0.3.6 Key Learnings for Personal Practice

Version 1.1 July 2016                                    Previous Version

The conclusions and values we arrive at lead on to principles for our personal behaviour, regarding ourselves, our friends, family and community and the world.  In Part 6, on personal practice, we discuss how we can apply the core, derived, effecting and ancillary values we have adopted. 

We relate each guideline to the relevant conclusions or values.  For instance, valuing the truth and compassion leads to a commitment to honesty – to tell the truth.  Valuing compassion and equality leads to a commitment to non-violence – to not murder, rape, torture or enslave.  We need personal courage to break out of our childish moulds, especially when facing social conservatives.

These guidelines can sometimes be prescriptive – specifying what we must (or must not) do, based on the values we have chosen.  For instance, it is generally wrong to steal.

Frequently we must balance one value against another.  For instance, despite our commitment to non-violence, we support the right of liberal democratic area governments to enforce reasonable laws, providing the use of force is somehow minimised and roughly proportionate to the crime.

At other times the situations we face are too complex for simple solutions and we can only consider general guidelines and we must address each situation case by case.  Philosophers generate many situations where it is difficult to choose the best outcome.  For example, when is it permissible to NOT tell the truth, or appropriate to tell a lie?  Is it reasonable to actively kill one person to save five others?

In these pages, we address the development of guidelines for our mental and emotional integrity, our physical health and our ‘spiritual’ selves, in rational, evidence based ways.  We look at guidelines for friendships, loving sexual relationships, family life, paid and voluntary work, and in ‘spirituality’: sharing in our common humanity.

These guidelines, based on what we learn from the other knowledge domains, help to define how we play our part in the universal narrative through the many roles we adopt:

as children, friends, lovers, spouses, parents, volunteers, team members, workers, managers, intellectuals, professionals, citizens, public servants, political leaders;

and the multiple identities we have:

based on age, gender, ethnicity, race, caste, sexual preference, religion or nationality.

We end up coming to this summary of our conclusions.  You may be able to phrase this better.  In subsequent pages we expand out and justify each one of these points.

We feel confident that our personal actions are justified and valid because they are based on sound analyses, as consistent as possible with reason and the evidence, and life affirming value choices.