Selective Caring - Everyone’s Moral to Some Point or Other

I got a pretty average glimpse recently of something which got me thinking. An electrical tradesman’s utility with the ‘Dial-Before-You-Dig’ sticker on the tray. I got to thinking that he’d, of all people, be a ‘Dial-Before-You-Dig’ activist.

I broadened my thinking out to the fact that everyone’s got a specialty in this life; everyone’s an activist for something good it seems--broad generalisation, I know.

There’s a type of wisdom involved in dialling before you dig. It saves lives and protects services and infrastructure. Yet, it’s the sort of wisdom requiring moral diligence--the sort of virtue that doesn’t take short cuts anytime, especially in situations of pressure and urgency.

The electrician knows more than most the dangers inherent in live electricity, especially when it’s covered with dirt or concrete. The gas fitter too knows this. Both respect the wisdom in the law to dial before digging. They think anyone not doing so simply mad.

Yet, why would these people not also see the wisdom in other constructs in life. Why would they not see the wisdom, for instance, in various permeations of law in the judicial system, which only seeks to keep up with contemporary societal trends in any event? For that is what the law is; it’s a protector against known threats to society. Throw rocks at public transport buses and you should be jailed; but before it became as prevalent as it is the legislators didn’t know. Why do so many think the law an ass?

There’s a challenge in this for all of us in meeting our perceptions, values and attitudes with wisdom--which never changes. We must conform to it, not the other way around.

The more morally sound we are the more our lives can be in tune with the society we live in and the more we’ll understand the morality indwelt in all things.

Living today, as always, requires us--if we want to be happy--to accept status quos and indeed work with them.

Selective listening we’ve heard about. Selective caring is an altogether too common problem as people ignore what can plainly be seen through the open eyes of the heart.

Wisdom is inherent in all things, and we humans are fallible. Accept these two facts and there’s no reason to kick against the goads that are the stimulus of life.