The Healthy Management of Reality - Stanford University

It is important, therefore, to appraise the consequences of acting on whatappear at first glance to be unassailable principles. If the consequences of ourbeliefs are likely to produce more harm than good, we need to reconsider ourbeliefs. We cannot abdicate our responsibility to judge our actions by relyingentirely on formulas of behavior (or, more accurately, our particular interpretationof these formulas).The difficulty with having to use our judgment on a continuous basis is thatwe know we are not perfect, and thus, our judgement could potentially lead usastray. Having an infallible source of moral certainty is certainly tempting. It cando away with the danger of everyone doing whatever they please, merely bydeclaring it the good, as they see it.As far as I can determine, there is more consensus about what is good thanwe usually realize. Those areas in which there is great controversy are often moresalient to us precisely because they are controversial. The vast areas that mostpeople and cultures agree on are taken for granted. If in our practice of thepresence of good, we focused only on the areas in which there is consensus, wewould be able to deal with the vast majority of the situations we face each day.But it is true that there would be a few areas that would be difficult to address.What about them?Here we return to the notion that reality is infinite, and we are finite. We asindividuals and we as a species have much to learn yet. It is not healthy to expectthat we will ever have all the answers. Just as in the areas of physical and socialscience, technology, and economics, we are constantly learning more andcorrecting errors from the past, so also in the areas of moral and ethical values wecan look forward to progress. I certainly hope that one thousand years from nowHMOR.July2005.Muñoz.doc 101