The Healthy Management of Reality - Stanford University

Few Christians would support the religious wars that wracked Europe, the religiouspersecutions that prompted so many to flee to the New World, or the Salem witchtrials. Few believers of the major religions wish for a return to the armed conflictsbetween them that have marred most of our history and are still causing death andsuffering today.Even the human perception of god has been molded in part by thedevelopment of the human idea of good. The early conceptions of gods withhuman imperfections, or bloodthirsty gods who required human sacrifices, or whoordered the annihilation of entire peoples, have gradually been moving toward aconcept of god as just, then of god as merciful, and, more recently, as totallybenevolent (that is, totally good).As humans continue to develop the concept of good, this concept is shapingeven our most fundamental beliefs. It is my hope that, as long as the leaders andthe influential thinkers of the great religions and the great civilizations remain opento their perception of the good and to the continual development of this concept,we will gradually find that there is more and more common ground across thesecurrently widely different perspectives.The concept of the good may be one of the most universal of humanconcepts. Osgood, a psychologist interested in measuring meaning across manydifferent cultures found that the "good-bad" axis was the strongest dimension ofmeaning that people used in thinking about people, things, and even concepts. Thedimensions anchored by the concepts of "strong-weak" and "active-passive" weretwo other such axes. I believe that if we recognize that this concept is basic to ourmakeup and begin to use it in a conscious manner, it will be extremely helpful tous. Putting together these dimensions of meaning, I believe most human beingswould agree in moving toward an active and strong actualization of the good.HMOR.July2005.Muñoz.doc 27