Once an academic year (at least in the last two years), I get a chance to amend my teaching writing at Capital University and get to add a philosophy course called Introduction to Ethics. And let me tell you, it’s wonderful. When do we ever take an hour and fifteen minutes two times a week for fourteen weeks and really go gradually into ethical frameworks and moral theories – why we actually make the moral choices we make?
During the first class I always put up the same powerpoint slides and begin with the discussion of SELF. I draw a circle with an “S” inside it and say: “This is you. Welcome to the world.” The next slide then asks: what does my S need to survive and NOT die. Answer: Food, Clothing, Shelter. The obvious question always arises. And I ask: Well, how did you make it to my class, then?” Answer: another S must have given me food, clothing, and shelter so I would NOT die. Hmmmm. I ponder out loud. “So without your involvement at all… without your choice… without anything from you at all as your baby SELF… SOMEONE (another self) actually intervened in your life so you would not die. “Welcome to ethical frameworks and moral theory.”
I am so profoundly struck by the idea, always am, still am, even after pondering it for a very long time – I am deeply moved by this fact. Someone intervened so I would not die. This action by another SELF that got us to where we are right now (and you are obviously that SELF because you are not dead and are here reading this) – because ultimately another SELF helped you. And then I look at my world. The questions are legion like the evil abounding.
When did that act of a self intervening into another self’s life so they do not die… when did that stop? What is the ethical framework that guides each of us as we live our “grown-up SELF” life? When was it that we stopped helping the helpless to live and and not die AND turn completely to just SELF. We live in an age that even praises such an act: we call the act a “SELFIE.” Hmmm?
Perhaps we all need to take an Introduction to Ethics course and remind ourselves why our human SELF entered the world and did not die? And maybe, just maybe… there is an astounding, foundational moral theory/ truth underpinning the way we should then live with each other.
Greg Belliveau 