This is a ominous time to be dealing with the question of Ethics because not just what's going on in the Middle East. But also what's going on in the USSR. What's going on in South Africa? And what's going on in the United States? It is not just things that are going on some place else that are worthy of our reflection. It's also what's going to be going on here as we make those very difficult choices of where the money is going to go and what's for real. And what's true and I just heard tonight coming in on my source of Truth, which is public radio if Cokie Roberts says it that's it but talking about where they're going to put the cost of the war and whether it's going to affect the deficit it doesn't go it's off budget. So it will not show up in the in the figures of our balance of payments and I think that's cool. I've been trying to do that for some years on my own personal budget somehow people the government the very group that's doing it watches me when I do it. So it's a bit of a problem.But anyway, what I'd like to do is talk a little bit about ethics and why I think it's a Hot Topic today and if it's such a Hot Topic why we tend not to discuss it so much and then see if I can make a proposal for a universal ethic that walks the fine line between relativism that is everything's a matter of opinion and absolutism, which is something which is universally true and see if I can want wind my way through that mess and do it in such a way that its Global and personal at the same time and is somehow connected with a spiritual foundation and we'll do that in an hour now no small feat.And probably say a couple words about leadership on the way through we're coming upon ethical problems that we don't have a clue how to solve or how to think about have any of you read the little book called everything. I needed to know I learned in kindergarten. Yeah, right how many of you like that when that kind of nice? Yeah, it's wrong. But it's fun. I mean, I think it's great to take a nap and hold hands and you know put things back and flush or wash your brush or whatever. It was you're supposed to do but I think that's cool. But let me try something out on you and I'd like you to tell me whether you got the kind of clue to this problem in your kindergarten class. Now, here's the problem a woman wants to get pregnant with sperm from her father have an abortion have some of the tissue taken from the aborted fetus reinstated in his father to help him fight Alzheimer's disease now somehow I missed that in kindergarten to know whether that's good public policy. Now, maybe you all got that but somehow that went right by me I maybe was flushing at the time when that topic was raised, but I didn't quite get it. And so the question is, how do we think about that? I mean just imagine trying to get your mind around it and that's a real case when I didn't make that up. I'm not bright enough. Since we're in a Newman Center, we can talk a little bit about Catholics Catholics have a long tradition of natural law. Right? I mean that's that solid base upon which to build a social ethic. Well now the problem comes what's natural because if we can mess around with the gene pool, which of course some Catholics don't want us to do because it erodes the theory makes it a lot tougher to launch when you have no Foundation the problem what's natural becomes a real dilemma. So for how about this one your veterinarian you give a big shot of something to to a hog? And so you need to meet you say I'm not eating natural meet. This has been doctored but now we can change the gene structure of corn by increasing the amino acids and we can put all the stuff into the hog through the corn. Now you eating natural food now watch natural hmm there go the Catholics puzzling about this. We're now for the first time going to map the total human gene, the total human gene. There's a proposal in Washington DC to map the total human gene, and I talked to a biologist a number of years ago, and he said if we can figure out we're going to mess with it. Period I mean that was just that we're going to get in there and mess with it. I had a guy at a program the other day just astonishing things that they can do now with this taking an egg from one animal and an egg from another and matching them and you get odd combinations. I thought that was science fiction. Oh, no, they took a chicken and a quail. And they took the eggs or chicken or Quail put them together, you know what they got. They got this little thing. That was yellow. It looked like a little baby chick as yellow head yellowtail with brown feathers in the middle and the middle it look like a quail. They took a sheep and a goat put them together. They got this thing that head was a goat sheep fur with a tail like a goat. I mean they're doing this I know is we are in the process of these things happening. It's good idea bad idea. That's an ethical puzzle. I went to Pioneer corn 20% of my time at the university is with Aggie extension. And so I want around with Agriculture and I went to Pioneer corn and they were going to talk about gene splicing. So I wanted to go into a lab, which I thought was going to be space cadet City you doing here with these big machines, you know, it's already I'd read a lot of Stephen King you go in there. It's like I was in a closet and this person had a little gun like a little 22 gun little bullet in it and a little petri dish and she went that was it look down there. Nothing happened. I was waiting for a Big Tomato to rise up, but I didn't know what to expect. All they're doing is they're shooting some Jean material into another Jean material and then you have to wait and see what happens and then see if you get the right kind of new growth and then you can reproduce it amazing things cloning. They can now take a cap and get for just like it. And they've done that they don't quite look alike because the color I have asked this is holsteins in there. I thought they'd all come out, you know the acts exactly the same pattern. So I asked why is the color down an inch farther on this one? It's a good question. I said, thank you. And what was going on is said that sort of moves around but the gene structure of the Cavs are identical now if we can do this in animals guess who's next? And what's going to be the ethical criteria that we're going to use them when we do this and when we don't do this because we're going to get into cancer research. But once you get into that genes analysis and at the micro level, I mean that's very fruitful area to go into research and pretty soon who knows us with feathers. Yeah, they cross Bob with a chicken. Who knows what we're going to get I mean, but it's just it's wild and I ask this guy. Where are we on the revolution in this, you know, kind of think about he said at the front end just at the tippy front end. We are just at the beginning and somebody said the discovery of DNA is the equivalent of the discovery of fire. That's a big thought a big comparison and if we're just at the front end our minds have not begun to comprehend what the implications are. And so the third reason why I think ethics is in a hot issue is because of the these horrendous problems let alone the biomedical ethics problems. When do you pull the plug and and abortion and so on and we've rehearsed those a lot but these are these just go beyond the imagination to know how to get our minds around him. And the fourth reason I think is the growing sense of cultural diversity that is Is there any universal ethic? Is there any are there any kind of standards that we all might apply and alasdair MacIntyre who's a British ethicist said what we have our ethical fragments a little of this and a little of that and a little something else but we don't have any kind of comprehensive ethical scheme that everybody could just say that's true that's real or that's right. What we have is competing frames. And so if that's true, how do we deal with this problem of relativism and universalism. Now I say a word about what's going on there with that how many of you've been an ethical argument and your final argument on the way out the door when you're really being pressed, you know, do you believe this and you say well that's your opinion? And how did you go in the United States? We think that ends the argument. I think that just starts it because we all have the same opinion why discuss it but we use that at the end because we don't know where to go. If you're different with an opinion. I think a great answer be no. It's not my opinion. It's God's try that that'll get somebody's attention. Just sort of, you know, keep the dialogue going but what happens is we don't know where to go. If we once sort of get two opinions, we sort of just run out of steam now that the relativists the relativists argue that the great thing about relativism. It's a corrective on anybody who thinks they're totally right because anybody who thinks they're totally right world run right over you. This is what the Civil Rights Movement said about the dominance of size with the women's movements and it says look if you have a white male straight Rich. Yeah, one big ethic. What are they doing with it? So what's the protection against that diversity that's good news because diversity of perspectives that is a corrective on imperialism of one perspective. So they're saying this relativism of diversity of perspectives is great news, because that's the challenge in the protection against anybody running roughshod over somebody else on the assumption that there right the the absolutist on the other hand set you got to be kidding. If there's nothing that's absolutely right. How do you know how to judge good ideas from bad ideas. Is everything equally good don't we have any intellectual capacity to judge? This is really a great idea. And this is stupid are we just left floundering around you like racism? I don't like racism duke it out. Does Mike might make right? And how do we I mean, it's a tough tough issue to find our way through this kind of relativism universalism debate to see if there's any way that we can have a principle that everybody should accept that doesn't wipe anybody out. As a matter of fact, it makes it possible for them all to show up at the table. So that's what we're going to solve tonight now. So I think for those reasons ethics is a Hot Topic today. It's just, you know, we have all of this going on yet at the same time such a Hot Topic. How come when we talk about it. We seem to not get very far in the discussions and I think for a number of reasons number one. I think there's some people that think the ethical discussion doesn't change anybody and was I often get asked Bob. Can you really teach ethics? This is usually asked to me by economists and my answer to them is do you teach economics? Yes. Does that make anyone economical so get out of my face? that is I think when people say can you teach ethics what they mean by that is can you make people ethical by teaching ethics and the obvious answer is no But that's about the mission. The mission is to open up ethical inquiry so we can sharpen our capacity to understand issues put them in different ethical perspectives so we can bring some wisdom to that rather than just grunt. I like it. I don't like it. Rah. Rah. Well, that's not helpful. There's a whole field of ethical inquiry that can really help us say what is just and fair and even though people differ on that it it's part of the intellectual apparatus that we need to bring to public policy questions. So I think one of the reasons why people say this is interesting but really doesn't make any differences my mind was made up some time ago and don't bother me with this kind of reflection. It's not going to change anything. Maybe you've seen the the videotape by Massey a guy named Massey you are who you were when or something like that it does is that something like that? I don't think I have it quite right, but he basically says your values are set by the time you're 10. Well, this is hardly then time for some of us in the room to be thinking about this. It's all over. And barring some big crisis in our lives. We pretty much are shaped by the time we were 10. Now if you want to get a little evidence for that think of when you were ten what was going on in the United States if you're from this country or what was going on in your home country. If you're not think of when your parents were 10 and your grandparents were 10 and see if there aren't cultural and value differences. The certainly was with my father who is a 10-round depression time when he would call me as an adult. He'd have three questions on the phone. Hey, he didn't exactly know how to use a phone. He thought he was stealing and Kentucky yelling across the holler there. So he sort of yell at me and I always knew it was him on the phone because you didn't actually need the phone, but you say hey, You making any money you're saving any money how Stephen as his grandson the correct answers are yes. Yes fine. And then that conversation was over that is you're supposed to make a lot of money and then save it. I was 10 in 1947 where the basic message was spend more than you make well I got that. And you know you have credit that was the introduction of a lot of credit and so on because they're the basic message was you can keep learning more. You can always always make more my son who was 10 in 1980 has no idea of what we're talking about because for him money doesn't grow on trees. It comes out of machines and it is a major intellectual feet understand that money. Somehow got behind that machine. He just sees it coming out. He said dad. You still got plastic old fart. Tommy we got some different values here that are at work that's that are intergenerational and so people say look the way you were raised by the time you were 10, even more dramatic for those of you who've been Myers-Briggs. It's a verb and if you have any of you know about the Myers-Briggs well good. Well, I'm an introvert anybody believes that has diagnostic problems. I actually have no inner life basically and you've heard the old adage that Opposites Attract. My motto is Opposites Attract only for your first two marriages obvious is basically piss you off and that's why nobody's really committed to diversity. We just give it lip service and really want everybody to be the way we are. My advice is marry someone who's the same work with people are different. You don't need grief in both places. But anyway, if you believe if you take the Myers-Briggs, seriously, it basically says you're born with personality preferences from the get. This is the way you popped out even with ethical preferences Heavens. What's the point of discussing it? Check out your please understand me book and see who you're going to be. Your whole life is a footnote on your Myers-Briggs torso. Just give up and all of you who believe in Free Will bag it That's hard for a Baptist to talk to face this I mean I look at my life. And there it is blue. Just like clockwork I go damn. That's really bad news. I thought I'm making this up. It's just happening for my gene pool. So that's the further is it? I mean, what's the point of discussing and if we're already fixed locked in second reason? When you teach ethics, we always have the hard cases remember that philosophy course where they give you impossible things to solve no matter which way you go you're wrong. So what's the point in thinking about it? There's no help. You're captain of a ship somebody Falls overboard. Do you stop and rescue them and risk everyone? So I said oh, yeah and definitely give you a headline ship flautist 3,000 people died as Captain tries to save one person greatest good for the greatest number. What are you doing? So not their goal. So then you say okay got it. You let him ground then immoral then we have duties life Uber Alles. Oh damn and so funny say what is this ethic stuff? It doesn't help you when you get to these tough cases. So what do we just throw it up? Pick one? Hope for the best third reason? What's this ethic stuff? Anyway, so sort of rules that we make up. So what's the big deal make some other ones? You know, we should get together get the Geneva Convention cranked up make a few rules. You know, what's the big deal people don't follow make some other ones. I mean, there's this sort of it's just that of a convenience that we have this ethical rule making and it's doesn't have any deep importance important but it's not profoundly important because rules change times change. So make some rules third or fourth reason any time any country starts talking about ethics be sure that they're not going to be ethical like operation just cause that means we're going into Panama with or without ethical justification, but I think it's nice to call it ethics and I was at this is Reinhold niebuhr the point of view the want to major American theologians who said that Nations cannot be ethical there will only be self-interested. This is basically Kissinger you can count on Kissinger. If you want to know if you want to predict where Kissinger is going to come out on any question. Just think he'll the first thing he's looking for. How is the balance of power doing? So you listen to how he worries about what's going to happen to Iraq what's going on? We don't want to wipe it out. It's going to create a Miss bat bouncer power. So we've got to get leave them enough. So he's always a blast them but not wipe them out because otherwise George just wait and say we'll take that serious and we'll take that and what we're going to have an imbalance of power therefore guarantee depression because as soon as you get an imbalance of power somebody's going to be unfair to somebody. So what is Justice balance of power but no nation is going to be ethical and just cover up its rhetoric. So why don't we just quit the ethical talk and say okay, what are your interests? I mean, that's the argument that now human beings individuals. He says might be ethical but not too likely it's an impossible possibility to love. It's always a demand but we can't do it in a sinful World nevertheless countries can't do it at all. Organizations can't do it. The church can't do it. Every institution fundamental interest is to take care and preserve itself. So let's get real. Go see arguing V. The reason why I think people don't pay too much attention to ethics is that people who really get caught up in ethics get very self-righteous and who needs it how many of you know people who just are convinced that they know the truth on everything and have this kind of hottie. I've got it you don't have it and we'll fix you with it. And so you get the Sunday morning evangelist who are absolutely certain about God's will they somehow have this pipeline of direct conversation and that becomes a problem. And finally, I think there's some people who say we can't really deal with it because of the diversity. We can't wind our way through that that mess that I talked about earlier. So I think here it is a hot issue here. It is for these reasons. I think people say put it over here on the side burner. It's not helpful. We're all fixed. Anyway, we can't get at it doesn't help us some really important issues. Now, I think my view is that that ethics is at the heart of life. You cannot build a credible and believable and sustainable world based on an ethical principles. The problem is what are the principles? And what principles do we need? And this is where we where we have this dilemma of walking between the the diversity of opinion on the one hand and see if they're in a universal is on the other and see if we can wind our way down through them. And so my suggestion is that there is a principle that I think is available to us to do that. And it's a principle that sort of odd because it's self-correcting absolutely required of all of us as human beings and has as its principal the guarantee of diversity. Or put another way the problem with diversity is never diversity. It is always Unity that is diversity is a fact I'm going to prove this I'd like you to look at your neighbor's earlobe. So just sort of go over and check out the bearded wonder over here. Just look at your neighbors earlobe and I want you to see whether his or her earlobe is attached or Loops up. Okay. Okay, how many have attached earlobes that go sort of straight into your cheek? Okay, how many have the Lyndon Johnson earlobe looped up, right? That's the great ones with the pierced ears. You got a lot to work with there. You can tell the attached to what they do have that little Diamond. I just sort of barely hanging on there, you know the other lope right down there now, that's a diversity. It's by its inherited. You can check in your family. It's a genetically inherited trait of whether you have attached earlobes and the do we sort people in this Society on earlobes? No, could we sure and then we'd have big signs drop buzz and which sort people look who's in class and so on so that but that's a fact that's a diversity fact another one. I'd like you to fold your hands like that. Okay, how many of you have your left thumb on top? Okay, how many of you have your right thumb on top hell's wrong with you. We need to just little examine that's diversity. But that those are not important diversities diversity is a fact I'll just do it the other way. If you want to feel an odd feeling I mean you don't even know where to put your thumb. You know, like all right. Yeah the same. All right just odd now. These are diversities. The problem with diversity is that it's an endless more as if you start thinking of which all the ways people are diverse. You never have any end to it because it can be this or that or some of the things that's why the question of diversity is never diversities the principles of inclusion and exclusion. It's what do we have to agree on? For example, the Amish Who police want the Amish to have that little reflector on the back of their carts horse-drawn carts many of the Amish. They that violates our religious freedom. So you have two good principles. You have a principle of Public Safety and cultural Integrity Clash. Now we don't always work that out and it's worked out differently the United States in Pennsylvania. They don't have to put the little sticker on but many are voluntary many of the Amish are voluntarily doing that in Minnesota. I think they they don't have to I think that just got overturned in the Supreme Court and so they no longer have to and there was they lost that one and now they want it peyote. The Indians lost that one I think because of the drug culture kind of concerned. They lost that out that was religious freedom versus versus drugs. And so what happens is when when you try to figure these things out the question is what criteria we're going to use to say, this is okay. That's not okay. Those are principles of inclusion or exclusion. And so the problem with diversity is really the problem of unity. Okay. So given that the other thing I want to say before I get into trying to identify what this principle is is that nobody sits on the balcony to look at life. What I mean by that is we're all stuck here in history. Nobody can sort of rise up and say the truth is we're going to have to find the truth somehow in our midst because we'd have no balconies that are high enough brought enough long enough to sit on to see the whole array of where we are and some people say aha that proves relativism. That is we just have our different perspectives. I think not I think it sets up the conditions for diversity of which we then have to raise the question of unity in our midst in who we are with each other. Okay. Now given that nobody sits on a balcony. That means all of us are born ethnocentric what I mean by that is we're all born with our own baggage and those of you who are married know about baggage baggage. Is that which arrives after the ceremony? Never comes early. It's usually about three years into it and you go. Oh darn here comes the baggage and some of you want to make a lot of money. I'd suggest you develop a baggage detector prior to marriage because you have to get married then the baggage arrives and say where did that come from? I don't know what just delivered this morning. Oh my itself. And when you get married you make to with decision you made the person later on you have to marry their baggage and usually would say sweetheart. You can stay your baggage has got to go now given that we all have baggage which of course I don't have baggage. I have resources you have baggage. I have wonderful history. Your was all screwed up. But since we all have that we come to a situation with our with with a perspective from our past and I bet since we're here at a university you probably remember when you first discovered that the way you were raised was not normal. It's often when you have your first roommate. And they start talking to you about how they were raised you go. Really? Oh my Lord. That is the most bizarre thing I've ever heard. You actually had a father there all the time my gosh what a crazy way to go through life. I had three mothers. They're only 20 kids in the family, huh? Whatever it is. I mean, for example, I was going to be a veterinarian until I realized they were cheaper ways to pet animals and you also have to know something. So I wanted to theology where you could reflect about big thoughts and big issues and not be too grounded and with technical debt data and I meant to the food line for the first time and here's his this plate of long white skinny stuff with red Gap in the center. What is that? What is that spaghetti now? You say spaghetti, but it wasn't real spaghetti because real spaghetti from my experience was all red chopped up look like I've been eating once franco-american. I was raised on franco-american Spaghetti. My mother took it from the can to the pan to the plate to the palette non-stop. I looked at that stuff at Cornell and I said they must be rushed here. They didn't spread the red stuff around and cut it up. Do you know how exciting it was to learn that you could have more than French dressing on salad. I mean that was a breakthrough. Oh and that lettuce didn't have to look like coleslaw and we're talking big time here. Now we all have those stories that we that is you bump up against somebody else and you realize my Heavens. My experience is not Universal. I want to talk a minute about bumping. It's a Wonderful metaphor, it has a good side and a sort of a crummy side the good side is that without bumping without bumping up against the difference. You can't know the other person or yourself, you know what you can't discover yourself in isolation. Just imagine if I had never had anything other than franco-american. I would have never realized I was eating crappy ruining. It had would have never dawned on me that this stuff was really bad because if that's all I ever had how would I ever know anything else? So Not only was I discovering something about myself I did that while I was discovering something else. So bumping is the way that we absolutely have to bump if we're going to know ourselves. The reason I need you is to know me. I don't need you just to know you I need you to know me. I need the difference in order to illumine who I am the kind of negative side of bumping is you can be bumped off seniority bumping rights. I mean, you got a whole way that bumping is kind of a violent elimination, but it's also very good on ego boundaries and and trying to get clear who we are because one of the problems say we did a lot of talk today about dysfunctional families when I would love to find one that wasn't just to see what it was like going to be great to have someone come to you and say I'm not codependent I'd be so excited. I wouldn't know what to do. I be so thrilled to meet somebody wasn't codependent into dysfunctional family and not in therapy now, but anyway with all of this you can have the appearance of how families are doing, but it's not real because everybody's lying in the family and so when you bump is bumping into sickness and so you don't know what's really going on and one of the things we have to do is clean up our boundaries so we know when I stop and You Begin and where you stop I began and so there's no perception without contrast. This is a point made by merleau-ponty that in the phenomenology of perception know contrast know Edge. You can't see anything. You got to have an edge. So if you get white out, what is whiteout no edges go into a cave where they totally shut off the lights no point of light no edges. If you had no edges. There's no perception says merleau-ponty and I agree with them so that in the in the process of doing ethics. We need different ethical principles. We need which creates the problem of raising then what do we have to agree to to keep that bumping alive to keep that vibrant and and working? Okay. So we're all born ethnocentric. We need the bumping 44 discovery of who we are what then could be the ethical principle that weaves our way through relativism on the one hand universalism mother can serve as a global ethic and a personal ethic at the same time and get everybody happy. Well, I'm sorry the time has run out. I think the answer is rooted in the principle of authenticity. Now once you know my personality type as an ENFP, this is really a shocker to me. I went back after I took the Myers Briggs and went back and read please understand me. They said this personality type is totally preoccupied with the question of authenticity and I go home damn. So I just want you to know this is my gene pool speaking and then I'm doing the best I can to have a fresh thought. So once we know that then you can understand this now two things about authenticity two postulates about authenticity what I mean by authenticity is being true and real in yourself and in the world true and real true is abstract real as concrete. And so we have to get together. What we think is true in terms of patterns and embodiment of that that is live it and you'll often say get real we wouldn't even say someone get real. That means get with it here start walking your talk when President Bush said Read My Lips. He pointed to the wrong body part. You should have said watch my feet. I mean he didn't well, he did actually did move it down a little bit said watch my hips and actually in football. I've been told I don't play football. But in football, if you got to tackle somebody you don't watch their feet because you can have foot movements and you don't watch their head because they can do Dodge you watch the belt buckle that right football players. You're a small person, right but watch you kind of watch their center of gravity because that's going to be the thing that's going to move the least. Okay. So so authenticity here my two postulates about being true and real in yourself and in the world not just in yourself, but also how you understand the world. The first postulate is that authenticity is presupposed in every human Act. That is you can't escape from the requirement to be authentic. How does that work? Even when you're lying? It works. We are at our conference that I told you about the Scandal Scoundrels and Saints we want to deal with the question of when is it okay to lie. And when should you tell the truth and government? So we thought in order to answer that question we should bring in a liar. So we brought in Jody Powell who admitted that he had lied to the American people on the media when we're trying to rescue the hostages in Iran that he was saying we're not doing anything while we were trying to get those helicopters out of the sand and so he was talking about this. I'm not talking behind his back he was talking about this and he said and you'll love this the reason the reason we should tell the truth in government is so that when we lie, we're believed I just think about that a minute. The reason you should tell the truth it so that when you lie your believed that is a backhanded compliment to authenticity that is in order to pull off a lie. You have to be credible. You cannot intentionally lie to another person. Without knowing the truth. I mean because you know, you're doing it now those of us who've been through therapy know that you wake up after 20 years ago. Oh dear. I've been lying to myself for 20 years now, but 20 years ago. You didn't sit down and have a little thought session. You know, what I'm going to do is really called talk about being intimate and I actually do everything I can to distance myself from anyone I care about because if you did that you knew what you were doing what you do with therapies, you discover a pattern and you go look at that pattern and you can do something about it. You can get a line between what you're saying and what you're doing, but if you're going to intentionally lie, you have to know what the truth is. What's a sting operation? A sting operation is where some people know what's going on. You have to fool the others to believe that what's going on really isn't going on and have you seen the TV program Mission Impossible. What's that based on you have to create the fabric of a lie, which everybody then can move in it except the ones who are doing it to act it out or humor. I Love Lucy kind of humor, you know where you know, what's going on when they're miscommunicating what makes that funny is that you know, they're not talking past but you know what the deal is, you know both sides, but they don't and so you can see it and it's that juxtaposition that makes it humorous so that authenticity is presupposed even in lying because in order to make a lie work somebody has to believe that it's true. Or another way try arguing against authenticity. You might say I don't buy this idea of authenticity. I think it's a crock So my answer to you is oh you really don't like it. Oh, no, I think it's terrible idea crumbing idea. Do you want me to believe you? Oh, yeah, you want to believe what you're saying about authenticity. Oh, yeah. I think it's a terrible idea. You want to treat you as authentic? Well, yes. Well, no, let's see that is to argue against authenticity is to presuppose it because you're making a case you want to be believed as be incredible because if I say, well you're lying well. And even if I'm trying to make you believe even if I am lying, you still have to presuppose authenticity because what do you what does it take to make the LIE work that I have to believe that you're not lying? Because if I said to you you're lying, you can't lie to me. The only way you can lie to me as if I believe you're telling the truth. It's what makes a lie work. And so even in lying authenticity is at work as the Silent Partner of all human acts. So my first postulate is that authenticity is nothing we can escape from it is built into the human condition that when we try to make sense out of life. We have to presuppose it in order to move on we have to presuppose that we know what's going on. Even if we don't we have to act like we do. Number two not only is authenticity presupposed in all human Human Action has as our Silent Partner. It's a prerequisite for building a viable future. This gets a little trickier because what does it take to build a viable future and one of the activities that I frequently have groups go through is to have them share stories with each other about how where they experience authentic City and inauthenticity and we just little stories like I hidden agendas how many of you know, what a hidden agenda is somebody saying one thing doing something else. That's an inauthenticity thing where you wear what appearance in reality don't connect or in an organization where you have the formal organizational chart and then you have how it really happens, you know has no connection to the formal organizational chart, you know, and but every time you surface it, so I said, oh you had to really does and you know darn well, it doesn't or you're in a relationship and you know, something's not right and you surface it. And the first thing is you're a crazy. And you find out later you're not that is it's that experience of Disconnect. So that that in the struggle to move into the future. I do this exercise. It's okay, where have you experienced this inauthenticity? Then I asked the group to stop and say what was it? What made it possible for you to have this conversation about authenticity nigga and I suggest there are six things that make it possible to have a conversation. So now I'll step back for a minute and then we're going to do a run through this and then I will conclude with a couple of thoughts about spirituality and Leadership and how all this fits together. Remember I said the problem with relativism and universalism is where can you start where you don't get somebody mad to begin with? Because if you start with say judeo Christian tradition is doing your ethics work the Hindus get sort of bent out of shape. Or if you start with a religious perspective the secularist get bent out of shape. If you start with a humanist, the religious folks get bent out of shape. So the only place that I've known where to start is show up. Show up and bring with you your baggage. That is because that's what we don't have any choice. So show up now you can I suppose decide not to show up. But if you show up now, you're hooked into the authenticity game because the two things I think necessary to build the social ethic is show up with your differences and be willing to engage So once you show up and you want to engage even if you lie, you're hooked into the authenticity game. If you're going to sustain the conversation if you're going to keep it moving along six things, I think have to be in place. Number one. You have to have an agreement that it's okay to show up. And the proof of that is that you're there that is what I call the principle of dwelling your history the richness of your tradition your baggage the good stuff the bad stuff. The good thing about me is I am who I am. The bad thing about me is I am who I am. I'm all of it. I show up I take up space and time in real history in real time in my dwelling and dwelling is doesn't just mean house. That means my shown up - with all the limits and possibilities that I have. Okay, so we start with showing up first principle dwelling if we don't have that we have genocide because genocide is basically the principle to eliminate people's dwelling in mass or murder individually. So already we got the first principle, it rules out genocide and murder and rules in showing up this of course is part of the abortion debate who ought to show up. And stay there as R its hinge right on this fundamental notion that life is a gift by the way the metaphor for this is gift and of you know about Michael Fox not Michael Fox Matthew Fox TV. Been watching too much CNN Matthew Fox in original blessing is this kind of root idea of gift metaphor not original sin, but original shown up. Mrs. Good. Okay. Secondly what you show up you have to have the possibility of develop of options and choices. And so the second principle is freedom. In order to have ongoing relationships people have to be able to do things. They have to be able to have the possibility of acting on whatever their tradition suggests. So the second principle of Freedom root in the market metaphor that says, You have the option and possibilities where we get equal opportunity and all that sort of thing third principle. It's not enough to show up not enough to have choices. The third thing is that we have to have some rules that keep us related to each other such that we don't wipe each other out. That's Justice. And the principle of justice that I like is Rawls where he says justice is fairness and you have three sub principles of Justice. What is the one thing everybody has in common in their shown up - each thinks they're superior to the other and whether why the others you're bothered to show up anymore. So the one thing we all have in common is our claim to Supremacy. So what the principle of Justice says is since we can't adjudicate who's better. We're all equal. That's the first principle of Justice which is equality. So nation-states show up do we think they're all equal? Oh, no. Do we act like they're all equal? Oh no, but the claim of the UN Charter is they're all equal in the general assembly. So that was trying to get at they're all little countries big countries. We have that same struggle the United States House of Representatives the Senate and all of that who's equal those who show up? Okay. So just as the first principle just a quality but what happens when some people get there late because there he'll back you have a principle of equity not just equality which means proportional Justice that is if you get there later you want to have people can can help you make up so you can fully participate And the third principle of justice is adequacy. That is you need to make sure the principles keep alert to changes in technology or changes in history and so on so you got three principles of justice that are basically rules rooted in the body metaphor that says you've got to keep the body all functioning. These are all our dysfunctional functional that stuff. Click Send. However, it's not enough to have the rules on the books how many of you know that we have wonderful documents called Personnel manuals and most corporations which people don't believe it or don't act on or don't claim so it's not enough just to have to show up not enough to have options and possibilities not enough to have some rules regulating how we're going to work together if people don't claim it and so we need participation which is rooted in a power metaphor of energy. You've got to claim it. And this is where Jesse Jackson says not enough to have the door open if you don't walk through it. We got to make sure it's open. So you gotta make sure it's open on the one hand, but then you gotta seize it and claim it. This is the basic thing of when you show up social movements and claims of what's important self-determination and all that self-empowerment weird today. But when you're claiming it, you can claim it just for yourself. And so the next principle if you're going to keep the conversation going is that we're going to go on a journey together. And so we need to attend to each other and that's the principle of love what love says is that I need to know who you are what you're about and are bumping. And what you find through storytelling of your Journeys if any of you have ever done this is that when you tell your own story other people go wow, your grandmother and mine were similar, but if you're never told the story you would never know there was an overlap of your histories because when we come from differences, it's very hard to get from the them to the whe when you get at this point the us as in the them's begin to overlap and you begin to discover my happens. We have some similarities. We have some things in common. We are discovering the weenus of our relationship. That's pretty amazing and there are two two principles of Love here one is caring Cara standing with people in their duress not fixing them standing with Get that from Henri nouwen and his little book out of solitude distinguishing caring and curing curing is always try to fix it. Well, what do you do when someone's dying you can't fix it is that nothing we can do, of course we can stand with them in their duress in their pain. The second principle is forgiveness. I had a Jewish therapist say to me Bob you Christians. Don't get it on forgiveness. I would love that when the Jewish people tell a Christians who think they have a corner on forgiveness that we don't understand it. I love that good bump and And what he said is you Christians keep talking about forgive and forget. He said you can't forgive and forget. We have a frontal lobotomy. You remember and some of you I'm sure can go back and remember 20 years ago 15 years ago 10 years ago when somebody hurt you right and if you start thinking about it, you get man again. It comes right back. It's like Melvin Tessler. I hope you're out there somewhere Melvin 1953. I still remember you mortifying me an English class. Because I have no feelings about that. Now. Are you out there? Now? What he suggested was forgiveness is not forgetting forgiveness is being open to newness while you're remembering can a relationship make it or what's an affair do in a relationship. It destroys the trust. Can you rebuild a relationship? Yes, will it ever be the same as it was before? No. Can it get better? Yes, is it likely to necessarily unless there is forgiveness, which says somebody has to admit they're wrong or both admit that they were Partners in this and then you have the new possibility of someone say we are going to be open to some new behaviors that will slowly build and rebuild the trust. We are open to not castigating you forever into some outer land that forgiveness is opening up that possibility and that's rude in the journey metaphor and if we don't have that we get what Hannah Arendt calls the cycle of Revenge I do this to you you do this to me I do this and that's where we are in the Middle East. We're going to need some forgiveness in here folks some new possibilities of new imagination to open this up to get out of this up down craziness that we're into but how love can get very sentimental eyes. I'm going to love you to death and watch out when somebody starts loving you to death because love can rescue. It doesn't just stand with people want to they get too involved. In other people their boundaries get all screwed up. And what happens is that love needs to be clarified by responsibility. So that's my sixth principle. That is as long as I don't own up to my piece of the action. Love is going to blur what's really going on. This means that we have to begin to own up to our shadow side. And those of you familiar with a union thought now that your Shadow is that part of ourselves where we stuff the stuff. We don't like it's not Myers-Briggs e, you know, if you're a high extrovert always my introvert side, that's not Shadow. That's your undeveloped side this let you know you may want to do it Shadow is a very ominous term in Union thought it's the place where we stopped the bad stuff the things that we don't want to have see daylight and we don't want anybody else to know about it. It's those secrets that we carry around with us. And unless we begin to explore that you can't build long-term viable relationships unless for example, we begin to really recognize how we have armed the Iraqis. And we have been co-creators of this mess. Rather than the victims of it. We are also partly the creators of it and unless we start owning up to that and taking seriously what that means. So while we're fighting oppression were also fighting what we created and to begin to get that picture in place. We will not be able to move through this and won't understand the pain and the grief and the anger and the hatred toward us of which were partially the Creator's not totally but partially but we need to own up to our piece of that an interesting thing about responsibility, which I think is one of the most important ethical terms in the 20th century It's relatively new as ethical category 1787 the first use of the word responsibility in English, that's for the sensors only fact I have The idea of responsibility is not a naught term. It's an is term I am responsible when you show up and you dwell you're responsible. And when people say in South Africa what the white say to Black's you're not ready for responsibility yet. They don't get it. You're never ready for responsibility. You just have to start being it. There is no Readiness for it. You just are it by the fact that you show up? Very interesting category and I think we need to do a lot more work on responsibility. We use it all the time. We usually mean our job what your responsibilities are in your job or institution, but it's much more profound than that. It has to do with just showing up qua being a human being and some people never go never decide that they're responsible. They never take ownership for who they are. They blame everybody in the universe early toilet training. My mother made me do my father made me do we blame everyone else rather than take ownership for who we are what we're about in our contribution. So my suggestion is the way through this morass is that there are six or seven ethical principles authenticity being the main one these other six that unless we all agree to this we are not going to have diversity. So now we've I think at least intellectually solved our problem because what are all the people worry about who are diverse they're going to be wiped out. That's right, unless you agree to these principles. It is these principles that guarantee the very diversity that the people who believe in diversity want and yet we have Universal principles, which is what the Universalist want. And so now we have Universal principle that guarantees diversity. And see me, that's the way that I think we have to wind our way down through there. Now. Does that mean that we got this all worked out nice principles? No, but at least it says we don't throw up our hands in Despair and say we can't even talk about this. I think it's possible to talk about some things that are true. And where did those principles come from out of showing up missing? And that was a don't come out of the sky. They come out of all the diversity that we bring to the table in a very effective showing up means you want to be respected and taken seriously engaged in the conversation and so on that means also that when you don't have those principles in place, as I said, if you don't have dwelling you get genocide and murder if you don't have freedom you get discrimination based on arbitrary characteristics. If we don't have Justice we get double standards and legalism. If we don't have participation we get oppression if we don't have love we have apathy and if we don't have responsibilities we have abdication and every time you get advocation apathy oppression, what are you doing to the richness of the human interaction you're wiping it out. And so it's absolutely essential if we're going to be talking about a new world order that these be the principles of the New World Order. Because without this the strong are going to dominate the week we're going to have oppression people are going to get wiped out and therefore the real task. I think now force in terms of leadership is not thinking about what's happening immediately in the Middle East. Some of us need to be thinking 20 years down the road. Because we're going to be creating such a mess of hatred and revenge that I don't think we have a clue in Auto now you're beginning to see the generals and I think wonder where we go next. What do we do? If we win? There is no task force that I know of in Washington saying what happens if we win? Just like there was no task for saying what happened when we dropped the atomic bomb the first time like what happens if we pull this thing off nobody thinks about success. And I think part of the ethical and Leadership task is to think about us winning then what because we may win the battle and lose the war if we're not begin to anticipate the kind of create chaos. We're going to be creating their hatred and Vengeance and so on and so we have some serious leadership work. What is all this say about leadership and spirituality. I think that leadership is a sort of a it's a different kind of definition of leadership than you might hear other places. I think that leadership is the courage to call forth authentic action in the Commons that is leadership is in the authenticity business because without knowing what's going on, what's going on? What's true? And what's real, how are we going to know how to move forward we have got to struggle with what's true? And that means we have to bump we have to explore each other's perspectives. We have to learn how to listen we have to learn how to care about how other people read it, even though we think they're crazy which of course what they think we are so that that it's absolutely essential. It seems to me that leadership be this calling. that's ethical but it also Embraces the unethical because to really be authentic fundamentally is to admit that I'm not because for me to say to you I have arrived is self-righteousness. To really be authentic is to admit that I'm not and therefore I don't think we're called to be perfect. We're called to be real. So I think leadership is an absolutely horrendous Kali. I'm sitting in my office and I finally figured out why I went to Seminary. The reason I went to Seminary was to avoid these questions. By developing all the intellectual category, so I wouldn't have to deal with this stuff. So I have in my head Luther Calvin Aquinas Aristotle Plato. There's old rattling around there like contemporaries, you know, just having these conversations in there. And so I didn't have to be authentic. I'd have good intellectual reasons why I couldn't believe anything and this this discussion over the last five years for me around authenticity has really led to a spiritual insight and I'll conclude with that and how it all fits together sitting in my office and I was writing about authenticity and I say, you know, this authenticity stuff is one pain in the butt. It gives us nose wiggle room because this Silent Partner of all Human Action is saying to me, but I'm be authentic be authentic or not being authentically authentic. I get out of my face and then if it's not doing it you are you're saying Bob you're screwing up Bob. You're not being authentic. Shut up. That it's always working. The silent partner is at work. And I said I was feeling this judgment. You're not being authentic and the other hand. I also was remembering as I was writing along the wonderful Liberation that comes when one experiences authenticity when you feel the alignment of who you are and what you're about the energy flows and you think you know, what's really going on and you have that wonderful Insight. I got it. I see what's real. I see what's going on and I can connect to it in my family in my community in the globe. It's a tremendous Liberation experience. I think I'm having a theological thought That is God is authenticity. That is the experience of what's true. And what's real. So how many gods are there many many many looking for one Christians have three Creator Redeemer and Holy Spirit and they can't figure except the unitarians how to get it into one. So there are many gods as many gods as there are centers of authenticity struggling for the one. So the nature of the universe is the one and the many the nature of the universe is pluralistic the one in the many and therefore our calling is to always appreciate the diversity while we're looking for the common ground. without wiping out the diversity Therefore why be authentic they're two answers. It's self-contradictory. Not to those are the that's the answer for the t's who are logical. Doesn't quite touch me too much but my son loves it 20:40 now off the chart, but for me part of the authenticity has to do with faithfulness. I have to believe that if I'm authentic somehow the universe is enhanced by that. That is radical Faith. No evidence. No empirical connection. No clue trust that when were authentic. It makes a difference. That's why I think leadership the courage to call forth authentic action in the Commons is a spiritual activity because it's based on the faith that that commitment and that living out of authenticity that somehow sustained by the universe without any evidence to support it. and when I heard the rabbi who Kitchener are bad things happen to good people Christian. Yeah. I heard him on on public radio and he said something very important said I have to trust that when I act Faithfully. Without any evidence that makes a difference. I was in that Dunham. This is different than higher Consciousness and channeling and this is more radical than that. This says no evidence at all. No voices except the Silent Partner saying get with it Bob. That to me is an Act of Faith which takes courage. And courage is something that I think is true to itself not everybody is courageous because courage lives about halfway between cowardice and rationalist toward a noble end. What's the noble end authenticity? You don't run away. You don't rush in you reflect and you act and so it takes courage to be a news reporter standing in the war because you know, damn well you could be blasted out of there. It takes courage for Terry wait to go in and try to rescue the hostages knowing he might be trapped. It takes courage to go in and rescue a child if you thought about it a minute, but it's not necessarily courage to be in the military. It's takes risk, but when you have a whole system designed to help you that's different than people in tenements Square by themselves taking on the tanks. Where would you rather be with an army? or by yourself wish you think takes more courage. I think it takes a lot more courage when you don't have the whole system rigged to take care of you which doesn't say there's not fear and you could lose your life as police and so on but instead You've Got A system that supporting you there. There was no system supporting those students standing taking on the tanks. There are no students in Latvia and Lithuania taking on the tanks. That takes courage because what you're doing is you're committing yourself to a noble end. And I think what they're trying to do is support the principles that I'm talking about of self-determination and caring and so on and I think Gorbachev therefore is no longer leading. I think he's moved into tyranny. And that's a sad time. I'm not sure the United States is leading in the war because I don't think we're dealing with the kind of farther it images now. This is not to say we should be fighting or not. I'm saying we're not doing the leadership job of having to consider. Where do we go if we win because I think we're going to win physically, but we may lose in terms of the future of that part of the planet. Thanks very much.