Knowing is doing?

We are living in the world that is full of anxiety more than ever. The reason oft that is very simple, human are becoming the only center of the universe. No other transcendent being that prop our life anymore. Even our super-hero that has been portrayed continuously in the mass market is ''human.'' They can die, at least most of them but all of them are known to be ''fiction'' only. Justice and right to be human becoming the main issue but how we define justice and human right without God? It is not strange that Pope Benedict XVI said that we are living in the ''Godless society.''

While Pope declared this statement, in his mind he refer to Europe or the Western-World in general. How about the Eastern world? In my own context, yes we are more or less the same. We are Godless not in the sense we disbelief about God or we do not believe religion is useful. Nevertheless, we as in Asia do not think that there is no urgent need to be serious adherent or practitioner of religion, especially for the younger millennial. I saw many survey that pointing out that younger Christian do not really know much about their faith like generation before. 

To think about the relation between Faith and Reason becoming the central issue once again of the millennia, as I venture to argue. Every generation need to ponder this subject for from it sprang and would create the rail of destiny in which one either goes into the path of death or path of life. If we emphasizing the dimension of reason/reason alone and dismiss faith dimension, then we are moving backward from the category of good that has been mentioned by Kant previously (Categorical Imperative/Deontolgy ethics).There is no universal good or bad whatsoever as the result.

However, as we all know reason have limit. To bring reason as the universal lens to which we judge and declare the reality, then, truth and justice are becoming matter of the judgement of consequences but who are the one who is responsible to determine the standard of whether the consequences is bad or good? is it Society? If society is the ideal standard, why there is so many people said that the cause of injustice comes from the elite of the society? If we say it is ''utilitarian philosophy'', then can we justify the mass murder on the cause of making peace and justice at large like what the old communist regime did? Pleasure-pain framework now becoming the backdrop of  the action. But I be of the opinion that not all pleasure is good and not all pain is bad. Intuitively most people know about this fact. 

Benedict XVI has mentioned important point of  this Godless Society, and it is s a tendency of believing knowing as doing. At the superficial level, nothing is wrong with it. To do as we know is a very good thing. Good ethics is a real practical ethics not just conceptual ethics. Suppose a pastor preach in the pulpit, the pastor really desire his congregation to do and living out their knowledge. And all of us agree this is how supposedly thing need to be done. Yet, on the other hand, if we apply this universally to all human knowledge then it will generate a huge problem. As Benedict wrote,

''Man knows how to clone men, and so he does it. Man know how to use men as store of organs for other men, and so he does it; he does it because of this seems to be an exigency of his freedom. Man knows how to construct atomic bombs and so he makes them, being. in line of principle, also disposed to use them. In the end, terrorist is also based on this modality of man's self authorization...''

The missing link of knowing and doing is actually ''faith'' and not ''freedom''. I would say that faith is the grand filter in which knowing and doing can be match and delivered, in line with the ''ultimate good'' not just about ''pragmatic good.'' If we feel the gap of knowing and doing with the idea of  radical freedom, following the enlightenment stream, then we can do whatever we want basically if we have ''power.'' Even freedom need to be filtered with the notion of faith. Without doing this, we are returning to the old pre-civilized living. The law of the Jungle or to use the word of Bill Dunbar, ''Jungle ethics.''!

As Dunbar pointed out, our ethics not came out from Plato, Socrates, Confucius or I will add all religious traditions but gone back much further, from the jungle and semi-social mammals. Regardless we believe with his biological-evolutionary approach or not his point deliver a really important point that the earlier state of ethics without any transcendent dimension (interest of individual vs preserving the integrity of the group) was akin to the ethics of ''jungle'' and I believe, this kind of ethics is the ethics that has been reintroduced again in our modern world, but with a new fashion when the world try to remove the notion of faith from our knowing and doing circuit!