On Moral Maturity: Growing Ourselves Up

 Summer Inquiry 

As the days of the Bush presidency wane and as we in the US prepare to elect a new President, I have been thinking about what lies ahead for the world.  I have been looking at my own failures of committed action over the past eight years when I saw the present administration act in ways  I knew were bound for disaster.  Will the next administration repeat the same errors and wreak more havoc on the globe?

Why Were We So Ineffective?

Reports now coming out reveal the sheer cruelty which the present administration became committed to in its response to 9/11. Why did we let this happen? How did it come to pass that the US  is now practicing torture? Why did the US Senate and House of Representatives vote for the Iraq War despite the fact that so many Americans were opposed to it?

Millions of people all over the world protested the US going to war in Iraq and I was among them. What difference did it make?  None. We went anyway. How many lives have been destroyed because of that quixotic adventure?

Moral Courage and Powerful Action

The critical questions I have been asking myself this summer have to do with moral courage and the connection to powerful and effective action. This is why I published my unwritten letter to President Bush. I have been examining what stops me from being powerful when I know something is unworkable or wrong. Many of us criticize the people of Germany for allowing Hitler to come to power in Germany in the early thirties. Yet here we are, behaving in some ways, very similarly.

Where Does Moral Maturity Come From?

What constitutes moral maturity and how does one get there?Lawrence Kohlberg who studied moral development and named its stages, said that he had rarely seen people who operated at the highest stage (the 6^th).  Some people believe that you must be a committed Christian, or from some other religion, and practice it with all your heart, and from that practice, you will eventually become morally mature.

 Lisa Vasquez, a non-denominational African American clergywoman disagrees. Moral maturity, she asserts, doesn’t have much to do with Christianity. In fact, there are morally mature people, she suggests, who have never adopted Christianity in their lives. I  was relieved to  read that as I practice no religion (though I have a committed meditation practice). And I’m sure Gandhi would be glad to know he is in okay company. The real question Vasquez suggests, is whether people have “internal integrity” and most especially, that they are not automatically following codes of behaviors taught to them by a church or anyone else.

Who is the  morally  mature person?

•     Has conscience, courage and great wisdom.
•     Is able to act in times of great crisis, even at great risk to themselves.
•     Has great compassion for other human beings and are able to put themselves in the shoes of other people.
•     Takes responsibility for their own wrongs and they do their own inner work.
•     Has a vision for how to create a world that works for everyone.

This summer I saw that as a child of a dictatorial father I became very, very good. I constrained myself and stopped myself from acting whenever I was afraid. This did not serve me or the world.

What about you? What stops you?