Ethics Instead of Morality and Religion
Trump’s re-election is a call for me to come forward.
I’ve hummed, hawed, started, and stopped more times than I can count. As my views got further and further from societal norms and I saw more and more clearly what was happening, I got more insecure about what I was saying and sharing.
As long as we had a Democratic president, the status quo was relatively safe. That meant people weren’t listening. They weren’t interested because they were still comfortable – until now. Trump makes a lot of people very uncomfortable.
And the truth is I don’t blame them. So many people voted for Trump because he wasn’t the status quo, but what they missed in all the anger, insults, and chaos was his underlying intent. He wants to be a dictator. He wants control and power and he is and was willing to say anything to get it. Now that he’s got control, we’ll see how far he’ll go to retain it.
The arguments between the left and the right can be summed up in this way – moral ideology versus religious ideology. That’s what it boils down to. Religion and morality have made their way into politics. So instead of having calm discussions about ethics and political policy, we’re taking moral high ground and trying to claim moral authority. The defense against that? Religious authority, because who has more power than God, right? It makes sense!
Both left and right were trying to force their beliefs onto the other. The left recognized that there needed to be a separation between the church and the government, but they didn’t seem to see their own hypocrisy, as they took moral beliefs that are meant to be personal and projected them onto the entire country. It’s not just church and government that need to be separate, it is also individual beliefs versus collective ethics that need to be separate.
Personal and religious beliefs about things like abortion and same-sex marriage are exactly that, they are personal or religious beliefs. They are not to be projected. The government’s job is not to ban anything or determine what is religiously or morally correct. The government is not meant to be a moral or a religious authority. Trying to make the government a moral or religious authority causes a breakdown and a division in society, much like we’ve seen in the United States. Can we have ethical discussions about how best to regulate abortion and same sex marriage? Of course, and that’s as it should be. But regulation and ethics do not include enforcing moral or religious ideology.
There is one main reason why I feel the Democrats lost and it’s not about their policy on health care or fair wages. It’s not really about abortion or same-sex marriage either. It’s actually got very little to do with policy at all. It’s censorship.
I caught a clip on TikTok of JD Vance at the Republican National Convention talking about how the left was censoring the right and it hit me hard.
Because the left is claiming moral authority, they judge what others say and do as good or bad, right or wrong. When they do that, they shut down anything they feel is wrong or bad. Consequently, it shuts down a very large swath of the US population that doesn’t agree with their moral ideology. When done at this scale, it results in censorship. The right doesn’t want to be shut down and to be honest, I don’t blame them.
Over the course of my own healing journey, I’ve become aware of my own opinions and beliefs. I recognize my own judgment. What I started to understand was that my judgment was making me want to shut down and control everything I disagreed with too. I realized quickly that this wasn’t fair. Just because I saw it as bad or wrong, didn’t mean it needed to be controlled or shut down. It didn’t even mean my judgment was correct. It just meant that I didn’t like it, but that was on me. That was my problem, not theirs. It wasn’t my job to project my personal opinion or pain onto anybody.
I lived for years feeling insecure about everything I was saying and doing. I’ve felt shut down more times than I can count. Labelling someone’s opinion as racist, sexist, homophobic, or anything else is a personal judgment based on our own experience, pain, and perception. It is not a fact or a truth. It is just pain being projected.
If we step back for a moment and question why a person might feel that way, think that way, or believe those things, you’ll see that there is pain in their belief system as well. People aren’t born with these ideas, they learn them along the way. Life taught them those things. We don’t have to like them and we don’t have to agree with them, but we need to find compassion and acceptance. We do need to be willing to disagree, because anything less than that is exerting moral authority and projecting a personal moral ideology onto somebody else. That is part of the problem.
I know that what I just wrote is not going to be well received. We have a whole lot of people that do not see the hypocrisy in what they are doing. Exerting moral authority is no different than exerting religious authority. They are the same thing and for my left-leaning friends, this is something we need to start acknowledging.
The right uses religion as a defense against the leftist moral ideology. That’s it. That’s the whole story. The entire thing will go away if you drop the moral ideology. Separate your personal morality from ethical and political discussions. Stop injecting your morality into politics. Ethical discussions are not personal.
There is an underlying belief that we are meant to protect people from themselves and others. That’s the foundational belief behind the moral authority the left holds onto. That belief isn’t true. We’re all here to have a human experience. We come in with a path of sorts. We’re here to explore certain ideas or themes – for me it’s been insecurity. Those themes show up in all kinds of different ways. Every single person will have experiences related to whatever theme they are exploring. We’re not here to protect each other from those experiences. We’re not here to protect ourselves from the themes and experiences we’re meant to explore either. We’re here to go on the journey – all of it – regardless of our judgment of it.
It’s difficult to sit back and understand that people just need to have the experiences they are having. As parents, we understand the struggle with that. It’s hard to let your children live their own lives. You want to protect them from everything. That does a disservice to our children. They need those experiences. The same can be said for other people that are going through things we don’t think they should go through. They are here to experience that – regardless of whether we think it should be happening or not. It doesn’t matter whether we perceive it to be fair or not. It’s not about fairness. These people are here to experience these things for a reason. We need to allow that reason to play out.
I’ve used this blog to focus heavily on the moral authority of the left, but understand that I see the pain on the right as well. The religious ideology of the right is just a defense against the moral ideology of the left. I don’t see it as a foundational part of their platform. I see it as nothing more than a defense mechanism.
What I see chiefly coming from the right is fear and pain. It’s partially a need for control, but it’s also a need to hang onto the past. I see them as very much clinging to the side of the pool afraid to swim and move forward. I see the racism and hate that is displayed on the right as the pain that it is. The pain is fear based. It is the fear of becoming a minority in their own country. That’s why they cling to the ideology that the United States should be a white country. That’s why they want to close the borders and kick anybody out that isn’t white, even if they were born there. The right is just a group of people that are afraid of the future.
Let’s be clear – the foundation of a conservative political viewpoint is not fear and hatred. The foundation of a democratic or left-leaning political viewpoint is not moral ideology. If all we go back to the roots of each of these political viewpoints and talk about those policies instead of religion and morality, most of the arguments we’re having today would go away.
If we stopped injecting our own personal fears and pain into our politics the problems would stop. We’d still have political viewpoints. There would still be things to fight about, but they wouldn’t run nearly as deep or cut as close to home as they do now.
I’m not asking people to drop their morality or their religion. I’m simply asking people to separate those things from their politics. You can have your morality or your religion – whatever it is. I’m not here to take it from you or argue with you about it – just separate it from political policy.
Your personal belief around whether something should exist or not is exactly that- it is your personal belief. That belief has absolutely nothing to do with making ethical policy decisions. To make an ethical policy decision you need to put that belief away. It cannot inform your ethical choices. Ethical choices allow things to exist whether you agree with them or not.
Ethical policies aren’t based on fear. They aren’t based on pain. Your job is simply to see your own pain, your own bias, your own fear and drop that from your policy making choices. That’s called consciousness. It’s awareness. Become aware of yourself enough to see where your political policy needs to stop and your personal beliefs can start. What you will find is that you can create a very clear line between the two when you’re willing to be compassionate towards others.
Ethical policy decisions don’t ban discrimination, racism, or hate. Banning it is moral ideology. Ethical policies allow those things to exist. They accept the beliefs of others, even if those personal beliefs are based on pain. Banning those things tells people they are not allowed to believe what they believe and that is how personal moral ideology gets projected. That’s when it shows up in policy making choices. Your belief that those things are wrong is exactly that – it’s your belief – don’t project it onto others. Figure out how to create a world where those things are allowed to exist.
Your moral authority is immediately arguing with that because you believe those things are wrong. But the underlying belief is in the need to protect others. When you drop the belief that you need to protect others, the idea that racism is wrong no longer needs to be projected. The only reason to project it is as a means of protection. But there is nothing to protect anybody from.
I have a couple of foundational ideas built into this philosophy.
There is nothing to protect anybody from. All experience is meant to happen and needs to happen. If it didn’t need to happen it wouldn’t happen. Things are as they need to be. Trying to limit the experience by banning everything we think is wrong doesn’t change that.
Radical acceptance and tolerance. Allow all things to co-exist equally and neutrally. Ethical policies that are not built on any personal moral or religious ideologies are what is necessary to relieve the pressure and division we currently have in society.
Our personal judgment of any experience has nothing to do with it. Our personal judgment of something is exactly that – our personal judgment. It isn’t something that is meant to be projected onto other people. It is okay to share it, as long as we recognize that it may not be agreed with. Make that disagreement okay. You’re allowed to have your personal opinion of anything, just don’t require anybody else to agree with you
I am creating a very clear line between where the individual stops and society starts. That’s very intentional because when we create that really clear line it makes it much easier to create neutral ethical policy.
I want to see neutral ethical policy become the standard in politics. I believe that this is how we resolve the current division and tension. I also believe that if we allow the current division and tension to continue to increase, that the destruction of that cycle will be far worse than anything we do now to intentionally and consciously create change.
How did I come to these conclusions?
My work in spirituality and self-mastery has been led by an innate desire to find the truth; not the human truth but the spiritual or Universal truth that exists. I wanted to find the blind spots in human perspective because I understood that our perspective is very limited.
There were some very simple concepts that most people in spiritual circles come upon. They include things like:
As above so below.
As within so without.
We are spirits in meat suits, having human experiences.
All experience is equal and neutral.
Everything happens for a reason.
God is the God of all that is, not that God of all that we perceive to be good.
There is no Devil or hell.
Spirits are not punished for their human experiences.
You are not your ego or the voice in your head.
You are not your experience.
There are so many spiritual truths that get bogged down in the ego – like the idea of acceptance. We fight with this concept because we refuse to accept the things we perceive to be bad or wrong. Once I started to spot the ego in spirituality, it made me question what the actual truth was, without the ego. Why are these foundational spiritual beliefs being spun to include the ego’s perception of right and wrong?
The more I recognized my own ego’s influences on my belief systems, the more I started to separate them from my politics. The more I separated them, the more I saw that the left was very much morally ideological.
Without the moral ideology, I agree with the left on some of their foundational principles. I don’t believe that anybody should have to fight to simply exist. I believe that food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and education should be provided freely to everybody at a basic level. If you choose to work to improve on those basics, you’re free to do so. We can create a capitalist society with a foundation that provides well-being for everybody. I have no reason to limit billionaires, but I also don’t see why people need to go hungry, be homeless, or sick. If we can have billionaires then we can have a population that is fed, clothed, sheltered, educated, and healthy.
Where I disagree with the left is in the idea that we need to take from Paul (the billionaire) to feed and shelter Peter (the homeless). Leave Paul alone. Just give Peter what they need to survive. I don’t care about the economy. Money is a human construct that is made up anyway. If feeding and sheltering people breaks the economy, then it’s the economy that needs to change, not the people. Who pays for it? Nobody! Invent the money to pay for it. It’s all made up anyway! Don’t tax people! Don’t take anything away from anybody, just give people what they need to survive and stop making up excuses about a fake economy!
I believe the economy is a bad excuse to not support people. Let them be racist, just make sure they are fed and clothed. Let them be lazy and take care of them anyway. No restrictions. No limitations. No rules. Everybody gets the bare minimum for survival regardless of income level once they turn 18. Parents are also provided with the minimum to support their children.
In all honesty, I got here because I kept challenging myself to see it without the pain of my own experience and perception. I kept challenging myself to find a way to be in the world that wasn’t built on pain. How can we structure society without a foundation of fear and pain? How can we create a world where all things, including pain, are allowed to exist without building society around the pain? I wanted to take pain out of the center of the discussion. We can accept pain as part of the experience that people are going to have without focusing on it or making it something we need to control or limit.
Lately, I’ve been running these ideas through AI. That’s offering me philosophies and constructs that already exist that I can research and look into. My ideas aren’t new as individual ideas. What is new is how I’m combining them together to create a society where freedom and collective growth are the focus instead of pain, survival, control, lack, religion, and morality.
If you’d like to see a world that looks more like this or you’re interested in exploring any of this with me, come join me. I’m building an entire platform around these constructs. Why now? Because I believe that the societal destruction we’re about to create for ourselves through our current structure, will be far worse than the fallout from shifting to a society that looks more like this. Visit dellawren.com to see what I’m up to!
Love to all.
Della