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Tag: ethics

  • Compassionate Reasoning

    It is out and Oxford and Amazon are keeping the price below $35. From the Introduction: “This book, more than any of my other books, centers on the creation of a new idea and a new approach to thinking, feeling, and doing that might help transform human relations for the better. I have encapsulated that in the phrase “Compassionate Reasoning” which is founded upon an exploration of and devotion to compassion as one of the most amazing and important emotions and ethical principles that brings healing and hope to human relations. The “reasoning” part rests on the importance for human reasoning, and moral reasoning in particular, as it is expressed and described over the centuries in at least five different approaches to virtue and moral decision-making. I have asked myself how I can acknowledge the roots of this journey toward this new idea and combination of skills and practices. When …

  • LEADERSHIP, IDEA, AND EVIL

     

    There is no mystery to evil.
    In fact making evil into a mystery,
    Is a bad idea.
    There are only good ideas and bad ideas.
    Anything that brings purposeful, unprovoked harm,
    To other sentient beings,
    Is a bad idea.
    Evil is a bad idea,
    In the hands of a leader.
    Be a leader only,
    With a good idea.
    If you must,
    Be a follower,
    For a good idea.
    Be smart enough,
    To be aware,
    Of your own bad ideas,
    And confine them to your head.
    If you cannot,
    Then you must leave immediately.

    The temptation to mystify evil is equal to our bewilderment at humanity, how many good people are led to do the worst things imaginable. The answer is not evil in them, but the evil of bad ideas inside leaders, and the tragedy of human obedience. The one alternative that has always worked is very good …

  • Conflict Prevention Values In Judaism: Coping with a Bad Summer by Beginning a New Year

     

    Below is an excerpt from my book, Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Violence, and Peacemaking, pp. 177-179 . The reason I am reproducing this now is given the Jewish season of New Year, repentance,  and the never ending assault this summer on the decency of the Abrahamic religions, their constant use and abuse by states and extremists alike, it strikes me as the right time to remember the thousands of years and thousands of texts that are humanitarian and decent in just one tradition, let alone all the great sacred traditions of humanity. We must not forget, we must not let states and their extremists bury the wisdom of any great tradition.

    Conflict Prevention Values In Judaism

    A. Self

    benevolent care of the self (al tehi rasha bifne, ahavah kamokha, im ayn ani li)[1]

    self-scrutiny and change (heshbon ha-nefesh, teshuva)[2]…

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