Moral Transformation Cycle

* Book. The River and the Star. Book One of the Moral Transformation Cycle series. By David Loye.

URL = http://benjaminfranklinpress.com/papers/moral.pdf

"is it possible to radically accelerate moral evolution, if not indeed launch moral revolution?" [1]

Content

The River and the Star

"The River and the Star: The Lost Story of the

Great Explorers of the Better World

In this first book for the Cycle, Loye provides a startling new
look at the lives, times, and work of a comparative handful of
men—and later, women—who, although from diverse, indeed
radically different backgrounds, shared a single passion.
Generation after generation, against opposition from
authoritarian religions, governments, and social systems—and
despite the massive indifference of much of the social science
they helped create—over 200 years they fought to expand the

ability of our species to build better lives and the better world for ourselves. Immanuel Kant, Marx and Engels, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Erich Fromm, Lawrence Kohlberg and Carol Gilligan—we follow these and other famous social scientific explorers as bit by bit they uncover the “two worlds” of morality and a firm first foundation for moral evolution.

On the surface we know the deeper reality of the “river” and the “star” as the drive for freedom and equality. But now for the first time we can see the deep primacy of this evolutionary partnership for moral evolution—and revolution; not only in politics, but in gender relations, child-raising, economics, religion, science, education, and all other regards."

(http://benjaminfranklinpress.com/papers/moral.pdf)

Discussion

David Loye (interviewed by David Loye):

"I’ve written about this in a book of mine called the River and the Star, which is actually the first book for my seven book “Moral Transformation Cycle.” The first book is River and the Star: The Lost Story of the Great Explorers of the Better World. It’s possibly the best thing I’ve ever written. It’s out there with all the online booksellers worldwide. I write about Piaget, for example. Today, we’ve focused on the cognitive development he wrote about and forgotten about the moral development work that came earlier, but it was the most brilliant of all.

Russ: Interesting. So Piaget is another example of someone who has written about moral development—not just Darwin—and that portion of their work is being ignored.

David: Yes, and that’s what I’m addressing in the River and the Star. I start with Immanuel Kant. Who really pays any attention to him except for dull philosophers these days? But he was a fireball! I move on to Herbert Spencer. Everyone writes him off as this rightwing ideologue. Well, he had some very important things to say about moral development. Marx and Engels—they’re the demons, you know—but they significantly advanced our understanding of moral development. I go into Freud and Emile Durkheim, who is one of the towering figures in the study of moral development, then on to Piaget and into the work of many people who I’ve worked with or knew, like Ashley Montague and Milton Rokeach. I used to work with Milton and it’s a magnificent story. And I include all of that work, except for the most recent, Carol Gilligan’s, because she’s still living and tied to the Women’s Movement. Hardly anybody pays any attention to it anymore so I’m determined to shove it at them.

In the seven books of my “Moral Transformation Cycle,” most particularly in the “Glacier and the Flame” trilogy. There I differentiate dominator moral insensitivity and dominator morality from partnership moral sensitivity and partnership morality in relation to Riane Eisler's fundamental work on domination and partnership systems. That is what we have to get across. Today, we live in this hybrid world where we’re hit with both versions; we’re muddled and mixed up. You go to church on Sunday, you tithe and go there on the holidays. But in the meantime, the other six days of the week, the orientation is screw your neighbor. Instead of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” it has become, “Do unto others before they can do it unto you.” That’s the regressive dominator morality."

(http://integral-review.org/issues/vol_4_no_2_volckmann_interview_with_loye.pdf)