{ Posted in “Night Eagle Speaks” by Night Eagle on December 6th, 2011 }
=====
{ Dream Contact: An angelic type explained, “There’s another dimension, a parallel world to yours, where the government is honest and people who are almost carbon copies of you live much better lives. Bobby Kennedy was not assassinated there, We interfered. He reformed the economics policies when he was elected President of the United States of America, and the economy there is doing much better than what you’re experiencing here.” }
(I didn’t think to ask several questions that became important as I woke up. The first one was, “So what did I do to deserve to live in this world and not that one?” A second question came up something like, “But aren’t all economics ‘voodoo economics’?” -Money, as we understand it, is generated by banks and credit card companies and has no basis in anything real. There is no gold or silver behind it. The only actual value you can assign to money these days, is: how much are you worth to your bank’s policy making people? Of course, your continuing ability to ‘buy stuff’ depends on how reliable you are in paying back your bank and/or credit card issuing authorities. So is your personal honesty a bankable commodity? are honesty and reliability interchangeable? Pathological liars may seem to be ultimately more honest as far as banks are concerned when compared to somebody who tries to tell the truth all the time, or most of the time, gets himself fired by a boss who is afraid the truth freak might ‘rat him out’ if he learns what the boss is doing… and therefore can’t pay his bills. )
((And then again, it’s kind of hard to tell the truth when you’ve been lied to about most of the ‘things’ and concepts you base your reality on.) )
So:
In the mid 1960’s Somebody wrote a book that was reviewed in the Boston Globe. The writer had scholarly credentials, but I can’t remember any more than he was a guy, maybe a PhD, and probably a professor type.
Stuff that was mentioned in the article about this guy and his book stuck with me.
The peculiar thing about moral growth, and the various levels this guy delineated in his study, is that people who subscribe to a ‘higher’ set of morals often appear to be immoral or amoral to persons who subscribe to a ‘lower’ set of morals.
Here are the six levels this guy came up with:
1. Infantile 2. Toddler 3. Juvenile 4. Youthful 5. Black and White 6. Situational.
Yes, situational morality ranked higher on this guy’s scale than the other five levels he described.
Okay, and now with a little more depth:
1. Infantile = What feels good is Good. What feels bad is bad. (When you’re warm and dry, that’s good. When you’re wet or hungry, that’s bad.)
2. Toddler = Mommy and Daddy are the ultimate authority in the known universe. What they say is bad, IS bad. (You learn that it’s bad to touch a hot stove. It’s good to have mommy’s and/or daddy’s approval.)
3. Juvenile = Your peer group is the authority in your universe. (If they say it’s bad to wear white socks, and you show up wearing white socks, they beat you up and that’s not good.)
* Here’s an illustration of how somebody at a ‘higher’ level of moral growth appears to be immoral to somebody at a lower level: If the values of an older child’s peer group say it’s good to smoke cigarettes and mommy and daddy say it’s bad, if you’re at the toddler level and see your older brother smoking, well, he’s being bad. You’re liable to explain that to your parents. This might not be the best example of this, but it is easily grasped. Is the juvenile level ‘higher’ than the Toddler level? It’s definitely more complex. & in today’s world, Mommy and Daddy can’t be there 24/7 to protect you from bullies at school or anywhere else you might go. If you want to have the strength of numbers, you’ll be expected to conform to the values of the group you want to hang out with. *
4. Youthful = “my country, right or wrong”. (You’ve learned to grow beyond the values of your transitory peer group to embrace the slightly-less-transitory values of your society. )
5. Black and White… this is a level that not everybody gets to. This is what happens when somebody’s conscience clicks in. This is where you ask yourself questions like, (( “Thou Shalt Not Kill!” doesn’t mean, “Thou shalt not kill unless your government tells you to!” Does it? ))
* Example number two of people stuck at a lower level believe those that subscribe to a higher set of morals are actually immoral or amoral: The “my country right or wrong!” crowd really believe that anyone struggling with their own conscience to the point where they claim conscientious objector status during war time is plain and simply, a coward. The conscientious objector probably believes that those people in the ‘my country right or wrong’ crowd are weak minded fools being deceived by unscrupulous bullies or immoral power crazed control freaks who have seized control (through deceptive means, no doubt) of their government. *
6. Situational. Hmmmm, Okay, here’s where the extenuating circumstances come into play: If you believe it’s wrong to kill people. And you see somebody pick up a rifle and aim it at a crowd of children. If you try to dissuade this individual from killing children, do you take the chance that you might put your ‘immortal soul’ in jeopardy by taking a chance that you may end up killing the would be killer? Are there circumstances in which you might have to break the normal rules of morality in order to prevent a bigger wrong? If you fail to take any action, are you actually becoming an accomplice in the crimes of a serial killer or whatever?
——— More Later….
————— Night Eagle