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keeping in touch with ones’ values in daily decision- making.
I can’t say what each individual’s conscience would dictate but I would say that none of us should turn off the voice of our conscience in our daily choices with the illusion that, in the end, it doesn’t matter. Or that the end result will make it all okay.
Do you see many examples around us today to support that view?
It’s difficult. The marketplace and the media seem to hold up the end product as the important thing. They seem to reward the individual who gets that goal, without looking at what came before or what comes after. But at least here at school I think students do see examples, especially in the curriculum. In U.S. history, students study a period of industrial growth in which personal ambition was pursued to the ultimate with no consideration for social consequences. A generation later, the federal government stepped in and corrected the excesses but it was not a peaceful process.
My students see the parallels with contemporary times. They are interested in the conflicting concepts of business strictly for profit versus business as a community enterprise with obligations that extend beyond the bottom line. We have looked at examples of both extremes but we have most profitably looked at examples of companies that seem to merge the two.
Do you see signs of change in the role of social conscience for the next several years?
There seems to be a growing recognition of a need for community. Clinton’s volunteer service concept is one example. Ihearmoreandmorereferencetothefact that we are communal people. People are identified as community members — the academic community, thescientificcommunity,forexample. Thereseemsto be a recognition that we need to reconstruct our sense of communal life and I hope this will happen.
If it is to happen, our decisions need to be made in a communal context, recognizing their effect on all the members of our communities. Individuality
Sunflower seeds from a field in the Ukraine are growing in the Priory’s soil. When harvested, they will be shared with another school, possibly locally or possibly back on Russian soil. Nuclear warheads once resided in the Ukrainian field where sunflowers now thrive. Priory students hope to perpetuate this symbol of peace with the sunflowers they grow. U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry (ret.), who was instrumental in the disarmament process, brought the seeds to Woodside Priory when he spoke on the campus last spring.
within community is explicit in Benedictine tradition as well as our other heritages, such as the Puritan village, the founding of a commonwealth, the settling of the west with its barn-raisings, and so forth. Virtually all religious traditions place value on living withconcernforothers. Individualrightsarealsoa part of our heritage, obviously, but taken to the extreme they denigrate the communal self and that’s what we are realizing.
The question for the next century will be whether thecommunities are openorclosedcommunities, whether they define themselves as inclusive or exclusive. We haven’t got a strong heritage demonstrating how to disagree on basic issues and yet maintain some type of civility.
What do social values have to do with one’s conscience?
It’s a part. We see ourselves as part of something greater than ourselves, as part of a human society. Everybody’s decisions have social consequences, even if people don’t like to think about what they are. There are examples of people in all walks of life who make decisions for some value greater than themselves. Itmaybetheroadlesstakenbutpeople take it. All you have to do is look around. I like the advice from St. Benedict that we should live in the world but always keep our mortality before us.
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