FEEDING the SOUL Three Lectures on Strengthening Moral Courage in Public Life Lecture Three: Moral Practice
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The essay based upon this lecture is published in The Moral Heart of Public Service (JKP 2017), available here. Other Institute publications in the Haus Curiosities series are available here. All Haus Curiosities are discounted by 30% with free postage, and a donation of 10% of whatever a customer pays to NHS Charities Together. FEEDING THE SOUL Three lectures on Strengthening Moral Courage in Public Life Lecture Three: Moral Practice Claire Foster-Gilbert Director, Westminster Abbey Institute 7th April 2014 My lords, ladies and gentlemen. At my 21st birthday party, my father made a speech, in which he told this anecdote. A cockerel had been purchased by a farmer to service his hens. Full of bright promise and good intentions, the cockerel went into the hen coop to start his work - and found that he was incapable. He failed, miserably. The hens cackled at him and shooed him out of their coop. Flopping around the farmyard, distressed as anything, feeling useless and foolish, the cockerel found himself drawn despite himself to the field of cows where, without a shadow of a doubt, and clearly with great skill and enjoyment, the bull was performing the very service at which the cockerel had been so dreadfully lacking. The cockerel drooped miserably on the fence by the side of the field. The bull, having finished his day’s work, sauntered over to the cockerel. ‘What’s up, old chap?’ he asked. I’ve failed,’ said the cockerel. ‘I’m supposed to do to the hens what you’ve just been doing to the cows, and I’ve failed. I - I just can’t seem to manage.’ The bull was sympathetic. ‘I’ve a solution for you,’ he said. The cockerel brightened. ‘Really?’ ‘It always works, believe me,’ said the bull, with total conviction. ‘Tell me, tell me,’ said the cockerel eagerly. ‘I’ll do anything you say!’ 1 ‘For the next three days,’ said the bull, looking straight at the cockerel, ‘nibble a bit from the edge of my droppings - you can choose the dryer ones - just a bit, every day for three days. You should find that does the trick.’ The cockerel, though slightly disgusted, did as the bull recommended. For three days, he nibbled at the droppings. Nothing seemed to change, he felt as droopy and useless as ever, until the evening of the third day, when, as if by magic, he perked up. So much so that he went straight to the hen coop, and taking no nonsense from the hens, performed his duty on every one of them. It took till midnight. He was so thrilled at his success that he flew up to the highest point in the farmyard, the roof of the farmhouse, threw his head back and let out the loudest cock-a-doodle-doo in Christendom. The farmer, wakened suddenly and violently from a deep sleep, leapt out of bed, grabbed his gun, ran out of the front door, and shot the cockerel, who died instantly. And the moral of the story is: if you get to the top through bull****, don’t crow about it. Tonight we will look at stories - stories that inspire, stories that lie, stories we tell of ourselves and those that others tell of us. This story, which I have never forgotten, taught a necessary humility and awareness of the role of others in any achievement. To recap: in the first lecture I offered a framework for ethical analysis to assist clear thinking in moral decision-making, drawn from the western philosophical canon. I suggested that a proposed action be scrutinised from goal-based, duty-based and right-based perspectives: goal-based to consider what the proposed action was trying to achieve and whether those goals were desirable and good; duty-based to consider what had to be done in order to achieve the goals, and whether the means were acceptable, not to justify the ends but intrinsically; and finally the right-based perspective to consider whether those most affected by the proposed action were happy with it: had their consent been sought? With such an analysis at hand, I suggested, moral thinking would become clearer, if not easier. Strengthening moral courage in thinking means exercising these analytical skills, allowing our minds to stretch when apparently mutually exclusive moral goods compete, and being ready to be quickly decisive if called upon, knowing what compromises had been made and why. The image I left you with was that of a three-legged stool, that stands firm even on uneven ground. Last week we considered what it was to feel moral. We looked at four perceptions of the world around us, drawn from the Judeo-Christian tradition, to help us see the world with new eyes, to feel our connection with everything else, to feel, as Hildegarde of Bingen expressed it, that ‘God made everything in the world in consideration of everything else’ and so to be conscious of the fact that everything we do has an effect on everything else. That was the creation covenant perception. Then there was the sense of the sacred, that everything in creation is loved by God and is therefore to be treated with deep respect - there is nowhere called away where we can throw things. The priesthood of humanity saw the human family as guests at a feast, receiving the good things of creation as gifts, not as rights. Finally the sabbath feast of enoughness permitted us, and all creation, to rest. Strengthening moral courage in emotion means falling in love with the whole; facing the global challenges of climate change, sustainable development, trade and finance which are all connected. Then the three approaches of goal-based, duty-based and right-based thinking can be brought into play, but in a much bigger, more joined-up and global world than we had been aware of hitherto. In practical terms then, one starts with the lesson of lecture two, the feeling or orientation of love for all, and then takes the lesson of lecture two, using ones analytical skills to consider the moral choices one faces on a daily basis. And finally, this week, I want to look at moral acting. What gives us the courage to act? It is one thing to experience beautiful feelings of connectedness and responsibility, then to have worked out on paper, as it were, what is right; it is quite another to stand up and take a step forwards. I promised, last week, that I would show how to travel from a high moral vision to its achievement, citing the example of JF Kennedy as the one who inspired US citizens to see beyond national self- interest to the good of all and who showed the way to get there. This week’s lecture will describe a path from feeling and thinking morally to acting morally. The material I am going to use comes from Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a thousand faces. I am once again indebted, this time to Luke Parsons QC, for introducing me to this work, and with whom I co-founded the Ethics Academy to teach ethics to young people and others using the story-telling approach found in Campbell. Campbell was a social anthropologist, and understood myth and the power of myth better than anyone I have come across before. He shows how in every myth that has ever been told there is a common thread or plot, in which the protagonist or hero embarks on a quest that transforms him or her, and from which he or she returns with the elixir that in turn serves others. This mono-myth describes the journey of the self into virtue and communitarian ethics, hence our use of it for young people, and we will look at it together tonight. But there are two lenses I want us to use, because of the particular circumstances of these lectures. One is that the hero of the story, because it is us, and we are public servants, starts knowing that this journey is not about me. The public servant acts, by virtue of his or her title, for others. That is what the Nolan principles all point the public servant towards. Moreover, we can also think of the story as being about the development of the collective, the community, institution, nation or human family. Because we are public servants, we can let our minds work on the story in this non-individualistic way. The other lens I want to suggest is that rather than use the word ‘hero’, I will use the word ‘pilgrim’, removing the connotations of specialness that ‘hero’ implies, and joining us with the countless thousands who have journeyed here over the centuries. So - think of your life, or that of your institution, as a film. You, unique you, like whom there never has been and never will be anyone, ever, are the protagonist of the film of ‘Life of [your name]’. 3 What kind of a film has your life been so far? Romantic comedy? Tragedy? Thriller? And what kind of a pilgrim have you been so far? Are you enjoying yourself? Are you challenged, or are you bored? Are you open to new possibilities? Do you know who or what you want to be? What sets your belly on fire? Or - do you feel as though you are treading a well-worn path through a thousand weary days of getting dressed and going to work, feeding the family, a slave to the quotidian calls on your time and your purse, with no clear idea of what you are doing or where you are going? Do you feel even more of a victim than that? Are you bullied? Are you physically or mentally challenged in some way that makes you feel you are being held back from doing what you have always wanted to do? What would you do if you were not afraid? In the story, this stage, the first stage, is called The Ordinary World.