Holte's corner

Principles and Vision

I love Buddhism. But I'm no more attached to any particular religious solution offered by modern Buddhists than I am to any Judeo-Christian-Moslem religion. I am attached to basic Buddhist Principles -- where they validate.

Religious practices are many. Basic principles are few. We only need one vision.

The following is a rough draft of a basic idea:

One core principle is that one should use principled thinking to guide one's words, deeds, and actions. The benefit of this is that principles are distilled from experience and represent distilled wisdom about what goals are worthy of pursuing and what objectives constitute an integral life. People who live by principles can look themselves in the mirror and see someone worthy, "integral" (with integrity), and with self worth (not measured by false measures). Integrity is setting boundaries and a main path, and then focusing ones efforts around that main path. Principles tell us where to set those boundaries (objectives and goals are boundaries in time, values are boundaries, properties are the area within those boundaries -- see earlier post).

A second principle is that one has to identify one's real principles, validate their integrity (boundaries), and then connect them to ones behavior so one can apply them; or one is not engaging in genuine principled thinking and behavior. Many people talk, preach or advocate principles. They often don't really believe what they are talking about. [This is demonstrated when you fact check an assertion and find the person is lying]. They use principles as a tool for controlling (or fooling) others but not themselves. We all know people who talk about free markets but are merely shills for giant corporations. We all know people who don't practice what they preach. When someone talks about the importance of family while fooling around on and divorcing a wife, one is noticing a person whose principles are shallow and not really worked out.

A third principle is that one has to take principles and validate them. That means one has to identify what those principles mean. There are no real absolute principles. Absolute simply means abstract. A principle applies meaning when it is privileged with behavior. For example; Having the right to freedom in the abstract is meaningless to a prisoner in a penitentiary, or a person struggling to stay alive in the streets. Principles acquire meaning when they are applied. They have to be weighted, connected to other principles, validated against "where they apply and where they don't." If a principle is not "real" then it is not really a principle. Above all principles should be truthful in an abstract sense and map to truthful realities.

Fourth; Principles have to be tied to vision and empowered. Principles without vision are empty. A person just doesn't have a clue on how to make principles real without some overarching image of what it means for those principles to be real. For example the Vision of Isaiah still guides Jews and non-Jews alike:

"The sword shall be beaten into a plow... Man shall not lift up hand against his other man, And nations shall not wage war on nation...." The lion shall lie down with the lamb and both shall eat straw together...." Each vision puts together a set of principles; "peace" with some image of how to realize that vision. The elements of the vision also set forth the attributes necessary to the full realization of it. For example, the lion merely lying down with the lamb is not peace. The vision of peace involves the lion giving up the appetite for meat and being able to feed on grain alongside the calf or lamb. The vision of peace is all of these. To implement it are very clear tasks: beating swords into plough shares. Reducing human conflict. Forbidding nations to attack other nations.

Fifth: Principles should be ethical and guide morality. Visions are "higher truth." That means they start out as narratives that can remain fiction or become real. My vision of the "Cathedral" is an example of this. A cathedral can be a holy beautiful place. But the same rocks and stones, concrete and steel that can build a cathedral can build a principle. Ethics is about setting boundaries that include the needs, wants and aspirations of other human beings. Selfish principles are at best amoral, and at worst, immoral.

Unethical or Immoral principles in the long run don't produce net value. Because principles are about setting reasonable and negotiable rules, limits, boundaries for behavior. If one doesn't accept the principle of the value of the concept of the "greatest good", "common good", and that "no man is an island" one can very well set up that one's own good is all that matters. Then ones concept of boundaries with others will become murky. What was wrong with Bernie Maddoff taking investments from one person to pay another? He made a lot of money for himself. The problem is that it was unprincipled and caused harm to others. Unethical behavior is setting up "win/lose", "war" and other games as ethical as long as they pay off for the self. Machievelli talked a lot about these kinds of principles and calculations. He also showed how they work and don't work in the short run -- and an examination of history shows how they degrade happiness even for the "winners" in the long run. Principles should be ethical.

Summary:

To take a principle and make it reality requires vision. An enumeration of principles is not enough by itself. A great leader should lay out a vision for what the world will look like if that vision is implemented. It is against this vision that principles can be weighed and measured.

Sometimes one has to pander and sometimes one has to fight. Knowing when to fight and when to negotiate; when to compromise and when not to, is the mark of a great leader; but is also the mark of a principled person. To make that decision one has to tie ones efforts to the vision one is operating under.

Some people missed their chance for genuine greatness because they betray their principles. When someone betrays principles "for the wrong reasons" that is a result of not having really developed a consistent set of principles in the first place. It is easy to adopt false, distorted, excessively rigid, or even evil principles. It is also easy to develop principles that

But most failures in business, politics and the international spotlight come about because people don't use their principles intelligently. They don't do so because they don't tie them explicitly to their vision of where the enterprise is going, what it is about, and what it should look like and behave like.

I was going to talk about Obama's principles and how he could be more effective if he would tie them to principle. Bush was effective because he laid out visions. He failed because his vision was founded on unethical principles. Obama lays out principles. To be effective requires both ethical principle and vision.