The previous entry equated a high quality of life with preserving our natural rights. There is an inherent problem modern culture faces with this. It’s easy to preserve natural rights where there are limited choices that can be made. When those choices expand because of diversity so does the difficulty of preverving the natural rights of all. Different cultural beliefs and behaviors are bound to be at odds with each other. In fact, the advent of civilizations brought to us the advent of scholasticism and dogmatism, the root causes of all major conflicts, including the World Wars of the twentieth century.
Maintaining natural rights for all thus hinges in large part on how we resolve diverse cultural beliefs and behaviors. The approach of the ideologue, the dogmatist, leads to conflict and oppression that at times become horrific. The opposite of the ideologue is the skeptic for whom “seeing is believing.” This leads to a better resolution of diverse beliefs and behaviors because skeptics are willing to adjust theirs according to what they experience with others. Idolatry is the goal for a room full of ideologues; harmony is the goal for a room full of skeptics.
Our society is full of ideologues with stiff allegiance to their fixed dogmatic beliefs. Think tanks are ideologues, as are political parties. Both think tanks and parties are types of interest groups. This is the litmus test of a society’s devotion to either idolatry or harmony. As a general rule, cultures driven by interest groups feature the idolatrous conflicts of dogmatism; cultures driven by community seek harmonious resolutions to diverse yet flexibly held beliefs.
When idolatry rules a culture the ends justify the means. Political authoritarianism and economic greed help to deliver these ends at whatever cost. When harmony rules a culture the means justify the ends. As long as resources are distributed with merit and decisions made with wisdom, cultural beliefs will be resolved through harmonious means, the natural rights for all will be better preserved, and our quality of life will be enhanced.
