Tutorial: Pause II: Your Sense of Community:
How will this impact the people in my community?
In our African Language we say “ a person is a person through other persons”. I would not know how to be a human at all except I learned this from other human beings. We are made for a delicate network of relationships of interdependence. We are meant to complement each other. All kinds of things go horribly wrong when we break that fundamental law of our being.
The Words of Archbishop Desmond TuTu
I recommend you always start with the grounding experience of Pause I before entering the considerations of Pause II. Pause II will introduce elements of conflict for your Sense of Good. While inconvenient this resistance is critical in your growth from knowledge to wisdom.
Like the word “good” words like “family”, “brother”, “sister”,”neighbor” are words that evolve in the context of community. Even though they fluctuate and change with the times, what these words seem to imply in common across time is ‘sustained caring’. We are born, learn to live, and are fated to die in the context of community either physically or in memory. Pause II is about how your decision will resonate in your community.
Ethics and morality find expression in community and will frustrate law unless the law itself is attentive to the ethical and moral. The collective Sense-of-Good will frustrate all of the above unless ethics morality and law are all grounded in a collective goodness. The Good Decision is premised on the collective Sense-of-Good; or as some people might call it “community”. So let’s look at our Sense of Community.
The Commentary and Guidance below can clarify this instruction for you,
The Good Decision 