Morals & Principles for Leaders

 

It’s a valentine season I thought of writing a love letter, a letter which completely explains the pain and the pleasure of love. The utmost joy which turns out to be the melancholy of life! Did I ever love anyone? Yes I did manier times and time and again, it’s rather foolish to not to love and not to be loved by someone.

 

It’s amazing when we realize that the most exciting thing become most boring over a period a time, eh now the question is are we human beings or habitual beings? Don’t know who I Am? Still confused and trying to understand myself over the period of these many years.
 

Can we keep these jokes apart? It doesn’t suit people like me oh nice Joke!! Well today we will talk about Morals and Principles! Don’t ask me what does this mean?

Jeremy Bentham is a well known political thinker and a philosopher he digged deep in laws of morality and principle. I shall rather start this article by saying “If any man who understood the human society & human more profoundly and that was Jeremy Bentham! The world is not as green we feel and see, its filled with all sorts of con man, like the cave with full of snakes! The irony of these very principles is the more you read and learn the more you want to go on and on…. Just life that!
 

“Jeremy Bentham and his principal of Utility”
 

Principles of Utility:
 

He states certain principles in his book called “Principles of Morals & Legislation”.

1.       The nature placed mankind under the governance of two masters, pain & the pleasure.  It is for each of us to think what we should do and what we shouldn’t. He expounds that at every given decision making situation we consciously or unconsciously think of these two masters. A man should always and will always go with any decision which increases pleasure. And that must and should be the right thing to do.

2.       Then should we do with the society or the community we live in, he observes that “Community is the combination of individual” and anything which increases the pleasure of community should be and ought to the right thing do.

Interesting!!!! Now the question for you on the above mentioned principle” is that right to hurt minority to ensure the majority lives happily”??

And if you propose that it’s ethically & morally right to cause pain for minority then who gave you the permission to decide?
 

Principle of asceticism:

I think this would make lot of sense for us to hear it from “horse’s mouth” By the principle of asceticism I mean that principle, which, like the principle of utility, approves or disapproves of any action, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question; but in an inverse manner: approving of actions in as far as they tend to diminish his happiness; disapproving of them in as far as they tend to augment it ( Page # 19 Principles of Morales & legislation – Jeremy Bentham).

And he beautifully adds “Mostly the principle of asceticism” is embraced by two sets of people, moralist & religionists.  The reason could have been the “philosophical pride”, “honor of Pride” Or it could possible the fear of “Deity”. “Fear is more powerful than hope”. I quote”.

We have heard, read see saints, roaming around the places and sitting calmly under a tree to find something, they give up everything. They search which they call it “Sat-chit-ananda” and “beyond”, where the different philosophies across the world have a say on its own.
 

Recently I picked up copy of the book called The Autobiography of Yogi, the book talks about the journey of yogi as you would have probably understood by the title of the book. And it also describes about the small village child travelling beyond the cities, mountains & hills and finding a guru to achieve the “Absoluteness or nothingness”.
 

After all! Does the “Asceticism” really save us from all unhappiness in the world and give us the “So called happiness”?

Or if I may say in Jeremy Bentham’s way does it augment the happiness?
 

I don’t want to talk more about this principle because I have read about sect of people who have forced others to accept a particular religion (still the conversion is on!! Hurray!!).  So called spiritual Gurus are all famous for wrong reasons!! Being a priest is the most secured and lucrative job from ancient times! (Ask the beneficiary and they will tell you, I know a priest who gets paid more than a Doctor or a scientist!) Best is yet to come Government of India is also trying to introduce a diploma course called “Priestism”, do they quote in that course too…. Yes this is secretly for General castes!! SC, ST and any other are barred from admission.

 

 “Idleness is the road to holiness” – Jeremy Bentham!!

 

 

Principles of Sympathy & Antipathy:

Among principles adverse to that of utility, that which at this day seems to have most influence in matters of government, is what may be called the principle of sympathy and antipathy. By the principle of sympathy and antipathy, I mean that principle which approves or disapproves of certain actions, not on account of their tending to augment the happiness, nor yet on account of their tending to diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question, but merely because a man finds himself disposed to approve or disapprove of them: holding up that approbation or disapprobation as a sufficient reason for itself, and disclaiming the necessity of looking out for any extrinsic ground. Thus far in the general department of morals: and in the particular department of politics, measuring out the quantum (as well as determining the ground) of punishment, by the degree of the disapprobation (Page # 23 Jeremy Bentham).

He argues that every time we consider Sympathy & Antipathy principle in human actions to determine which disapprobation, you need to counsel your own feelings!

Whatever you find in yourself a propensity to condemn is wrong for that very reason. For the same reason it is also meet for punishment: in what proportion it is adverse to utility, or whether it be adverse to utility at all, is a matter that makes no difference. In that same proportion also is it meet for punishment: if you hate much, punish much: if you hate little, punish little: punish as you hate. If you hate not at all, punish not at all: the fine feelings of the soul are not to be overborne and tyrannized by the harsh and rugged dictates of political utility.

There are four distinguishable sources from which pleasure and pain are in use to flow: considered separately they may be termed the physical, the political, the moral and the religious: and inasmuch as the pleasures and pains belonging to each of them are capable of giving a binding force to any law or rule of conduct, they may all of them termed sanctions.

Physical Sanction:

If it be in the present life, and from the ordinary coursed of nature, not purposely modified by the interposition of these will of any human being, nor by any extraordinary interposition of any superior invisible being, that the pleasure or the pain takes place or is expected, it may be said to issue from or to belong to the physical sanction.
 

Political Sanctions:
 

If at the hands of a particular person or set of persons in the community, who under names correspondent to that of judge, are chosen for the particular purpose of dispensing it, according to the will of the sovereign or supreme ruling power in the state, it may be said to issue from the political sanction.

Moral Sanctions:

 

If at the hands of such chance persons in the community, as the party in question may happen in the course of his life to have concerns with, according to each man’s spontaneous disposition, and not according to any settled or concerted rule, it may be said to issue from the moral or popular sanction.

If from the immediate hand of a superior invisible being, either in the present life, or in a future, it may be said to issue from the religious sanction.

I am not the smartest of lot, when I read his book everything was bouncing over my head. As if I was dreaming of certain unnatural flying saucers, the beauty of it is to understand the unimaginable I suppose I am trying to impress you with my writing skills, which seem not to improve over the years.  I don’t want to bore you much with my thoughts; I simple want to say these are pretty basic principles of life.

Some have understood and some have never! I cannot complete talking about these principle in one blog. Keeping read to know more…

Cheers and May your Valentine remain!!!