In an integrated society, there should be harmony between the material and immaterial worlds, between the superstructure and the concrete life. It is also an ideal for all of us that what we say, we should also do, and believe is right. We cannot say one thing and do another thing, and that is particularly important in politics since it is so visible there. When we build our opinions on certain principles and standards, our own and such belonging to the political party we belong to and the culture we live in, then we must also try to implement what follows and not deviate too much from promises given during election campaigns and afterward.

All this is good and well, you may say. But what about ordinary life and how we behave in the family, at work, in community situations, and more, shouldn’t we also there practice what we preach? Certainly, our religious beliefs, moral standards, values, and principles should be the foundation for what we do. Part of it is built on traditions and common opinions where we live, and part of it on more lofty philosophies. Most of the time, we just take things for granted and follow them without many questions and considerations, but without becoming too fanatical and one-eyed since we also know that things are not quite absolute but relative. In everyday life in the modernity we live in, there is often a discrepancy between what we really believe and what we do.

In my article last week, I mentioned that many times what we do is based on what benefit ourselves rather than our neighbour and community. We become self-serving and selfish. Often, we stretch principles and ideals because that is what the world around us requires. We have to fend for ourselves, otherwise we may lose out and others will benefit instead. People also say that this is how human beings are and behave, indeed so in modernity, we live with a worldwide competitive, capitalist economic system and philosophies supporting it all. Even if we disagree, also using religious arguments against certain secular ways, little change and improvement can be made. We succumb to living one life in practice when we know that is against our true religious and moral values.

Moral philosophers and thinkers would say that people are usually better than the structures and systems that they live under. Besides, in most countries, there are regulations restricting some of the extreme consequences of the economic system we live under. There are ideal organizations and NGOs that contribute to making society kinder, cushioning the extremely negative aspects. The religious associations have always done that, underlining that we should love our neighbor, help the poor and show solidarity with those who struggle for better work and living conditions. The there will be greater harmony between the material and immaterial worlds.

Historically, all countries used to give greater emphasis to religion and related morals than today. In our time, it is Islamic countries that give the highest emphasis to the direct role of religion in society. Well, also important groups in other religions, including Christianity, emphasize the values of religion. In addition, we should realize that many religious ideals lie under political policies and practices, especially in social democratic countries, without it being said, and there are also humanist-ethical philosophies. The development aid policies after the end of the colonial era, and the welfare policies in the West, would hardly have been possible without religious foundations.

Until the end of the Middle Ages (about 1500), followed by the Renaissance (about 1500-1700), religion and in Europe that was Christianity, was seen as the direct foundation for all human actions. People would believe and say that all human actions should be done in order to honour God. True, it was not always the case in practice, considering, inter alia, the terrible wars that took place in Europe and elsewhere and the enormous class differences that existed with a tiny exploiting ruling class and a vast underclass of people living in abject poverty.

Some five hundred years ago, we talk about a paradigm shift in science and overall development thinking. The new technologies and ways of using natural resources would often be seen as being in opposition to religious thinking and belief. Others would say that it was a continuation of the religious trends and understanding of technology and how people should control and use the resources of God’s creation. In the early times of modernity, say until the middle of the 1800s, there was harmony in general thinking between the church, the state, the private sector and the society at large, especially in the countries belonging to the Protestant branch of Christianity, more so than in the Catholic countries. Some would argue that Protestantism was a precondition for the development of capitalism – for good and for bad. There wasn’t really consensus about development, but the secular leaders made people believe there was, and people allowed it to happen although their values and standards were higher than that of the state.

Today then, is there a fair degree of harmony and consistency in the technological, economic, material and immaterial superstructures and development? I said above that until some 150 years ago, even later, there was a great deal of harmony in the overall values and thinking in society, without any clear schism between religion and secular society, between the material and immaterial worlds.

But there wasn’t necessarily as great unity and common values even in earlier centuries, although we easily think there was. The prominent German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) stressed that in his time the values of people began to be very different from those of the society they lived in. People’s moral and religious values were not in harmony with those of the state and the modernisation of the world around them. Nietzsche says that he finds people’s values and believes for the first time in history to be at a collision course with society, although he doesn’t quite state if he is for the old, traditional and more integrated world, or modernity, which also has new technologies and major progress. In any case, from then on, people’s values are in many ways separate from the world around us – and we manage to live with it. Today, that concerns the huge issues of environmental protection, climate change, peace and war, inequality, and more. But somehow we manage to live with the schism between the world around us and what we really believe.

The Norwegian environmentalist and thinker, Erik Dammann (b. 1931), who established the organization “The Future in Our Hands” in 1974, has in several books pointed out that people’s values are much higher than the structures of the Western world and beyond. We have come to live in conflict and disharmony with the world around us, unlike the way it was before what Nietzsche termed modernity. No wonder then that we say one thing and do another thing, as I began my article discussing today. Hence, we need to become more principled and truthful in order to live better lives and become able to solve the problems around us – in greater harmony and integration between the material and immaterial worlds.

Atle Hetland
The writer is a senior Norwegian social scientist with experience from university, diplomacy and development aid. He can be reached at atlehetland@yahoo.com