The Authentic Person 3 Creative Tension, Openness and Morality

Sydney J Harris's 3rd and 4th lectures encouraged keeping opposites in a creative tension within a moral framework. So the bonds of marriage involve both bondage and freedom. He uses phenomenology to explore human experience. Again, what follows are my comments and not his.

This is to replace an 'either-or' frame of mind with 'both-and'. In his example, marriage binds and restricts on the one hand, yet liberates on the other. These two need to be held by both partners in balance, in creative tension, for the marriage to be healthy. In fact, readjustments will have to be made all the time, either emphasising the need for more responsibility or more freedom. Choices and decisions balance a number of points of view, sometimes contradictory. Democracy allows people to have a vote, and to be outvoted by a majority. The majority are not always right. Achieving a consensus aims at a solution that everyone can live with. Unfortunately it takes longer and assumes compromise. One intransigent individual can wreck consensus by refusing to compromise. In some cases he or she may be wrong to do this, but they may be right, especially if it is a moral matter of significant principle. Sometimes, someone has to stand up against the crowd.

Assuming that compromise does not mean 'being compromised' (i.e. feeling that we have to do something unethical), we need to define within the continuum of legitimate opposites a comfort zone within which we are prepared to trade. If others do the same, the ground is prepared for consensus. This assumes that ethics plays a central role in defining the limits of consensus and compromise. It is not that anything goes (relativism) - that gave us the ghettos and death camps. It means that there is room for manoeuvre within an ethically defensible range of choices.

The answer to many questions is yes and no. Understanding the parts we would say yes to (the pros) and those we say no to (the cons) are the ways we operate in this marginal zone of creative tension. Openness to others is easier for some than for others. People who are self-centred and disagreeable (poles of two personality traits) will find working with others difficult, and may find it hard to change. Openness comes in both dialogue (the willingness to allow another a valid point of view) and empathy (sharing in other people's emotional ups and downs0. Not wishing to hurt other people is the beginnings of morals and ethics. It is nothing to do with obeying petty rules.

Later lectures talked of polarised confrontational politics, misbalancing individual concerns with social responsibilities, and how in future we will have to live with ambiguity. Certainty is dead, although there are moral principles which are absolute. Globally, we have a lot of listening and compromising to do.

Humankind has evolved to be rational, though this is a discipline that escapes many. That should mean escape from aggressive responses and power to the strong, and to the possibility of working for the common good. The twentieth century was the most bloody in human history. What will the 21st be? What can we each do as individuals to achieve a fairer world both for humans and for other species?

So what is an authentic person? It is a dilemma. Authentic could mean true to me, and be totally self-centred. I do what I want, true to my beliefs and desires, and blow to anyone else. Or it could recognize that authentic recognizes the network of responsibilities and relationships that the self sits within. This is MacMurray's Self as Agent and Self in Relation, that as a human I have to be actively engaged, and supportive of the networks I exist within. My cats are not capable of that choice. For me, humans exist in a global network, so being authentic means promoting world progress and harmony.

The Authentic Person 2 False Opposites.

Sydney J Harris's second lecture challenged the use of opposites such as good-evil, love-hate. Again, these are my comments and not his. We try to make sense of human experience, and either-or is a favorite mechanism. Many questionnaires work on the same principle, with yes-no answers. That a person might wish to answer both yes and no wrecks the system. I once did a careers test to tell me what career I ought to go for. Do you like to work indoors or outdoors? Choose one. I like both. Depending on my choice they would advise me to be either a banker or a lumberjack. The verdict of the questionnaire was that it could not advise me. I liked too many things. A scale of responses is more helpful, but on occasions whether I reply 1 or 5 may depend on circumstances.

So is a person good or evil? Do I love someone or hate someone? 'Love a little' or 'hate a little' seem perverse options within polarity. How can I answer until I know what good is, or what evil is? Do I even know what love is? It is these sort of questions that push me into qualitative research, which raises a similar question - do I know what quality is, and does my view agree with everyone elses?

Good and evil have been part of the human psyche for ever. Evil spirits are still blamed for misfortunes amongst educated folk. Children are killed because they are believed to be inhabited by an evil spirit - Victoria Climbie is the most famous example. Religions have promoted the idea, and pastors have connived with the murder of children so labelled. A girl I once taught, with some emotional fragility, was exorcised by a Christian priest, with disastrous consequences. This was to objectify evil into a separate entity and to deal with it by driving it away. Evil, and exorcism are the stuff of popular films, which portray a dualistic world in which evil forces reign. Children's stories sometimes depict battles between these evil forces and the child characters. Garth Nix's The Ragwitch, and his 'across the wall' books; Anthony Horowitz's Raven's Gate; Michelle Paver's Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. The truth is that there are no evil forces. Philip Pullman shows struggles with archangels, ghasts, harpies and other monsters, and depicting fortune telling as real, but set out of this world, within the imagination, with a story which sets the mind free of these fictions by establishing a commonwealth or cooperative of individual endeavour, rather than a kingdom led by an authority - that is self help rather than dependence. This at least is an honest journey.

Evil characters in fiction and especially in computer games, can be killed. War stories exult in enemy dead. In a computer game, the child zaps aliens, or enemies, or even Indians. This is educating them to kill. The Nazis became very good at it. Few Germans in 1945 felt guilty and the victorious allies had to treat their misperceptions as a disease. People, in real life, are mixtures of good and bad. All are capable of change, given circumstances that enable them to. Equally good people are capable of becoming monsters if circumstances drive them in this direction. Madmen rule only because others permit them to. We need to cultivate those others to resist injustice and to build a fairer society.

So, there is no devil and equally no God. There are only choices, crossroads to different journeys with different consequences.