 Social Problems: Working Paper |
|
|
Liberty vs. Love: The Principal Contradiction Inherent in the Human Culture: |
||
Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University, Professor Emeritus; CrePS Institute, Director) |
 |
|
|
||
| Posted on Apr. 29, 2016; Updated: May 9, 2016 | ||
For going back to Japanese pages, press 
buttons.
Editor's Note (Toru Nakagawa, Apr. 21, 2016 (in Japanese), Apr. 27, 2016 (in English))
This paper stems from my work on 'Thinking over the Poverty in the Japanese Society with Visualization'
. The initial approach of the work was to visualize the logic of Takanori Fujita's "The Low-living Elderly" Book (2015), as posted in this Home Page from Sept. 2015 to Jan. 2016
).
Reading the 82 Customer Reviews of Fujita's Book contributed to the Amazon site stimulated much my thoughts and I wrote detailed discussions on them and posted it in my Home Page
on Mar. 30, 2016.
It is very interesting that many readers evaluate the Fujita's "The Low-living Elderly" Book very highly while many other readers very poorly. The unusual phenomenon corresponds to the point written by the Author in the book: "Concerning to my NPO activities for supporting the low-living people, young or elderly, I receive a number of encouraging messages but at the same time much more opposing messages."
Criticisms by the reviewers include the ones summarized below as examples:
"The people who became poor because of their selfish and idle lives are not blamed for their deed, but the society is blamed instead."
"The Author does not point out self-responsibilities of individuals, while he blames the society."
"According to the Author's suggestions, it is of no use to live humbly and one should better live easily and spindling and finally ask the government for the welfare because it is one's natural right. Isn't it meaningful to live seriously and modestly? What shameful suggestions!"
"The book recommends people to scrounge off the social welfare, and then our country will fail financially, just as Yuubari City did. "
"Welfare must take into account of people not only with good will but also with ill will, otherwise it cannot convince the people commonly. "
"People who have the illusion of Utopia where everybody is happy and equal would like this book."
"The solutions suggested by the author deny the market economy and democracy, hence they are unrealistic. "Reading all the 82 Customer Reviews closely, I wrote my comments in detail in my own note. I wrote my own Customer Review and contributed it to the Amazon site, with the title "Visualizing the logic of Fujita's Book, I made a pamphlet of 24 pages of diagrams". And I also wrote a detailed discussion on the Customer Reviews (mentioning 23 among 82 reviews) and posted it in my Web site.
While these processes, I recognized that there should be some important issue to be considered at much deeper level underlying these discussions by readers.
In the Editor's Post-Note of the Discussion page
Reading, classifying, and learning the arguments in various aspects in the Customer Reviews by many readers was very useful for me.
I now feel the following tasks should be important for me to pursue in the near future, and I am going to investigate and write on them step by step:(1) We should clarify the issues of social philosophy, social ethics, and ways of arguing which underlie far deeply in these arguments by people. The discussion need to be deeper, and should clarify social thought, social ethics, and the issue concerning to the the ways of discussion.
[ (2) to (5): snaps]The present page is the first article addressed to the Item (1) above.
The present article has grown into an significant working paper addressed at a very large theme. The entire theme on which I am writing now may be titled as follows (where the present article is just its initial part):
"Liberty vs. Love: The Principal Contradiction Inherent in the Human Culture and the Human Culture for Solving the Principal Contradiction." by Toru NakagawaReaders of the present Home Page might be much surprised with this big theme and with its sudden appearance. However, since Liberty generates the world of Competition while Love appears as Mutual aids, the concepts of Liberty and Love underlie the people's discussions on the directions of social welfare at the very deep level.
I myself am surprised with my writing a (working) paper (instead of an essay) with the big theme like this. This must be a working paper memorial in my life, I think. I wish this may be memorable in Japan and in the World. I would like to work on the theme more step by step in the near future.
Note: Summary version of this working paper is posted: PDF, 2 page
Table of Contents
Liberty vs. Love: The Principal Contradiction Inherent in the Human Culture: Deep Bases of Thoughts Underlying the Arguments by People on the "Low-living Elderly" Book.
0. Introduction
1. Liberty and Love: Compatible Contradiction
1.1 'Liberty and Love' and 'Competition and Mutual Aid': The principal issue of the human culture
1.2 Liberty: The First Principle of the Human Culture.
1.3 Love: The Second Principle of the Human Culture
1.4 Contradiction between Liberty and Love2. Basic Concepts for Making Liberty and Love Compatible: Ethics and Fundamental Human Rights
2.1 Ethics: Motivating both Liberty and Love and controlling Liberty with Love
2.2 Universality of Ethics: Conscience
2.3 Fundamental Human Rights = Clarification of Ethics: What the Liberty must not violate3. Principal Contradiction of Human Culture and its Structure
3.1 Liberty vs. Love: The Principal Contradiction of Human Culture
3.2 Factors making the big problem even more complex: Bad Nature in Human and Hierarchical Social Systems4. Competition and Win-or-Lose
4.1 Competitions are unavoidable
4.2 The First Principle Liberty aims at Winning the Competition
4.3 Problems of the culture which aims at 'Winning the Competition'
4.4 (Social) Ethics for controlling the measures to Win.
4.5 Fairness, Impartiality, and Equality in (Social) Ethics5. Solutions based on Good Human Nature and Solutions based on Bad Human Nature
5.1 Two Faces of representations of Ethics: Good Human Nature and Bad Human Nature
5.2 Usage of Guidelines/Solutions based on Good Human Nature and those on Bad Human Nature6. Concluding Remarks
Working Paper:
Liberty vs. Love: The Principal Contradiction Inherent in the Human Culture:
Deep Bases of Thoughts Underlying the Arguments by People
on the "Low-living Elderly" Book.Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University, Professor Emeritus)
"TRIZ Home Page in Japan", Working Paper,
Apr. 19, 2016 (in Japanese), Apr. 27, 2016 (in English)
The present paper stems from my work to visualize the logic of Takanori Fujita's "The Low-living Elderly" Book (2015). I read the 82 customer reviews posted in the Amazon.co.jp site concerning to the book, and I examined them closely. Interestingly, while many readers evaluate the book highly with 5 or 4 stars, many other readers evaluate it very poorly with 1 or 2 stars.
The author writes in the book:
"Over 20 % (about 6-7 millions) of the elderly people in Japan are now living poorly at or below the welfare level, and in future even much larger percentage of the elderly people will be in such poor situations. Poverty is caused, in spite of individuals' hard efforts, by the society systems. The Constitution declares to ensure 'healthy and cultural lives of people at the minimal level', and hence we should certainly support the low-living people (either elderly or not) with some welfare systems. "
Many people criticize the book saying:
"The people who became poor because of their selfish and idle lives are not blamed for their deed, but the society is blamed instead. The book recommends people to scrounge off the social welfare, and then our country will fail financially. Welfare must take into account of people not only with good will but also with ill will, otherwise it cannot convince the people commonly. The solutions suggested by the author deny the market economy and democracy, hence they are unrealistic. etc."
I visualized the logic of the book and wrote my own opinion reviewing the different arguments contributed by many readers. During the process, I recognized a very basic issue, underlying deeply in the people's arguments, related to social philosophy and social ethics. The issue has not been revealed well in the culture of society and hence it does not have consensus in the society and in the world.
The issue is related to ‘mutual aid in the competitive world', or 'welfare in the world of win-or-lose with individual responsibility'. Investigating its essence, I have reached the two concepts, Liberty and Love, which form the two important targets of the human culture.
The present paper clarifies that the Contradiction between Liberty and Love is the Principal Contradiction of the Human Culture. The contradiction between Liberty and Love actually contains the contradictions between Liberty and Liberty and between Love and Love. The human social structures are built in complex, hierarchical ways, including the level of individuals, the level of groups and organizations, the level of industrial enterprises, the level of countries, etc. Contradiction between Liberty and Love becomes more and more difficult issue at the higher level.
The human culture has been making much efforts for trying to reveal and solve the Contradictions between Liberty and Love, and it has revealed them to some extent but has not been successful in solving them.
Through the process of study mentioned above, I have obtained a new understanding of the human culture. In the present paper, I am going to write the new understanding in a top-down manner so that the understood concepts become clearer.
1.1 'Liberty and Love' and 'Competition and Mutual Aid': The principal issue of the human culture
I recognized recently that 'Liberty and Love', 'Competition and Mutual aid', 'Win-or-Lose and Cooperation', 'Desire and Self-control', 'Karma and Benevolence' are examples of pairs of concepts which form the most important issue underlying deeply in our human culture. The pair of concepts are conflicting and yet need to be compatible.
How can we build our society and human culture on the basis of these pairs of concepts, with thorough and common understanding of them by the people, and with the installation of them in our social institutions? I realized this question as the fundamental problem of our human culture.
The pairs of concepts listed above may seem to be quite different from one another. However, I have realized them saying essentially the same issue. They are coming from the same root and appearing as different phenomena and aspects in various fields.
1.2 Liberty: The First Principle of the Human Culture.
The guiding principles appearing first in the human culture and primarily significant in the pairs of the concepts are the concepts written first in the pairs. I.e., Liberty, Competition, Win-or-Lose, Desire, and Karma. These represent the characteristics which humans must have fundamentally as living things. For humans to live, we must eat, act, and reproduce children by sex. For such purposes, we need to decide and act freely first of all for ourselves, to win against other living things, to win in the competition with other humans.
Such characteristics are necessary for humans as living things and for humans in the society. Desires to eat, to sex, and for properties, for money, for power, for fame, etc. are the examples. In order to become capable for them, we build our body strong, get educated, and work in the jobs. Various organizations in the human society also behave in the similar manner. Industries and countries are all making efforts to get things, money, human resources, power, etc.
However, Liberty, Competition, Win-or-Lose, Desire, etc. in their simple forms generate the world of the selfish law of jungle. They result in dangers and harms for many other people and for the human community. Thus the desires of humans having inherently as living things apt to generate undesirable and bad results. This fact is clearly realized in the Karma concept in Buddhism and in the Sin concept in Christianity. Such concepts should be necessary at the level of human organizations, besides at the level of individuals, but are not well recognized so far. For example, it is not widely accepted yet that the simple pursuing of profits by industries may generate harms in the society. And some people working in the business science advocate erroneously that the market economy, which is simply the overall sum of human desire for money, is guided by 'the invisible hand of the God'.
1.3 Love: The Second Principle of the Human Culture
After the recognition that the First Principle, i.e. Liberty, Competition, etc., alone could not build desirable human societies, the concepts shown as the second terms in the pairs were realized to be important. They are Love, Mutual aid, Cooperation, Self-control, Benevolence, etc.
These concepts have their roots in the desire as a living thing to 'Protect one's own children'. The range of protection starts with one's own children and gradually extends to one's own partners, own family, own relatives, etc. At this initial stage, Love, Mutual aid, Cooperation, etc. cover the people in the Family (in a wider sense) and are expected to be beneficial (directly or indirectly) for oneself.
It is an important and difficult issue how widely they actually cover, such as other persons in neighbor, in other groups, in other countries, in other races, etc. As the basic concepts, Benevolence in Buddhism and Love in Christianity are known and taught widely. Love as well as Benevolence, however, are taught as the Ethics (in religion) of individuals and are applicable to the decisions and actions at the individual level at first. At higher levels such as companies, organizations, countries, etc., these concepts are apparently not yet recognized as their guiding principle.
In the present description so far, Love, the Second Principle, seems to be always right and does never make mistakes. However, it is not the case. Love starts with Protecting one's own children, and grows to Protecting one's own Family (in a wider sense) and Protecting one's own colleagues, and also to aiding them and cooperating for the same purposes. The sense of Protection implies to enclose the persons (and objects) to protect as the Insiders and to defend them against the Outsiders, who are countering against them, might give them dangers, and are attacking them (i.e., enemies in short). It means that Love gives affection, help, cooperation, etc. to the Family members in their recognition but shows counteracts, non-cooperation, hostility, etc. toward the Outsiders. When the situations become the more severe, the Protection wall between the Insiders and the Outsiders are made the clearer and stronger for defending from the attack by the outsiders. Furthermore, as a choice of defending actions, Love might choose to attack the Outsiders.
In this manner, Love, the Second Principle, inherently has the sense of the range of the persons and objects to love. Thus Love is applied to the Insiders, while to the Outsiders Love is not always applicable and sometimes, or rather often, Love applies 'Anti-Love heart and actions' such as hostility and opposing behaviors. This is one of the fundamental roots of contradictions which cause the problems harder and more complex in the human culture.
1.4 Contradiction between Liberty and Love
Next, we need to think how we can take Liberty (and other first concepts in the pairs) as the First Principle and Love (and other second concepts in the pairs) as the Second Principle. Saying simply "we should apply either one of them depending on the situations" does not clarify the usage. We need to clarify in which situations we should use which one and in which manner, and also how we can judge about the situations.
Mothers may teach their children saying, "You should not do onto others what you would not like to be done." It means that you should behave not in the Liberty way of the First Principle but rather in the Love way of the Second Principle by controlling yourself. Doing such behaviors in the Love way properly, at the level of individuals, at the level of industries, at the level of countries, etc. should be the ideal of the Human Culture. Actually, however, Liberty, Competition, Win-or-Lose, Desire, Karma, etc. are prevailing in the world and the winners on the First Principle mostly obtain the benefits and power in the real world.
Next we should consider what are the basic concepts which can coordinate the two Principles or can make them compatible in the contradiction.
2.1 Ethics: Motivating both Liberty and Love and controlling Liberty with Love
As the concept for such a purpose, Ethics may be most basic and appropriate; i.e., Moral and Conscience, in plain words. Conscience perhaps has been already installed in the DNA of humans as a species of living things, and hence is in common in any human society, regardless of some cultural modifications afterwards.
Ethics tells us first to live for ourselves, and accordingly to make healthy body, to learn, to think, to work, to devise creatively, and to improve various things. And it also tells us to love our own children, our parents, our partners, etc. and to cooperate with our family and neighboring people. These lessons correspond to the basic ones under the First Principle (i.e., Liberty, etc.) and under the Second Principle (i.e., Love, etc.). Thus they may be regarded as lessons of Ethics common with all the human societies, needless of discussions.
Ethics next tells us, for example in the Ten Commandments, not to kill, not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to bear false witness, etc. These are not religious but rather ethical orders concerning to the human relationships. They describe the human relationships with the persons outside the parent-child relationships. They essentially control (or forbid, suppress) us doing selfish behaviors (for our own living, for getting something advantageous, for our convenience, etc.).
The reason of such control is for avoiding the risks that our behaviors might give serious damages onto the others. If selfish behaviors which might cause big damages onto others were allowed, the human society, of different sizes from a family to a village, to a city, to a country, and to the world, would suffer serious negative effects. Humans have learned the lessons from their experiences for many thousands of years.
We may also say that such selfish behaviors violate the Second Principle, i.e., Love, of the Human Culture. Controlling any selfish behaviors that may follow the First Principle Liberty but violates the Second Principle Love is the essence of the Ethics in this aspect. In essence, Ethics regards Liberty as the First Principle but Ethics restricts the applicable range of Liberty by the Second Principle Love. The necessity of this kind of restriction may be the common understanding by the human kind; it might perhaps be installed in our DNA already.
2.2 Universality of Ethics: Conscience
There can be arguments that such Ethics seems not a common understanding at all in the actual situations of our societies around and of the World. The present actual situations reflect the fact that the Human Society and Human Culture are still immature and the Ethics are limited in the extent and degree of actual application and effects. In any country, region, and tribes in the world, the minimal unit of society, such as relatives, tribes, villages, etc., would have the Ethics of common regulation essentially no different from the ones described here.
The universal nature of the Ethics can be expressed simply by: "You have Conscience, I am sure. Act under the guidance of your Conscience." There may be some room for discussion whether such Conscience is really natural or is grown by the education in society. Nevertheless, I suppose even a person 'with no conscience' still has his/her Conscience deep inside his/her heart.
2.3 Fundamental Human Rights = Clarification of Ethics: What the Liberty must not violate
The part of Ethics for controlling the behaviors which might give damages onto others are stated much clearly in the concept of the Fundamental Human Rights. The concept has been formed in legal terms ralatively recently in comparison to the Ethics and religions, but certainly is one of the fundamental concepts obtained by the Human Culture. Fundamental Human Rights are understood to be based on the Natural Law; this statement is essentially the same as I say Ethics is already installed in our DNA.
Fundamental Human Rights contain various aspects including the social rights which are related to the present context of the Low-living Elderly and the poverty in the Japanese society. The Constitution of Japan declares the basic rights of living (to live healthy and cultural minimal lives), the rights of receiving education, and the rights (and duty) of working, etc. These rights are inherently given to all the humans and must not be violated by others, including the national power, the Constitution declares. In such a way, the Fundamental Human Rights restrict the behavior of the First Principle Liberty.
3.1 Liberty vs. Love: The Principal Contradiction of Human Culture
Here I am going to summarize the points described so far.
Liberty is the First Principle of Human Culture, having the origin in the necessity for humans to live as a living thing. It is the guiding principle for us to judge for ourselves, to act, and to win various Competitions. We should pursue for the Principle proactively and follow the directions. Simple and straightforward pursue of the Liberty, however, often collides with other's pursue of Liberty and can cause danger and harms, such as possible deaths of them. Thus Liberty of people need to be coordinated.
For the purpose of coordinating the Liberty of people, Love has been found as the Second Principle of Human Culture. Love has the origin in the nature of a living thing for protecting one's own children in order to maintain one's offspring. Love gradually grows in the recognition of what to protect, such as one's family, one's village people, one's tribe, and one's country, etc. Within the people for Love to protect, i.e., within the Insiders, Love acts in the forms of Self-control, Support, Service, Cooperation, Dedication, Self-sacrificing, etc. and coordinates different Liberty of the Insider members, and accordingly improves and extends the Liberty of the whole body of Insiders.
At the same time, however, Love differentiates what to protect, i.e., the Insiders, from 'from what to protect', i.e., the Outsiders and hence generates some countering relationships with them, such as competition and even opposition. Consequently, if we regard the (strongly- or loosely-tied) organization of the Insiders as an Activity Unit in a higher level, then such Activity Units having origins in various Insiders and Outsiders compete for seeking for their own Liberty and collide with one another at the higher organization level.
The Concept (or Guiding Principle) which is capable to maintain both Liberty and Love and to coordinate them entirely may perhaps be Ethics, or Conscience. It may be taught simply as "You should not do onto others what you would not like to be done." Ethics are supposed to be installed already as Conscience in our DNA of the human kind, but (for the same reason) the contents of Ethics are not easy to describe clearly. They are vague but most likely to be understood commonly in the Human kind. The Concept of Fundamental Human Rights, supposedly based on the Natural Laws, is a part of the Ethics (or Conscience) stated clearly.
The summary in this subsection describes the basic framework of important concepts underlying deeply in different and big issues of Human Culture. It reveals that Liberty and Love are the two most-important Principles in Human Culture and that there are complex contradictory relationships in Liberty, in Love, and between Liberty and Love.
Thus in the present paper, 'Liberty vs. Love' is named as 'the Principal Contradiction of the Human Culture'.
Human Culture has built complex hierarchical social systems, including individual personal relationships, villages, companies, regional communities, countries, etc., and every region on the earth has its own history of culture of thousands of years. I realized that throughout the human history of entire social systems there have been one significant issue/problem and that the contradiction and compatibility between Liberty and Love is the issue/problem. This is the reason for my calling ‘Liberty vs. Love’ as the Principal Contradiction of the Human Culture.
3.2 Factors making the big problem even more complex: Bad Nature in Human and Hierarchical Social Systems
The main factor that makes the big problem of 'Principal Contradiction of Human Culture' even more difficult and complex is the Bad Nature in Human. Humans apt to act for their own interests, i.e., claiming their Liberty, without following these Principles and the Ethics.
Though there exist big problems (or Contradictions) inherent in Liberty, in Love, and between Liberty and Love, as described so far, the problems are made even more difficult and complex by the Bad Nature in Human. And the accumulation of many different events containing such Contradictions and Bad Nature have built huge and different histories in various regions and in various organizations.
Bad Nature in Human has been clearly recognized by Gautama in the concept of Desire and Karma in Buddhism and by Jesus in the concept of Sin in Christianity. Gautama realized that the Human Desires, such as those for eating, for money/goods, for sex, for honor, and for sleeping, are boundless and trap the humans to follow them, and consequently make the world ugly; thus he taught to leave Desires. Jesus found Bad Nature (i.e., Sin) in humans, which hurts one another for their egos (because of missing God), and taught to love others (through praying God for forgiveness). As in these two examples, recognition of Bad Nature inherent in humans and trying to reach 'peaceful heart of Charity and Love' by leaving Desires or praying for forgiveness are the Ethical essence, in the core of religious thoughts.
The Bad Nature of Human is involved not only at the level of individual personal relationships but also at all the higher levels of social systems. For instance, companies try to win the industrial competition among them by taking various measures, including immoral ones. In such a case we may say that the persons who lead and manage the company are leading the company to take the immoral actions, for their own selfish desires. But we may better to regard the company as an Activity Unit and to understand objectively that it takes such actions as the result of its own choice. Similar with Bad Nature of Human, we can observe Bad Nature of companies and Bad Nature of countries, etc. in various activities of those organizations.
4.1 Competitions are unavoidable
During lives of humans, many different Competitions are unavoidable. They often become very serious and they result in Win or Lose just like in Fights (in a wider sense). Competitions are unavoidable simply because the resources in the environments are limited and insufficient in comparison to requests/needs. Foods are limited, places/facilities suitable to live in are limited, places/opportunities of jobs are limited, person(s) we want to get married are limited, etc. Also because every person (or every organization as an Activity Unit) wants (or demands) 'better things' and 'more things'.
Furthermore, in addition to such formal Competitions, we meet various chances of Competitions and Fights every day without expectations. For instance, getting a good acquaintance with a person as a result of small kindness may be a chance of Competition. Obtaining a new idea of commercial product with the trigger of a small irrelevant hint may be an important start in product development Competition. In an unfortunate accident of slipping and falling down in a river, whether you swim to survive or get drowned to death is a serious Fight against the nature.
4.2 The First Principle Liberty aims at Winning the Competition
Facing with these situations, Liberty, the First Principle, aims proactively at Winning the Competition and Winning the Fight. In the pursuit for Winning, Liberty aims at obtaining what it wants, i.e., better things desired and more things wanted. It is the way to Live and the way to Survive, the Liberty believes. Losing the Competition and Losing the Fight mean that we cannot obtain what we want and desire. At best we can obtain only poorer things or less things than we wanted. As the results we may be forced to lose our own things, to be wounded, and even to lose our own life and lives of our family.
In this situation, people make various preparations for Winning any possible Competitions or Fights of various types and occasions. Building a healthy body, being well-disciplined, learning languages, studying at higher education, getting trained as an technician, and even keeping properly dressed, etc. may be regarded as instances of such preparations. Moreover, keeping good habits of life, being a hard worker, being honest and serious, having friendly personality, etc. may be regarded as some forms of preparation for Winning at Competitions and Fights, in a wider sense. That is the basics of living (i.e., Ethics) in accordance with the First Principle Liberty and we should follow it as seriously as possible.
4.3 Problems of the culture which aims at 'Winning the Competition'
As a consequence, however, the lifestyle of aiming at Winning the Competition is cold at Losing and at the Losers. People say: 'You Lost because you are weak/have little power', 'You Lost because you did not work hard/think carefully', 'You Lost. It's your own fault/own responsibility'. Criticisms like these are done (and evaluated) in a positive sense of encouragement, meaning "You should and can work hard to Win on the next occasion". At the same time, however, they mean, perhaps more often, some sense of disrespect. Liberty does not have any positive intention of saving or helping the Loser. The Losers have similar two-faced evaluation on themselves. Consequently, in the culture where Winning is pursued and encouraged, it is natural that the viewpoint of saving and supporting the Losers become weak.
Another problematic issue of the life (or Ethics) pursuing for Winning under the First Principle Liberty is its evaluation of the results mostly and taking less notice on the process of Winning. Winning finally is important regardless of the process, and hence it is of no use to think about the processes whether they are Ethically good or bad. Once this way of thinking is prevailing, there appear the fields of severe Competitions and Fights, the world of the laws of jungle and of awkward personal relationships. This issue also need to be considered at various levels of social systems.
Furthermore, we have to consider that the Values for which we individuals/organizations want to pursue/achieve naturally have various aspects. If we put much weight on one aspect of Values and join the Competition of pursuing for it, we often need to put much less weight or neglect other aspects of Values. It is OK in some cases, but in some other cases it can result in an unsatisfactory situation as a whole. Such issues of diverse aspects of Values and their balance are apt to be overlooked, but needs more attention.
4.4 (Social) Ethics for controlling the measures to Win.
Another big problem is that people and organizations would take various measures to Win and such measures could produce many unhappy situations. Which kind of measures one may take or must not take should be judged and controlled at the very deep level by the Ethics, as explained before. Be Kind, Be Honest, Be Diligent, Be not Wasteful, etc. are a group of examples of Ethics, and also Do not Kill, Do not commit Adultery, Do not Steal, Do not Lie, Do not Exploit, etc. are another group. They are guidelines primarily at the personal level.
At higher levels of social systems, where larger number of people and organizations are involved, the problems concerning to Competition and Fighting become more and more complex. Measures undesirable and violating the Ethics are actually carried out in a large scale and they are often justified under the laws and powers.
At the level of companies, there are cases of forcing workers to work for very long hours per day, and employing workers at very low wages and on unstable temporary bases while saving much money of company profit. At the level of countries, murdering people in the wars, especially by air bombing on villages and cities, is the typical cases.
For judging whether the possible measures are right or wrong, what kind of guidelines and criteria do we have? At present, Laws (in a wider sense including from the Constitution to regulations of local governments) and International Laws (including treaties) may be the standard answers. However, doing whatever measures not restricted by the Laws seems not Ethically good, and it is our basic question how we can revise and improve the Laws and treaties. So we want to have some useful guidelines, at the level deeper than the Laws, for directing higher levels of social systems such as companies, organizations, and countries. It should be the Ethics at the social levels. .
As the examples of Ethics at social levels, we may think of 'Obeying the Fundamental Human Rights' and Fairness. Fundamental Human Rights declare the rights of all the people which must not be committed by any persons and organizations. Hence any organizations should be composed and should work in a way following the guidelines of the Fundamental Human Rights.
4.5 Fairness, Impartiality, and Equality in (Social) Ethics
On the other hand, Fairness means that the organization should behave in its social activities in the fair manner to various individuals and organizations. The basis of such a guideline is the recognition that every person universally has Fundamental Human Rights and should not be discriminated without due course. In this sense, Fairness implies Impartiality, we may say.
The concept of Fairness contains the concept of Correctness, which may be claimable to be right without depending on any particular position, beyond the Impartiality. It means the correctness that can endure various criticisms from different social parties. However, it is not easy to answer how we can ensure such Fairness. For instance, let us think how to ensure the Fairness of judges in the courts. We may be able to evaluate the Fairness of individual judgements afterward, but in advance in general terms we may only say 'should be judged according to the Conscience of each judge'.
Another issue we should discuss here is the difference between Impartiality and Equality. Fundamental Human Rights are supposed to be the rights which every human has naturally and equally and which nobody must violate. Constitution of Japan declares that every person is equal in front of the laws. Do these statements mean that equal (or the same) treatment should be applied to all the people?
In the case of the rights of receiving education, Article 26 of Constitution states that all people have the right to receive an equal education correspondent to their ability. This is understood that every person has the right to receive education corresponding to the ability, and hence such education may be different corresponding to their ability. It is not assumed to give all the people the same education having same contents and of same degree. Even though the contents, fields, and degrees of education may be different, all the people equally have the right to receive education.
The arguments for Equality sometimes become arguments for Uniformity. For example, a uniform amount of wage is paid to all the employees working at a shop for the same period of time on the same job. Employees who work hard and efficiently to produce more products may complain that their productivity is not evaluated. In another case, employees are working in a group at a shop and it is not easy to evaluate the contributions of individual members quantitatively, and hence the same amount of wages are paid to all the members. Members who are working actively with taking care of the group work and supporting some other members may not be evaluated well in the payment. In these cases all the employees are paid in the principle of Equality, but there may be a risk where some productive and active employees among them can be discouraged in a long run feeling their additional contributions are not reflected in the wage (and other) treatments. It may be desirable that according to their contributions such employees are treated better in some form in addition to the Equal wages. Inclusion of such evaluation may make the treatment of Equality into the one of Impartiality and further of Fairness.
5.1 Two Faces of representations of Ethics: Good Human Nature and Bad Human Nature
As is discussed so far the Ethics which has been acquired in the Human Culture are the guidelines that all humans should follow. Many of the guidelines are expressed in positive ways saying: Be Diligent, Be Honest, Be Kind, etc. Many others, on the other hand, are expressed in negative ways such as saying: Do not Kill, Do not Steal, etc., in order to prohibit bad and undesirable behaviors and to control human actions.
The former expressions are based on the thoughts that Human Nature is intrinsically Good and possible to be Good; so we may call them Guidelines/Solutions based on Good Human Nature. The latter expressions, on the contrary, are based on the thoughts that Human Nature is intrinsically Selfish and Bad and apt to dare to make Harms on others, and hence is necessary to be controlled for avoiding such Harms; thus we may call them Guidelines/Solutions based on Bad Human Nature.
5.2 Usage of Guidelines/Solutions based on Good Human Nature and those on Bad Human Nature
It should be noted that nobody probably live believing only in Good Human Nature and nobody probably live believing only in Bad Human Nature. Every person and every organization, such as company, municipal office, country, etc. use both Guidelines/Solutions based on Good Human Nature and those on Bad Human Nature in some balance, for making various preparations and for deciding their actions. In this sense, it is useless to argue simply which is better to be based on either Good Human Nature or Bad Human Nature. We need to think how we should properly use both of them.
The first option is 'to use Solutions based on Good Human Nature primarily and Solutions based on Bad Human Nature auxiliarily (or in exceptional cases)'. This is a policy based on the thoughts that since most of the people are Good in nature we should actively support and cooperate with them, while in the exceptional cases when we meet somebody having or behaving with Bad Human Nature we should apply the exceptional ways of treatment we prepared beforehand. This option is preferable in principle. It assumes that most people take correct/desirable ways in pursuing their Liberty and hence it approves and encourages most of people for their actions and energies for pursuing the First Principle Liberty. It also assumes that the people who uses their Liberty in wrong ways are relatively few and hence it expects that those relatively few persons and events can be handled properly with the exceptional treatments.
The second option, reversing the first one, is 'to use Solutions based on Bad Human Nature primarily and Solutions based on Good Human Nature auxiliarily (or in exceptional cases)'. It first suspects many people and basically takes defensive attitude and measures. And only if the person is found behaving on the basis of Good Human Nature, the exceptional favorable treatment, which is prepared beforehand, is applied.
This option might be appropriate when most of the people actually need to be suspected, or when there might be a big danger if some exceptional person of Bad Human Nature would be overlooked (for instance, at the airport gate for checking any dangerous hand baggage). In any other ordinary cases, once the second option of using Solutions based on Bad Human Nature primarily is applied actually, then the human relationships may be destroyed and the social system may become inefficient.
Though I am planning to write some more extensions, I would like to close this paper here for summarizing the important propositions so far described.
(1) The Human Culture takes Liberty as its First Principle and pursues for extending it. Liberty is for every person to decide, to act, and to live for oneself. Liberty aims at Winning various, natural or social, Competitions. Liberty of a person necessarily collides (Contradicts) with Liberty of another person.
(2) The Human Culture takes Love as its Second Principle and pursues for spreading it widely. Love is for every person to help and protect one's children and one's family. Love aims at Self-controlling one's Liberty and at eliminating collisions among Liberty in one's Family. Love, for helping and protecting the Family (or Insiders), tries to counter the (attacking) actions from Outsiders. Considering the Family (or Insiders) as a social Activity Unit, Love generates Liberty and Competition at a higher social level.
(3) The Human Culture has been extending the two Principal Principles, i.e., Liberty and Love, and has been asking how to use these two often-contradicting Principles in compatible and appropriate ways. Liberty vs. Love is named the Principal Contradiction of Human Culture, in the present paper.
(4) As the guidelines for containing and motivating both Liberty and Love and coordinating them, the Human Culture has been acquiring Ethics, i.e., Moral, Conscience, in plain words. The core part of Ethics is supposedly installed already in our DNA; and for the same reason it is too obvious and difficult to write it down clearly. The concept of Fundamental Human Rights is a part of Ethics stated clearly.
(5) Throughout the history of Human Culture, Humans have been trying to extend the two Principal Principles, Liberty and Love, and to resolve the Principal Contradictions between them, i.e., Liberty vs. Love. Human Culture has developed to build various Social Systems. The issue of Resolving the Principal Contradiction, however, has become more and more complex and difficult.
(6) The first reason for causing such difficulties is that the Social Systems have been built so many, so multi-layered, so large in scale, and so complexly connected, and hence the reality and ideals (or Guidelines) of Liberty, Love, and Ethics for various Social Systems have not been made clear yet and understood commonly in the world. The second reason for difficulties is the actual situations where even though the Guidelines of Liberty, Love, and (social) Ethics were made clear, many individuals and social organizations insist on their own interests (i.e., Liberty) and take actions not in accordance with Ethics, and actually become Social Winners. And such actions and organizations, from very small to very large in the scale, exist everywhere in the World and have their own histories accumulated in many layers.
(7) As is summarized above, the present paper have found the concepts of Principal Principles and Principal Contradiction lying deep at the root of Human Culture and described the framework structure of them.
Further, in the near future, the present author wishes to investigate the real situations and conceptual directions of Liberty, Love, and Ethics for Social Systems in different levels.
Such investigation will certainly build sound bases for revealing the problems of Poverty in the society and guidelines for improving Welfare and for further changing the Society, which are the issues addressed at since the beginning of this research.
Editor's Post-note (Toru Nakagawa, Apr. 20, 2016) Even though this is a paper (or a working paper), I have not listed any references. This is implicitly based on many authors and references which I learned so far. Many individual points might be thought and written by a numerous number of people, I guess. In various points, my writings here may have a lot to be clarified more.
Nevertheless, I thought and wrote the overall view and the framework in this paper for myself. In such a sense, I am posting this article as a Paper (a working paper) in my Home Page.
I will be very grateful for receiving your opinions, suggestions, and thoughts.
Last updated on May 9, 2016 Access point: Editor: nakagawa@ogu.ac.jp
