Harmony, Morality and the Inner Voice
In the study I conducted with my colleague, Berne Weiss, during our work in Eastern Europe during the years when the Soviet Union was collapsing (Bergquist, and Weiss, 1994), considerable attention was given to the ways in which the citizens of two countries (Estonia and Hungary) were addressing the challenges associated with their new-found freedom. At the heart of their confrontation of this new freedom was the choice between escaping from the burdens associated with this new freedom and finding liberation in the range of options now available. In the midst of this choice between escape and liberation was the question of mutuality. Can liberated citizens of Estonia or Hungary move forward together with shared interests, or is the new freedom to be engaged (as in many Western societies) through individual actions? Must the imposed collectivism of the Soviet regime be replaced by the individualism of the Western world or is there another option—a mutuality of interests?
My colleague, Berne Weiss, became intrigued with this question of mutuality—and in particular with the notion of an inner voice as central to the notion of mutuality in the midst of new-found freedom. Her interviews with Vaclav Brichacek, Jiii Hoskovec, and MirekJuno in Prague were particularly insightful in this regard. She found that freedom becomes a function of the individual “listening to the inner voice,” as Professor Brichacek described it. A mutuality of interests can only be established if there is a shared version of the truth. The question then becomes: who owns the truth? Weiss’ three interviewers all indicated that each individual does have access to the truth internally, regardless of the press, the state’s relationship with the press, or the degree of information technology at his or her disposal. With this foundation of shared truth comes the opportunity for finding mutual interests.
Moral Man and Immoral Society
In returning to the insights offered by Berne Weiss and her Hungarian colleagues, I am reminded of the analysis offered by the theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, who wrote about “Moral Man and Immoral Society.” For Niebuhr, individual citizens maintain the morality of their society—the “inner voice” identified by Brichacek. The collective will compromise, distort and neglect. It is the individual, person who hold firm with the fundamental values of their society. Collectively, the voice of individual morality must be assembled—as Anonymous suggests—to protect the interests of all citizens. Cutting right to the chase in Moral Man and Immoral Society, Niebuhr immediately offered his basic premise on the first page of his introduction (Niebuhr, 1932, p. xxvii):
“Individual men may be moral in the sense that they are able to consider interests other than their own in determining problems of conduct, and are capable, on occasion, of preferring the advantages of others to their own. They are endowed by nature with a measure of sympathy and consideration for their kind, the breadth of which may be extended by an astute social pedagogy. Their rational faculty prompts them to a sense of justice which educational discipline may refine and purge of egoistic elements until they are able to view a social situation, in which their own interests are involved, with a fair measure of objectivity. But all these achievements are more difficult, if not impossible, for human societies and social groups. In every human group there is less reason to guide and to check impulse, less capacity for self-transcendence, less ability to comprehend the needs of others and therefore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who compose the group, reveal in their personal relationships.”
