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3. ETHICS: THE IDEAL AND ONLY LONG-TERM SOLUTION
3.1. What are Ethics?
Conflict and cooperation are social processes embedded in a deeper cultural matrix.
Any attempt to transform situations of conflict or potential conflict must entail an
understanding of social change. In developing ethical and cultural incentives of water
for cooperation one must explore the means by which societies undergo
transformational changes, and understand the processes by which attitudes and
institutions change.
Our outlooks on life, perceptions, cognitive styles, and sensibilities are the result
of the dynamics of being in the world as individuals and coping within the parameters
of our cultural inheritance with ever-changing life situations. Individuals are neither
passive puppets enacting traditional cultural programs nor totally free agents who can
create their world ex nihilo. Traditions are important. They maintain a sense of order
and stability. At the same time, a blind or dogmatic adherence to tradition can
prevent societies from coping with new situations. Hence societies cannot live long
without admitting change and innovations. Human society is the product of a long
evolutionary journey in which constant change or adaptation has been characterized
by two driving forces, social organization and intelligence.
The virtues of love and compassion in human beings are intertwined in human
minds with the capacity to transcend their bodily interactions in the world and their
circumstantial situations. This exceptional mental power, which can be traced in our
cousins among the primates, is magnified to such an extent that it sets us apart from
other animals. Transcending the tangible world – developing, storing, processing, and
retrieving ideas in a world of “virtual reality” – was tantamount to an evolutionary
threshold. It was a revolutionary achievement that has enabled us to survive under
very different environments, from the arctic to the tropics, from parched deserts to
rainforests, from valley floors to mountaintops. This exceptional intelligence allowed
us to solve problems, not the least of which is living with others who are different
from us. In fact, sociality was the womb of intelligence.
In turn, intelligence is the guardian of sociality. There are often more problems
to solve in a social environment than those encountered in dealing with natural
environments. As emotional animals with the proactive minds of thinking primates,
humans are prey to swings of moods and flights of fancy – some can bring us close
together, while some can repel, threaten or endanger others. The mind thus becomes
a powerful game-playing tool. Its individual reality (subjectivity) must be harmonized
with that of others if the individual is to survive. As such, there is no such thing as
individual subjectivity: subjective views are embedded in a socially constructed intersubjectivity,
the only kind of objectivity humans know. To know others or the world
without human eyes and cultural lenses and filters constituted by our being in society,
which is in turn a channel in the braided stream of human culture, is impossibility. For
us, absolute objectivity is a meaningless notion.
Our actions are determined by a system of moral principles for individual,
community, and international behavior, or ethics. Ethical notions are enshrined in
rituals and imbued with a sense of inviolability and sanctity. Ethical beliefs are bonded
in our minds with deep emotions and sentiments that verge at times on passion, zeal,
and devotion. Ethics are not the dry subject of textbooks. They are the incendiary fuel
of disputation and the pacifying ointment of social cohesion.
3.2. Ethics and Social Performance
Changes from conflict to cooperation are much more than resolution of conflict. The
aim is to transform the situation in a manner that ensures cessation of hostile
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