You know when I was a kid, I did a little experiment that I had read about where I floated a sewing needle that I had rubbed vigorously with a piece of cloth on a dish of vegetable oil and watched as it slowly pointed north. I was given a real compass right after that and was quite intrigued by the fact that no matter what I did to it, the needle, when left to its own devices, would inevitably turn back until it was pointing once again to magnetic north. Even as a kid, I could see how this could be useful. Always knowing where north was would make it difficult to get lost in any environment. I have known a lot of people that have a terrible sense of direction. When you ask them which way town is, they invariably point in the wrong direction. I worked with many people like that when I worked in the oil refining business. Refineries are big places. There were many times when I was listening to someone tell me about something that happened at such and such a unit within the refinery, and they would point in a direction they were talking about. I would spin them around and point out the unit clearly visible above all the others which would be in the complete opposite direction from the direction they had pointed. I’m one of the lucky ones that has a pretty good sense of direction.
Once my dad was going to take my brothers and I hunting in the woods. It was a very cloudy day and as you know, in the woods every place looks just like every other place. It’s quite easy to get turned around. Dad was leading us through the woods to a certain spot where he had hunted many times. But I noticed that we were going in circles. I whispered to my brother that we were lost. My dad heard me and told me he knew exactly where he was and that we weren’t lost at all. About fifteen minutes later, I told my brother that if we weren’t lost and going in circles why were we passing the same tree we had just passed fifteen minutes earlier. I knew better than to question my dad. But my brother hadn’t quite learned that lesson yet. He asked dad why we were going in circles. My dad got angry (even though I could tell he knew he was lost). He said if I was so smart, I should lead us back to the car. So I said okay, follow me. I made a beeline in one direction and they all followed. About ten minutes later, we came out of the woods about ten feet away from the car. Even dad was impressed.
In life it would be nice to always have a built in compass to guide you when you’re wrestling with difficult situations. You often hear people talking about a moral compass. But looking at the shape the world’s in today, it is extremely obvious that such a thing is not built in at all. The dictionary defines morals as: “of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong.”
Rules of right conduct. Hmm…where have I seen something like that put forward in black and white? Oh yeah, it was called the Ten Commandments. But those rules have pretty much fallen out of fashion, right? Then there’s that golden rule thing. But we all know that there are some sick people in the world who thrive of being treated badly. So that rule seems to be very arbitrary and is not entirely dependent on right or wrong. For such a rule to be beneficial you would have to assume that the person applying it in the first place is a moral person to begin with. Then there’s the law or set of laws that a society has agreed to abide by. But society is a conglomerate. It is made up of individuals, not all of whom will abide by those laws. So can we really count on that to protect us? And what happens when flaunting such laws is a day to day occurrence? What happens when they are flaunted openly by the majority of individuals in a society? And we’ve all seen “talented” lawyers twist the law around to suit their own purposes and obviously guilty people end up going free and unpunished. So what does a society count on for peaceful coexistence of its individual members? If a moral compass is not built into the individual or the society as a whole, how does it avoid sliding into chaos? Physical coercion? What else is there? If you toss aside a religious based set of guidelines, and daily subvert society’s legal system, and even the golden rule has lost its ability to guide good behavior and deter bad what’s left? What are the results of not really having a moral compass? To quote Bob Dylan, “Yes, how many times can a man turn his head, pretending he just doesn't see? The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind. The answer is blowin' in the wind. Look around you. The answer is plain to see.
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