What Makes Sense Leads to Moral Progress

Morality predicated on external pressures is never sufficient.                                               – Immanuel Kant

As explained in Steven Pinker and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s TED Presentation, “The Long Reach of Reason” (also below) moral progress has been instigated through reasoned arguments that documented inconsistency in values, actions, and common sense.  After discussing some examples of how reasoned arguments led to moral progress, they wonder if our grandchildren will be as appalled by our actions as we are of our ancestors who saw things such as beheadings and slavery as normal. Won’t our ancestors or even our children wonder why we focused on eliminating disease when we were wanting to experience better health that we defined as the presence of physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity? After all, doing actions and engaging in thoughts that lead to or cause health to create gains in well-being beyond just the absence of problems is a reasoned, logical course of action. Efforts focused on eliminating problems are insufficient and illogical if improved well-being is the goal.

Eliminating problems just brings us back to where we were, not better. If we want to be better, logic and reason suggests we must first determine the better outcome, Operationalize and Idealized Outcome, we want that is not available now and then determine how to create that better reality, Discover Precursors, Optimize the Process, and Plot Progress. This idea is the objective with salutogenesis and paneugenesis and the idea is explained in the Exceeding Expectations video you can access here or below. Reasoning and logic suggests focusing on and working toward creating a better is the obvious way  to create a better tomorrow.

I look forward to hearing about how you will be exceeding YOUR expectations, doing so will generate comprehensive improvements as you create interactions that help everyone and everything benefit.

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