Category Archives: Ethics

Stepping Stones

Ethics, Practice

The Gamma Tao is easy to understand, but more difficult to practice.

To be honest, I like to sit in my room to read and meditate about how to live a good life. I can spend hours reading books about philosophy or religion, absorbing ideas of famous thinkers and explore fundamental questions of life in my head. In a way I am attracted to a contemplative life (vita contemplativa), but I know this can easily become an intellectual comfort zone.

All philosophies of life should be tested in real life situations, outside the safe environment of a cosy living room. The Gamma Tao should not only be great in theory, but more than that it has to be useful and practical in real life during interactions with other people and the natural world.

Vita contemplativa and vita activa should complement and enrich each other in a continuous feedback loop. The theoretical form of the Gamma Symbol can be used for contemplation, the practical form of the Gamma Tao indicates the way to an active life.

Below are seven basic and practical stepping stones that may help us in the balancing act of life. They are based on the practical symbol, but of course they are not exclusive to the Gamma Tao. Stepping stones like this can be found in many streams of thought:

  • Set a good intention
    An important first step is to set the intention to always do the right thing. A morning ritual might help to set this intention. Beware that we never know what will happen next. Good intentions can easily be disturbed. We may need to reset ourselves to this good default intention various times during the day. In this way we become people of good will and practice benevolence.
  • Open your mind
    It is impossible to know everything. No matter how smart or wise we think we are, we are actually ignorant about most things in life. We do not even fully know ourselves. Our own perspective is limited by nature. Therefore we are constant in need of input from others to correct and complement our views. Open-mindedness does not mean that we listen to the same group of people all the time. Especially nowadays it is easy to enter a bubble where you only find confirmation of your own views. Prepare yourself to find other points of view, especially ones that challenge your own ideas. This is real open-mindedness.
  • Accept what crosses your path
    The world continuously confronts us with new situations. These situations may be good for us or not so good. They may be the result of our own doing or just fate. Whatever the cause, we have to deal with them. It is often a good idea to start counting our blessings. These blessings came to us before the present situation arose. They include our inner potentials and (hidden) talents. Inner treasures like these are our Golden Gift. If we learn to cultivate gratitude for them, we increase our inner strength and happiness. This practice can prepare us to face the situation at hand in a better way.
  • Listen to your heart  
    We become aware of the world through the interplay of our senses and emotions. We are sentient beings with human emotions. Through our own emotions we learn what it means to be a human being. Our inner talent for empathy helps us to develop human values. The Golden Rule is a treasure based on empathy that teaches us to refrain from doing to others what we do not want others to do to us. If we manage to internalise this, we will develop our sense of compassion. We should try to face all situations with compassion or kindness.
  • Use your head
    Passions always have intensity. If we are passionate, they are strong. If we are indifferent, they are weak. The intensity of our emotions also fluctuates in time. If the intensity of an emotion is too strong, first take a deep breath.
    This is the moment to use our head, take some distance from our emotions and create space for rational thinking. If we take various points of view and also include the standpoints of others, we are able to put things in perspective. Since only exceptional situations call for extreme measures, the Golden Mean is a useful treasure to keep in mind when we try to find the just proportion for our reactions. Since we are not alone in this world, we cannot always have it our way. In most cases we must apply diplomatic skills of compromise. This does not mean that we must always end up somewhere in the middle. A middle position can lead to a stagnant status quo. If we take the Golden Ratio as an example, we may find natural proportions of progress.
  • React in a humane way
    Life is a continuous practice of receiving and giving. First we must accept what comes to us and then we have to give a reaction. As human beings we can use our  talents, emotions and ratio to give a creative and unique response to the situations we face. Our good intentions should guide us in an uplifting and humane direction.
    We are not things or numbers, but human beings with emotional, rational and probably even spiritual intelligence. That is why robots with artificial intelligence may help us out in practical ways, but they will never be able to replace us and create a humane society.
  • Go beyond
    We have to learn from our experiences. Examine your life. Life is a learning process. Otherwise we will make the same mistakes again and again. If we continue to practice, we may develop the skills to do the right thing in a natural, spontaneous way and reach a level of mastership in the art of living.
    Such a mastership will eventually go beyond the Gamma Tao. It will become a process to transform and transcend ourselves (and our ego). The Gamma Tao shows the initial steps of this path and as a compass for wisdom and compassion it only indicates the basic directions. All philosophical and spiritual traditions, their practices of reasoning, meditation and prayer, together with the latest scientific insights, can teach us all that we know about the living art of being in the universe.
This exploration of life is like a great adventure.
Even when we achieve a certain level of life mastership (reaching maturity is often a first step), we will never become supermen. We cannot do everything by ourselves. We will always need others.
During our steps on the stepping stones of life it is always good to remember the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
Life is always a balancing act.
It is OK that once in a while we lose our balance, fall and get really wet. In these cases we have no other choice than to stand up and try again.
Only by trying again and again we may learn and eventually master.

Tu Weiming

Ethics, Philosophy,

This week I had the pleasure to attent a lecture by Tu Weiming. To be honest, I did not know him or his work before. I had only read somewhere that he was a leading Chinese neo-Confucian thinker. Since I seldom get the chance to hear a modern and living Chinese philosopher I bought my ticket right away. The lecture sold out quickly.

According to the program the lecture would be on Europe from a Chinese perspective, so I expected that the western way of life would be challenged. I even had some fears that western arrogance would be confronted by a renewed sense of Chinese moral superiority. Was I about to get a preview of a new clash of civilisations based more on economic power than on philosophical debate?

There was no need for such fears. I should have prepared myself better to know more about the life and work of Tu Weiming. He is a modest man with a broad cosmopolitan perspective on world affairs who has teached at several universities both in the west as in the east. It was a great pleasure to hear his wise words on “the unintended negative consequences of the advent of modernity, such as aggressive anthropocentrism and possessive individualism.” He proposes a new spiritual humanism that can “guide us to survive and flourish in the 21st century by deepening the intellectual and depth of our environmental awareness”.

There was so much in his lecture and his answers during the Q&A that resonated with me that I had to thank him personally for his words.

If you want to hear him speak about spiritual humanism, you can watch this video:

sense of proportion

Art, Ethics, ,

taoist painting

On the gamma way it is very important to develop a good sense of proportion. Proportion is one of the key values.

Today, in our modern societies we are mainly interested in opinions. We are all trained to have opinions on everything and everybody. If you do not have a clear opinion about a topic, your contribution to a discussion will often pass unnoticed. Presidents get elected with the help of catchy one-liners.

Opinions become a part of our identity, both in our own minds as in the eyes of others. Therefore it always takes some courage to change your opinion.

Opinions are important. We would be lost without them. We need opinions to find our way. They help us to put some order in an otherwise confusing world.

We have learned that we need to distinguish between facts and opinions, but that is easier said than done. What is an important fact? That is often also a matter of opinion.

Opinions can be true, partly true, false or partly false. They also have a reality of their own. They do exist in our minds and influence our behavior.

Opinions themselves go beyond the gamma, but together they help to build our sense of proportion. In daily practice a good sense of proportion is more valuable than the sum of all underlying opinions.

Proportion is always related to a perspective, a point of view. Something can be perfectly in proportion from one point of view, but totally out of proportion from another.

This is not a matter of “right” or “wrong”, which can be a good thing to remember when you are having an argument.

In order to develop a good sense of proportion it is important to take different perspectives.

In human affairs this practice, fuelled with feelings from our hearts, can lead to empathy and compassion.

In this way we develop a good sense of proportion in human affairs.

It is possible to take an even wider perspective and try to see things from a global or universal point of view.

From that perspective we can reflect on our place in the world, both as individuals and as a species.

From a high mountain top like this we will probably all recognize how nature itself develops with a perfect sense of proportion. Everything in nature that is out of proportion, will not survive very long.

From an universal perspective most of us will probably soon start to ask ourselves whether our modern societies are still in proportion with the natural environment?

In nature and the universe this seems to be a matter of survival.

It is very difficult to develop a good universal sense of proportion. In order to do this we need to look at our world from various perspectives and learn from science, religions and philosophies. 

Pictures of the earth from space can be very useful. It can also be helpful to take a look at some old Taoist paintings. 

In these paintings nature is often overwhelming. The men in these pictures are small and insignificant. You often have to look for them.

Taoist painters had a special sense of proportion.

what I like

Ethics, Internet,

Facebook-logo-thumbs-up

Today the gamma way is still my tiny little personal website with almost no visitors.
Only a few friends and colleagues have visited the site until this day.

It may stay a small site. There are no clear objectives to grow. If the site grows I will be pleased, but if it stays unnoticed, that is fine with me as well.

It may seem a very strange project.

The gamma way is an open and friendly site, but it is also a bit revolutionary.
It is also a call to action, a call to action for a bit more ethics on the internet.

Not old school ethics that tell you what to do or what not to do.
But new school ethics. Ethics for grown up people that can decide for themselves.

At the start the internet was a great place, with a lots of great liberating ideas.

Nowadays nobody talks about netiquette anymore.
The two biggest companies on the web, Google and Facebook, had (and still have) a lot of good intentions and great initiatives to make the world a better, more connected place.

Unfortunately, the power of money has corrupted both of them.
I still like to use both Google and Facebook. I like to communicate with friends on Facebook. I like to find my information on Google. I do this every day.

Google’s spider has already visited my website to see whether the gamma way has something interesting to tell. Apparently not. The gamma way will not show up in search results. Not yet.

The gamma way is now on Twitter, but not (yet) on Facebook.

Facebook is a great company with lots of enthusiastic and smart people.
But it has grown out of control. Today Facebook uses the data of its visitors not in a friendly way.
Not anymore. It was great in the beginning, it is still great in many ways, but there is something wrong with Facebook.

Maybe the gamma way can inspire Facebook to correct itself. It may be a strange call to action from a tiny, apparently insignificant website, but I really hope it does.