One of the pivotal ideas I learned long ago is contained in this book. I am going to quote this, maybe because I'm lazy and maybe because I thought it good enough to write in longhand in my Commonsense Book.
1. Societies are successful when people choose to be good.
2. People choose to be good when they are taught and believe in good.
3. The thing which determines how well they are taught is their national books. Good national books like the Bible or Shakespeare will lead to a good nation. Bad national books like The Communist Manifestor or Mein Kampf will lead to bad nations until they reject such books.
Now, what of a nation with no national book, with no central text which almost everyone agrees upon as the measuring rod of right and wrong? Such a nation is simply without culture, or at best it is in the process of losing it.
I think this is profound. If a nation, or even a town, has to have a law governing every situation, they are doomed. That is impossible. Besides, how do you determine how something should be handled if the people cannot agree on the fundamentals? If everything is situational. Situational ethics is a moving target. Something as basic as the golden rule, stating the idea to "Do unto others as you would have others do to you," would become a cumbersome mess. Maybe that's why we can't build enough prisons anymore. Maybe that's why our court system is so inundated.
Some examples for a national book in history? The Bible, Torah, Koran, even Shakespeare have each been used. The national book, however, arises from the homes of a nation. When a book is used as the guiding principle giver in enough families, it becomes the national book. As DeMille put it, if we will defend our book as our teenagers will their music, then we have a national book (for at least our own family) in place.
1. Societies are successful when people choose to be good.
2. People choose to be good when they are taught and believe in good.
3. The thing which determines how well they are taught is their national books. Good national books like the Bible or Shakespeare will lead to a good nation. Bad national books like The Communist Manifestor or Mein Kampf will lead to bad nations until they reject such books.
Now, what of a nation with no national book, with no central text which almost everyone agrees upon as the measuring rod of right and wrong? Such a nation is simply without culture, or at best it is in the process of losing it.
I think this is profound. If a nation, or even a town, has to have a law governing every situation, they are doomed. That is impossible. Besides, how do you determine how something should be handled if the people cannot agree on the fundamentals? If everything is situational. Situational ethics is a moving target. Something as basic as the golden rule, stating the idea to "Do unto others as you would have others do to you," would become a cumbersome mess. Maybe that's why we can't build enough prisons anymore. Maybe that's why our court system is so inundated.
Some examples for a national book in history? The Bible, Torah, Koran, even Shakespeare have each been used. The national book, however, arises from the homes of a nation. When a book is used as the guiding principle giver in enough families, it becomes the national book. As DeMille put it, if we will defend our book as our teenagers will their music, then we have a national book (for at least our own family) in place.
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