Guidelines Puffed Up as Law: Should under the Subterfuge of Must

During the coronavirus pandemic (2020-2022), Arizona’s Ducey administration allowed bus and light-rail employees to go maskless even though they were in close contact with the public. Bus drivers were even getting sick. The “rationale” of the Phoenix transit authority was that the federal regulation is “just a mandate.” Because the word mandate means “an authoritative command,” the rationale that being a mandate renders a law or government regulation as optional can only be spurious at best; this is a case of arrogant ignorance that can’t possibly be wrong about itself in the member-state that ranked 49^th out of 50 on public education. As an authoritative command, a law, even as implemented in regulations, has what Kant called necessity in that law itself cannot be bent; it stands firm in itself as law. In contrast, a guideline connotes flexibility rather than necessity. It follows that enforcement must pertain to laws (including regulations) but not to guidelines. I contend that what are commonly referred to as international laws are actually international guidelines. Such “laws” lack viable enforcement mechanisms and thus are actually guidelines for governments engaged in international relations.

The full essay is at "Guidelines Puffed Up as Law."

Acting Morally: Bhukti Yoga and Kant Beyond Duty

At Harvard’s Bhukti Yoga Conference in 2025, a Hindu religious artist whose Hindu name is Srimati Syamarani, spoke on the art of spiritual life. A person is like the hand of Krishna. The hand puts food in Krishna’s body, so the entire body is nourished. The hand serving the body is a duty. So too is following the type of bhukti that is following rules and regulations out of duty. At some point, it will no longer be felt as a duty. In Kantian terms, this means not acting ethically by being compelled by reason—the necessity of the moral law that reason presents to us; rather, going beyond moral duty is to approximate the holy will, but not because it is the nature of finite rational beings to be good; rather, it is out of love of the moral law, including its necessitating us to act ethically. In bhukti devotion, however, it is not love of the form of moral law (i.e., it being an imperative, or command, of reason) that obviates the sense of duty to serve Krishna and other people, as in being a hand of Krishna serves Krishna’s body; rather, it is love directed to Krishna (and ensuing compassion to people) that transcends ethical obligation per se. This is not to say that bhukti practice can go beyond feeling obligated due to a feeling, whereas it is by the use of reason that Kantian gets beyond duty, for it is the feeling of respect that empirically motivates a person to treat people as not only means to one’s own goals, but also as ends in themselves. As rational beings, we partake in reasoning, albeit in a finite way, and reason itself has absolute value because it is by reason that value is assigned to things. Even so, it cannot be said that a devotee of Krishna in Hinduism can go beyond acting out of duty due to an emotion (i.e.., love or compassion) whereas for Kant it is just by reasoning that a person can go beyond acting because one is duty-bound.

The full essay is at "Acting Morally: Bhukti Yoga and Kant Beyond Duty."

The Russian Orthodox Church as a Political-Moral Force: A Case of Religion Overextended?

While visiting the Pskovo-Pechersky Monastery in northwestern Russia in 2000, Vladimir Putin wrote in the guest book, “The revival of Russia and growth of its might are unthinkable without the strengthening of society’s moral foundations. The role and significance of the Russian Orthodox Church are huge. May God protect you.” This statement is revealing concerning what has perhaps fueled the Russian president’s vision, at least ideally.

 Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, head of the Sretensky Monastery in Moscow    NYT

The full essay is at "The Russian Church as Politico-Moral."

Oceans Arising on Edifices of Arrogance

A study published in late November 2012 in the journal Science estimates that the melting of ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland had raised global sea levels by 11.1 millimeters (0.43 inch) since 1992. That represents one-fifth of the total sea-level rise increase in that period. Other contributors include the expansion of the sea water from warming, and the melting of glaciers, as for instance on mountains. In the 1990's, melting of the polar ice sheets in the Antarctica and Greenland was responsible for about 10 percent of the global sea-level rise, but by 2012 the effect had risen to 30 percent.[1] The study does not, however, uncover the underlying cause, or association, lying in a complexity in human nature itself. Our species has vaunted to the top of the food chain and leveraged a brain capable of engineering technological advances that would have seemed magical even just in the nineteenth century, and yet we seem hard-wired to accelerate our course to a self-destructive extinction. This lack of balance is reflected in the increasing extremes in the global climate. In this essay, I begin with the study and steadily work toward uncovering the underlying, subterranean culprit, which would go on to produce record-high carbon-emissions in 2017.

The entire essay is at "Oceans Arising on Edifices of Arrogance"

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[1] Gautam Naik, “Polar Ice Melt Is Accelerating,” The Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2012.

The Russian Conscience on Human Rights in Syria

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, warned on January 18, 2012, according to the New York Times, “that outside encouragement of anti-government uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa could lead to ‘a very big war that will cause suffering not only to countries in the region, but also to states far beyond its boundaries.’” A very big war, it would seem, with very big stick, would be the result of “outsiders” stepping in to protect the Syrian protesters from their own government. In fact, the Times reports that “Lavrov said Russia would use its position on the United Nations Security Council to veto any United Nations authorization of military strikes against the government [of Syria].” It made no difference to Lavrov that the United Nations, including the Secretary General, had “repeatedly called for Syria [to] end a crackdown on opposition demonstrators, which Arab League monitors say resulted in hundreds of deaths over the past month.” In other words, the U.N. was officially impotent in being able to act on the basis of its “demand” because one of its members has a veto.

The full essay is at "Russia on Human Rights."

Halliburton: Organizational Culture and Ethics

Human beings are moral agents. Generally speaking, we have consciences and a sense of ought, which according to David Hume is not derived from what is. In other words, ethical principles are not obtained from describing some object or situation. Organizations consisting of human beings do not have consciences; nor are companies able to have a sense of ought that is not reduced to monetary terms. Such terms being empirical, they cannot get to ought anyway. The illusion that corporations are themselves moral agents comes from the failure to distinguish an organization itself from not only its human members, but also its culture. While it may seem that an organizational culture is distant from the people who inhabit the organization, as if culture were somehow based at the organizational level, culture is simply a way of saying that most people in a group share certain basic beliefs, values and ways of behaving. Beliefs, values and conduct pertain to persons. Physiologically, the brain thinks, values, and conducts the rest of the body. There is no “organizational brain.” Rather, culture refers to a critical mass proportion of persons having something in common. This does not mean that the “something” exists apart from, or "above," the persons.

The full essay is in The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business: A Malignant Mentality of Mendacity, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.com.