yesterday i went for a run and i looked up to the sky and ran into a fly and it died in my eye. i know it all rhymes but its true, and it was the highlight of my week. that probably speaks volumes about my uselessness and aimlessness as of late; i know i can do better--but i also know that the things that people prefer to chase after do not interest me. the things they prefer for themselves and for me, i do not prefer--those things cannot make me happy. i know i can do better, but it wouldnt be better for me.
what would make me happy is a house in the countryside with a garden with vegetables that i grow myself. maybe a couple of pigs and a roost of chickens for meat and eggs. ill never get this in this country. a country that stands so high in all the international rankings, a country that is obviously so well-managed and efficient and orderly and consistent and stable but completely immoral.
everyone has been schooled into thinking a stable job and an hdb flat and 2.1 children would make them happy. they have been guided to believe or strongarmed to accept that father government knows best, and while they are encouraged to grow they are restricted to Stage 4 moral reasoning, a notion that right and wrong is a question of benefit and disadvantage respectively to society as one system. such mentality creates stability and security and progress, socially, economically, but not morally. today the system in my country is a swill of stage 4 morality and asian conservatism; a corrupted mutation of an otherwise blameless stage 3 moral system like original Confucianism.
for perspective, stage 3 mentality reasons that right and wrong are derived from respectively the well-being or animosity created by moral action between interpersonal relationships. eg. "stealing from another is morally wrong as it would offend, harm or trouble that person."
stage 2 reasoning understands rightness or wrongness as a concept of social exchange, eg wrongness: "i should not steal from him because i dont want him to steal from me," or rightness: "im nice to everyone because you never know when you might need a favour!"
stage 1 reasoning, like stage 2, is egocentric and is the first cognitive structure of morality that children grasp. here, rightness or wrongness is weighed according to consequence of action. eg "stealing is wrong because we will go to jail," or "i follow the ways of my religion because i dont want to go to hell,"
as children grow, they are continually tested by real life situations that challenge their existing understanding of life in general, and their curiosities impel them to revise these understandings to become more comprehensive, more adequate in a sense--and as any reasonable person would see now, any person of a lower stage in moral development would encounter grave difficulty and confusion should he be suddenly placed into living his life in a sea of higher moral reasoning. what is comforting to note though, for that person, this confusion is not permanent, for these troubles and hardship compel him to grow up--in effect his moral growth is supported and encouraged by the average higher moral mentality that surrounds him. eg, upon realising that the world does not exist to serve him, the child begins to abandon the egocentric stages 1 & 2, and upon realising the value of social relationships subscribes to 3, and upon seeing the bigger picture, moves on to 4.
but to what end does this growth move to? it is my belief that moral development is, by nature of its virtue (system above self; all > one), limited to Stage 4, which, together with stage 3, are known as the conventional stages of moral development--owing to the fact that stage 4 mentality is the most commonly observed thought system. it is of no surprise to me that my country has already reached this glass ceiling. and the reason that moral development stagnates at stage 4 is a function of this stage's ability to maintain security and stability.
after all, stage 5 begins to challenge the inadequacy of systematic order or (let me coin this word) mass-produced morality. a stage 5 moralist realises that any reasoning powerful enough to move an entire population with one vision is also powerful enough to overwhelm and wipe out the many constituting individual visions. in effect, stage 5 sees stage 4 as trying to visualise too much of the big picture, and worst of all, using it to replace the individual small pictures of each and every person within it; thinking as a system breeds systematic thinking--brainwashing if you will. it is my belief that this inbuilt security system of stage 4 morality automatically weeds out from itself the stage 5 individuals that crop up around here and there. ultimately a stage 5 person believes that society can improve, while stage 4 societies reject him as they have come to believe that they have already attained the plateau of perfection and have become comfortable with sacrificing much for the sake of stability. stable, but therefore also rigid and unchangeable. inflexible.
reluctance to change cannot be justified if one knows that such change is progressive. the fact is that stage 4 societies know what they are giving up for their security and stability--namely the human rights of political prisoners, lgbts, people on death row--leads me to believe that my country, no matter how high on the HDI rankings or whatever list that makes it sound awesome, is really a country built upon principles that my God wouldnt be proud of.
to be continued.
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