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Copyright William C. Kiefert. All Rights Reserved.
The Practical Side of Heaven: Chapter Three, Part One: The Relationship Between Morality & Rational Development
Our psychic processes are made up, to a large extent, of reflection, doubts, experiments, all of which are almost completely foreign to the unconscious, instinctive mind of primitive man. It is the growth of consciousness which we must thank for the existence of problems; they are the Danaan gift of civilization. It is just man’s turning away from instinct–his opposing himself to instinct–that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature and seeks to perpetuate nature, whereas consciousness can only seek culture or its denial.
Our human development has been commonly analyzed in terms of five stages. At each of these stages, a different human nature emerges. What is “natural” for us at Stage I is not “natural” when we are at Stage III, for example. And the converse is equally true:
what is “natural” for us at Stage IV is hardly “natural” when we are at lower stages of development. Those of us who have developed into the higher stages, however, can and do occasionally slip back into the reasoning and morality of the lower stages. This is unfortunate, but it will continue to occur, until society reinforces the values of the higher stages of human development. Let us now turn to a more detailed description of the first two stages of our model of rational growth and the moral consciousness which is associated with them.
Development is a natural process through which we all progress. Biologist Stephen Jay Gould explains the biological principle, “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”: in our embryonic development, “the embryo repeats the physical stages of remote ancestors.” In physiological terms, our instinctual and emotional responses are associated with the limbic system and particularly with the amygdala, which is the seat of disgust and delight, anger and fear. Fear, then, has a biological basis and purpose: it warns the organism that its behavior may lead to harm.
It is our physiological nature which provides the basis for the consciousness of Stage One: survival and self-preservation needs, which Maslow and others identify, lie at its core. At this stage we are hardly recognizable except for our physical shape: Teilhard de Chardin calls this stage a “mentoid,” and Kohlberg and Wilber use terms like “preconventional” and “archaic” respectively to describe this state of human awareness. For it is not the function of our physiological nature and its survival mind of fear, in particular, to provide basis for human consciousness. Millions of years ago, the neocortex evolved, and we humans developed the capacity for learning, remembering, and loving. These higher capacities are far better motives for uniquely human thought and action than fear. But these capacities are not yet present in the consciousness of those in Stage I.
What is true of biological evolution is likewise true of our rational and moral development: we as individual human beings repeat the stages through which our species homo sapiens has traversed. As Swiss philosopher and psychologist Jean Piaget explains, “There are inborn components of reason, but they are not static: they themselves evolve in a definite way during ontogeny as the child assimilates external reality to its changing internal structures. Reason itself evolves in response to increased experience with the external world.”
Some people develop more rapidly than others, others advance more slowly, but most of us unfold according to what seems to be Nature’s timetable. “Everything in its season,” as the expression goes. What is true of flowers is also true of us: we grow and blossom when our time is right. Like fruit on a vine or tree, we ripen morally and rationally after sufficient time in the sunshine of life.
So it is neither appropriate to blame those whose moral development lags behind the majority, nor to lavish with praise those whose moral sensitivity is more advanced. We are all fellow-journeyers traveling together toward the same goal, however we conceive that goal: heaven, union with God, enlightenment, salvation, cosmic consciousness, satori, nirvana, or moksha. It is a sad commentary on our world, however, that many people do not receive the support from their society in their growth. There is, therefore, a need to change society in order to provide conditions which support, rather than hinder, normal moral and rational development. For without a supportive environment in which we can mature, an ethical kingdom of heaven on earth will be a distant and impractical dream.
“Only when man succeeds in developing his reason and love further than he has done so far, only when he can build a world based on human solidarity and justice, only when he can feel rooted in the experience of universal brotherliness, will he have found a new, human form of rootedness, will he have transformed the world into a truly human home.” –Erich Fromm
Heaven will become a practical reality when we consider it rational and logical to be moral: in other words, when acting on our moral values becomes a reasonable thing for us to do. Generally, “moral values” mean what most of us would accept as kindness, caring, and consideration for others, ideally even compassion toward others, and what the New Testament calls agape or “brotherly love.” All these values are “moral” in the broad sense that they affirm life. As mentioned earlier, Albert Schweitzer characterized morality in this way: “the fundamental principle of morality . . . [is] that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.”
What we often overlook in our analyses of morality is its intimate connection with reasoning. Gnostic Christianity teaches that moral development is both proportional to and dependent upon rational development. By “rational development” I do not mean the mere ability to think with a certain degree of clarity. More than this is required. For at later stages, rational development involves becoming conscious of how we think and conscious of the laws or rules, in accordance with which, the process of reasoning occurs. Ultimately, this will entail understanding the laws of thought, known as “logic.” Let me now survey familiar five-stage models of rational development. This survey will reveal that each of the five stages have clear and defining characteristics.
It must be emphasized that the development from lower stages to higher ones is not a function of intelligence or education. There are many people with Ph.D. degrees in science, M.B.A. degrees in business and finance, Th.D. degrees in theology, who still view the world in terms of the dualistic categories of Stage II. Education, or the lack of education, is not necessarily a relevant marker or significant indicator of the stages of our moral and rational development.