Dr. Clare W. Graves

From the Historical Collection of the work of Dr. Clare W. Graves of William R. Lee, March 2001

1959

We may need to identify the highly ordered main stations on the road to some final or infinite ethical state. We may have to learn how to extract people from a lower state of ethical affairs, into a higher and higher and yet still higher state of ethical affairs. Perhaps we will never make ethically mature decisions until we learn what values are a part of what ethical system and how man moves from one set of ethical values to the next set of ethical values.

A view of ethical behavior from a systems point of view might lead one to hypothesize that certain values are appropriate to certain systems of ethics but that these same values might be inappropriate to other ethical systems. Thus instead of the earlier ethical beliefs being immature but quite like later ethical beliefs it may be that the later ethical values are quite unlike the earlier ethical values. And it may be that he who is living by an earlier ethical system cannot conceive that a later system is possible or its values anything but wrong. It may be that when we look at earlier ethical systems from within a later ethical system, we will see that the earlier values, no matter how appropriate in a later system, are not only appropriate to, but absolutely necessary for living in the conditions which exist when that earlier system is present. If any or some of these speculations are true, possible we can see why we have problems in the region of ethical behavior.

Perhaps the way to achieve the ethically sensitive, ethically mature decision maker is quite different from the ways being tired to produce such today. Or as Allport has said:

"The determinists are right in saying that the fabric of the world is structured and orderly. But they are wrong in believing that the fabric of a given life has reached its final form. The relative freedom of man lies in his seeking and utilizing knowledge that will enable him to discover the final shape of his life." (4, p. 564)

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