The Six Spheres of Morality (Part Two)

I cover the next three moral spheres vital to peace, freedom, and abundance

In The Six Spheres of Morality (Part One), we discussed non-violence, integrity, and compassion. In Part Two, we discuss the practices of pluralism, stewardship, and rationality. Combined, these practices are essential to social harmony. Let’s jump right in.

4. Pluralism

The practices of nonviolence, integrity, and compassion are fundamental. But we need a fourth sphere, which arises from recognizing inevitable differences among us. It would seem that there is nothing new under the sun. After all, isn’t toleration already a liberal value? Our familiar liberalism is too passive, a relatively bloodless and rules-oriented doctrine. To go deeper than toleration, we need to practice pluralism. By pluralism, I don’t mean recognizing diversity in society, but rather the active practice of viewing differences in others through a lens of love and acceptance. It will take mastery to ascend to this level of practice, as it requires one to take on new habits of mind. 

So what exactly does it mean to practice pluralism? 

First, we can say what it doesn’t mean. For example, pluralism isn’t fixation with some group’s victimhood status tallied on a cosmic scoreboard. Crude social theories of oppressor/oppressed are antithetical to pluralism. That’s because, under such conceptions, people have to suspend their agency, rationality, and individuality. Some become mindless drones of an ideological monoculture in which diversity doesn’t mean pluralism but obeisance to a victimhood narrative.

The practice of the spheres serves the ends of mutual empowerment, not victimhood. Thus, pluralism in practice means seeking understanding, finding synthesis, and making peace. And that makes the practice of pluralism among the most difficult to master. 

The first instinct for most ideologues is to dig in their heels and cling to a checklist of group identity criteria. Identification with one’s group too frequently comes before sound thinking. If someone else offers a perspective that is not on the checklist — or that someone belongs to an out-group — the ideologue is biased to look for what’s wrong with that person’s perspective. But what if we started looking first for what’s right?

One who practices pluralism will have an open heart and mind, and she will not be so quick to retreat into tribal allegiances. Instead, she will discipline herself, looking for the alternative’s best ideas and healthiest expressions. Eventually, she’ll borrow from many different perspectives to build upon and strengthen her own. And then, she will seek to synthesize the ideas. 

Take the example of poverty alleviation, and consider that three different groups have strong opinions on the matter:

• Progressives think people should emphasize care as a core value, and that entrepreneurship and markets are not enough to help society’s least advantaged.

• Conservatives think there are right and wrong ways to help the least advantaged, and those blanket welfare policies create dependency cycles that destroy communities.

• Libertarians think that entrepreneurship and markets do most of society’s work in poverty alleviation, and people can carry out the rest through charity and civil society.

Many of us would look at these three claims and figure out which one is at the top of our in-group checklist. But the pluralist looks for what is valuable in each and weaves the strands together. In doing so, we borrow liberally from the Integral Theory practitioners’ transcend-and-include approach. 

And yet, this is not without paradox. 

Eastern traditions speak of non-duality, which we can understand both in contemplation and meditation. In one respect, we must resist thinking of others as separate or other. Yet pluralism acknowledges each person’s separateness. Therefore, we must reconcile the idea of sacred separateness with the fact of holism, that is, connection to the universe and each other.

Image by Venkat Reddy

Non-duality is challenging to articulate in cumbersome Western prose. Perhaps it is better to refer to the inner struggle Arjuna faced before going into battle in The Bhagavad Gita. The hundred who Arjuna is to slay are his cousins, which symbolizes all those lower-order temptations and distractions that are the sum of our embodied humanity. Of course, these hundred are under the command of the Blind King, who is Ego. Krishna’s vision requires that Arjuna overcome these lower-order aspects of himself on the battlefield of his inner world so that he can understand his place in the cosmos. And with Krishna’s driving the chariot, Arjuna can access just a little of that understanding, which will allow him to see that higher-order understanding is a triumph over Ego, but that everything that exists extends backward from the same cosmic source. Maybe the Gita is a kind of source code for recognizing one’s singular place in the cosmology, but one interpreted as a unique manifestation of space-time’s fabric. Krishna, Vishnu, and all other manifestations are aspects of the same mystery, partially revealed, unifying us all.

O Arjuna, in this world, all beings are born in utter ignorance due to the delusion of dualities (pairs of opposites, likes and dislikes), arising from desire and aversion.

The paradox of pluralism is that understanding difference and diversity is a path to understanding a whole underlying truth. It connects all things. It is all things. So, for example, when we explore dualities such as creation and death, masculine and feminine, we regard patterns in the universe, of which we are part, expressed through us. 

The practice of pluralism is about seeking a synthesis of perspectives, but it is also about seeking unity. In reconciling the paradox, philosopher Robert Nozick invites us to consider organic unity. The idea is that within any system, there is value in the balance of diversity and unity. Whether we’re talking about art, science, or society, Nozick saw a pattern: One can find value where unity and diversity are in balance. In society, too much conformity means oppressed people, marching soldiers, and brutalist architecture as far as the eye can see. Too many stark differences, one gets faction and unrest. According to Nozick, diversity and unity are mutually constraining. This kind of mutual constraint yields a sweet spot between rigid order and unruly chaos.

“Can we draw a curve of degree of organic unity with the two axes being degree of diversity and degree of unifiedness?” asked Nozick in Philosophical Explanations. The diversity axis will constrain the unity axis and vice versa to achieve a kind of stasis. Apart from its simplicity, Nozick’s graph’s beauty lies in its appeal to some intuitive sense of balance.

The dollar’s dictum, e pluribus unum (out of many, one) is good, but so is ex uno plures (out of one, many). Integral thinkers are comfortable with the synthesis view of pluralism: Each person is unique and deserving of respect, but each is a manifestation of the same cosmic unity. 

Why is pluralism in unity essential to our idea of society? When we are unified, we are probably at peace. But when we have peace, we each seek our own flourishing, which inevitably comes in different flavors. Pluralism means that people with varying conceptions of the good life can coexist while in pursuit. The practice of pluralism means that we balance our diversity with unity and attempt to weave our perspectives into a new tapestry. Getting a glimpse of that truth helps one see that monocultures are not always healthy, that experimentation is needed, and that reconciliation is possible.

Therefore, organizing society is not about finding a singular ideal to be crafted by masterminds. Instead, it is about acknowledging our differences, accepting them, and unleashing the creative forces that arise in the overlaps. Becoming a practitioner of pluralism does not come easily, and it starts with good old-fashioned toleration. In mastery, though, the practice means holding multiple values and perspectives in cognitive and affective juxtaposition. That takes discipline. So many of our reflexive responses work at odds with pluralism. It’s rarely easy to understand and empathize with points of view that might go against the grain.

But therein lies a greater truth. 

The hardest part is weaving together various perspectives into coherence while avoiding contradictions. To achieve coherence, we might have to shed fragments of those perspectives. These fragments can sometimes be pieces of our identities, insofar as our ideology or in-group identification shapes who we are. But no matter. That’s what makes it hard. If we fail to achieve coherence, we end up with something that is not a greater truth at all, but instead, a muddle. And if we fail to seek greater truths, we will cling to fragments and remain in a state of disharmony.

5. Stewardship

The penultimate sphere is stewardship. Like the other practices, it too involves several dimensions that can be broken out and practiced in isolation. It’s useful to think of stewardship as a cluster concept, mainly because it’s easier to remember a word when getting started. 

We enjoy relative plenty in today’s world thanks to the liberals of the past. Our forebears made good rules and created wealth and know-how for us to inherit. It doesn’t mean they created wealth in a perfect world, nor does it mean the world’s material abundance is distributed according to anyone’s ideals. It simply means that any given person alive today is likely to be wealthier than any given person at any other time in human history. We begin by honoring that fact.

Once we honor relative wealth, we must forget about ideologies grounded in envy and violence. Instead, we must focus on the stewardship sphere—whether we own a little or a lot. There is dignity to be found in stewardship, even if one has only modest means.

The old liberal rule of private property is a good rule, but is it sufficient? Private property is a precondition of trade and creates productive incentives compared with other forms of resource management. Like many rules, though, it is not enough. Owning property comes with tacit responsibilities and expectations, making ownership more than just a condition. It ought, like the other spheres, to be an active practice.

• Stewardship involves moderation. Whether in Aristotle or the Yamas, it’s good to adjust one’s consumption habits or behavior to a reasonable level, avoiding extremes. Just because one has a lot of ice cream, for example, doesn’t mean she needs to eat it all today. Just because one earned a lot of money doesn’t mean she needs to live a life of ostentation. Moderation helps one protect the seed corn, which means protecting the means of investment and growth. It helps her appreciate scarcity before it arrives while taking a healthy attitude towards plenty, especially if she is tempted by it at every turn in advanced market economies.

• Stewardship involves non-attachment. Whether in the Vedic traditions or Christian asceticism, non-attachment is a vital habit of mind in the sphere of stewardship. Why? One develops non-attachment to avoid privileging the destination over the journey, the salary over the effort, or the praise over the achievement. Non-attachment is a habit of recovering from feelings of loss but also a reminder that there is more to life than things. Goal-directed action is necessary as far as it goes, but the very nature of practice means losing oneself in habituated thought and action. She must honor the fact that resources are in her care and that they will be transferred into another’s care if she exchanges them or when she dies. In other words, no one can cling to her possessions forever, and there will be times when she loses something important to her.

• Stewardship involves leaving the world better than one found it. She should seek to improve any resources or offices in her charge. Then she should see to it these resources can improve the lives of others when they are no longer under her care. If she’s not a good investor, her poor stewardship will be evident in time. Simply said, she will take losses. Investors who get rich from their investments are good stewards when the investment creates real value in society instead of just paper profits gained from political favor seeking. Those who have many possessions should otherwise keep them in good condition. And one who owns a modest plot of land should care for the fields, forests, and gardens. If one owns a business, she should seek to stay profitable and grow. If not she should sell to someone who can.

• Stewardship involves sovereignty. With the development of token ecosystems accelerating, we have significant opportunities to be responsible for our assets. It used to be necessary to outsource most of that responsibility to financial institutions. But increasingly, we have the chance to manage our finances securely, without third-party intermediaries who command considerable sums for their intermediation. As we become more sovereign in controlling our resources, we will become more mindful in consumption and giving.

Ownership is mere possession. Stewardship is a practice. If each of us continues to improve and grow the resources in our care, we will improve the world around us. Once we start to reframe ownership as stewardship, we will begin to see improvement in the world and ourselves.

6. Rationality

The final sphere of the six is rationality. Woe unto those who think rationality is a relic of the Enlightenment. Instead, it is a faculty that humans evolved to survive together in harsh conditions, and it provides us with cognitive abilities for achieving our ends. Like the other Spheres, we must practice rationality. And just as with the other Spheres, rationality involves more than paying lip service to a single word. It includes other nested concepts necessary for us to continue together in cooperation, but in the end, one can’t cooperate without tracking truth. Despite the playful verbosity of postmodernism or the mysterious phenomena of the quantum realm, we must continue to labor under the assumption that we have all to understand the features of our universe to navigate it together. Rationality becomes the bedrock of all the secular magisteria, including science and law. 

Justification. Rationality is first the process of mining good reasons for holding a belief or working towards an objective in a certain way. In the absence of justification, there is randomness. While the iterative nature of randomness can be useful in certain narrow circumstances, such as applying evolutionary algorithms to solve complex problems, justification is essential for human decision-making. That way, others can understand our rationale, which is particularly important for deliberation and collaboration. One vital feature of justification is evidence for making a claim.

Evidence. When offering justification for a belief or behavior, we ought to provide some sign indicating the claim tracks truth. In the absence of evidence, there is only faith or logic. And faith is primarily useful in the magisterium of religion. Such is not to argue that articles of faith never appear in science, as indeed they do. Instead, it is to say that faith is not the primary mode of truth tracking. Instead, we need the world to offer clues, which get mined in observation and recorded as data. 

Critical thinking. With some evidence-based justification in hand, one usually needs logic and reason to organize the rationale so that others can readily understand and their understanding leads to no contradiction or fallacy. Eschewing contradiction and fallacy involves critical thinking, which is the deliberate application of logical analysis or clear reasoning. Critical thinking thus requires intellectual discipline, which forms a coherent set of beliefs that indicate some claim is likely to be true.

Bayesian thinking. Even though we might have evidence and feel certain, we need a rational way to deal with uncertainty. The Bayesian view of probability relates to the degree of one’s belief. Given incomplete knowledge, we can get an idea about the plausibility of holding a particular view. Bayesian thinking is based on the idea that one can know more as more information comes in and becomes integrated. We can use these methods to combine results from different experiments, for example, as the data are often scarce, noisy, or biased. Some might view the adjusting probabilities of Bayesian thinking as a limitation of the rationale. Instead, it is a way to understand the world around us using imperfect information and limited knowledge while admitting that sometimes truth-claims needn’t be binary.

Fallacy and bias. Much of our contemporary discourse is plagued by fallacy and bias. Indeed, sometimes people consciously employ biased or fallacious reasoning in order to persuade others or reinforce the beliefs of those in their in-group. Good discourse norms must be distinguished from rhetorical tactics, but these tactics do not serve the ends of truth tracking. After all, biases can be natural tendencies to think a certain way, in that one’s brain, as it were, plays tricks on him. Fallacies are patterns of illogic that lead one to preoccupy himself with matters that are irrelevant to the inquiry, or that stir up emotions that can interfere with gaining clarity. 

It might be strange to some readers to think of rationality as a moral sphere. Consider, though, that these spheres stand outside of time. In other words, no matter where one is situated in history, truth tracking is always vital to human survival and flourishing, which we define as happiness, harmony, and prosperity. Rationality is the toolset of truth tracking.

The Six Offenses

Sometimes good practice in the Six Spheres includes knowing what to avoid. The Six Spheres of moral practice have vicious mirrors, the Six Offenses. 

Violence is nonviolence’s vicious mirror. Of course, it is to be avoided as nonviolence is foundational to the Voluntary Society. That doesn’t mean one should not defend herself. It means we proscribe the initiation of violence in every sphere and at every scale, practicing nonviolence in thought, word, and deed.

Corruption is integrity’s vicious mirror, and it can take many forms. In essence, though, corruption is an act based on untruth, abandonment of one’s principles, or consciously failing to honor one’s commitments to benefit herself, which comes at others’ expense.

Callousness is compassion’s vicious mirror, which means a cold indifference or sense of cruelty in the face of another’s suffering. If we are to create a benevolent society, we must become attuned to suffering and practice compassion.

Monomania is pluralism’s vicious mirror. One sets about zealously to impose the One True Way upon everyone else. Of course, there is no One True Way for different people living in different contexts, all of whom have different life plans.

Negligence is stewardship’s vicious mirror. Whether we fail to attend to our possessions or take responsibility for our offices, negligence can be offensive to the project of taking care of the world around us, from one’s garden to our global ecosystems. 

Casuistry is rationality’s vicious mirror. Usually, this vice is employed to mislead or deceive, but sometimes it can be a careless lapse into fallacy or a failure to acknowledge one’s biases. If we are to track truth together and improve our collective intelligence, we must avoid casuistry.

The Six Offenses are clearly morally offensive. But when one considers them in the context of politics, they can seem more like strategy. That’s because politics, and its associated political team sports, teaches us to leave morality at the door.

The Six Spheres are, in a sense, eternal. That is, the Six Spheres are as good a set of moral practices as one can imagine for almost any human context -- whether on the prehistoric savannah or staring down from a modern skyscraper. Contrarian philosophers will busy themselves with exceptions or counterexamples. But in the end, if any given person wants to live in a world of relative peace, freedom, and abundance, she ought to practice the Six Spheres to the greatest feasible extent and encourage others to do the same. The aggregate effect of such practices among more people will allow our children and grandchildren to inherit not just an improved world but a moral universe.