Question: What is the path to true inner peace through moral development?
Utilitarian “good behavior” that only aims to stay out of trouble leaves the soul empty. We are moral beings in a sea of moral realities, and we feel the dissonance between what we are and what we ought to become. Inner peace comes by seeking harmony with those realities through pietas and the dictates of conscience — not by silencing that voice for baser appetites.
I wish peace for myself as well as for others, and, in the search for it, must demand that self-evident truth be not ignored. When I, in company with my conscience, go hence, or when I with untutored but fully awakened moral instincts stand now face to face with the insufferably resplendent moral law, I desire harmonization with my environment. - Joseph Cook
One of the biggest obstacles to my moral development when I was younger was the (false) sense that the whole purpose of being a “good boy” was to get through life as inconspicuously and unobtrusively as possible. Not lying, cheating, or stealing was beneficial to society and would keep me out of trouble. This is true as far as it goes.
But when I encounter perspectives such as Cook’s, the utilitarian approach to morality can’t help but feel cheap unless it is grounded in something more foundational, transcendent, and real. Our deepest intuitions confirm the reason that Cook gives for this.
We are moral beings who swim in a sea of moral realities. In our best moments, we apprehend the dissonance between what we are and what we’re capable of being, what we ought to become.
We are then faced with two choices: to silence that inner voice and give precedence to our baser appetites, or to seek harmony with those moral realities through the cultivation of pietas and the dictates of conscience.
Only one of these paths leads to the inner peace we all hunger for.