|
References
Question
1: Ethics and Organizational Ethics
These works
contributed
significantly to the development of the Organizational Integrity
approach. Arranged by importance to the topic rather than alphabetically
or chronologically, they-and other works-may be secured through
this site by arrangement with Amazon.com.
Ethics
have Evolved:.
Probably
one of the more remarkable writings in the last decade is Robert
M. Pirsig's Lila:
An Inquiry Into Morals. Pirsig proposes that there is a
fundamental evolutionary structure he calls the Metaphysics of Quality,
which shows that there is not just one moral system. There are many:
- There's a
morality of the "laws of nature," by which organic patterns triumph
over chaos;
- There is
a morality called the "law of the jungle" where biology triumphs
over the inorganic forces of starvation and death;
- There's a
morality where social patterns triumph over biology, the "law";
and
- There is
an intellectual morality, which is still struggling in its attempts
to escape the control of society. (182-83)
Pirsig argues
that, in general, when given a choice of two courses to follow,
and all other things being equal, that choice that is more Dynamic,
that is, at a higher level of evolution, is more moral. (183)
An evolutionary
morality says it is moral for intellect to seek to subjugate society,
to escape from the constraints of society, but it also contains
a warning: Just as a society that weakens its people's physical
health endangers its own stability, so does an intellectual pattern
that weakens and destroys the health of its social base also endanger
its own stability.
Any static mechanism
that is open to Dynamic Quality must also be open to degeneracy—to
falling back to lower forms of quality. This creates the problem
of getting maximum freedom for the emergence of Dynamic Quality
while prohibiting degeneracy from destroying the evolutionary gains
of the past. (189) The
whole thing, he says, is to obtain static and Dynamic Quality simultaneously.
The challenge is to create a stable static situation where Dynamic
Quality can flourish. Pirsig gives as an example Robert's Rules
of Order, which captures the whole thing in two sentences: No minority
has the right to block a majority from conducting the legal business
of the organization. No majority has the right to prevent the minority
from peacefully attempting to become a majority. (255)
This is easy
in the abstract, more difficult in practice. Any static mechanism
that is open to Dynamic Quality is also open to degeneracy. The
mechanism by which a balanced society grows and does not degenerate
is difficult, if not impossible, to define. (256) The really central
problem in the static-Dynamic conflict of evolution is, how do you
tell the saviors from the degenerates? Freedoms that save the saviors
also save the degenerates. (256) But restrictions that stop the
degenerates also stop the creative Dynamic forces of evolution.
(256-57)
A new culture
has emerged (the first in history) to believe that patterns of society
must be subordinated to patterns of intellect. The one dominating
question of our times has been, "Are the social patterns of our
world going to run our intellectual life, or is our intellectual
life going to run our social patterns?" And in that battle, the
intellectual patterns have won. (304) Truth,
knowledge, and beauty, all the ideals of mankind, are passed from
generation and generation like a flaming torch, but that torch is
static social pattern. (306)
Finally, Pirsig
maintains that there are five codes of morals (345):
- Inorganic-chaotic,
essentially static patterns;
- Biological-organic,
essentially exploitative;
- Social-biological,
essentially coercive;
- Intellectual-social,
essentially struggle; and
- Dynamic-static.
The last code,
according to Pirsig, says that what is good in life isn't defined
by society or intellect or biology. What's good in life is freedom
from domination by any static pattern, but that freedom doesn't
have to be obtained by the destruction of the patterns themselves.
(345)
In the opening
paragraphs of his chapter "On the Origin of Morality," Daniel C.
Dennett assigned to Thomas Hobbes the Darwinian task of seeing "that
there had to be a story to be told about how the state first came
to be created, and how it brought with it something altogether new
on the face of the earth: morality."
See also:
|
