reason for why we must emphasize the teaching values in our homes, our schools,
our churches and our communities. He wrote: “What is the good of drawing up, on
paper, rules for social behavior, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill
temper and self-conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them?” Lewis
acknowledged that, of course, we need to establish rules to govern our social and
economic behavior, but he highlighted a truth that is too often ignored: “You
cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good
society.”
So what’s the solution to this conundrum? Lewis said the answer
lies in developing morality inside the individual—a morality consisting of
a set of values that keeps us from giving in to the influence of vices such as greed,
selfishness, cowardice, ill-temper, bullying and lying. The structure of that
morality, he concluded, lay on a simple foundation that most, if not all, of
us can acknowledge as reasonable: “Do unto others as you would have them do
unto you.”
Sounds simple and it is—in theory. In practice it becomes much more
challenging. And that is why we need institutions like schools and churches and
individuals like parents and teachers to dedicate time to teaching young people
how to meet that challenge. What makes the challenge of learning to be good men
and women formidable is that we are all human and prone to forget the needs of
others as we pursue our own needs. In addition, we live in a society that often
promotes selfishness and other vices as virtues. Think of Gordon Gekko in the
movie Wall Street and his slogan of “Greed is good” and of how many people on
Wall Street and other streets enthusiastically subscribe to that idea. Or consider
the counsel of the guru of many economists, John Maynard Keynes: “For at least
another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is
foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and
precaution must be our gods for a little longer still”.
We know now what making gods of selfishness, avarice and usury can lead
to. It can foster a society in which inequality threatens the very existence of that
society. We know because we are experiencing it: We have become members of
either the 99% or the 1%. We are not now a community of common cause looking
after the welfare of one another. And as economist Joseph Stiglitz has pointed out
in The Price of Inequality, all we have to do is look around us at countries that
have this kind of inequality (countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia) to see
what is in store for us.
To avoid catastrophe we need a change of direction and a return to a more
moral philosophy— to a way of thinking that emphasizes kindness and caring for
one another: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. It is most
unlikely that a change in philosophy will come from today’s lawmakers and
business leaders; the most we can expect from them are more rules that attempt to
control the excesses of our current way of doing things. The rejuvenation of the
Golden Rule philosophy and its promise of revitalizing a sense of community
among us will have to come from our schools, our homes, our churches and our
communities. If it does, it will influence our future lawmakers and business
leaders. If it does not…? We know the answer to that.
Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Founding Father John Adams