Dear Mike,
Irrespective of the belief that any of us may have in God, I believe that we can agree on rules. Most human actions and ideas begin in concepts, responses, or preferences of some kind. The existential choices we make and enact transform some of these into rules.
Human beings have the capacity to make a solemn undertaking to accept and abide by rules. Traditionally, we do this by giving a pledge, a promise, a commitment, or an oath. The rules to which we agree in this way rise above momentary preference to become rules.
In many nations, one may swear an oath before God or swear an equally valid affirmation as a solemn undertaking. In Australia, for example, one may choose between an oath sworn on a sacred book or an affirmation for many processes that would once have required an oath.
It is my view that human beings may responsibly make an existential commitment to create and abide by rules.
Warm wishes,
Ken
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Mike Zender wrote:
—snip—
I was touched by the list of 8 Principles in your post. It struck me that four of them used the word "rules" and one other used the near synonym "boundaries."
The problem is that we no longer have rules or even the possibility of rules, we have preferences.
I am not the scholar you are, and it is late Saturday night here, and I am away from my library, but I believe several of the USA's founders and at least one observer of their the USA - de Tocqueville in Democracy in America - wrote that without consensus on "rules," specifically the consensus of Christian belief, that democracy was impossible.
I think de Tocqueville was right. Apart from a widely shared faith in God, apart from consensus belief in a rule-giver higher than all and to whom we owe all and to whom we all submit and worship and wonder, rules are just personal preferences. Voting may continue in a society based on preferences but in a society based on preferences democracy is no longer possible and it is not design that will save us. I admire Victor Margolin tremendously and wish he and his project the best but perhaps on this one point, we disagree.
That is where I think we are.
—snip—
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