ESSAYS IN SEARCH OF UNDERSTANDING

Whether we take any of these directives at the minimal level (cause no harm) or at the maximal level (“Love one another as I have loved you”, implying a willingness to self-sacrifice for the other), there is an implication in all of these views that I want to examine. And that implication is that there are things (actions) that would or do “harm” other people and its converse: that there are actions that “help” people (human beings). This implication is perhaps most easily seen by considering the simple directive: help other people. To carry out such a directive, you must have some idea of what would actually help (or harm) people. And when the directive is framed in such a generic way, the implication is that certain actions or behaviors and their intended outcomes will, in fact, help people. And note that the more important part here is the “and their intended outcomes” since it's those outcomes that define the help as “help” or the outcome as “good for” people. And the converse of this implication is that there are things, actions and behaviors, that do, in fact, harm people. In other words, these notions of harming and helping (or benefitting) people are neither arbitrary nor (entirely) subjective. Certain actions or behaviors really do harm people, and certain other actions and behaviors really do help or benefit people. This probably does not seem like much of a revelation to you. You're inclined to think, I suspect, that you knew this all along, so what's the big deal? The “big deal” lies in the answer to this question: why does doing X “harm” people and doing Y “help” them? And I'm going to suggest that it's because they either help the person achieve “a more fully realized human life” or they hinder them from doing so. In other words, these notions of “help” or “benefit” and “harm,” as they apply to human beings, imply some standard or idea of the way a human life, at its best, can be. So, to the extent that your behaviors toward the other helps them achieve that well-being or, alternatively, causes them to fail or hinders them in their efforts to achieve it, your actions either benefit or harm the other. In short, there is a way of being human which constitutes an ideal of what it is to be human and there are other ways of being which deviate from that ideal to more or less greater degrees. And if you think you know what it is that benefits or harms people, then you must have some notion of what it is to be what I referred to above as a more fully realized human being. Few of us have actually taken the time to spell-out, for ourselves, what exactly that notion involves. And I'd like to spend a little time with you trying to do just that, but later in this essay. At this point I would like for us to focus on the implication, the presumption actually, that we just reviewed.