How to Find Your Moral Compass | Healthy Aging Series: S12 E17
You need a map and a compass. And, you need to know where you are right now on the map. Use a compass to orient your map to the north. Line up the edge of the compass along the imaginary line to where you’re going. This gives you a bearing.
If you’re in the woods, the mountains, or the desert, and you followed that bearing, and if you’re good at following handrails like streams, or roads, or powerlines and fences, and you’re good at judging distances, you eventually get to where you want go.
This is called Orienteering. The local orienting club, OLOU (Orienteering of Louisville), of which I’m a member, holds several meets throughout the year to help you practice the skill of using a compass and a map.
Twenty years ago, I did a 12-hour orienteering meet through Bernheim Forest, in the pouring rain. You get a map marked with several controls, which are basically points on the map, that indicate the site of an electronic register. Your goal is to check in at as many controls as possible during those 12 hours.
If you’ve been to Bernheim Forest, you know it’s 12 hours of hills. Hopefully you don’t get lost.
A map. A compass. Knowing your destination.
Feeling loss is no fun. I think it happens mostly when you don’t know where you are on the map. Obviously!
Time to Weave
I’m going to do a little weave here and shift to a different kind of being lost.
I think we’re beginning to feel lost as individuals and as a country. I think we’ve lost our moral compass.
And by moral compass, I mean we’ve lost our respect, our decency, our kindness, our acceptance, our tolerance, and our concern for people.
That’s what morality is all about. It isn’t just following a prescribed set of rules regarding your behavior. It’s about how we treat people.
We have lost our way and our moral compass, and we don’t care about people anymore. It’s all about ideology.
And when I say we, I don’t really mean me and maybe not you, but I mean social media influencers, I mean religious leaders, I mean celebrities, and I mean pundits of every stripe and flavor.
We’ve lost our moral compass and we’ve become mean.
I think much of this meanness is rooted in bigotry, which is rooted in fear. If I learned anything from reading James Baldwin, it’s that racism, and I include bigotry, is the way people act out their fears.
People who have lost their moral compass fear losing their status to people who are different. This is mostly white people, fearing the loss of status to people of color, and people who speak another language.
Sometimes people lose their moral compass when they see the ethical and moral foundation, which they’ve stood on since childhood, start to crack and crumble. They fear the diversification of morality.
It’s the “Member Berries” effect that South Park highlighted.
“Member when things were simple. Member when it was only men and women that were married. Member when you were either a man or a woman. Member when everyone knew their place. Member when things were predictable. Member when the Cowboys and the Redskins were the ones who played on Thanksgiving days. Member when there were only three networks, no Hip-Hop, no Rock ‘n Roll, just Country Western and Motel 6.”
All of this change scares people, and they fear the future. They feel that we have lost our way.
Do you want to find your way through all of this fear and meanness?
Retrace your steps.
I remember when I was running those OLOU meets and feeling a little lost.
This happens when you’re hiking in the desert and mountains, where there are cairns, which are just piles of rocks, that mark the trail. Every now and then you miss a turn and keep on walking through the sandy stream bed until you realize you’re off the trail, maybe not lost, but maybe a little lost. So, something tells you to stop, and get your bearings, retrace your steps, and look for a cairn, the trail.
Maybe it’s difficult to admit when you’re lost, when you’ve lost your moral compass.
Admitting you’re lost is the first step, though.
Bigotry is usually the telltale sign.
No one wants to admit to their bigotry.
Our tendencies toward tribalism ensure that we all harbor ill towards “others.” You stop seeing people of color, or people from other places, or people who sound different as human beings that deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, who deserve the benefit of the doubt, and who deserve a chance to share in the good life.
We stop, admit we’re lost, retraced our steps, and returned to the trail that is destined to take each of us to a life free from fear, a life full of compassion.
We are becoming to be in an ugly place to live. Hateful. Spiteful. Mean. Immoral.
And I say immoral, not in the “evil concupiscence” sense, but in the “lack of neighborly love” sense.
A moral compass isn’t a badge to police other people’s lifestyles. It’s a broom that you use to sweep your side of the street, you use to sweep away your bigotry, your prejudice, your fear of others, and your lack of tolerance.
I love destination hikes. They add an extra layer of motivation to the hike. I’m going somewhere.
It’s time to make a new destination for us as individuals and as a country.
We take out our map, and our compass, and orientate our map to north.
We pick a destination, say to a place called Compassion, or a place called Kind-Heartedness, or Charity.
We strike a bearing.
And we follow that bearing, regardless of the obstacles, until we arrive at the point where there is no fear, a point where we treat all people kindly.
What a hopeful idea.
