Chapter 18: In the Moral Pursuit of Meaning

We spend too much of our lives doing things that do not really matter. This is a reality generated by technologically productive civilizations, which generally shield us from our inborn concerns with subsistence and seamlessly segregate us from noticing our socioeconomic stratifications as we become preoccupied with artificially induced needs that are both normalized and instilled in our cultures. And as we continually and mutually endorse the dubious value of one another’s interests and achievements, we collectively learn to discard any attempt to question our allegedly progressive goals in order to justify what we do and validate who we are. Many of us mistakenly come to believe we are the focal point of our narratives and unknowingly forsake the greater truth to remain invested in our mass delusion of self-importance. This inadvertently leads us to lose sight of the meaning we derive and express through our own stories of struggle and transformation where we actively explore the indeterminate element of life that drives us to live instead of suppressing our externalized fears of the unknown by blindly succumbing to the uncontested commands of self-perpetuating sociopolitical systems. And when we heed the deafening cry of the herd to guide us, we instantly weaken the inner voice of our spirit that reflects the true will of our motivation and underscores what really matters to us in life.

The answers we seek reside within ourselves and not in manipulated societal constructs that cater to the fortuitously privileged few who materially benefit from our civil degradation while quietly assuming their moral authority over the rest of us by diminishing our irreconcilable dilemmas. Our divisive ideologies of indisputable certainty only serve to conceal our shared insecurity and distrust while enabling the inequities and iniquities that strongly contribute to our individual angst and collective suspicion. A polarized society only reveals that we are more concerned with compensating for our uncertainties than with facing them. And as we ceaselessly obsess with relative status as our cover story, we drive everybody else to be concerned with it too. Since our sense of value has to be comparative to possess meaning in a zero-sum game, it definitively becomes a scarce resource not available to everyone. Closed systems of belief help sustain an imposed scarcity of personal utility that only yields an unrestrained abundance of fictitious identities with no purpose other than to unconsciously imitate absurdly unimportant lives and evade the ambiguities of a sentient existence. However, a society that tries to eliminate all risk or chance also discards all meaning embedded in mystery along with it.

Life undoubtedly presents us with many situations that urge our desperate escape from peril, internment or defeat. But we also experience diverse patterns and events that capture our curiosity. So while the adversity we face throughout the course of our existence may spark the desire for our lives to remain relatively stable and fulfilled, we simultaneously yearn for boundless adventures to see beyond our experiential horizon. We starve for the mysterious and irregular just as much as we hunger for lucidity and consistency, and this brings into focus how security and growth instantly diverge in their aspiration. While one demands the assurances of living within protective boundaries, the other wants us to surpass them. Each prompts us to seek the other until their brief union elicits momentary elation.

However, the complexity of our needs and the emotional states they evoke often confuse what we really want with what we pursue or follow. For instance, we may seek fame and fortune when we secretly aspire to be loved and to be free. We all more or less wish to be liberated from a life of physical hardship and mental confinement, but this characteristically leads us to substitute the attainment of spiritual wealth for higher financial status, and to viciously fight for supremacy over others when the slightest refuge and justice would suffice. Naturally, we only begin to deduce what is indispensable after we obtain what we desire and candidly examine whether or not we feel nurtured, and it is through our unreserved introspection that our fleeting wants often prove to be poor predictors of what we enduringly need. Our wishes also place many of us in addictive cycles of longing and gratification, where we are never fully satisfied and where we are constantly lost in the present as we blindly chase a better future only to repeat some distorted yet unalterable version of the past.

Our needs are tied to the conditions of life that expose us to pain and injury as well as threats and constraints, and it is in response to these conditions that we are generally motivated to seek the pleasure, power and possibility of things. Suffering is the inescapable reality of dealing with our fundamentally harsh environment, and it is essential to appreciating life and reminding us of what is truly important. We also prolong authentic happiness through its briefly distressful lapses that occur as we attempt to rescue ourselves from unending agony by transcending our limits. Unfortunately, many of us choose to overindulge in frivolous decadence or to gain a competitive advantage over one another while many others among us have to contend with fighting for our sustenance or enduring too much grief to realize that we only want our lives to mean something. We neither afford the time to deconstruct nor sincerely test what we believe is vital to being meaningfully happy or fulfilled.

Whether we hopelessly struggle to know what matters or unquestionably presume that we know, we want our sense of meaning or our path through adversity to be unequivocally clear. Some of us address this by believing that life is purely for the taking and if we want something, we have to acquire or confiscate it. But most of us know from our shared wisdom as shown over the ages that life is really about what we make of it. Meaning is not something we pilfer but rather generate by producing or expressing value. Hence, we cannot expect it to make an appearance unless we engage in the narrative of life by seizing its opportunities and enjoying the fruits of our labour long enough to determine what it is that lights the fire within us or brings us inner joy as well as what we are willing to do at great cost to ourselves. To know our purpose or find our calling, we have to experience it, and we cannot experience it unless we partake in the world however obscure or aimless it may seem at times.

In order to manifest the self we always were, we need to transcend the self we have become by deciding what to do with what we are now. And it is in the indirect impact of our deeds, the painful scars of our mistakes and the strange ease of our struggles that we locate our answers. When we find comfort in responding to the discomfort that we sense about the world, it is because the internal imbalance we feel links to the external imbalance we perceive. Real meaning is derived from our quarrels with life and it is only found in what genuinely matters to us, and what matters to us is what defines our morality. Our meaning and morality are inseparable, and therefore, to live a viagnostic life is to engage in the moral pursuit of meaning. This requires us to raise our awareness above complacent and reassured crowds as we endeavour to comprehend and employ our ethics regardless of their potentially negative consequences, however immediate, incessant or insufferable they may be. This is how we surface the very essence of our being and find the utility in the self that gives meaning to our lives.

UTILITY IN THE MEANING OF VOLITION TO MORALITY

Although there are many ways we can define morality, one of the most enduring and pervasive views is that it represents our code of conduct regarding what is appropriate and inappropriate in specific situations as well as applicable to all circumstances. From this perspective, morality arises from our need for social order. Since we know that particular forms of behaviour can potentially disrupt or harm our functional harmony with one another, it is normal and necessary to expect our societies to have laws that dictate what falls outside the bounds of acceptable conduct as well as specify punitive actions to take if we breach those boundaries. And while this includes rewarding cooperation and performance, our societal structures tend to maintain obedience through group pressures and by threatening people with violence, ostracism or other forms of perceived punishment. However, confining morality to sociocultural norms or rules of civic engagement is a very limited interpretation of our ethical framework that neither reflects nor acknowledges its personally conscious nature.

As sentient beings, we are morally aware because we are socially sensitive to one another’s actions and we have no concept of equity or injustice without the presence of other social creatures. This also comes with the propensity for engaging in coordinated efforts just as much as for competing over scarce resources and territory. While a disproportionate number of us who seem to suffer from delusions of absolute autonomy also take full advantage of the unquestioned conformity or good will of others, we naturally grasp the need for collaboration to progress individually and collectively. We possess the mutual desire to bond with one another since we all share the same existential fate. Our socially oriented consciousness gives us our moral sense of right and wrong, which many of us commonly refer to as our conscience. And while our personal experience and cultural teachings shape our moral beliefs, our capacity to distinguish right from wrong is something we seem to derive from our own intuition or base intelligence. Many of us, if not most, would argue there is something intrinsic about the origin of our ethics that it is beyond what we could learn or acquire experientially and completely on its own. And although this implies that we are likely encoded with the raw logic of fairness and justice, our moral sense of truth is neither fully constrained by our biology nor by our culture because it is both innate in its construct and emergent in its application.

Furthermore, we do not purely confine our moral systems to definitions of right and wrong because morality includes all of our beliefs about what is important or what is of value, which suggests that morality has intimate ties to utility. This means that aligning to our values or producing value is what we deem virtuous, and opposing those values or destroying value is immoral. Consequently, we learn to follow what we perceive to be valuable to us as per our circumstances to determine how to best live life, which includes everything from how we handle difficult situations we may encounter to what we believe we should contribute that is missing or lacking in the world. And as we tacitly answer the inevitable questions of life, we discover our morality and begin to fathom who we really are. It is in our search for utility or value that we come closer to expressing our authentic selves instead of simply imitating the societal products that our cultural indoctrination breeds. Unfortunately, very few of us ever learn to make this distinction. Since this can be a lifelong process that we undergo to find our true path along our indeterminate journey, it may not be apparent to us until much later in our lives.

Since we can construe or misconstrue our reality to fit any narrative we like, we tend to perceive ourselves along with our actions as part of a greater good while the rest of the world is bad or under suspicion of being bad to justify why we need to destroy, control or outcast the other. We sometimes incorrectly assume that people failing to do the right thing results from not knowing the difference between right and wrong or from being unethical because we should all know that difference. However, we all secretly, if not openly, have our own morality despite what we have been taught regarding how to interpret what is acceptable or responsible, and we are always unknowingly reassessing our values, such as when we decide that being pragmatic becomes more important than being compassionate or than even being fair or honest. Given how countless factors and diverse settings influence how we reason and respond to the world, determining what is moral and immoral or amoral becomes a matter of perspective as we witness how one person’s or group’s rectitude can become another’s misdeed. We rely on our wisdom to consider which principles to apply in which situations we may face and to appreciate the short-term versus long-term outcomes of choosing to prioritize one set of values over another. But while most of us can foresee the future costs of an immediately convenient tactic such as lying, some of us will resume our dishonest schemes regardless of their risk or penalty.

There is a long held, albeit unpopular, supposition that we only have the illusion of free will because we seem to be largely oblivious participants in a world we neither willingly nor successfully influence. However, most of us reject this view because we experience the intended impacts of our behaviour on our lives and surroundings. And although conditions limit our choices, our choices do have consequences and consequences change our conditions. Moreover, we assume we have freedom and responsibility because we possess awareness of having options and the ability to act voluntarily upon them, even if we may have challenges with making or committing to decisions while concurrently feeling that we are often left with little to no alternatives in many of the scenarios we face. Otherwise, without freedom of choice or the power to choose, morality would be rendered meaningless since we would also have to abandon responsibility for our actions and their harms. Nevertheless, morality is more than simply having choice; it is about what we do with our options. We reveal our morality through the decisions we make or evade that define our path in life. We find utility in the meaning of volition to morality because we encounter our genuine sense of value that express who we really are through the spirit of our choices. Hence, we must freely choose to act according to what feels right to ultimately derive something of importance from our stories.

Every decision we make only matters if it means something. Unfortunately, we struggle with our true morality because our cultural upbringing pressures us to follow a righteous or prescribed way of life that promises us either prosperity or suffering. For some of us, we are consumed by the belief in an afterlife where our past and present deeds will later determine our place in a future world. But more generally, we believe that we will be rewarded or punished in this life eventually based on our graded performance, and consequently, many of us carry an endlessly heavy burden as we repeatedly worry about how we behave and what we achieve based on our internalized expectations of significant others. We may even become fearful of social persecution and feel like some unforgiving all-seeing entity or an undisclosed panel of judges is watching us and scrutinizing our every move. But this only occurs when we precipitously relinquish ownership of our morality by outsourcing to a self-serving society with an uncontested rulebook, or when we free ourselves of any authentic relationships that may challenge or expose the charlatans we have gradually become. When we are not true to ourselves, we substitute who we really are with clay figurines of our projected identities that we can mould to camouflage the deepest parts of ourselves that are too vulnerable to withstand the cruelty of life.

We all risk becoming the things we fear when we sever our ties to our essence and our societies become so corrupt that their social fabric tears apart from a fundamental breakdown in trust and the abandonment of our ethics. Morality is essential to building and maintaining trust through its integrity, which we demonstrate through consistency between our actions and declared values. Our moral code demands that we practice what we truly believe. Otherwise, what we say and do only invites hypocrisy to join our duplicity in spreading mistrust. Without integrity and stability, we cannot seed and grow confidence in the world, in others or in ourselves. We solidify social bonds solely when we experience a reliable, steady and diverse exchange of real value with one another. But if we promote or tolerate blind faith in the world and in ourselves, we will only surface our fragility and deepen our conflict. By overlooking our underlying motives and ignoring all conspicuous evidence that counters our professed adherence to the principles and values that sustain and enrich life, we only serve to support an artificial structure that is destined to fail at a great cost to our true selves and communities. We need to wrestle with our morality and the meaning of its utility in order to strengthen it, and that strength lies in our willingness to explore the core dimensions of morality itself that include our volition and reason as well.

THE MORAL DIMENSIONS OF LIFE

Our moral reasoning became part of the unwritten language of the inseparable self from society long before we devised civil laws and long before we could verbalize our sense of inequity and injustice. Until that point in our biocultural history, we crudely expressed our moral appreciation through emotional states that involved both positive reinforcement of behaviour and negative expressions such as anger, jealousy and violent tendencies towards vengeance. However, the articulation of our moral principles would later evolve through our storytelling, scripture and symbolism that would come to represent our relationship with life with increasing elegance. At the heart of these principles, we see specific logic embedded in life that helps to secure our interpersonal trust and communal balance through our mutual need for fairness and justice. From this special blend of genetic and cultural programming, the foundation of morality appears to branch out over time into two ethical modes in the assessment and regulation of biosocial interactions and in the formation of political and judicial structures.

The first and perhaps most rudimentary of the two is the reciprocation mode that resonates with us in common sayings such as ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’, and includes the retributive rule of ‘an eye for an eye’. We see the custom of reciprocity consistently across geography, history and culture, and we quickly come to appreciate its rationale during our developmental years because its simple approach to morality seems fair and unambiguous in its expectations. However, when we consider the potential for unfulfilled obligations or broken promises, situations can be easily manipulated and dangerously escalated between individuals or groups, especially where longstanding differences of opinion already exist. Furthermore, while this evaluative feature of the psyche does not take long to adopt as part of our psychosocial functions, its scope remains confined to direct outcomes and to distinct actions or rules isolated from the larger context of events. In other words, it is very limited in its guidance.

On the other hand, the more evolved exemplification mode aligns more with the golden rule of ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ and focuses on how to behave before considering what others do. It is the ageless practice of living by example or by a set of principles, which transcends our concern with equivalence in order to encompass and demonstrate integrity. This instills trust because regardless of whether or not we agree with a principle, we know what to expect from people who behave in accordance with their beliefs. Moreover, it is an expression of truth as a way of life. And while it shows indifference to anticipating immediate personal benefits, it does test our broader convictions by seeing past their direct costs to envision their greater utility beyond the self and its society.

Nevertheless, we tend to unknowingly make moral presumptions that divide our values along the political spectrum between personal rights and civic duties, which underpin the perpetual tug-of-war between the individual and society. This means that many of us unconditionally assume that applying an established principle should result in a benefit to ourselves or to some extension of ourselves such as our children, while others among us expect some kind of contributive value to our community or environment that sustains our lives. Our biases extend to whom and what matters to us, and this can range from our own existence to every living thing in the universe. In addition, we often consider the temporal continuum of our morality that vacillates between assessing the future implications of our decisions and meeting immediately urgent needs, which at times could end all possible futures if left unmet. Although we can never completely foresee the ripple effects of our actions regardless if they express our morality or not, we need to acknowledge how our underlying motives trigger our predispositions before we can surmise what is significant or measure how well our alleged values align with reality. Furthermore, it is important to recognize that much of the variance among our different value systems provides a wider understanding of what matters beyond our own beliefs as well as reflects our differing experiences and ongoing shifts in the conditions we face, individually and collectively. For instance, we tend to splurge and meander when times are good, but we conserve and toil when they are not. And so while there are some common ethical considerations to influence our beliefs and choices, our values adjust to our circumstances.

Moral contemplation involves the assessment of multiple variables that include any conditions relevant to how we interpret or judge moral behaviour. And we typically focus on at least one of three factors, which vary in importance across cultures. These include (a) the intent of the actor, (b) the actual action or means, including inaction, in accordance with an expected norm or perceived risk, and (c) the resulting outcome and its severity. But we also consider (d) the actual causal relationship between the action and the outcome, (e) the awareness or pre-existing knowledge the actor had regarding the risks or consequences associated with actions taken or averted, and (f) the voluntary control the actor has or had at the time of committing that action. Additionally, some of these factors are difficult to substantiate definitively such as intentionality that require us to infer from any awareness of potential motives and identifiable patterns of behaviour. Nevertheless, the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt rests upon us as an overarching precondition that necessitates consideration of all relevant variables in unison while avoiding fixation on any sole element while we attempt to address any grave issue or moral conflict.

While one side of moral judgment requires us to establish accountability by determining causation or responsibility, the other side demands or seeks compensation that extends beyond punishing the guilty. This is about how we respond to misfortune through some form of restitution or reparation. Imagine a case where we may not have intended to hurt others, but our way of life resulted in the complete or partial devastation of another community or that of our own. Would we consider taking steps to restore or compensate for damages however inadvertent that others now bear and institute measures to prevent such a tragedy from recurring, or would we simply plead ignorance and suggest that such things are the unfortunate realities of life for which no one is responsible? Morality extends beyond legal proceedings and the rulings passed in a court of law. It accompanies us wherever we go and applies to everything we do, but it embraces utility as value in all contexts that considers both private and public interests as well as includes the subtle pleasures of life as much as the fruits of our labour.

All enduring perspectives on morality help us to define or highlight the moral dimensions of life. And by engaging in open ethical discourse or reserved moral contemplation, we reflect our true sentience in that we are aware of life beyond our own existence without excluding ourselves from life. Such engagement demonstrates a genuine concern with ethics that assumes a commitment to fully grasp the meaning and seriousness of opposing or varying views, where our arguments are not devised merely to win a debate. Furthermore, we do not validate our moral presence of mind by having unequivocal answers to our ethical dilemmas but by operating with an untainted aim of arriving at a fair and sound judgment that can guide a defensible course of action without losing sight of any judicial ramifications. However, the greatest challenge with morality lies in our misconceptions of moral principles and their consequential misuse. Even if we put aside primal prejudices such as viewing ethics through the lens of self-interest, most of us are susceptible to making false claims that interfere with our deeper moral sense and leave it buried underneath an avalanche of rationalizations. And so if we do not consciously surface the aberrations in our thinking, they will obstruct our morally rational efforts to exhume the underlying meaning of our lives.

A common misconception we have about moral principles is that we equate them to achievable ends. But principles are guidelines, not destinations. They are like teachings on how to live life, which we should not confuse with the reasons for which we live or the purpose of life itself. Principles may inform our instrumental goals, but our ultimate goals are rooted in our values in the form of ideals that we approximate in their expression, but can never physically attain as a fixed state. Consequently, we should not expect the application of a principle to render immediate or direct results because this might contribute to abandoning our hopes and dreams, which include finding happiness and escaping misfortune. In addition, having a predisposed vision of our desired reality can blind us to the numerous forms in which it may appear and promotes an all-or-nothing mindset. We should instead permit our enduring moral principles to channel our efforts and choices. While we have to be thoughtful about where and when to apply them, we must be disciplined in our practice to persevere in their gradual outcomes.

Another misconception arises from our tendency to treat moral principles as being equivalent to restrictive societal rules. Rules are prescriptive standards of conduct that regulate our actions, whereas principles serve as truths about life that guide our discoveries and decisions. A rule in this context is a defined behavioural requirement or boundary, and it can describe a very particular action or an array of actions that apply to a specific set of circumstances with an anticipated set of outcomes. This means that rules are essentially conditional. Hence, the more we try to generalize them and neglect the conditions under which they apply, the less effective they become and possibly risk reversing their intended result. However, when a rule can apply to a growing number of scenarios, it is likely we have uncovered a principle that we can abstract and express in multiple ways to emphasize a reality about life. A common example of this type is the principle of sustainability. We try to convey the message of doing or building things that are sustainable and that minimize wasted effort so that we can benefit from the lasting effects of our industrious investment as well as avoid placing ourselves in a worse set of circumstances than where we started. This can be demonstrated when we deplete resources faster than we can renew them.

We establish, follow and enforce rules when we are confident of their effectiveness and we employ them every day mainly to reduce risks that include unnecessary failure or expenditure. However, we also tend to implement rules out of a desperate need for control to prevent adverse conditions or hazards in our lives, which dangerously leads us to create rules for the sake of rules in the absence of any evidence that demonstrates any beneficial findings. This contrasts the point of a principle, which is to guide rather than prescribe a way of life, and the discovery of a universal principle is like uncovering a nugget of truth that helps us develop good rules while challenging those that have become obsolete. We need rules to manage as societies and operate as economies, but rules are as stable as the conditions to which they apply. This is why we need principles to tell us when laws are unjust and rules must be broken. Principles are the wisdom of our morality because they steer us towards veracity without any supreme conviction, whereas rules have a tendency to turn into absolutes if left unquestioned.

This brings us to one last misconception worth noting both personally and professionally, which occurs when we apply principles as universal truths that serve as single answers to our questions and challenges. This stems from our general inclination to oversimplify solutions to complex problems, which is exacerbated when we are faced with an urgent matter or an imminent threat that requires us to act quickly and decisively to achieve immediate resolution. Without sufficient time to conduct the detailed analysis necessary to identify the best possible options, we instead use heuristics or rules of thumb to process readily available information with a heightened focus on momentary self-preservation. Some of us will later reassess critical events more thoroughly to establish specific rules or practices that may better prepare us for the eventuality of similar scenarios we will encounter in our indeterminate future. But while conditions tend to dictate when we prioritize survival over progress, we always have to weigh one set of risks against another and juxtapose multiple perspectives when making important choices. In order to steer through the adversities of life with any success, we have to entertain multiple principles relevant to the current circumstances of our stories. We will always confront relatively unique situations that force a collision of values where we must find a balanced intersection of principles and where their juncture is not the middle ground or the halfway point but rather to a moving target that can express the greatest utility at a given place and time. This becomes clear when we grapple with a moral dilemma where there is no absolute right or wrong answer and where every principle is potentially significant because each surfaces a distinct perspective of the universal truth.

Principles speak to truths or realities of what happens or can happen. They fall within the realm of our knowledge and constitute the elements of our wisdom, and when applied correctly, they become tools or methods in the process of achieving our goals to gain or realize the value we seek. On the other hand, our values define our morality, but only those we uphold through the actions we commit to work towards utility in our lives. So while our principles offer us the meaning of perspective, our values reflect the meaning of our utility through its demonstration in the stories of our lives, which are individual expressions of our collective moral evolution. Utility is the beacon of our moral reasoning that helps us navigate through the uncertainty and torment of our choices as our thoughts and feelings thrash in the deep waters of our experiences where we discover that our function is to strive rather than to achieve. We seek to unshackle who we really are at our core and struggle to constantly become a better version of what we hold in high regard. Otherwise, we devolve into its antithesis. Our genuine morality as opposed as our inculcated creed is key to safeguarding us from regression and salvaging our meaning through the practice of our most rudimentary virtues.

EXPRESSING OUR ELEMENTAL VIRTUES

Virtues are fundamental characteristics or qualities that we come to value as part of our discovery and expression of our true selves, and they accompany our principles to guide how we conduct ourselves to live life genuinely. Their purpose is to evoke and define the attributes necessary to build our moral character and unleash the essence of what we are. Many, if not all, religions and philosophies from around the world have historically adhered to some commonly recognized virtues that we nurture to ensure balance and quality in our relationship with the world, others and ourselves as well as find the channel to our spiritual enlightenment. Most religions encourage these elemental virtues in one configuration or another to relate the self to the other or to link the body, mind and soul across the layers of existence in alignment with their operating principles. And while they may seem to conflict with our egocentric bias towards survival and fairness purportedly embedded in our biology, these qualities are rudimentary elements of our culture, which gradually emerged from the elaboration of our social interactions and a deeper moral awareness of life.

We carry forward seven virtues with us across generations, which we can divide into two even groups of three and join through one that unites them all. The first group includes humility, respect and compassion. They are the foundational or basic virtues that keep us grounded in our sense of reality and our relationships, whereas the second group are transcendental in nature and act as our ideal virtues that unlock our potential. These include courage, loyalty and excellence. However, at the centre of these qualities, we find integrity as the core virtue that bridges the two groups and holds the entire moral framework together. Integrity, in this context, refers to both veracity and honesty, which is as much as about honesty with life and being truthful to ourselves as it is about honesty with others. This is the very essence of being viagnostic in that we seek truth in life, practice fidelity and demand sincerity in everything we think, feel and do including the presentation of the other virtues as fundamental practices, which primarily support us while serving others as well by design. Consequently, pretending to align to our virtues only leads to being dishonest with ourselves, and a life based on lies is a life without meaning, which for many of us is not a life worth pursuing.

Humility is the first virtue we should comprehend perhaps because it is the least understood. For many of us, it implies the opposite of conceit or the absence of displayed confidence, as exhibited by shyness or modesty, which respectively tend to conceal our desires and achievements. However, we tend to confuse this with insecurity. Since confidence is critical to our functioning, humility is our necessary reminder of how little we know and can do relative to the profound complexity of life and the vast possibilities of the cosmos. And much like genuine confidence, it is the balance between arrogance and insecurity. Humility is the recognition that we are imperfect and fundamentally dependent upon the world, and that we are no more or less important than the rest of existence. In particular, we are not inherently superior to anything else, but it does mean that we consider ourselves any less important. Our fundamental responsibility is our own existence, without which we can prioritize nothing else. And while recognizing our own value neither implies nor justifies being arrogant or dismissive of other living creatures, it does accompany an appreciation for how fragile our lives really are no matter how much we advance because we can never escape our dependency on the universe. We are all limited beings with a common origin. Hence, if we are able to acknowledge our limitations and proneness to error, then we can learn to live life with humility and feel gratitude for the mere fact that we even exist at all.

We need humility to complement our value of quality by focusing on doing better without perceiving ourselves as being better or more important. This may contrast with the ways in which many of us were raised to follow, but it is in our own interest to find humility before the realities of life ultimately put us all in our place. Since we do not possess absolute power or the totality of knowledge except in our own delusional minds, we also do not hold the authority to judge others absolutely. Our humble awareness teaches us to reserve judgment. And while our relative discernment of reality is necessary to survive and to function, there is little need to judge others most of the time and even less reason to criticize or condemn them. This can be extremely difficult to overcome given that our foreseeable interactions with those who lack humility or the ability to manage their insecurities will inevitably trigger our defenses designed solely to rescue us from our own inadequacies. Nevertheless, it is always best to examine our own state of mind and behaviour before scrutinizing others or letting them scrutinize us.

Another way we address the moral trappings of our judgments is to simply consider and behave according to how we wish to be treated. None of us wants to be killed, maimed or violated in any way, including being betrayed, controlled or humiliated. And since violence as a resolution only escalates to greater violence, our best approach has been to demonstrate respect as our second basic virtue. Since our lives stem from our dependencies and we share these dependencies with all other life, it is entirely natural to treat all things with respect and dignity. Having reverence for all people and all things is the means by which we recognize the right of all to exist. However, in nature, we cannot escape the reality that life consumes life out of necessity, which is why some of us revere our dependencies on other living organisms to subsist when we kill or harvest them for our sustenance. We may even hold them in higher regard precisely because we cannot live without them. This is important to comprehend because it is completely distinct from entities including humans whose actions serve to eradicate life. What we respect offers us utility, even if it is purely to protect ourselves, but annihilation is not about defense and certainly not about nourishment. It is an attempt to erase reality. It is the ultimate act of destruction taken when we want to control everything, but realize we cannot. But trying to control everything disrespects free choice for all and exterminates meaning since meaning hides in the uncertainty of life.

Moreover, treating others as things we have conquered reflects our elementary ignorance of the universe as well as of ourselves, and it exposes our motivation to divide and rank one another to compensate for our inability to deal with the fundamental realities of life. Too many of us almost purposely neglect to mention that those at the top of the food chain did not create those at the bottom while suppressing the fact that the bottom foundationally supports the view from the top. A failure to respect one another ensures the decay of our society and shared economy, but the source of our contempt lies in fostering the illusion of status based on normative definitions of success inevitably rigged to maintain the advantages of some over others even with the best of intentions. These prescribed notions of relative importance as individuals determined by some external measure are placed upon us collectively with social pressure from our families, mates and peers. And if we cannot demonstrate notable personal achievement, then we affiliate with any group to reclaim our significance and to win on our behalf, whether it is a political party or a sports team, or even a single yet uniquely representative idol, however misplaced our adulation may often be. Although competitiveness serves to accentuate both our finest and crudest qualities, many of us forget that most rivalry is just a game that necessitates imaginary enemies or opponents. And if we do not keep these roles and identities in check, we only promote treacherous divisions instead of cultural distinctions along national or ethnic lines.

Unfortunately, we often use our differences to segregate and humiliate one another in defeat, and we see cruelty and resentment in place of propriety and appreciation. Yet it is our diversity more than our commonality that elevates the likelihood of our existential continuity and progression, and it is for this reason if we have no other that we respect our differences as individuals and as groups. This does not mean that we ignore insolent or abusive behaviour and blindly maintain unconditional loyalty to people. Instead, it implies that we also extend our veneration to ourselves as much as to all other life and the things that make our lives possible, and it begins by universally acknowledging our presence through our response to one another. We show respect by giving life our attention and by behaving with a degree of decency that aligns with how we would like to be treated. Hence, respect remains one of the most powerful tools we possess in realizing and sustaining civility even if has become a forgotten art. If we address indignity and the injustice it invites with a pervasive show of honour and fairness to others as if we were revering God, then we could reduce acts of violence, theft and unfaithfulness of any kind to footnotes in our shared history. However, this entails having both the willingness and capacity to fundamentally understand without condoning morally unfathomable behaviour because many of us who are exceedingly disrespectful have ourselves been injuriously belittled. And since we have all jointly permitted this to occur, it requires us to practice compassion as the last of the basic virtues if we wish to reduce unnecessary suffering or to offset its inevitability.

Compassion is our responsiveness to the distress of others, and it is often mediated through empathy but it is not a prerequisite as long we can recognize and ameliorate the anguish we encounter. But experience shows us how the harsh world can inescapably engulf us and potentially harden or break our spirit to the point where our already reserved power to empathize and care is completely depleted or severed as a form of emotional defense. Many of us are also taught to suppress our compassion by perceiving it as a weakness and by assuming the worst in others so that we can forego any offers of generosity. But compassion is not a weakness if we engage in it sincerely, which means that we do it deliberately knowing the nature of those with whom we are interacting and that we accept the risk of those interactions. This is a profoundly spiritual sense of understanding that expands beyond our mere physical existence by finding purpose through our utility in the other, which occurs because compassion is also deep listening and can be felt by those who are given our attention. In addition, it naturally drives us to charity as something we can give to ourselves as much as we give to others. However, some of us may be charitable to portray ourselves as good people while being driven by remorse to secretly seek absolution for our greedy or exploitative behaviour and for how much we know we have taken from the world. Being generous does not necessarily mean that we are compassionate, but it also does not mean that we need to pledge donations or volunteer our time to be caring. It may involve nothing more than offering momentary companionship, but it tends to be as substantive as our forgiveness, which is to grant permission to release someone from guilt since we all face the same existential realities.

While many of our cultures emphasize the survival of the fittest as an adaptive response to the crude conditions of nature, we seem to forget that so much of what allows any of us to ensure our initial prospect for continuity began with charity or the care of others. Undoubtedly, some among us have been the recipients of a cruel and abusive history that frequently began at an innocent and defenseless age and that carries forward from one generation to another. Yet most of us also live long enough to see repentant behaviour take place in our societies for the simple reason that they would otherwise cease to function in collectively supporting our existence. Compassion restores balance in the world through charity as the act of giving back or placing back in that which we have taken out. It is to invest our good fortune in the care of the disadvantaged and less fortunate, which will eventually include all of us. Being humble, respectful and charitable promote a sense of community and awareness that we are not alone in the universe. Compassion in unison with humility and respect maintain our psychosocial stability, and as our basic virtues, provide the sentient foundation for exercising our ideal virtues.

As the first of these developmental practices, courage is our mental and emotional capacity to persevere in the face of real or imagined threats, and to withstand unbearable suffering so that we can endeavour to realize our potential. It involves overcoming our fears to live beyond the secure perimeter of our existence and confronting any disturbance to that security. We may think of this as bravery or valour, but it is more broadly about giving us permission to be who we really are and about accepting the risks of our decisions, including going against popular opinion. It also includes the courage to forgive, which is why we associate it with compassion. We often have to see past the hurt we feel that was afflicted on us by others to truly understand their hearts and minds while never knowing if we can trust them or if they will likely ever extend to us the same courtesy even for much lesser indiscretions. Without courage, we cannot move forward or act with sincere determination and we cannot escape the weighty burden we shoulder in order to realize what we truly are or to do what we know is right.

This brings us to the second ideal virtue of devotion, which involves the dedication and  consistency we need to achieve, develop or sustain something important. Devotion is a commitment to some purpose of value, whether it is to a person, principle or project as a critical goal or hopeful venture. This includes loyalty, which is a prerequisite for building the trust required to strengthen the bonds of our relationships and enable our collaboration with one another to generate, grow or govern value beyond ourselves. However, when faithfulness is mired in deception and betrayal, it can also destroy what we cultivate in our lives with others. This occurs when we pledge our allegiance to dubious sociopolitical causes or when we misplace our confidence in those significant among us who exploit our loyalty, despite clear evidence of being corrupted by double standards where infidelity, disdain and mendacity become tolerable norms. Moreover, our deepest insecurities, which are often linked to a traumatic past, can lead some of us to hold others hostage to impossible expectations or to set unconditional demands that may range from spreading calamitous lies or committing an indefensible crime to conforming to a career or an ideology aligned with questionable requests by families, partners, friends, peers or authorities. Genuine devotion is not about obligation; it needs to be voluntary and sincere, which we associate with practicing respect to recognize freedom of choice and ensure honesty.  

Finally, devotion links utility to quality or excellence, which is the last among the ideal virtues because it is the part of us that is always surpassing what we currently are as we attempt to optimize our lives in some significant way. Excellence is about seeking quality by being the best version of who we are, personally and mutually. It is to do our best to be at our best at all times. It is to improve continuously upon what it is already there without mocking earlier achievements. The risk of excellence is always conceit, and hence, we couple it with humility so that we remember that we are only here in the present because of what was made possible in the past. It is not about being better than or different from others, but about being in a more desirable or optimal state. Striving for excellence without trying to be someone else other than who we really are is the ultimate expression of personal integrity.

There are benefits to expressing our essential virtues that result in developing authenticity in our confidence and trust as well as demonstrating true discipline and cooperation as the instrumental outcomes needed to function effectively in life. It is in putting these seven key elements of ourselves and of society concurrently into practice that we build our resilience and test our perseverance, whether it is withstanding our greatest physical and emotional challenges or recovering biologically and spiritually from being beaten or broken. The mental fortitude, agility and stamina we are able to manifest in ourselves and promote in others ultimately reflect our moral character. And this is how we psychologically overcome our insecurity, purge our arrogance, bring harmony to the self and unite the community as well as protect ourselves from injury, abuse and deceit while resisting our own deception, greed and spite. Moral character comes with the expanded awareness and clarity of purpose needed to remain faithful to the essence of what we are as an extension of the greater truth and to enable us to freely and responsibly exercise our will to choose in the face of an indeterminate life.

THE PATIENCE OF A PRINCIPLED MIND

The likelihood that we persevere in our individual choices depends on numerous factors. These include: (a) how important something really is to us, (b) our capacity to access the resources required to influence our environment in alignment with our goals, (c) how long we have to achieve our goals relative to their degree of difficulty, and (d) the experience of measurable or perceived results. All of these conditions have an impact on our ability and desire to self-regulate that is needed to demonstrate our utility, but they are not enough. There is also a dependency on our view of the future based on our personal history and culture that affects at least one additional contributor to the adaptive and persistent nature of our moral character and that is the silent eighth virtue of patience. Its silence or stillness intimates that it functions almost unseen and at times overlooked because it is subsumed under the other seven virtues. However, its presence is felt in the faith we have regarding the positive eventuality of change in our lives, others and the world around us. Our patience, which also characterizes our resilience and perseverance, draws from the wisdom of the ages and our own introspective studies to identify which principles we should put into practice and where to concentrate our attention and effort in attaining better outcomes and actualizing value. Sometimes it means doing nothing because even inaction that may appear to be still on the outside is very much active within our meditative consciousness. The mind needs principles to apply, and some prove to be more valuable than other principles based on our circumstances in helping direct us towards meaningful change.

The first guiding principle and starting point for realizing something of utility is always to focus on what is important, which is equivalent to knowing and living by our values. This is such a basic tenet in life that we tend to neglect its obvious instruction. But a great deal of us struggle with defining our values because we fail to realize that determining what is of value to us only requires that we notice what causes us to react. For instance, if we see something being done inefficiently, it may mean that we loathe waste and value conservation or being economical, or if we get annoyed with poor design and things easily breaking, then we likely value quality. And for many of us, if we feel unease at the sight of heated disagreements and act to resolve them, then we know we are concerned with social harmony. All we need to do is examine how we react to our experiences and we will know what is important to us.

A second principle is to embed the outcome into the process. Values tell us why or at least what we care about, but processes tell us how we achieve them. Since success as achievement is only a state, it is the process of doing that moves us from one state to another. Given this reality, it is wise to imagine our desired result and incorporate it into our work in the same way that a viable strategy begins with a clear vision. In a way, we start at the end. Otherwise, we would merely entertain ideas without ever accomplishing anything of importance to us. Since all real processes have defined inputs and outputs, the key is to ensure that we tie our outputs to valued outcomes so that we do not neglect the outcome in the process. When we appreciate the values that drive us, we learn to outline specific outcomes to meet and insert them in the work we do. And if the results we expect never materialize, we change our process or search for a wholly new solution or means of attaining what matters to us. This includes setting realistic goals that we can break down into smaller and measureable objectives that are easier to produce results. And the more we break down our activities into productive tasks, the more likely this will lead to more meaningful outcomes.

Another related principle is to redefine immediate problems as longer-term goals. Problems are inevitable and we all need to learn how to solve problems, which necessitates a problem-solving mindset. However, we generally do not want to repeatedly resolve a recurring problem. We want to think beyond the immediate issue to develop a sustainable solution or a valuable skill where we know how to address an entire domain of problems as opposed to only knowing how to solve a particular problem in a specific scenario. We can exemplify this easily in the slightly adapted proverbial saying that ‘we can give a man a fish and feed him for a day, but if we teach a man to fish, he will feed for a lifetime’. To do this, we need to restructure our problems as goals to achieve enduring results by identifying the fundamental challenges that we need to overcome and then packaging them into feasible projects. The added benefit of this process is that we discover our intrinsic interests through the undertakings of challenges we enjoy, and the types of problems we know how to best solve can ultimately be converted into services we can provide. We find our strengths in what comes naturally to us and complete mastery emerges when we harness our natural talents and train them into disciplines where we can be of greatest service to the world and optimize our utility.

This brings us to a final piece of guidance caught under an inexhaustible pile of truisms, which is to leverage our sensitivities as measures of relevance. We tend to weigh heavily on our abilities but what comes naturally to us is also what we find to be most sensitive to us because we tend to detect and measure matters of greatest relevance to who and what we are. As a result, our sensitivities expose both our strengths and weaknesses because they are dependent on the conditions to which they respond as illustrated by someone who may be able to see in the dark with very little light while being incapacitated by normal exposure. In this sense, our strengths are also our weaknesses just as they are conversely true. They involve the same skills and predispositions but demonstrate different results in different situations or in similar environments with different roles where, for instance, we may be more effective as a trainer or an advisor than as a performer, or more valuable as an expert than as a manager or representative. This suggests that we can prevent our strengths from becoming weaknesses by avoiding situations that may overwhelm our sensitivities or by preparing ourselves for those inevitable moments, and that we can also transform our weaknesses into strengths by changing the situation or arena in which to play and by seizing opportunities in the crises we face while mitigating their risks. This simply requires that we focus our attention on what is relevant by utilizing our internal sensors to know and operate within our boundaries in order to ensure the integrity of who we are so as to increase the likelihood of actualizing our potential and the associated meaning we seek.

However, we rarely act on conscious reason alone since our behaviour is often driven by emotions and their unconscious triggers tend to be largely unspoken, which leaves us scrambling for retroactive explanations for our actions and states of mind. Furthermore, rationalizing our feelings and behaviours after the fact only reduces our chances of uncovering the underlying truth by pre-empting a deeper grasp of our essence with the convenience of palatable fallacies posing as facts. While our emotions can deceive us, they are nevertheless bits of information that express perceived realities about ourselves and about our circumstances that we should not ignore. Hence, we need emotional awareness to support the patience of a principled mind guided by our wisdom that affords us the time and energy needed to find the passage to the meaning of our lives through the unfolding of our stories.

REMEMBERING THE MORAL OF THE STORY

The moral pursuit of meaning assumes that we have learned something important by applying it in our lives or through its demonstration in some experiential form that we can culturally disperse and integrate with other stories. But sometimes we forget what we are pursuing or neglect what we have learned. This can happen at any point in the course of our biotic existence where we might lose our true sense of self, especially who we were as children before being defiled or shamed by a morally corrupt world or prior to being haunted by a merciless tragedy. Such experiences can infiltrate or breach our character to turn us unwittingly into instruments of amoral or malevolent intentions. This is fundamentally why remembering the moral of the story is critical to our spiritual redemption and the preservation of our humanity. It is critical not only to secure our essence, but also to safeguard our sociocultural progress as an enlightened society of conscientious beings. The morals of all stories are the threads that stitch together the tapestry of the greater story we call life, which is also how we all recall who we are and able to remain impervious to darker forces that play on our terrors and temptations.

We recite stories to remember what genuinely matters in life and evoke who we really are as well as to prevent repeating the mistakes of the past as we build upon our insights into the future. Recitals of our stories serve as rituals that kindle our awareness of the lessons we have collectively learned by routinely reliving or playing out the narratives that continue to teach us about life. Moreover, these rituals are not confined to storytelling or religious ceremonies. Meditating, praying, exercising, bathing and washing, as well as cleaning our homes, can be forms of ritual. They may involve literal or figurative acts of cleansing that feed and support the cycle of our sustainment as much as our growth. They maintain the ‘living of our lives’, but they equally serve as reminders of why we live and fundamentally help us deal with an indeterminate life. This means that if we forget why we practice our rituals, then they will cease to be rituals. Hence, we should take them very seriously and submerse ourselves in them as if they are actually happening so that we instantly know what is important in life.

To remember what is significant very often means to recognize the ‘being’ or ‘becoming’ in the ‘doing’. This is perhaps why we sometimes embed the answer into a problem or build a principle into its practice. For example, we could say that the purpose of life is to find purpose, or a critical objective of life is to be objective. Similarly, this can extend defining the challenge of life as knowing when to challenge or be challenged, or having power is to know when to apply power and when to refrain from its use. We can also think of action as being within inaction; and such a play on words can act as an effective mnemonic when we wrestle with ourselves, particularly when appeasing our internalized societal expectation to be productive with no meaningful outcome. We should be free to do nothing at all as needed and this includes merely witnessing events in our world. And while such behaviour may hint at our procrastination or indolence, we all ultimately wish to be motivated. Laziness is its absence, and we often seek inspiration by listening to music, reading a book, watching a film and looking at a painting or any moving piece of art, or by immersing ourselves in a story, real or fictional.

In the film adaptation of The Unbearable Lightness of Being [18], we encounter a cast of characters diverse in their approach to life and their respective sexual attitudes that represent the wide spectrum of choices in passionately sustaining their own perceived individuality against a backdrop of opposing political change. But despite the fundamental differences between Tomas and Tereza, they derive meaning from their mutual decision to be together that completes who they really are. We may need to live life to know it, but living is a prerequisite to discovering and expressing meaning. Hence, to live lightly because life itself seems empty is a failure to realize that it is through our choices and actions that we give it value and its weight in relation to each other. Morality is not intended to add burden to our lives simply because it inadvertently highlights the cost of our fully conscious freedom. Our moral pursuit is essential to ensure that what we decide to do matters to us personally or to others. And it is by exercising our volition that we find our channel to our essence through life as we explore, create, preserve and restore value in our interactions with others. We are the individual choices that stem from a collective of possibilities in the face of existential uncertainty. What we seek fuels the engine of our experience and flows through the roles we play in our stories within the bounds of reality, where life is suspended in motion for its lessons to be known, our utility to be gained and real meaning to be felt.