Everyday ethics: What keeps us going

It was a chilly early fall morning. One could imagine old man winter outside huffing and puffing trying to put frost on the car windshield. Even the dog sleeping on the bed doesn’t seem to want to go outside. She knows more than you what’s soon coming — bleak, gray mornings with white stuff floating to the earth and covering the ground.

Who wants to get out of bed anyway remembering the world yesterday? Wars and threats of wars, nasty politicians spewing fake conspiracies and treating rivals with language reserved for wartime foes, the planet creaking its way toward destruction and even the morning song of birds silent.

Why bother to face this kind of world that seems devoid of hope and promise today?

The answer is that you must get up no matter what because that’s what millions of other human beings are doing now just like you. As your feet hit the floor below, you realize it’s time to write and submit another column. But who wants to read more dreary words of doom? It’s hard enough to be ready to face another day when nothing seems right with the world.

But when you remember words of hope, written on the backs of shirts of clerks in a newly opened thrift store: “Love one another.” Three supposedly simple words that catch you off guard and offer a way out of the wasteland of modern life. Old words. Universal words. Commanding words. Not like the modern version of the Ten Commandments, the “Ten Suggestions,” but clear and concise words that if obeyed might yet save us from ourselves.

The words are from the great commandment of Jesus to love God and your neighbor. No matter your religious persuasion, they are words you understand might lead to a better world, if only people would act on them every day in small and great ways. In some traditions, loving one another means showing compassion to others and oneself. In very old wisdom paths, it means honoring the divinity within which is also the power of the whole cosmos.

I once heard the great mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell respond to a question about what guidance he would like to leave behind for generations to come, and he responded: “Love is wise. Hatred is foolish.”  Maybe I should have those words printed on the back of a shirt as a reminder of what can yet save us.

But how is one to live and not just talk about love?

The first rule is to respect yourself. Remember this guidance: “What does a person gain if he or she saves the world and loses his or her own soul? The answer is obvious — nothing.

The second rule is to love others as you love yourself. Treat them with respect, kindness, fairness.

This is the whole of wisdom you need to know and act on to live an ethical life, perhaps best expressed in another commandment that echoes down the centuries: that you are required to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with your God.

John C. Morgan is an author and former ethics professor.  His books can be found on Amazon and his columns at www.readingeagle.com