids seem to be born with a moral compass on the most basic level. They have the urge too. but they also get that other people have it and that we’ve got to meet somewhere in the middle. Fair is fair. They can be persuaded to see the logic of “How would you feel if someone did that to you?”

But this is by no means a universal trait. And unfortunately, my kids aren’t among the budding saints of the world.

Creative Commons image via Pixabay

I not only have kids myself, I also teach preschool and early elementary ESL students. Two sisters ages 5 and 8, who I teach, are always cuddling. The older one looks out for the younger one—making sure she gets the colors of crayon she needs and that she’s dressed warmly to go out—but then insists on winning all the games in recompense. And most kids aren’t even that nice.

Between the current wave of right-wing, anti-compassion politics and my struggles with my own little humans, I have been thinking a lot on ethics lately..

We blithely talk about teaching children to know “right from wrong,” but increasingly it seems like adults in our world don’t know or at least wildly disagree on the subject. OK, most people—at least publicly—get behind the rules of not killing or physically harming people or stealing.

But every week I come across at least one online post declaiming on how wimps who are hurt by verbal bullying should grow a thicker skin—i.e. exclusionist opinions in direct opposition to what I know of as ethics. And clearly, while most of us think it isn’t okay to kill or steal, we go on buying products the production of which requires killing and stealing from the poorest people in the world.

What is it we really believe? And why would we strive to live morally and ethically even if we could agree on what it would entail?

Abrahamic religions have an answer that is so widely disseminated in the world today that I doubt there is a fluent English speaker who isn’t well versed in it, regardless of whether or not you follow one of those faiths. There is the carrot of Heaven and the stick of Hell. And each particular religion or specific sect has its set of commandments or moral rules saying what will be grounds for sentencing you to Hell or rewarding you with Heaven.

For those who believe literally in this Heaven and Hell thing, the ethical life may seem relatively simple. Follow the rules or you will suffer. It’s a fear doctrine with a bit of a possible reward held out—not unlike my methods with my children. “Stop kicking your brother or you will lose your video privileges and be banished to extra chores-ville!” I’m less eternal about it, but only because I—unlike the Abrahamic God—can’t manage to hold grudges and don’t have guards to enforce my Hell while I am otherwise occupied.

Another popular method is the Hindu concept of Karma. Some more sophisticated versions perceive Karma as primarily about providing specific lessons that one needs to learn. But there is always an element of “If you behave unethically, you will suffer as a result, possibly in another life, but eventually you will suffer.”

This may be conceived of as learning a necessary lesson in order to be more enlightened in a future incarnation or as straight-up karmic punishment, depending on who you listen to, but either way, it’s a method of enforcement.

My parenting often has a Karma-like element too. “If you break your toys, you won’t have them. If you use up all your time fighting, you won’t have time to play. If you break someone else’s toy, you’ll have to work it off.”

In parenting circles, we like to call this “natural consequences” rather than punishment. Just like we like to call the Heaven and Hell version, “reward-based discipline.”

Every reward entails the possibility of its denial. And every natural consequence that a parent enforces is only one step removed from punishment.

It may be that immaturity leads many of us to require this kind of external moral compass. As children we almost all need it to some degree. Many adults still appear to need it. Without constraints, most humans don’t act particularly ethically. This is why we have law enforcement after all.

Some people will argue that morality and ethics are nothing but social constructs, and thus somehow suspect and questionable. Many animals don’t appear to have ethics, these ethics deniers argue.

But that is a belief primarily espoused by those humans who spend very little time with animals or in nature. In fact, very few animals kill beyond self-defense, the need for food or competition for procreation, i.e. beyond absolute necessity. Some do but most do not. Many animals respect the territorial rights of others with only exceptional outbreaks of violent struggle. And recent research is showing a remarkable number of animal species that are capable of compassion, loyalty, empathy, revenge, community cooperation, communication and occasionally even heroism.

So it isn’t really possible to say that ethics is a merely human conceit.

A secular, humanist perspective acknowledging this science often simply claims that we want to do “what is right” without any basis for it. And perhaps those young children and animals who act ethically—seemingly without threat or reward—may be proof that this principle has some traction. This reason for ethics is pleasingly uncomplicated, but often there are hidden reasons.

My extraordinarily well-behaved eight-year-old student wants the approval of adults. She is highly motivated for approval and enjoys being praised more than most kids. She also enjoys winning though, which is why she insists on winning every game over her younger sister.

There is a reward being sought and a consequence being avoided. The reward of praise and approval and the consequence of disapproval. The fact that her reward and consequence equation is a bit less tangible and forceful than that required by some kids does not negate the fact that it is still there. She glows under adult praise and so pursues it.

It is still an external reward but perhaps it is easier to transition from such a non-tangible reward to an internal reward and thus to ethical independence. That is why parents often try to motivate children through praise alone, hoping that our children will not always need a carrot or a stick.

As a follower of Pagan gods and a seeker for spiritual insight in ancient traditions, I am often fascinated by the ethical systems of ancient cultures. Many do not appear particularly moral to us today. The concepts of ethics were different and some ancient cultures were quite hierarchical and ruthless. But the deeper you go into tribal, hunter-gatherer traditions, the less hierarchical and the less external reward-consequence thinking you find.

It is not that there is no possible reward for ethical acts but in these ancient cultures there is a heavier reliance on internal rewards, those we give only to ourselves in the form of self-respect and s healthy self image.

This is what I am interested in. Whether we call it enlightenment, awakening or honor, it all comes down to one thing—self-respect.

Within reason, children need consequences and rewards. And in law enforcement, these mechanisms seem necessary as well. But when it comes to most ethics and my own deepest beliefs, I want to live my life ethically based not on a hoped-for reward or a feared consequence from outside, but rather because my self-respect demands it.

Unless I am within a specific tradition that uses a different term to mean the same thing, I use the more universal term ‘self-respect” because that most clearly gets at the meaning. My goal is to live well, ethically and morally in such a way that I can feel unreserved self-respect.

This is one reason I follow an earth-centered spiritual path with ties to ancient cultures. This spiritual approach lends itself to the ethics of self-respect. I strive to teach my children these values as well. It is not easy in a world filled with instant, external gratification from consumerism and passive entertainment. But when they do well, my first response is not a material reward or even my approval, but a comment to notice how they feel inside.