When ethics and humanity can provide us direction why do we need spirituality?

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Transcript

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Thank you. Question.
Why do we need spirituality when we have ethics and humanity to give us direction and science and technology to give us speed? Answer. Ethics and humanity are definitely valuable. And they do provide a sense of moral compass.
At the same time, even from the perspective of studies in humanities, ethics and metaphysics are different branches. And ethics can tell us, if we consider the same metaphor of speed and direction, ethics and humanity can give us a sense of direction within the course of our present life. And yes, even within the course of our life, we do need morality, we do need a sense of meaning.
But ultimately, death is the biggest meaning destroyer. Death is the biggest force that seems to make even morality seem futile. We do see from our observation of the world that in this life, there are people who flagrantly violate many ethical principles and still they flourish.
So if ethics is about how we should act, then acting ethically doesn’t always lead to the best results. From this life’s perspective, sometimes greedy people are people who are greedy, manipulative, exploitative. They will become fabulously wealthy.
And it may not be that their families are falling apart or other kinds of bad things are happening to them. So while the same applies to a sense of humanity, by humanity we refer to a sense of humaneness, our sense of compassion, the sense of human decency, the sense of the shared sense of belonging that we all humans have, by which we act kindly. It’s true.
So I will talk here about there is operational and there is foundational. So yes, ethics and humanity are essential at an operational level to mold our life. But what is the foundation for ethics and humanity? Mostly within the materialistic worldview, if we don’t consider there is anything beyond matter that survives bodily death and continues to exist, and if we don’t consider that there is any divine being, supreme spiritual reality, who gives us the rewards of our action in due course, then what are we left with? We are left with not a very sound reason for following ethics.
Now of course, it’s not that we are advocating that because bad things will happen to you if you do bad things, therefore you should not do bad things. That level of fear is required at one level. If there is no fear of law, for example, would people be law abiding? Well, some people will be, many will probably not be.
So fear of consequences is an important deterrent in the civilized conduct of human society. So basically if we reject spirituality, materialism is what we are left with and materialism does not remove any of the problems of life. Materialism does not remove any of the injustices of life.
It only removes the hope, the promise, the assurance that these problems are ultimately purposeful, that the injustices will ultimately be transcended. That’s why rather than seeing ethics and humanity as replacing spirituality, we can see ethics and humanity actually arising from spirituality. When there is a spiritual foundation, then ethics make sense.
Now what is our humanity? Why should we humans act in a humane way? At a biological level, if we are simply biological machines geared for survival of the fittest, then how do our humane actions even make sense? We see some of the most, not just humane, but noble and inspiring actions are where people go utterly against the principle of survival of the fittest and there is sacrifice of the fittest for those who are unfit. Why would we humans, if we were simply biological machines geared for survival, why would we go so much against that survival instinct and be ready to sacrifice ourselves? So within the biological context itself, if we are purely biological machines, then some amount of morality as an operational tool for survival makes sense. But sacrifice, which is often seen as an extraordinarily glorious moral activity, that doesn’t make any sense at all, but we consider it glorious.
So when I say some amount of morality makes sense in operational senses, if I trust others, if I vindicate others’ trust in me, if I act in a trustworthy way, then I can hope that others will also act in a trustworthy way and that’s how we can have a functional society. So to some extent morality helps in survival, but the highest moral acts go far beyond the principle of survival and in fact they go contrary to the principle of survival. And people sometimes sacrifice their lives even for those whom they are utterly unrelated with.
It’s not even that genetically we may be completely different. People may dive into a raging river to save a stranger’s child and we consider it not a misfiring of the biological circuitry, but we consider it as a glorious example of our humanity. So where does that humanity come from? So the completeness of our humanity and our ethics cannot be described in terms of materialism, in terms of the biological substrate.
Yes, biology can explain many things, but even after all the biological reductionism we do, there are things that remain. So spirituality is the foundation for ethics and humanity and when we say spirituality gives us direction, so we can say that spirituality gives us ultimate direction and a spiritual worldview gives rise to ethics, gives rise to meaningful understanding of humanity. And then it helps us guide ourselves in our life.
Thank you.