Reciprocity and rules, by Yvonne Aburrow
One thing I have observed on my travels through life is that some sort of consensus on how to engage with others is required. Sometimes this consensus emerges as a set of rules of engagement. Animals have rules of engagement. Doubtless these stem from the situation and the animal's response to it, but nevertheless there are observable consistencies in animals' behaviour. Rabbits and cats get along because rabbits’ rules of engagement are that grooming represents submission; whereas cats’ rules of engagement state that grooming represents dominance. So the rabbit presents itself to be groomed, and the cat grooms it, and each believes that it is the dominant one. Dogs and cats do not get along because their rules of engagement are different.
I am not advocating the kind of rules that are imposed from above and come to seem arbitrary and stupid; I am advocating negotiated rules which stem from the internal relating to the external (the ethos of the practitioners, if you will). Language is a set of consensual rules by which we communicate, e.g. we all agree that 'red' refers to a certain range of light frequency and a certain shade of pigment. While there is still room for poetry and expressiveness within the rules of language, there are certain unwritten rules about the use of metaphor, such as how to signal that you are using a metaphor, and how to make the metaphor intelligible to the reader or listener.
In any given situation, the action taken by the participants is governed by rules of engagement. These may be unwritten or unspoken, but they are still there. The so-called disintegration of society is due to the loss of consensus about what these rules of engagement should be. It is also due to the closing down of available options in many situations – for example, if you are poor and ill-educated, you will have less options available to you, as Pierre Bourdieu and others have observed, you will have less “cultural capital”. But we can choose to act morally, even in apparently hopeless situations.
The question of conscience is closely related to that of freedom – which, as we saw, is an intrinsic part of our humanity. The modern world is often confused about "freedom", which has been turned into an absolute since the French Revolution. We all know that human freedom is in reality extremely limited. We do have a limited ability to choose between the alternative courses of action that our imagination presents to us, but when Christianity talks about freedom it generally means something much deeper than that: not simply the power to choose between two things, but the power to choose the right thing.
Normally we find it easy to choose the thing which will serve our own pleasure, but we find it hard or even impossible to choose something that may be better for others, or for the world as a whole, than for us. In a sense, then, no matter how many "consumer choices" we may be offered, we remain slaves to our desires.
(Stratford Caldecott, www.secondspring.co.uk/society/termtwo.htm)
What was the position of ancient paganism on questions of morality? Since much of Christian moral philosophy is derived from the ancient Greeks, it seems likely that the ancient pagans had a similar view to the one expressed above. Indeed, it was Socrates who asked “How shall we live a good life?” Both classical pagan and Christian sources emphasise the importance of the cultivation of virtues as being that which makes a good person. Similarly, modern Wicca explicitly aims to cultivate the Eight Wiccan Virtues (mirth and reverence, power and compassion, strength and beauty, honour and humility). Plato identified the four Cardinal Virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) in his Symposium, and these were later taken up by Christian philosophers. Aristotle, in the Nichomachean Ethics, identified two intellectual virtues (theoretical and practical wisdom) and various moral virtues, each of which was a mean between two corresponding vices (e.g. courage is a mean between fear and recklessness).
Another thing that I have observed is the need for reciprocity, commonly known as "give-and-take". Not in a tit-for-tat or calculated way (I'm not going to count the reciprocity of my friendships on a balance sheet or anything) but in a general and fluid way. Most friendships are predicated on shared values, a shared agenda, and an exchange of energies, each friend sharing both their joys and sorrows with the other, and each being interested in the joys and sorrows of the other. Conversations are generally a mutually created exploration of the issues at hand, a traversing of the conversational terrain where the route is negotiated between the participants, and the contributions of all the participants are equally valued. Even if one of the participants is an ‘expert’ in the topic at hand, the insights of someone who is new to the topic may be equally valuable. In other words, there are rules of engagement in friendship as well. The rule for friendship is generally held to be reciprocity.
But on the other hand,
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
(1 Corinthians 13: 4-8)
Sometimes we have to forgive our friends for being neglectful, preoccupied and generally vague. But they in turn will forgive us, we hope, for the same offences. That is love, just as much as enjoying the company of the other person.
In order to feel the power of love in our lives, some genuine spiritual practice is required: the process of letting go of the ego's agenda. It can be done lightly and playfully, but it needs to be done. One day there will be a flip into the new awareness, to be sure, but it doesn't just happen. You have to join up the head and the heart; you have to open yourself to poetry. You need to cultivate values and virtues.
Yvonne Aburrow, 9 August 2004
Thanks to Peter Mellett, Claire Salisbury, Nick Hanks and Stratford Caldecott for contributing to the thought processes which gave rise to this article.
Further thoughts
What I think you wanted to say is decorum, which is beyond rules but whose essence is written in the hearts of things. Yes, there is the need for decorum and convergence of fundamental principles for any group to survive.
You know Einstein has to break the absolute space of Newton which had become the law based on the rules of behaviour of macro-particles to give unto the world his relativity theory. That's what I mean by no breaking rules, no revolutions. I had to break the rules (axioms they are called in mathematics) of Peano arithmetic to create numbers that flow like life like Nature like thoughts like us like everything in the universe.
I agree with you completely that there are certain activities for which rules are necessary but that intrinsically what matters is decorum which is written in our hearts.
do the drivers on the crowded freeway 'need' conflict management protocols and traffic laws?
no, because they are guided by the dynamical geometry of space they are co-creatively shaping. all they need is the instinct or intuition of a 'shared destiny', that their actions are interdependent rather than 'independent', this sense of One-ness that we are born with and that is drummed out of us by our western cultural conditioning, ... but not so in the cultural tradition of the natives, for example.
conflict management protocols are necessitated as an adjunct fix that tries to compensate for the UNnatural proposition that our social collective is composed of independently behaving individuals. this unnatural collective dynamic where everyone bumps into everyone else arises from our cultural tradition of convincing everyone that they are independently behaving individuals living a purpose-driven life (see my comments on 'the purpose driven life' by rick warren in my note reviewing eckhart tolle's work). the native moves through the forest so as not to disturb the sleeping bear, and his mocassins must not leave an impression, and if they do, it should disturb the forest so lightly that it will be washed away by the first rainfall.
this native tradition may sound like a 'behavioural protocol', but the difference is that it is specified in terms of space being disturbed moreso than what the individual does; i.e. putting the sustaining of harmony of the collective in the primacy over regulating the actions of the individual, ... this conceives of the individual's behaviour as being INCLUDED in the dynamic of the overall collective that he is enveloped by and immersed in.
clearly, protocols developed to regulate on the basis of individual behaviour do not account for the participation of space, and thus do not conceive of space as being the inclusional dynamical presence of absence that coordinates our behaviours relative to one another.
It is true that Western ethics, where they are based on a series of "Thou shalt not..." statements and the punishment that will be incurred if these are transgressed against, are indeed "after-the-fact" management of individual behaviour.
The problem is, how to cope with the situation where not everyone subscribes to an inclusional ethic or protocol? Certainly, decorum comes from the heart. Well, it does for a person who is inclusional, but what about the people who are not? It is true that dissonance is included in the greater dynamic, but that's not much consolation to the person who has just experienced it.
Not all Western ethics are based on "Thou shalt not". There are also virtue ethics, as described above. We need to cultivate virtues, both collectively and individually, so that decorum does come from the heart.
I think sequential consciousness has probably evolved for a reason, and that whilst we must be able to dip into holistic consciousness now and again, the ideal is obviously to balance the two in an inclusional way. But whilst we fall short of that ideal, we maybe need some protocols - or perhaps better, values. We are always teetering on the balance, rarely perfectly balanced. There is a school of thought that says that 'inclusional' consciousness (using the left and right brain and the corpus callosum simultaneously and in harmony) is samadhi - the state of bliss that can only be achieved after much meditation.
I'm all for the Native American ethic, it sounds great - but it relies on a consensus view of values, virtues, and the way the individual relates to the community and his/her surroundings.
But I'd go further and say that protocols (or a consensus on how to move in a collective dynamic) are a natural outcome of living in a collective space with no discrete boundaries. If we lived in a box with discrete boundaries, our behaviour wouldn't affect anyone else, so we could do what we liked. It is precisely because we live in a collective space that we need protocols/decorum/ethics.