FIVE SEASONAL THINGS TO PONDER: Ethics and global society.

Indians, migrating across the ice bridge from Asia, were the original settlers of North America. Question: should they have kept out all the rest that have migrated to America more recently? If not, why should current Americans stop immigrants at the border, separate children from parents, evict them to unknown hells? A question for politicians and voting citizens.

Roger Williams, an early immigrant to America, a friend of the Indians, would say, let them in.

The Lord Jesus said: Love your neighbor as yourself. (Mark 12:31.) In our interconnected world, who is NOT a neighbor? In this global inter-connected neighborhood, how can you best love all your billions of neighbors?  A question for all, and particularly but not only for citizens of the developed nations worldwide.

Freud called the deep sub-conscious aspect of human mind the Id. The current author Jonathan Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis, 2006, p 3) portrays the Id as a “hungry, lustful, disobedient horse.” Can this lusty, power-hungry energy be controlled by the ego and superego? Or, for Haidt, can the horse be controlled by the driver and the passenger (the driver’s father)? Questions for all those living in nations dominated by strongmen.

If the furious energy evident generated at the top of so many governments is a sign of the Id / the lustful horse in the highest office, how can the passengers exert effective counter-control? How can citizens pull the reigns? A question for citizen-strategists.

Citizens of the U.S. A. (and I’m one of them) pledge their loyalty to “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Is the current push toward a nation under a dominant president without checks and balance—is it un-American? If so, what are the enfranchised citizens to do about that? A question for all Americans.

This week marks the change of the seasons. Let it be true for the political climate too. Make 2018 be the year of the people.