 TRIZ/CrePS Paper: Social Problems |
|
'Liberty vs. Love': The Principal Contradiction of Human Culture |
|
Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University & CrePS Institute) |
|
|
|
| Posted on Aug. 14, 2018 |
For going back to Japanese pages, press 
buttons.
Editor's Note (Toru Nakagawa, Jun. 19, 2018) (on publishing the paper in Japanese)
This is an full paper in Japanese extended from the three presentations (with the same title) made last autumn (2017) at the following three conferences: (See the page
(A) Japan Creativity Society, Annual Research Conference, Sept. 9-10, 2017, at Keio University (Yokohama)
(B) Japan TRIZ Society, Japan TRIZ Symposium 2017, Sept. 21-22, 2017 at Nakano Sun-Plaza (Tokyo),
(C) European TRIZ Association (ETRIA), TRIZ Future Conference (TFC) 2017, at Lappeenranta (Finland)
(D) (Extended Paper) (in Japanese) TRIZ Home Page in Japan, Jun. 25,Just after the presentation at Japan Creativity Society, I started to extend the paper in its Proceedings (2 columns, 8 pages) by much enhancing section 6. Discussions, and submitted the extended manuscript (1 column, 16 pages) to Journal of Japan Creativity Society for publication (on Sept. 15, 2017). Next year on Jan. 10, the results of peer review were shown t me for the first time, saying Rejected for publication. Reviewers' comments were: No references to preceeding works especially in Ethics; Definitions of main terms are not clear; Mixed description of positive side and negative side concerning to Liberty and Love; Not clear in the relationship to creativity; etc. I revised the manuscript tosome extent and sent a letter of claim of re-review to the Editor of the Journal (Jan. 14, 2018). I further revised and sent the manuscript in a final form (1 column, 19 pages) (Feb. 27, 2014). The review process was not re-opened, unfortunately.
Since then, for these 5 months, I studied several books in Ethics closely. I now have confirmed my understanding that the Basic Hypotheses postulated in the present study are quite different from vaious preceeding works in reference and provide with new aspects and theory of significant importance. For discussing the relationships with preceeding theories, however, it is necessary first to presenting my theory in its full extent. In my future works, I would like to discuss on my theory in comparison with various preceeding works, especially in Ethics.
In this situation, I have decided to publish my paper in this "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" in the form of my final manuscript submitted on Feb. 27, 2018. (Publication in the Journal of Japan Creativity Society has to wait until March 2019.) JCS Reviewers' comments were reflected to some extent in the paper; I express my thanks for them. English translation of this paper is not ready. Discussions on relationships and comparison with preceedings works, especially in Ethics, will be presented in my future investigations.
Editor's Note (Toru Nakagawa, Aug. 11, 2018) (on publishing the paper in English)
Now the English translation of the Extended paper (submitted on Feb. 27, 2018 and posted on Jun. 25, 2018 in Japanese) is ready. I am publishing this Extended Paper in English here in "TRIZ Home Page in Japan". Its Table of Contents is shown below. Please read its section 6. Discussion.
Table of Contents:
1. The 0th Principle of Human Culture: Ethics
1.1 Bases inside the human heart and the 0th Principle of Human Culture: Ethics
1.2 Ethics is learnt after birth but Conscience is inherent
1.3 Position of Ethics in the Human Culture
1.4 Fundamental Human Rights as the core concept of Ethics
1.5 Essence of the 0th principle Ethics: "Every person has the rights to pursue his/her happiness".2. The First Principle of Human Culture: Liberty
2.1 Liberty is to decide and act for oneself and to live
2.2 Conflicts between Liberty and Liberty: Inevitable Competitions and Efforts for winning them
2.3 Competitive society and Disparity
2.4 Governance by Social Winners: Setting up new Social Rules and their Maintenance
2.5 Releasing and Reformation from the positions of under the control
2.6 Reformation in Human Culture: significance of Liberty
2.7 Essence of the First Principle Liberty: To pursue my (our) own happiness and interests3. The Second Principle of Human Culture: Love
3.1 Love is 'to love one's children, one's family, and one's neighbors, and to help and protect them'.
3.2 Love is to Help each other, to Serve, and to Cooperate.
3.3 Love seeks for Harmony, and sometimes suppress Liberty of somebody
3.4 Cooperation (Love) while respecting diversity of Liberty
3.5 Another prototype of Love: Sexual Love and Marriage
3.6 For protecting Family (or Insiders), Love resists/defends from Outsiders.
3.7 Love, trying to defend the Insiders, generates a Conflict at a higher social level.
3.8 Philanthropy: Reducing Disparity and Reforming society
3.9 Essence of the Second (Guiding) Principle Love: To pursue happiness and interests of all the members4. Conflicts and Contradictions between Liberty and Love
4.1 Decisions and actions (Liberty) made up by a person are blocked by some other person's Love
4.2 Love asks for mutual help and cooperation, but Liberty refuses them
4.3 Liberty wants to finalize an issue by Competition or Fighting, but Love wants to avoid them peacefully
4.4 Social Winners is setting up new Social Rules, while Love protests them
4.5 Love sometimes opposes the movement of Releasing from suppressions (Liberty)
4.6 Love wants the Insiders in a band and tries to restrict Liberty of members
4.7 Love, distinguishing from Insiders, excludes the opinions and actions (Liberty) by Outsiders5. The Role of Ethics to Liberty and Love
5.1 The understanding of Ethics itself has been developed in the History of Human Culture
5.2 Importance of appropriate understanding of Ethics in human heart and of proper practices by individual persons
5.3 Insufficient understanding/practice of Ethics ruins the spirits and practices of Liberty.
5.4 Ethics as the foundation of Liberty: Fundamental Human Rights and concept of Equity in Essence
5.5. Insufficient understanding of Ethics ruins the spirits and practices of Love.
5.6 Ethics as the foundation of Love: Love in the heart and open mind
5.7 Problems in modern societies: Recognition of the problem of economic disparity and the issue of redistribution of wealth6.1 Contributions of the Creative Problem Solving Methodology (TRIZ/CrePS)
6.2 Verifications of problem situations, relevant references, and hypothesis setting
6.3 Structure and significance of the Basic Hypotheses
6.4 Possibility of Common Basis of Ethics in Human Culture
6.5 Significance and influences of the First Principle Liberty: Reformism and conservatism
6.6 Significance, influences, and limitations of the Second Guiding Principle Love: Reformism and conservatism
6.7 Social roles of the 0th Guiding Principle Ethics
6.8 Factors which make the Principal Contradiction of Human Culture 'Liberty vs Love' even more difficult to solveSupplementary Note
Editor's Note (Toru Nakagawa, Aug. 12, 2018)
On Jul. 15, 2018 I have written a new paper in English and submitted it for the presentation at ICCI2018 (International Conference on Creativity and Innovation) to be held by Japan Creativity Society on Sept. 10-12, 2018 in Osaka. Its Discussion section is devoted for 'Implications of the presnt Hypothesese in Comparison with the conventional/staddard theories of Ethics and Philosophy'. The new paper enhances and strongly confirms the present paper written in Feb. 2018. In its English page
|
|
|
|
Japanese page |
(2D) (Extended Paper) TRIZ Home Page in Japan, Jun. 25, 2018 (in Japanese)
(e2D) (Extended Paper) TRIZ Home Page in Japan, Aug. 14, 2018 (in English)
'Liberty vs. Love':
The Principal Contradiction of Human Culture
(2) The 'Liberty vs. Love' Contradiction and 'Ethics'
at the Personal LevelToru Nakagawa
(Osaka Gakuin University, Professor Emeritus, Japan)English translation of the Extended Paper (2D) in Japanese
published in “TRIZ Home Page in Japan” on Jun. 25, 2018Published in English in "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" on Aug. 14, 2018
Abstract
This is the second report of applying the TRIZ/CrePS Methodology to the social field. A basic hypothesis, found in the first report, is " 'Liberty vs Love' is the Principal Contradiction of Human Culture unsolved yet throughout the human history. Possible keys to reduce/solve the Contradiction may be found in 'Ethics' ".
The present study has extended it further to investigate the structure/relationships of 'Liberty, Love and Ethics' at the personal (and inter-personal) level. Inside the human heart, there exist senses, feelings, and greed/desires at the base and also conflicts between Bad will and Good will. The guiding principles for overcoming the Bad will and cultivating fundamental energies to live and Good will is Ethics. Various contradictions of Liberty vs Love become serious in poor understanding of Ethics. Keys to reducing/solving the Principal Contradictions Liberty vs Love are found in Ethics, especially Fundamental Human Rights around the concept of Intrinsic equality as humans.
Keywords: Liberty, Love, Ethics, Principal Principles of Human Culture, Principal Contradiction
0. Introduction
This is the 2nd report of applying the Creative Problem Solving Methodology TRIZ/CrePS [1] to social problems.
In the previous papers [2,3], I investigated the problem of poverty in Japanese society, and found beneath the people's arguments a basic conflict between blaming the poor themselves for their poverty and the spirits for mutual help. I realized that the philosophy of Liberty, which aims at winning in competitions and surviving, does conflict with the philosophy of Love, which aims at helping others and coordinate with another. Furthermore, I realized that in Human Culture the First Principle Liberty and the Second Principle Love contain some intrinsic contradictions. Liberty vs Love is the Principal Contradiction of Human Culture which has not been solved throughout the human history. And I have supposed that Ethics can motivate both Liberty and Love and can coordinate Liberty and Love.
The present study investigated the problem further and considered the structural relationships among Liberty, Love, and Ethics at the personal (and interpersonal) level, which is located at the bottom layer in the hierarchy of social relationships.
As a process for the study, I tried to understand the people's mind and behaviors from the aspects of Liberty, Love and Ethics. They are considered in relation to the growth of people, categorized as baby and child, kid at schools, youth, middle, and elderly. Then many keywords which characterize people's mind, behaviors, and social issues and related to Liberty, Love, and Ethics are collected. And the keywords are visualized in the Fuda-Yose method to see internal structures and contradiction relationships among Liberty, Love, and Ethics. Insights through the visual diagrams are then written down. Thus the understandings obtained newly were postulated as Basic Hypotheses in a form much enhanced and extended further from the previous study.
Figure 1 illustrates the structure among Liberty, Love, and Ethics, by using many relevant keywords.
Fig. 1. Principal Contradiction of Human Culture: Structure among Liberty, Love, and Ethics (mainly at the personal (and inter-personal) level) (Detail)
After obtaining Fig. 1, its essence has been extracted as drawn in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2. Principal Contradiction of Human Culture: Structure among Liberty, Love, and Ethics (Essence)
In the following sections 1through 5, Basic Hypotheses are postulated as the results of the present study.
1. The 0th Principle of Human Culture: Ethics
2. The First Principle of Human Culture: Liberty
3. The Second Principle of Human Culture: Love
4.Conflicts and Contradictions between Liberty and Love
5. The Role of Ethics to Liberty and LoveIn these sections, each Principle (in the sense of Guiding Principle or target for Human Culture) is defined first with its fundamental nature and then is further described with the relevant phenomena and aspects which are caused naturally by the original nature. These Principles are fundamental and significant Guiding Directions/targets for Human Culture and represent positive values to be pursued. In the process for Human Culture to pursue them, however, there emerge and grow conflicts/contradictions both inside each Principle (see Sections 1-3) and among the Principles (see Section 4). These facts are stated clearly in the Basic Hypotheses of 'Principal Contradiction of Human Culture' in the present study. The postulation of these Basic Hypotheses is the significance of the present study. In Section 5, the directions for reducing/solving these Principal Contradictions are suggested.
For the sake of conciseness and clarity, the Hypotheses are described in a top-down manner. Since the theme is tremendously big, there must be many problem issues and aspects to be discussed. And, concerning to individual issues, there must be a huge number of thoughts and writings by numerous people in the world and in history. But for the sake of clarity of the present paper, such individual issues are intently not mentioned.
The Section 6 is devoted for discussions, where the approach of the present study is explained and various issues relevant to the Basic Hypotheses are discussed.
1. The 0th Principle of Human Culture: Ethics
1.1 Bases inside the human heart and the 0th Principle of Human Culture: Ethics
At the basis inside human heart, there are senses, feelings, and desires/greed as a kind of living things and also as a human. It contains energy for living and intrinsic desires as a human (e.g., wanting happiness and self-realization), and also honesty, passion, tenderness, etc. which form the basis of Good will. Desires/greed in human heart, however, have some relations to Bad will which seeks one's own interests even by harming others. In this manner in our human heart, Good will and Bad will exist at the same time and are conflicting with each other in a contradictory situation.
In this conflict in our heart, Ethics tells us What are Good and What are Bad; this is the definition of Ethics in the present study. It forms the guiding directions for the entire life of a person, and also the basis of guiding directions for society. With such an understanding, Ethics is called the 0th Principle of Human Culture (i.e., the most basic Guiding Principle for the development of Human Culture) in the present study.
1.2 Ethics is learnt after birth but Conscience is inherent
The contents of Ethics, i.e., what are Good and what are Bad, have been taught after birth by the society, and hence are different depending on the society and on the era. Various types of Ethics existed and gave influences on one another, and have evolved along the history of Human Culture.
Then, we may ask if there is anything which are inherent, built in the DNA, and hence are common throughout the Human Culture. -- That's Conscience, I think. Instead of 'Good will' in the ordinary sense of definition, Conscience is defined in this study as ‘the inherent capability of heart which can distinguish Good from Bad deep inside our heart’. (Such hypothesis of inherent ability has been introduced here in analogy to the ability of learning languages. Any human baby can learn to understand and speak a language of the raising family and community wherever being raised, independent of his/her genetic inheritance. Though the babies learn a language after birth, they were born with the inherent ability to understand and speak a language.)
The understanding (or the hypothesis in the present study) that humans have Conscience in common forms a solid basis for Human Culture. Conscience exists in the internal heart of individual persons, and judges the Good/Bad of behaviors of oneself (and of others and of the society), and also suggests directions to Good. In this sense, Ethics is quite personal in nature.
At the same time, society has already built some criteria of Good/Bad and is trying to teach such criteria to all the individual persons and to make them observe the criteria. Thus, in this sense, Ethics is social and dependent on the society.
1.3 Position of Ethics in the Human Culture
Human Culture has been developed on the basis of Ethics, especially in the directions of extending Liberty, which tries to decide and act for oneself for realizing oneself at best, and of expanding or universalizing Love, which tries to love, help, and protect others for realizing happiness of all the members. However, it has become clear that there exist various conflicts/contradictions inside Liberty, inside Love, and between Liberty and Love. The keys to coordinating or solving such contradictions are supposed to be Ethics, which is the 0th Principle positioning at the base. (It should be noticed that the description in this paragraph applies at social levels as well as personal level.)
1.4 Fundamental Human Rights as the core concept of Ethics
Moral (or Morality) is a plain word close to Ethics, but has strong nuance of Obedience and Submission to social rules, with the background of former hierarchical class system. (This is a comment for Japanese society, but it may apply also in many countries till recently or even today.)
Through the history of Human Culture, however, the concept of 'Equity of humans in essence' has been obtained and in the modern world the concept of Fundamental Human Rights has become a fundamental and clearly-stated Ethical concept for coordinating Human Culture. In this sense, it is important to have the Ethical view which has overcome the Obedience-oriented traditional Morals.
It is noted here that some important parts of Ethics are not covered with the Fundamental Human Rights. Honesty, diligence, tenderness, modesty, etc. are such examples, which are related to the internal mind and personal behaviors, and also relevant to virtues and personal quality. These aspects of Ethics are not covered with the Fundamental Human Rights. Fundamental Human Rights intend to define how the society should get involved with people and what the society should do or not do on people.
We understand that Ethics motivates both Liberty and Love and coordinates the Liberty vs Love Contradictions. This requires us to keep Liberty and Love be respectful for Ethics, especially Fundamental Human Rights; or not violating Fundamental Human Rights.
1.5 Essence of the 0th principle Ethics: "Every person has the rights to pursue his/her happiness".
In short, Ethics is the Guiding Principle to understand, secure, and realize that every person has the rights to pursue his/her happiness. (The role of Ethics are further described in Section 5.)
2. The First Principle of Human Culture: Liberty
Human Culture takes Liberty as the First (Guiding) Principle and pursues to extend it further.
2.1 Liberty is to decide and act for oneself and to live
The First Principle Liberty is for every person to Live, and hence to decide for oneself and to act for oneself. (This is the definition of Liberty in the present study.) It aims at extending Liberty as much as possible. It may be called Pro-activeness.
To decide for oneself means not to depend the decision on others. In order to Live (or to survive), it is necessary to decide the best way at each occasion and to take responsibility for the results. This leaves us possibilities of generating new, original ideas. Such novelty can develop the Human Culture in a new way, as we understand.
Furthermore, according to our own decision, we do Act for ourselves. To act according to our own best decision is supposed to be the best way for us to claim and obtain our own interests, namely for us to live or survive; the First Principle Liberty suppose in this manner. Since any action may cause various results and possible risks, it sometimes succeeds while other times fails. Realizing such possible consequences, one should consider thoroughly to decide and act for oneself; this is the First Guiding Principle Liberty.
2.2 Conflicts between Liberty and Liberty: Inevitable Competitions and Efforts for winning them
Claiming one's own Interests (or claiming one's Liberty) often conflicts against other person's claiming his/her own Liberty. What we humans want, such as foods, houses, marriage partners, job posts, etc., are limited. Thus we meet conflicts inevitably. Such conflicts emerge as Competitions. The Principle Liberty aims at Winning such Competitions. In actual human societies, it is often the case that some of the competitors are more (or less) advantageous than some others. Liberty tries to Win the Competition even by overcoming such a disadvantage.
The Winner of the competition obtains what he/she wanted, while the Loser fails to obtain what he/she wanted (and would lose his/her own life at the worst case).
Thus, for the purpose that one can decide properly, carry out the action decided, and obtain good results, it is crucial to have prepared for the capability (or power) to decide and act properly (especially in the competitions). In response to what one wants to achieve (i.e., the contents of one's claim of Liberty), one needs to have powers of intellect, experiences, physical strengths, etc. (as a part of such capability).
2.3 Competitive society and Disparity
When the Self-insistence (or Liberty) aiming at winning the competitions emerge straight forwardly, the competitions become severe more and more. For instance, the higher the average level of students, competitions in entrance examinations become the harder. Sales competition and pricing-down competition in merchandises becomes more severe, similarly. Human desire seeking for money is actually limitless. In the society of severe competitions, the laws of jungle prevail. Since winners become more advantageous in the subsequent competitions, the differences in social positions of winners from losers increase gradually to form the disparity in the society.
2.4 Governance by Social Winners: Setting up new Social Rules and their Maintenance
Social Winners, who have won in a number of social competitions, start to govern (or control) Social Losers. This is apparent in the cases of social systems such as organizations and institutions. As a proverb says "Might is right", social rules are built up step by step by the Winners in the ways more preferable for Winners. Such phenomena also occur at the level of individual persons. Naughty boy among a group of children, bullying apparent in the kids, seniors vs juniors in schools and in working places, domestic violence, etc. are such examples..
The Social Winners want to maintain the present Social system, such as Social Rules, which they have built as governors. It is the position of Conservatism and Realism in contrast to Idealism.
2.5 Releasing and Reformation from the positions of under the control
On the other hand, Social Losers want to get released from the situations under control and under suppression. Thus, breaking the present situations and reforming the present social rules becomes the big goal for the Social Losers to achieve for their Liberty. It is a positon for Reformation and often a position of Idealism. Such Reformation has characterized the history of Human Culture.
2.6 Reformation in Human Culture: significance of Liberty
Besides such cases of Social Reformation, there have been many case of Cultural Reformation and development (especially in the fields of science, technology, and arts) by deciding for oneself and acting for oneself. Deciding and acting for oneself is often the keys to originality and novelty in science, technologies, and arts. Innovation is a big target to pursue for Liberty. In this sense, Liberty has been regarded as an important and indispensable Guiding Principle for developing Human Culture.
2.7 Essence of the First Principle Liberty: To pursue my (our) own happiness and interests
In short, Liberty is the Guiding Principle to pursue my (our) own happiness and interests. .
3. The Second Principle of Human Culture: Love
Human Culture takes `Love' as the Second (Guiding) Principle and aims at expanding it widely and universally.
3.1 Love is 'to love one's children, one's family, and one's neighbors, and to help and protect them'.
The heading of this subsection is the definition of Love in the present study. The prototype of the Second Principle Love is the affection by mothers to their children. It originates in the instinctive behavior, for human (just like many other living things) to protect and raise their children, for leaving offspring. Mothers love their new born babies naturally (or instinctively), feed them milk, protect them from dangers, and raise them. Mothers' Love usually continues while the children are infants and at school ages, and even after they are grown up. It is desirable for children to grow up in the warm feeling of Love by mothers and families.
Love is expected to be applied not only from parents to children, but also more widely to family members, to neighbors, to people in the community, and to everybody in the world, and also in the bidirectional ways. Expanding Love universally is a final target for Love as the Second Principle of Human Culture.
3.2 Love is to Help each other, to Serve, and to Cooperate.
Love has the nature of Helping others. Love helps not only one's children but also more widely the weak and the people in trouble. Anybody more or less affordable serves them with money, suggestions, services, etc.
Furthermore, Love helps others mutually, by complementing something in short and in trouble. Such mutual help is expected to be spread from family to neighbors and friends, etc. To help one another widely is the original target for Love as the Second Principle. To give and serve to others is the basis for Love. For this purpose, Love wants to make contact and communicate with people, and to understand each other. Thus Love grows from mono-directional to bi-directional relationships, i.e., Cooperation among people with mutual understanding.
3.3 Love seeks for Harmony, and sometimes suppress Liberty of somebody
Love tries to make Harmony among the people around and Coordinate them. One may behave just like a parent and help, protect, and serve others in the group (or Family in a wider sense) to make Harmony of the group.
However, in the situations of increasing number of people involved, increasing divergence of their positions, and increasing differences among the people’s desire (i.e., claims of Liberty), then the Coordination of the group becomes difficult more and more. One solution is to conciliate the member who was insisting his Liberty to stay in cooperation in the group. This results in leaving some frustration in the member. Another solution is to approve the opinion of the person who is insisting and to ask other members for their understanding (or to conciliate them). In these two solutions, Love is trying to find some compromise among the group members' Liberty for the sake of harmony in the group. This means that Love meets in conflict (or contradiction) with the insistence of Liberty by some of the members.
3.4 Cooperation (Love) while respecting diversity of Liberty
It is much more desirable that each member of the group understands the differences in members' opinions and interests, and understands further the usefulness of keeping mutual respects and cooperating as a group. Especially, it is desirable to understand and actually act to mutually complement something in shortage and make the situations better together. This is possible when the group members understand that the differences can compensate the weakness of individual members and can make the group better/stronger as a whole. This realizes mutual cooperation on the basis of diversity of people, and is a desirable situation where the mutual understanding of others' Liberty works well as a form of Love.
In other cases when an opinion (Liberty) of some members is new and meaningful, such member(s) may be separated from the original group to form a new group independent but having a (loose) relationship with the original group.
3.5 Another prototype of Love: Sexual Love and Marriage
Besides the affection by mothers to their children, Love has another prototype, i.e., Sexual Love for making offspring through sex. Because Sexual Love is one of basic instincts as a living thing, sexual desire and selecting sexual partners are much oriented by instinct and feelings. Because of desires of exclusiveness and occupation, there often occur intensive competitions for obtaining partners desired. Finding good partners, getting married, and living marriage life are big issues in personal life and also important basis of stable society.
3.6 For protecting Family (or Insiders), Love resists/defends from Outsiders.
Love tries to protect (without limit to one's own children and family) the members of one's group from dangers coming from outside. For such a purpose, Love tries to define the members to protect (i.e., Family in a wider sense or Insiders) and to build Wall against Outsiders for protecting from dangers and defending from Outsiders.
For banding the Insiders together, Love sometimes tries to control the opinions and actions (Liberty) of the members. This becomes the positions of Conservatism and Realism.
3.7 Love, trying to defend the Insiders, generates a Conflict at a higher social level.
Furthermore, if we regard the Insiders as a (social) organization and a unit of actions at one-level higher in the society, we will realize that there emerges a conflict (e.g., competitions, fighting, etc.) between such new organizations at the social level. For instance, Patriot Love of the people in one country and Patriot Love in the neighboring country caused wars often in history.
3.8 Philanthropy: Reducing Disparity and Reforming society
When there are serious disparity in the society and there are many people who are forced to be in disadvantageous and poor situations, Love naturally tries to extend Love to those people. Applying Love to a wider range of people, finally to all the people (i.e., Universalization of Love, Philanthropy) is the intrinsic directions for the Second Principle Love. Trials to change the real society in such a direction are the movements of Reformation and Idealism. When such movement has the international world-wide scope, it becomes the movement for Peace in the World.
3.9 Essence of the Second (Guiding) Principle Love: To pursue happiness and interests of all the members
In short, the Second Guiding Principle Love is to pursue happiness and interests of all the members. We should note about the range of people recognized here as 'all the members'. It means Family in a wider sense (or Insiders). It means to be 'all the people in the world' only at a much higher level of recognition.
4. Conflicts and Contradictions between Liberty and Love
During the explanation about Liberty, some conflicts/contradictions inside Liberty are mentioned, and similarly during the explanation about Love, internal conflicts/ contradictions inside Love are described. In the present section, we discuss on Conflicts/ Contradictions between Liberty and Love. Basically, such Conflicts/Contradictions emerge while Liberty pursues my/our own happiness and interests and Love pursues happiness and interests of all the members.
4.1 Decisions and actions (Liberty) made up by a person are blocked by some other person's Love
The first case of conflict occurs when a person has made up his Decisions and Actions and some other persons around (e.g., parents, teachers, etc.) try to stop him for the reasons of risks, wrongness, etc. The blocking actions are typically taken by persons around, especially in the leading/protecting position and full of experiences. The person believes in Liberty saying "Even though my decisions and actions are risky, it is necessary to take the risk for the success in future". But the others advise from Love saying "Stop them, or you would certainly fail and get a big damage". Which position is appropriate? It depends on the situations.
4.2 Love asks for mutual help and cooperation, but Liberty refuses them
Second type of conflicts occurs when Love asks for Mutual help and Cooperation for the sake of happiness and interests for all the members, but some member refuses the requests because they do no match his/her own happiness/interests (Liberty). Since Liberty pursues one's own happiness/interests at maximum, this type of conflicts emerges very often.
4.3 Liberty wants to finalize an issue by Competition or Fighting, but Love wants to avoid them peacefully
The third type of conflicts occurs when Liberty wants to decide who wins and loses by Competition. It is natural for Liberty to finalize any issue by means of Competitions or Fighting to decide who wins. On the other hand, Love wants to avoid Competitions, Win/Lose, and Fighting, and tries to somehow achieve coordination, harmony, and peace among the members. However, there are often not so many actual means which Love can propose to convince the struggling parties. For settling the issue, Love needs to be respected as a mediator and the Mediating solution must convince the both sides.
4.4 Social Winners is setting up new Social Rules, while Love protests them
The fourth type of conflicts occurs when Social Winners are going to build new Social Rules and to start ruling the society. This is a natural way in the standpoint of Liberty. In such a situation, Love considers whether the new Social Rules are appropriate or not from the viewpoint of happiness and interests for all the members. When Love judges them inappropriate, Love protests against the new Social Rules and the way of ruling, claiming that they would violate the happiness and interests of all the members. Then Love sometimes starts a new movement with the claim.
4.5 Love sometimes opposes the movement of Releasing from suppressions (Liberty)
Fifth type of conflict may occur when Social Losers raise Reformation movement for the purpose of Release from suppression and Breaking the current situations. Love usually agrees with the purpose of the movement which aims at releasing the people suppresses. Sometimes, however, Love opposes against the means and processes of the movement, claiming that the movement has much risks of causing new, big unhappiness among the members.
4.6 Love wants the Insiders in a band and tries to restrict Liberty of members
Sixth type of conflict occurs when Love wants to strengthen the bandage of the members, in order to defend against the threats and attacks from outside, and tries to control and restricts members' Liberty. Members are restricted in their opinions and behaviors, and lose some parts of their Liberty.
4.7 Love, distinguishing from Insiders, excludes the opinions and actions (Liberty) by Outsiders
Seventh type of conflict occurs when Love treats Outsiders ill in contrast to the Insiders as it recognizes. When Love has a strong sense of distinguishing the Insiders from Outsiders and is narrow-minded, the people other than the Insiders are often excluded from the circle of Insiders and hence their opinions and actions (Liberty) are not approved; this causes conflicts between the Insiders and the Outsiders.
5. The Role of Ethics to Liberty and Love
Now, we should reflect the understanding of Ethics especially on its roles. We basically understand that Ethics motivates both First Principle Liberty and Second Principle Love and coordinates them for reducing/solving the Principal Contradictions 'Liberty vs Love'. Let us now investigate the understanding further.
5.1 The understanding of Ethics itself has been developed in the History of Human Culture
Deep inside human heart, we have feelings and desires/greed which raise both Bad will and Good will (including humane desires of self-realization) and conflicts between them. Recognizing the conflicts between Good will and Bad will, Ethics tries to show the guiding directions of fundamental and desirable images as humans. Ethics indicates 'What are Good and What are Bad' and serves as the guiding principles for distinguishing from Bad to Good.
The contents of Ethics, however, differ depending on history and society, and has been evolving with the history of Human Culture. People have been taught 'what are Good/Bad' after birth by the society and have followed (or have been forced to follow) them as the basis.
Human Culture has historically contained divergent types of Ethics depending on eras and societies and has been evolving Ethics while mutually interacting with one another. Such evolution of Ethics seems to have some, but broad, directions in the history of Human Culture. We may think the reasons for such directions are based on the 'Inherent capability of judging Good from Bad deep inside human heart', i.e., Conscience redefined and postulated in the present study. In this sense, we may suppose, Human Culture historically proceeds for better understanding of desirable Ethics.
5.2 Importance of appropriate understanding of Ethics in human heart and of proper practices by individual persons
It is important that Ethics is understood appropriately in the heart of individuals and is practiced properly. This is crucial for Liberty and Love to be practiced by individuals and by societies in their genuine spirits as the Principal Guiding Principles of Human Culture.
In the following subsections, we investigate closely what roles Ethics play for the purpose of reducing/solving the conflicts/contradictions inside Liberty, inside Love, and between Liberty and Love.
5.3 Insufficient understanding/practice of Ethics ruins the spirits and practices of Liberty.
There exist numerous examples where insufficient understanding/practice of Ethics ruins the spirits and practices of Liberty.
Ruin the pro-activeness (i.e., the spirits of Liberty) <== Being passive, enervated, irresponsible, following others blindly, etc.
Ruin the originality, novelty <== Following precedent cases, conventional, copying, imitation, etc.
Ruin the challenging <== Seeking safety, shrinking, avoiding the responsibility, etc.
Make Competitions inappropriate <== backdoor admission, doping, judgement juggling, hiding rule violation, corruption, bribery, etc.
Obtaining one's interests unfairly <== Threatening, corruption, falsification, fraud, robbery, killing, etc.
Building new social rules improperly <== Slavery, class system, restricted voting rights, colonial system, etc.
Misleading the Movement of breaking the current ruling <== Terrorism, armed uprising, etc. (on the movement side); armed suppression, media control, etc. (on the ruling side)
5.4 Ethics as the foundation of Liberty: Fundamental Human Rights and concept of Equity in Essence
For Liberty to be respected, the thoughts and actions in the name of Liberty should be in accordance with Ethics, namely they come from not Bad Will but Good Will of the person. Practical guideline for ensuring this point is to keep following the Fundamental Human Rights, especially Concept of 'Essential equality', in the claim of Liberty and in the field of Competition. Reserving the Fundamental Human Rights for all the people involved should be the prerequisite for claiming and pursuing Liberty.
In this relation we should note that the word 'Moral' has the nuance of old Ethics which put much stress on Obedience, reflecting some class system. We should overcome such an old Ethics and proceed to the modernized Ethics which is based on Fundamental Human Rights and the concept of 'Essential Equality as a human'. It is important further to clarify the concept of Equity and to understand and practice 'Essential Equality as a human' instead of 'Uniformed Equality'.
5.5. Insufficient understanding of Ethics ruins the spirits and practices of Love.
Similarly, insufficient understanding of Ethics ruins the spirits and practices of Love. There are various examples:
Ruins the affection <== Indifference, dislike, cruelty, abusive treatment, etc.
Ruins the help <== Neglect, disregard, etc.
Ruins the protection <== Disregard, closing the eyes, etc.
Ruins the coordination <== Non-cooperation, lack of understanding, cold heart, selfish, insistence, rejection, etc.
5.6 Ethics as the foundation of Love: Love in the heart and open mind
For Second Guiding Principle Love to play its original roles, the people involved need to master Ethics properly. 'To love, help, and protect others' is expected to be an aspect of original basic nature (e.g., feelings, desires, etc.) of humans and hence everybody has such tenderness in the heart. With such a tender heart, one can help, cooperate, and coordinate with others. With a tender heart, one may avoid claiming selfish Liberty and hence reduce the factors causing the conflicts between Liberty and Love.
Love aims at widening its scope to its goal of universal Love. Barriers against the widening exist inside Love itself, i.e., the sense of specifying the Insider members (to love). Love should be applied to not only one's family but more widely to people in one's community, to people in one's country, and to all the people in the world of different races and with different languages. (Or else, patriotic Love, for example, would cause wars against another patriotic Love. )
It is important to have the Ethics based on the concept of 'Essential Equality as a human', to communicate with people widely, and try to understand the history and current situations of the society and the world.
5.7 Problems in modern societies: Recognition of the problem of economic disparity and the issue of redistribution of wealth
One more point we should note particularly is the fact that Greed of human, especially the desire for money, is endless. In the current world, money is the biggest factor for distinguishing the Social Winners. The rich people are the Social Winners and the current social system is made favorable for them. That is the capitalist economy and the capitalism social system. The capitalism social system has generated big disparity and various serious problems in Japan and in the world. We should make efforts for reforming the social system in this point to incorporate the redistribution of wealth more widely. This is the current important issue of Liberty, the issue of Love, and the issue of Ethics as well.
The present study initially chose the concrete problem of Low-living elderly and the problem of poverty in Japanese society [2,3]. The discussion in this subsection suggests a broad direction for solving such problems.
6. Discussions
6.1 Contributions of the Creative Problem Solving Methodology (TRIZ/CrePS)
As is explained in Section 0. and in my previous reports [2, 3], the present study has applied the Creative Problem Solving Methodology (TRIZ/CrePS) [1] to a social problem.
The TRIZ methodology was originally developed in the latter half of the 20th century in the personal section in ex-USSR for the purpose of problem solving in technological fields. Since 90s it has been spread to all the world and extended to the application areas of business, software, etc. It has developed extensive knowledge bases of up-to-date science and technology through the analyses of world patents, and has revealed some essence of technology evolution. Thus it has become powerful in solving new problems in technologies. It is much advanced especially in the concepts and techniques for system thinking, revealing and solving contradictions, investigating ideals, etc. CrePS has integrated, on the basis of TRIZ, various creativity methods and problem solving method into 'General Methodology for Creative Problem Solving'.
Going out of the application areas in technologies and business, TRIZ/CrePS has been applied for the first time to the social problem areas, in the present study. As the results, the present study has extended the study areas of creativity and creative problem solving (i.e., study areas of Japan Creativity Society) towards a new area. Moreover, it also has given a new approach from out of the box to the study areas of social problems and social philosophy, I believe.
Concerning to the research process, the present study has proceeded along the Six-Box Scheme of CrePS [1]. The Six-Box Scheme are:
Box 1: To find a problem in the Real World:
Taking the problem of poverty in the Japanese society as a theme, I have studied the problem by visualizing Fujita's book "The Low-living Elderly" [7].
Box 2: To focus the problem in the Real World and pass it to the Thinking World:
The root of the problem was understood as the conflicts between the opinions of self-responsibility and the spirit to mutual help, and hence the theme was focused to investigate the real causes of the conflicts in a wider scope.
Box 3: To understand the present system and the ideal system:
The basis of the conflicts has been found as the conflicts between the philosophy of Liberty and the philosophy of Love. The conflicts has been found between the two most significant guiding principles in Human Culture. And hence the 'Liberty vs Love' Contradiction is recognized as the Principal Contradiction of Human Culture, which has not been solved yet throughout the human history. As possible keys to coordinate both Liberty and Love, we consider Ethics. On the basis of such a Basic Hypothesis, the present study is on the way to investigate the structure (or relationships) among Liberty, Love, and Ethics.
Such investigation is partly on the present system (reflecting the history of Human Culture) and also partly on the ideal system (reflecting the history and considering the future directions). The investigation of 'Liberty, Love, and Ethics' should start at the personal (and inter-personal) level, to various hierarchical levels of social systems and organizations, and further to the global level. Such investigation will certainly need a huge efforts with wide scopes and deep insights.
Box 4: To obtain solution ideas for a new system.
Under investigation. It has become clear that revealing the present and ideal situations among 'Liberty, Love, and Ethics' and clarifying the roles of Ethics will be the basic keys (i.e., solution ideas) to find a new system (of Human Culture). Investigating such basic keys further, from the personal level to various social levels, concerning various types of organizations and fields, should be necessary in future.
Box 5: To build up conceptual solutions in the Thinking World:
Need to be considered in future step by step.
Box 6: In the Real World, to implement the solutions and to solve the problem:
This should be a very large scale of activities in future.
As shown above in the Six-Box Scheme procedure, Creative Problem Solving Methodology TRIZ/CrePS has contributed to the present study, not by its concrete techniques but rather by its ways of thinking (or its philosophy). Especially its ways of System Thinking have contributed much to the present study: such as to consider the essence of the problem, to consider the problem system in hierarchical levels, to consider the structure, functions, and mechanisms of the problem system, to consider the problem in time (historically) and in space (regionally), etc.
Furthermore, TRIZ/CrePS has supported the present study much with its strength in handling Contradictions: such as not to hesitate in handling complex problems, to understand the essence of problem as contradictions, to reveal the contradictions because it is the best way to solve contradictions (i.e. problems), to handle with a network of many contradictions, to handle contradictions not only in a philosophical way but also in a concrete manner to think of feasible solutions of the contradictions, etc.
In addition, the ideas about the evolution of technologies has provided a basis on which the ideas of evolution of Human Culture is developed across different eras and regions. Visual thinking, i.e., visualizing the problem situations in diagrams, also contributed much.
It should be worthy of reviewing the present study also in the aspect of creativity:
Main results of the present study are: to have revealed principal Guiding Principles at the root of Human Culture, to have presented the structure of the conflicts/contradictions among them (i.e., Principal Contradictions), and to present the directions for solving the contradictions. These results are now postulated as Basic Hypotheses. They have been derived and postulated by the present study as the original, newly-built theory. The essence of Creativity in problem solving is to find and propose some new and significant ideas. Basic Hypotheses correspond to ideas in problem solving, and hence the present study have shown its Creativity. Significance of such results of creation will be enhanced by future research and will be evaluated by history.
Among the factors contributed to the Creation in the present study, the most significant one seems to be that the present author has newly come into the field of studying the basis of Human Culture. He has been originally in the field of science and technology, and when he encountered a quite different new field in humanity and social science he applied the methodology for creative problem solving in the field of science and technology. Many examples are known that creative works and Innovations have been achieved not by the specialists in the field but by new comers from some other fields. The present study may be regarded as one of such examples.
Contributions of the creative problem solving methodology TRIZ/CrePS are discussed already in outline at the initial part of the present subsection. Several key factors for generating Creativity are remarked here:
(a) The biggest key was the investigation into the essence of the problem, i.e., from the conflicts in book reviews by many readers of "The Low-living Elderly", to the conflicts between the opinions of self-responsibility and the spirits of mutual help, and further to the conflicts between the philosophy of Liberty and the philosophy of Love.
(b) Listing up many keywords relevant to the problem essence and arranging them visually (see Fig. 1) for understanding the mutual relationships and overall structure among them: this visualization was effective in rearranging many complex factors and in organizing new thoughts. Especially, I have realized clearly that Liberty brings Conservatism to Social Winners while Reformism to Social Losers and similarly Love brings Idealism for reformation and also Conservatism for internal control.
(c) It was stated clearly that the contents of Ethics, i.e. the criteria for distinguishing Good from Bad, are not necessarily common to all the human kinds because Ethics is taught by societies and depends on the history and societies. And the present study obtained the hypothesis of Inherent Conscience, common to all the human kind, which is the capability of judging Good from Bad deeply inside the human heart.
(d) Extracting the essence of Fig. 1 to obtain Fig. 2. (Actually, I made Fig. 1, then obtained Fig. 2 as the essence, and further fed back the essence into Fig. 1.) As the results, I obtained a clear understanding of the overall structure, or logical relationships, of Liberty, Love, and Ethics.
(e) Spiral repetitions of visual thinking in diagrams and logical description of texts contributed to finding new insights of aspects and enhancing the logics of thoughts.
Considering these factors summarized in (a) through (e), we can see that the new creative ideas have been obtained not by un-intended happening but rather along the structural and logical process of investigating the problem step by step.
6.2 Verifications of problem situations, relevant references, and hypothesis setting
In the present study, verification of problem situations has not been tried by the present author. For example, concerning to the situations of poverty among elderly people in Japan, the information written in Takanori Fujita's book "The Low-living Elderly" [7] is mainly used here in addition to other daily news sources, without carrying out any specific, statistical surveys. And with a trigger of conflicting arguments among many ordinary readers of the book, the present study jumps into the understanding of the Essence of the problem. This might be criticized that the present study is too easy as a research. Specialists in the field of social problems might rightly criticize in such a way. For a researcher in different areas, who is a citizen receiving abundant information daily and thinking of society in various aspects, the problem situations and the essence of the problem are understood naturally; and such understanding is certainly supposed to be correct in the large.
The present author certainly thinks that the essence of the poverty problem lies in the relationships of 'Liberty, Love, and Ethics' and that the same essence is commonly found in future in the problems in much wider areas; for example, situations of education, actual problems in democracy, employment problems, economic policies, taxation system, international politics, etc. etc.
The present paper is also criticized that essentially no references by other authors are referred. It is not clear whether the Basic Hypotheses postulated in the present study is new or not. A brief survey was tried to find no similar hypothesis, but it might be possible that any other people have written similar ones. This is the initial stage where the present author describes what he has thought and found for himself. Since Liberty, Love, and Ethics are all very important concepts and relevant to very wide range of affairs, it is no doubt that numerous people in various eras and societies have thought, argued, and investigated about them. A lot of people recognized and wrote that concrete conflicts in various problems are the conflicts between Liberty and Love in its essence. It is not clear yet, however, whether any author stated that there exists an intrinsic contradiction between the philosophy of Liberty and the philosophy of Love and that Liberty vs Love is the Principal Contradiction of Human Culture causing a very wide range of problem situations.
The present paper does not show any individual references on the concepts of Liberty, Love, and Ethics and various relationships between these concepts. Concerning to these individual concepts and issues, there should be numerous papers and books in the world and in the history. (In relation to the present theme, I would dare to recommend the references [7-17] among the ones I read recently.) My writing this paper without referring to the works by numerous people might be criticized by specialists in this area. Such individual issues, however, are all minor details of the Basic Hypotheses in the present study. The Basic Hypotheses in the present study are described logically using the concepts of Liberty, Love, and Ethics which are defined here in a concise manner. Thus, it must be of much social significance for the present author to publicize the newly obtained creative results without delay. (Note: Please refer to the Postscript written at the end of Section 7.)
6.3 Structure and significance of the Basic Hypotheses
In the previous reports [2,3] of the present study, contradictions between the First Principle Liberty and the Second Principle Love were investigated mainly and for motivating and coordinating them Ethics was considered. At that stage, the understanding of Ethics was not so clear for me, and the consideration of internal side of humans and the positioning of Ethics in the Human Culture were not sufficient either.
In the present paper, Ethics is called as the 0th Guiding Principle of Human Culture and is declared to be the most basic Guiding Principle both for personal internal life and for various social organizations. As the results, the basic structure of '(0th Principle) Ethics, (First Principle) Liberty, and (Second Principle) Love' has become much clearer and hence various relationships (e.g., bases, conflicts, coordination, etc.) among them are shown. The structure of the three Principles is the framework of the Basic Hypotheses of the present work (See Fig. 2).
It should be noted here that the slogans of French Revolution were 'Liberty, Equity, and Fraternity' and they have come to be the important guiding concepts of modern societies. In such slogans, however, the stress was put at the freedom (or Liberty) from the control of the class-system society (e.g., king and nobles) and Equality independent from social classes. Structural relationships, containing conflicts, among the three slogans were not well recognized at that time. Ethics in the present study contains the concept of Equity (in essence as the same human kind) and further more.
The Basic Hypotheses in the present study has become much clearer when the essence of the three Guiding Principles were rephrased using words in common (See Fig. 2). Namely, the First Guiding Principle Liberty is to Pursue My (or Our) own happiness and interests. The Second Guiding Principle Love is to Pursue happiness and interests of All the members. And the 0th Guiding Principle Ethics is 'Every person has the rights to pursue his/her own happiness and interests'. It is clear that the 0th Guiding Principle which covers Every person should form the basis of the three. Since the First Guiding Principle Liberty claims to pursue My or Our own happiness and interests, we understand that it apt to become aggressive and causing conflicts with others. Since the Second Guiding Principle Love pursues happiness and interests of all the members, we can understand it to be embracing and cooperative. We need to be careful, however, the Love pursues happiness and interests for all the members, where the range of members are limited depending on the concrete cases. 'All the members' in a case of a social level becomes 'We' in the one-step higher social level and forms a social unit involving in conflicts and competitions. Therefore, in order to become Love to be universal Love, where everybody in the world are included as the members (of Insiders), Love needs to make many times of recognition change (i.e., reformation in thoughts and reformation in actions) for stepping up the social levels.
Significance of the Basic Hypotheses in the present study is not limited to pointing out the Principal Contradiction 'Liberty vs Love'. More importantly, it has revealed that for coordinating Liberty and Love and for reducing/solving the Principal Contradiction 'Liberty vs Love', Human Culture has to rely on Ethics after all, when thinking at the root level of philosophy. We, the whole world, should deepen and share the understanding of Ethics and implement desirable Ethics in various systems in society. This has clarified the guiding directions for solving the Principal Contradictions of Human Culture. Understanding of the basic structure of 'Liberty, Love, and Ethics' has clearly revealed the Principal Contradiction and also the guiding directions for solving it.
6.4 Possibility of Common Basis of Ethics in Human Culture
Ethics shows 'what are Good and what are Bad' and should work as the internal guiding directions for individual persons and as the guiding directions for society. Contents of Ethics, however, are taught by discipline by parents, and by various educations and social systems, and are influenced and changing by different environments and life experiences for individual persons (and also for society).
The contents of Ethics (or Morals in plain word) for different societies have been changing in history and are different more or less in the world at present. Such differences are apparent especially in human relationships reflecting classes and control systems, in sexual discrimination, in religious beliefs and habits, in personal relationships reflecting economical situations, etc. In each society, there are various Social Rules, in the form of laws and unwritten rules, and following/obeying them is regarded as the pillar of Ethics. Such differences reflect the fact that the understandings of Ethics are different in various points in Human Culture and are changing in history.
It may be possible to see some common understandings and general directions of change (or evolution) in Ethics to some extent. However, we are not at the stage where we can suppose a common 'absolutely correct Ethics'.
Then, don't we have any common basis for humans concerning to the concept of Good/Bad? In this regard, the present author has postulated 'the inherent capability of heart which can distinguish Good from Bad deep inside our heart' and called it as Conscience (See Section 1.2). This is a hypothesis derived intuitively by the present author. It has not been checked concerning to its novelty and has not been verified concerning to its correctness.
The hypothesis was obtained with analogical thinking about the inherent capability of human babies for learning to speak an language. Every baby has the capability of understanding and speaking a language at the age from 0 to 3 years. Suppose a baby is separated from birth parents and raised in an environment of a different language. Then the language the baby starts to speak is the one spoken by the nurturing mother and in the community, and is not a language of birth parents through the genetic factors. It is clear that the language learnt by a baby depends on the environment after birth (and not on the genetic factors) while the capability itself to learn a language is inherent (and common in all humans).
In analogy, we may understand that the contents of criteria of Good from Bad are taught and learnt after birth while the basic capability of distinguishing Good from Bad is given inherently. The inherent capability is for our heart (rather than our brain) to distinguish Good from Bad intuitively and emotionally deep inside the personal heart.
The words and thoughts people express outside are often dressed up due to various feelings, calculations, considerations, logics, etc. and hide the internal feelings/thoughts. Teaching small children saying "Don't do to others what you do not like to be done to yourself" is an excellent explanation, very easy to understand and effective to distinguish Good from Bad.
The inherent capability of distinguishing Good from Bad is the basis for individual person to build up one's own understanding of Ethics, by integrating the contents of Ethics taught by the society, different contents of Ethics studied through history and other societies, various facts and events learned with real experiences in life and in society, etc. Such individual understandings of Ethics further motivate the evolution of Ethics in society.
6.5 Significance and influences of the First Principle Liberty: Reformism and conservatism
The First Guiding Principle Liberty advises us to decide and act for oneself, and hence it is well understood that Liberty brings pro-activeness, originality, and novelty, and while it generates competitions it aims at winning them, and that the new winners bring in reformation. All these are generally understood as the pro-active and positive nature of Guiding Principle Liberty.
The present study, however, has proceeded one more step to reveal another aspect of Liberty. Namely, as the consequences of Liberty, the repetition of competitions increases the disparity between the winners and the losers, and the social winners build social rules in the way favorable for themselves and control the society, and further the social winners want to maintain their control positions and take the positions of conservatism. And further, with the change in situations along the time passing, new winners emerge from the former losers and reform the control system. This sort of process occurs not on some specific situations but very often as usual cases.
This understanding suggests many more phenomena: The keys to win competitions may be different depending on situations. Military power (or physical strength), political power, economic power, intellectual power, etc. For instance, in the area of wealth and poverty, free competitions would results in the situations that the rich families become rich more and more while poor families get even poor. In the area of education levels, the families originally with high education levels are easier to proceed for higher education than the families originally with low education levels.
It is important to recognize that in any era and in any society the Social Rules are set to be favorable for the social winners in the society, i.e., the ruling classes. Social Rules mean here a very wide range of things, including laws and other public rules, various systems and organizational forms in the society, usual ways of activities, ways of distributing wealth in the society, common senses and Ethics in the society, etc. All these factors of Social Rules are set in the ways more favourable to the Social Winners (namely in the above examples, families economically rich and families with high education levels). This recognition suggests the importance to have the attitudes of criticism concerning to existing Social Rules in each society; the attitudes of not presuming the justice of the existing Social Rules and of considering and seeking for more desirable ones.
6.6 Significance, influences, and limitations of the Second Guiding Principle Love: Reformism and conservatism
Love, the Second Guiding Principle, has its prototype in the mothers' love to their children, and is to love one's family, to love one's neighbors, and to help and protect them. Love self-controls own desires, serves others, coordinates the thoughts and interests of people around, and makes harmony among them. Expanding the targets of Love towards all the people, just as taught by Jesus Christ and Gautama the Buddha, is the goal of universal Love. When such Love spreads widely and in mutual ways, there occur intimate and mutual-help human relationships and peaceful society without fights and peaceful world. Thus Love gives pleasure to people, and reforms the society towards mutual help with no discrimination nor poverty. This is the general understanding of Love as the Second Guiding Principle.
The present study understands, however, that Love is actually the Guiding Principle of pursuing happiness and interests of All the members. 'All the members' here means the range of people whom are recognized by the Love as the target to love, help, and protect. It means one's own family in a case, one's organization or one's company in some cases, one's own race or one's own nation in other cases. That is the Insiders (or Family in a wider sense) for the Love to help and protect.
For protecting the Insiders, sometimes it is necessary for Love to counteract against some Outsiders and then for Love to coordinate and control the Insiders. This brings in a competition or fighting in the society at the level one-level higher. In these situations Love sometimes takes the closing and conservative positions and roles. For the recognition of 'All the members' to be widened to the universal extreme of ‘All the people in the world’, Love has to achieve the reformation of its own understandings and feelings at many levels.
In this manner, the Second Guiding Principle Love in the real world has not only positive aspects but also negative aspects and contains various types of Contradictions, in spite of its ideal of universal Love. Such intrinsic contradictions inside Love make the Principal Contradiction 'Liberty vs Love' even more complex. As for the Contradictions between Liberty and Love, many sample cases are already discussed in Section 4.
6.7 Social roles of the 0th Guiding Principle Ethics
In Section 6.3, we discussed that the 0th Guiding Principle Ethics gives, in its main significance, the criteria for distinguishing Good from Bad inside the personal heart and that even though the criteria are taught after birth by society, humans have Inherent capability (i.e., Conscience) of distinguishing Good from Bad deep inside the heart (in common in DNA). So let us now go ahead to discuss about general contents and social roles of Ethics, in supplement to Section 5.
As demonstrated in Sections 5.3 and 5.5, insufficient understanding and practices of Ethics ruin quite easily the spirits and practices of Liberty and the spirits and practices of Love as well. Examples of insufficient Ethics are mentioned there, such as being passive, enervated, following others blindly, discrimination, violence, non-cooperation, selfishness, lack of understanding, etc. Seeing these keywords, we understand that Ethics contains guiding directions for inner character and personal behaviors and those for personal relationships with others.
Thus we may describe some contents of Ethics in various keywords having positive expressions: honesty, pro-activeness, passion, diligence, efforts, sympathy, reliance, etc. etc. These keywords may represent the concepts which are accepted almost commonly in Human Culture as the desirable personal characters and guiding directions for personal life. Some of these keywords are related to the guiding principles Liberty and Love, but there are many others which are more fundamental and belong properly to the 0th Guiding Principle Ethics.
Though not included in the above examples of keywords, Ethics has another aspect representing social codes, such as Don't murder, Don't steal, Don't commit adultery, etc. In each society, they are set sometimes as religious commandment or else as national laws with punishment; and they form a part of Social Rules.
As the root basis of them, the concepts of Fundamental Human Rights have been made clear in the modern world. For instance, Constitution of Japan writes in Article 13:
"All of the people shall be respected as individuals. Their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness shall, to the extent that it does not interfere with the public welfare, be the supreme consideration in legislation and in other governmental affairs. "
And Article 14 writes as
"All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin. "
Namely, the Constitution ensures all the people (i.e., Japanese national here) to be equal without discrimination and to pursue their own life, liberty, and happiness. This may be regarded as an expression of Social Guiding Directions in Ethics, the 0th Guiding Principle of Human Culture in the present study.
It has been confirmed in this subsection that the 0th Guiding Principle Ethics is the basis of both the First Guiding Principle Liberty and the Second Guiding Principle Love and hence Ethics is the keys to coordinate and solve the Principal Contradiction ‘Liberty vs Love’.
6.8 Factors which make the Principal Contradiction of Human Culture 'Liberty vs Love' even more difficult to solve
Human Culture has been trying to solve the Principal Contradiction 'Liberty vs Love' throughout its history. However, cases of the 'Liberty vs Love' contradiction exist everywhere at present, are emerging newly, and have become more and more complex and huge.
Main factors which make the solution even more difficult are as follows [2-6]:
(a) At the most basic level of individual person(s), actual and desirable relationships among Liberty, Love, and Ethics are not clear yet. Due to the issue of Desires/Greed and Bad will in the Human Nature, people are very often moved by their feelings and emotions rather than their intellect. Thus it is difficult to make common logical understanding, and even more difficult to make such a common understanding being practiced widely.
(b) For various types/levels of social organizations, actual and desirable relationships among Liberty, Love, and Ethics are not clear yet. For organization of different types and scales, such as groups, companies, political parties, communities, countries, etc., we have to make clear and common understanding. Since all such organizations form the Social Systems of the whole world, it is necessary to construct their desirable images, especially desirable Ethics of such different social organizations, as common sharable understandings.
(c) Individuals and organizations may insist on their Interests (Liberty), may act against (Social) Ethics, and can become the Social Winners. Such social Winners (re-)build the Social Systems in a way favorable for themselves. This means that even if a case/aspect of Principal Contradiction 'Liberty vs Love' is solved, the solution itself is apt to generate another case of 'Liberty vs Love' Contradiction in some other aspects. Thus, at any time, Social Systems do not meet the (Social) Ethics in some aspects.
(d) Situations of (c) exist everywhere, in the scales from tiny to huge, and are accumulated in many layers in the Human History. People and organizations who have been oppressed, with the feelings of grudge and hatred, try to overthrow the present organizations and systems. Such situations are repeated every time, everywhere.
Recognizing these factors of difficulties, the present study intends to proceed initially (a) to study further the real and desirable relationships among 'Liberty, Love, and Ethics' at the personal level and then (b) to investigate the real and desirable relationships 'Liberty, Love, and Ethics' for social organizations, starting with groups and smaller organizations and step by step towards organizations and systems at higher levels.
7. Concluding Remarks
The 0th Guiding Principle Ethics is concerned first to the internal heart of individual persons and has a goal to guide the person towards Good will in the conflicts with desire/greed and Bad will. And in the center of Ethics, the concept of Fundamental Human Rights, especially based on the Equity of all the people as a human, have become clear for all the people to observe.
The First Guiding Principle Liberty aims at deciding and acting for oneself and winning at competitions. Such Liberty brings in cultural and social reformations. Social winners of competitions start to build social rules favorable for themselves and to control the society in conservative ways. In the competitions and in setting up social rules, we should employ the Fundamental Human Rights as a part of decision criteria.
The Second Guiding Principle Love is to love, help, and protect people. The warm heart of Love is naturally a part of Ethics. Mutual help wants to reform the society. Love, however, has the nature of protecting the Insiders by defending from some Outsiders, and hence has some risk for becoming sometimes narrow-minded. Universalizing Love and applying the concepts of Fundamental Human Rights are important.
Correct understanding of the desirable relationships among 'Liberty, Love, and Ethics' and sharing the understanding widely in the whole world is crucial as the basis for further sound development of the Human society and Human Culture.
The present study applied the TRIZ/CrePS Methodology, especially with its system thinking and contradiction thinking, to a problem in the social field and investigated the complex social problem of poverty and further down the fundamental problem in the philosophy of Human Culture, and obtained the Basic Hypotheses described so far.
The present author is planning to go ahead to investigate the 'Liberty, Love, and Ethics' structures of groups and organizations at the level higher than the personal level.
Supplementary Note:
For the purpose of comparing, in future, the present study with many theories and studies in reference, the key points of the present Basic Hypotheses are summarized in the following 3 points.
(a) The First Guiding Principle of Human Culture is Liberty, while the Second Guiding Principle is Love. Between the two Principal Guiding Principles, however, there exist intrinsic and serious Contradictions. Solving the ‘Liberty vs Love’ Contradiction has been the principal issue in Human Culture, but has not been successful so far throughout the history of Human Culture.
(b) Ethics is the 0th Guiding Principle, underlying at further basis, of Human Culture. Ethics motivates both Liberty and Love, and is the key to coordinating and solving the ‘Liberty vs Love’ Contradictions.
(c) Ethics, however, are taught after birth by societies, and hence is dependent on eras and societies. If we search for something, which is inherent and common to all the human kind, as the further basis of Ethics (the 0th Guiding Principle of Human Culture), we find the Conscience, i.e., Capability to distinguish Good from Bad deep inside the human heart.
The present author has been surveying for references which discuss on any of these 3 issues (a)(b)(c) as main themes and state clearly, but has not found any yet.
References
[1] Toru Nakagawa: “CrePS (General Methodology of Creative Problem Solving) beyond TRIZ: What, Why, and How?”, TRIZCON2016 held by Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies, Mar. 2-5, 2016, New Orleans, USA; THPJ, Jun. 20, 2016.
[2] Toru Nakagawa: “TRIZ/CrePS Approach to the Social Problems of Poverty: Underlying the Arguments by Ordinary People, 'Liberty vs. Love' Is Found the Principal Contradiction of the Human Culture”, Japan TRIZ Symposium 2016, Sept. 1-2, 2016, Tokyo; THPJ, Sept. 9, 2016
[3] Toru Nakagawa: “TRIZ/CrePS Approach to the Social Problems of Poverty: 'Liberty vs. Love' Is Found the Principal Contradiction of the Human Culture”, ETRIA TRIZ Future Conference 2016, Oct. 24-27, 2016, Wroclaw (Poland); THPJ, Nov. 7, 2016
[4] Toru Nakagawa: “ ‘Liberty vs Love’: The Principal Contradiction Inherent throughout the Human Culture”, Bulletin, YMCA at the University of Tokyo, No. 146, pp. 9-26, Dec. 8, 2016 (Japanese) ; THPJ, Jan. 13, 2017 (Japanese)
[5] Toru Nakagawa: “'Liberty vs. Love': The Principal Contradiction of Human Culture (2) The 'Liberty vs. Love' Contradiction and 'Ethics' at the Personal Level”, Japan Creativity Society Annual Conference, Sept. 9-10, 2017, Yokohama (Japanese); THPJ, Sept. 28, 2017
[6] Toru Nakagawa: “'Liberty vs. Love': The Principal Contradiction of Human Culture (2) The 'Liberty vs. Love' Contradiction and 'Ethics' at the Personal Level”, ETRIA TRIZ Future Conference 2017, Oct. 4-7, 2017, Lappeenranta (Finland); Gaetano Cascini, Leonid Chechulin, ed., Journal of the European TRIZ Association, INNOVATOR, ISSN 1866-4180, 02/2017 Volume 04, pp. 97-104
; THPJ, Jun. 20, 2018
[7] Takanori Fujita: "Karyuu Roujin" ("The low-living elderly"), Asahi Paperbacks 520, Jun. 2015, pp. 222 (Japanese). -- Introduction by Nakagawa, THPJ, Mar. 6, 2016 (English)
[8] Koji Morioka: “Employment Class Society”, Iwanami Paperbacks 1568, Iwanami Shoten, 2015, pp. 240 (Japanese).
[9] Tomosuke Kasuya: “ Contestant to “Freedom and Equality”: Neglected Love “, Sophia University Press, 2007, pp. 199 (Japanese).
[10] Robert B. Reich: “Beyond Outrage”, 2012; Japanese translation, Hiroshi Amemiya, Akiko Imai: “Disparity and Democracy”, Toyo Keizai Shimpo, 2014, pp.214
[11] Okamoto Yuichiro: “Philosophical Challenges in the 21st Century”, Diamond Press, 2016, pp. 318 (Japanese).
[12] Sean Covey: “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens”, 1998; Japanese translation by Franklin Covey Japan, King Bear Press, 2002, pp. 370.
[13] Steven R. Covey, Breck England: “The 3rd Alternative: Solving Life’s Most Difficult Problems”, Franklin Covey Co., 2011; Japanese translation by Franklin Covey Japan, King Bear Press, 2012, pp. 567.
[14] Walpola Rahula: “What The Buddha Taught”, 1959; Japanese translation by Yoshiro Imaeda, Iwanami Paperbacks Blue 343-1, Iwanami Shoten, 2016, pp. 207.
[15] Yuval Noah Harari: “SAPIENS: A Brief History of Humankind”, Vintage, 2011; Japanese translation by Yasushi Shibata, Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2016, pp.267 + 294.
[16] Kazuo Inamori: “Kangaekata (Ways of Thinking)”, Daiwa Shobo, 2017, pp. 256. (Japanese)
[17] Tetsuhiko Shinagawa: “Rinrigaku no Hanashi (A Talk about Ethics)”, Nakanishiya Press, 2015, pp. 276
Note: THPJ: TRIZ Home Page in Japan, URL= http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/ nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ (English)
URL= http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/ nakagawa/TRIZ/ (Japanese)
|
|
|
|
Japanese page |
Last updated on Aug. 14, 2018 Access point: Editor: nakagawa@ogu.ac.jp
