Imagination and Morality

Read a book, listen to a story that someone’s telling, watch a movie, and if they’re any good, you’d be moved to tears, inspired, touched, angry; and you want to do something to make a change for the better. This is what a story does to you. But, it also appeals to your imagination. It is the only faculty, not reason, that allows you to enter the world of another human being. Story telling and imagination are powerful combination. Without a story, moreso, without the ability to imagine, life would be meaningless, unconnected dots of facts. Want to know what it’s like? Just look at any statistics or a resume of someone who’s looking for a job. You don’t feel a thing. You are detached - a high wall that bars you from seeing people other than statistics on a graph.

Imagination opens you up to a world that isn’t yours. Imagination allows you hear not just their stories, but their heartbreak, their sorrows, their joys. I had just finished reading a news about a 9 year old girl, murdered by a family friend. It is awful to die during Christmas season only because it is the time - I want to believe - when no crime is committed. I turned the page. Her death was just another news amongst countless news unrelated to me, my life. Imagination could have made the death of a beautiful child my own story if I chose to weave a story out of it.

Moral values are like news. We all know that ‘Do unto others as you want others to do unto you’ makes sense only if we are a victim of injustice. The golden rule applies when I am involved, when I feel that I have been wronged.

We are taught the golden rule. But, we have all taken it to apply to ourselves and not to the others.

We are taught that the golden rule and other ethical codes are the principles of reason, not of emotion. So, the teaching of the golden rule and other ethical codes are treated in the same way science and mathematics are presented.

But, this is very wrong.

Moral codes are emotion based that are best presented to the imagination by way of a story. If we were taught this way, then we would be receptive to the world of other persons. Only then will we be able to see ourselves in the light of their stories. Moral teachings/stories aren't just about ways of fulfilling one’s happiness. They are there for us to reach out to the other, to go beyond our limited and limiting perception, bias and prejudice. And, only then are we able to correct ourselves and follow the golden rule and other ethical codes - for it matters not to us, but to them as well.

Free Will or Freedom?

Does free will exist? Is it an uncaused cause?

It sure feels like I have a free will. I don’t feel coerced to doing something that I don’t want to do. If I were coerced then I would rationalize that my free will has been curtailed by an external force. Curtailed, yes, but not taken away, for free will, it is assumed, is innate.

However, psychologists and philosophers have become quite wary about our ‘feeling that we are free’.  In “Is Free Will an Illusion?” Shaun Nichols writes:

Yet psychologists widely agree that unconscious processes exert a powerful influence over our choices. In one study, for example, participants solved word puzzles in which the words were either associated with rudeness or politeness. Those exposed to rudeness words were much more likely to interrupt the experimenter in a subsequent part of the task. When debriefed, none of the subjects showed any awareness that the word puzzles had affected their behavior. That scenario is just one of many in which our decisions are directed by forces lurking beneath our awareness.

This argument is not new. In the 20^th century, Behaviorism revealed that those ‘forces lurking under our awareness’ were determined by operant conditioning. If one was to be exposed to certain stimuli again and again, one would react in a certain way again and again. One's behavior would become a ‘habit’ and it would feel as though there were no external forces curtailing one’s sense of freedom.

We could spend the whole time arguing for and against the existence of free will. But, hasn’t anyone yet realized that whatever the outcome, it does not really matter?  Whether this argument or that argument could show you – its validity, it is still an argument that has no proof or hard evidence. 

Here’s what I know: I value freedom because I value human dignity. Humans fought against slavery because they are subjects, beings of intrinsic values. They are values in themselves. I don’t just believe in these ideas; I see actual people standing up for themselves, fighting and defending their rights, their human dignity.  And, when they retain and regain their human dignity, they are free.


So rather than saying that you have a free will (innate), why not describe freedom as an act? Wouldn't you feel that you have accomplished something valuable when you succeeded in overcoming an obstacle, be it physical or psychological, or spiritual? Let us think about it. For as long as you view freedom as an act of overcoming a resistance, then you will stand up and do something about your situation rather than enjoy complaining about 'how hopeless your situation is'.

Not To Have A Soul, But To Be Soulful

Describe the soul or the mind as an immaterial thing, and the body as a material thing, then you will have to explain how these two entirely different entities ever get to interact, if they ever did. Is the soul ‘inside’ the body? A pencil is in the box. That makes sense. I see that. Both pencil and a box are material things that take up space. As an immaterial thing, the soul does not take up space. So, it does not make sense to say that the soul is ‘inside’ the body. Where is the soul? That question, too, does not make sense because only material things can be located in specific areas.

Stumped by this problem, you’re forced to make a choice between being a materialist or an immaterialist.  An immaterialist believes that all that exist are ideas. While a materialist believes that all that exist are material things. That is, you will either deny the existence of a thing outside the mind, or affirm the existence of a thing outside the mind.

But we don’t have to be ruled by those terms and definitions. We needn’t be. We shouldn’t be. I would like to free ourselves from these definitions and experience for myself what it means to exist.

Indeed I do experience the world as existing outside of me, at the same time, I do experience something in me that is not of material texture. I do not have to assume that the material thing such as my body, and the immaterial thing such as my soul as two entirely different entities. Why can’t I acknowledge the physical pain and pleasure that I derive directly from my experience of material things, while recognizing the fact that I feel joy and suffering without the accompanying physical pleasure or pain? Indeed, I can. And, that’s because you and I do encounter such experiences.

Does not the body sense something other than what is experienced by any or all of the five known senses? Do I not experience the ‘beauty’ of the waterfall or the sunset? Don’t I experience suffering through the body by way of physical aches, as I suffer through, for example, the loss of hope or a loved one? Certainly, I encounter these experiences through the body and my soul. These experiences cannot be denied. The body feels what I think; and the soul thinks what is felt through the body.

Are we still going to get enmeshed in the problem of interaction? Not unless, we rectify the description of soul and body. How? The way out of this abstract, misconstrued problem is to describe the soul as a certain kind of experience. When we watch the musician play his instruments, do we not say “He plays with so much soul”? Compare him to someone who is great with techniques but lacks soul in his rendition of a song or music.

A murderer is said to be a man without soul? How is ‘soul’ taken here, but as a state of being or experience? We read his body language and we pick up something that none of the five senses can ever perceive. For example, the look or the stare or the ‘angry’ eyes of a father, who said not a word.

The ‘soul’ is an adjective, a state of being. We describe a person (or, ourselves) as being soulful by the way he moves, he understands, shows compassion, radiates a light of hope when everything seems to be lost. Soul is not a thing like a table or a chair; but the experience of a carpenter who carves wood in a way the admirer remarks, “this table has character.”

Ought we then long for the life after this life? Is the soul immortal, immune to physical mortality? Perhaps, when we speak of a person ‘having soul’, or is a soulful being, it is telling us how a life is lived. For that, it does not matter how long one has lived, but how well he has lived.

The Living Truth

Truth is very difficult to define. So let us take up some examples of truth, or of how we use the word, 'truth.'

Mathematical truth. "Two plus two" is equal to "four." We say this is true. The opposite is false when we say "two plus two" is equal to "three."

Empirical truth. If I say "I have an elephant in my shirt pocket', then it is false because it is an empirical fact that there is no elephant in my shirt pocket. It is a fact and true when I say that there is a pen in my shirt pocket. This is an empirical truth because anyone, not just me, can see that there is a pen in my shirt pocket.

Biblical truth. If I say that "Christ is merely a man, not a son of God," then it is false because Christians believe that Christ is the Son of God, born without sin. While mathematical truth is based on logic, and empirical truth is based on the senses, biblical truth is based on one's faith. We can say that different truths have different bases.

There is another meaning of truth that is not necessarily based on the aforementioned. This truth is derived from, and created by, one's life. It is a truth that enables one to realize more of his or her nature and destiny. However, this truth is extremely difficult - and, at times, dangerous -to discover because it requires that one has to first accept one's ignorance, that is, that one does not know everything. Not everyone is willing to accept one's weaknesses. Everyone likes to know his or her strengths. Everyone wants to show off his or her strengths. Unfortunately, many cringe at the sight of their weaknesses. Knowing their weaknesses are actually a big step to knowing their selves. It takes moral courage to face them.

Many of us are afraid to know the 'dark side' of one's personality because we have something to hide from the others especially from ourselves. Through the years, we have built up an image of ourselves that we show to other people and to ourselves. This is a false image, a pretension. And it takes so much time and energy to keep up that façade that we actually become weary and stressed out. Furthermore, we become defensive when we sense that people can see through the façade (mask). The more masks we wear, the more we don't know ourselves; and the more we become ignorant and arrogant.

Why do we wear masks? Why do we lie to ourselves and to the others? We lie because we depend on the approval of the others. We want people to like us. There is nothing wrong with that. But, people might like us for the wrong reasons. And worst of all, we might love ourselves for the wrong reasons.

How do we free ourselves from all of these wrong reasons? How can we allow others to accept us for who we are? The answer is to first accept who we are. So, when we have humbly accepted our strengths and embraced our weaknesses, people will (eventually) accept and respect us for who we are. As a result, the truth about who we are sets us free to be who we are and can be.