IDENTIFYING THE PREVAILING COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS:
(Source: Sentience: Companion to reason, London: FAB, p.128-143)

"New Capitalism" and "Managerialism"

In the present time of ultramaterialism, the collective thought that gives force to the prevailing econo-political Zeitgeist has come to be known as "the new capitalism". New capitalism is in essence the offspring of traditional capitalism and the new and ever emerging information technologies.

The key features of the new capitalism are multifaceted. Traditional capitalism had, and also outlived, its own critique; and all of that is now history. But traditional capitalism is only a small part of the history of the new capitalism, for without the birth of new information technologies the new capitalism could never have come into being in the first place. Paradoxically, however, the elite class of new capitalism is not the class of the InfoTech experts; rather, it is a group consisting of power brokers, managing directors, and corporate bureaucrats. Unlike the InfoTech experts, the majority in this new elite class is unequipped with such expertise. As a result, the terms "corporatism" and "managerialism" have been applied to capture the essence of the new capitalism.

The class of Info Tech experts are well trained experts of specialized knowledge and skill. They are not unlike other classes of experts in the public good arena such as education and health: teachers and lecturers; doctors and nurses. All these experts are fully engaged in their specialized profession. The core activities of their chosen field demand all their professional and creative energies: the technical experts maintain hardware and create software, the educators teach students and conduct research, the medical specialists care for patients and search for new cures.

There is nothing new about experts fully engaged with their specialized fields in their conduct of teaching, caring and research. However, the new field of InfoTech has brought to human society unique and unequalled impacts, both immediate and long term. For it has generated an unimaginably vast amount of new information and, perhaps more fatefully, new money and wealth in an unprecedented world order. With this new world order, there emerged an urgent need for controlling and managing the vast amount of new wealth and information.

The class of power brokers and corporate bureaucrats also already existed in traditional capitalism. Sensing this new urgent need, they swiftly reinvented themselves with strategic maneuvers including expanding their power base and rewarding themselves generously with the new wealth created by the hard labour of their expert employees. Thus, within the InfoTech proper, the first wave of a new management class came into existence.

All this took place almost three decades ago. But the magic impact of InfoTech seems unbounded; it is felt everywhere in people's lives and society. And the unsatiable greed of the controlling elite is equally unbounded, it extends anywhere where money and power are to be found. Hence, the unstoppable wave of managerialism gradually and surely gulped up the whole spectrum of business and industry in the private sectors. But such sectors have always been the bedfellow of conservative political ideologies. They were then able to gain further control through political alliances over the running of the affairs of the public sector. This first became obvious in the two world-leading nations under the Thatcher and Reagan administrations.

As a result of political intervention, education, health and other sectors of the public domain have also fallen victim to corporatism and managerialism. The mindless application of this business model to public good was thus put in place. Educators and health experts, whose core duties concern the betterment of the cognitive and physical health of a civilized society, are now subject to the control of the new business elite.

There is little doubt that the spirit and ethos of public good, education and health in particular, is in conflict with that of business. Education emphasizes naked truth and reflection; health care springs from care and compassion. In stark contrast, business stresses profit maximization, superficial images and quick-fixes.

This new business ethos soon turned into a new form of totalitarianism. For, there no longer exists an independent body of critics in such societies. The traditional role of the educators and the educated in serving as "critic and conscience of society" has virtually been eroded under new capitalism. When education becomes a commodity to be marketed and purchased in cost-profit per dollar transactions, and when academic freedom in the educated choosing of research pursuits are dictated by the managing class, the educators no longer are able to serve their pivotal role. This thus ensures that the cognitive health of the society as a whole degenerates.

Many economists and social thinkers have spelt out the key features and far-reaching ills of new capitalism. The economists Robert Frank and Philip Cook, in their book The Winner-Take-All Society,²¹⁹ characterize the new capitalism in terms of its competitive ethos of "winner-take-all". Those few at the top of the steep power pyramid get all the rewards and amass all the wealth there is. Yet, in a society of only limited resources this is required by all its members to ensure, at the minimum level, the very dignity of life and existence. According to Frank and Cook, the legacy of such a winner-take-all collective Zeitgeist is a fierce competition-driven society and an impoverished cultural life.

The sociologist Catherine Casey, in her book Work, Self and Society,²²⁰ has also unveiled the influence of large post-industrial corporations over the self. Casey has used the term "the colonization of the self" to describe these corporations' total control of their individual employees. Casey further argues that the traditional self with a sense of inner-directedness and inner judgement is now replaced by an outer-directed self that is governed by the authority of the utility-driven bureaucratic corporations. And with the exteriorisation and corporate colonization of the self, the ultimate human values in terms of intrinsic meanings and purpose of life have disappeared from public institutional and working life.

Another sociologist Richard Sennett, in his book The Corrosion of Character,²²¹ details the characteristics and personal consequences of this new econo-political ideology, Sennett lists three key features that characterize the new capitalism. First, a "discontinuous reinvention of institutions" involves a reengineering of irreversible changes within institutions. The various reforms, layoffs, restructurings are but a few forms of the reinvention, but all of them result in irreversible disruptions to people's professional as well as personal lives. Second, the feature "flexible specialization" captures the ever-changing and unrealistic demands from the managing class to get more varied products out of the employees and to get these products to markets at ever more increasing speed. Third, the feature "concentration without centralization" portrays the total concentration of power at the top of the steep power hierarchy. The new e-technology gives extra force to such an extreme power concentration without having to resort to a physical centralized command chain. Here, Sennett writes, "the new information systems provide a comprehensive picture of the organization to top managers in ways which give individuals anywhere in the network little room to hide."²²² This thus makes possible absolute domination by the top few managers.

The consequences of the new capitalism for individuals are many. Based on his interview data, Sennett concludes that chief of all the consequences is the "corrosion of individual character", which is brought about by a profound sense of confusion, powerlessness, and a deep uncertainty of self worth.

In the wake of the recent massive Enron and WorldCom corporate scandals in the United States, the academic and politician Robert Reich has identified the Social Darwinist competitive ideology as the root cause for the collapse of the mid-20^thcentury social contract between corporations and their employees.²²³ According to Reich, the past two decades of the gilded era of Corporate America are characterized by a climate of irrationality and "exuberance". In its pursuit of individual greed, the managing rank has lost sight of the supposedly mutually-supportive social contract with its employees. With the erosion of a sense of social responsibility and common good, the ruthless seeking of personal profit by the corporate elite, unchecked and undeterred, has resulted in serious damage to a great many lives of the general public.

Yet the consequences of new capitalism for individuals may sound all too familiar. After all, Max Weber long ago already warned of the ills of (traditional) capitalism: its instrumental pursuit of materialistic wealth enslaved modern man in an "iron cage". The new capitalism's iron cage is perhaps not much different: it engenders ruthless competition that impoverishes culture, it induces confusion and self doubt that corrode character, and it colonizes the self and ultimately damages lives. Either cage is a form of totalitarianism, a total and complete control over the individual mind and self.

Cast in the context of humanity's evolution, the new capitalism's far-reaching consequences for human cultural heritage and future collective consciousness deserve to be critically examined and clearly identified. While it is undeniable that new capitalism has multifaceted consequences, as these aforementioned critiques have already shown, the seemingly diverse consequences have one common root. The root of new capitalism's manifold consequences lies with its implicit yet ruthless task of exteriorizing and demolishing the intrinsic self.

Therefore, the sections that follow consider the far-reaching impact of new capitalism, through the deconstruction of the intrinsic self and intrinsic values, on the future of human culture and human collective consciousness. In this evolutionary context, the disappearance of the intrinsic self and intrinsic values has significant implications for the three fundamental parameters of humanity: sense of freedom, education, and morality. These parameters form the pillars of human civilization as they are the most significant distinguishing features that define humanity, and as such, they matter dearly to being human.

CONSEQUENCES FOR SENSE OF FREEDOM

The Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen addressed in his book Development as Freedom, the problems of global economic development, social justice and fundamental human rights.²²⁴ The global problems that Sen identifies apply equally to the economically underprivileged countries as to the developed world.

Sen argues that people today are denied elementary freedom and remain imprisoned either as high-tech slaves, as poverty stricken underdogs, or as social-class outcasts. Because of this, the ultimate goal of any "institutional arrangement", be it socio-economic, political, governmental or industrial, would need to be the fostering and enhancement of the freedom of the individual. Individual freedom in this sense constitutes social and political participation, opportunity to receive basic education and health care, and the choice of a life that each individual self values.

To reach such a freedom-focused goal, Sen asserts, each institution will need to base its practices on values and social ethics that embrace justice, prudence, sympathy, trust, free dialogue, and sense of social responsibility and social commitment. And the ultimate criterion of the quality of human lives lies not with the amount of wealth but with that of freedom. Thus, Sen argues for the importance of social institutions in the promotion of individual freedom, which he stipulates as the ultimate goal of any social arrangement for the betterment of humanity.

The great French philosopher, Charles Renouvier, saw freedom as the key distinguishing characteristic of humanity. He further argued that individual freedom is the one indispensable condition for the progress of humanity. However, Renouvier's philosophy is grounded in what he calls "personalism". Personalistic philosophies, to which Renouvier's own belongs, find ultimate explanations of and solutions for human conditions in the "person" itself. In contrast, philosophies of "impersonalism" find such solutions from the outer reality in the external world.

It is based on the central tenet of personalistic philosophy that Renouvier identifies freedom with human nature itself and traces its origins to the personal world within. Thus, to Renouvier and other personalists (and many humanists), freedom springs from intrinsic personal will and is sustained by it, quite irrespective of external social conditions. Philosophy aside, ample real life examples attest to the person-centered view of freedom: the free spirit of the jailed Nelson Mandela is just one such example. But there is no need to find examples elsewhere; each and every person can be a valid testimony to this person-centered view of freedom when the realization hits home at some difficult moments in life.

But to achieve individual freedom in its fullest and truest sense, the solution of neither Sen nor Renouvier by itself is sufficient; both are necessary. On the one hand, Sen's solution offers a necessary half solution. Freedom so achieved comes from without, from each individual's social institutional arrangements. But precisely because of its external origin, it is institution- and society- dependent, and hence is inescapably transient and fragile. On the other hand, Renouvier's freedom, while capable of sustaining the individual person within its own personal sphere, can not find full pragmatic outward expression without a supportive environment.

While social conditions and institutional regulations are necessary in fulfilling humanity's basic need for security and sense of belonging, these external arrangements can, paradoxically, be the very source of an antithesis for the unfoldment of an individual's truest inner potential. The Romantic philosopher Rousseau realized this long ago. In his Emile, Rousseau spoke of the general condition of a civilized man as being "born free but everywhere in chains". Society wants one to wear a uniform, as it were, and the success of one's life is measured against the fitness of this uniform.

Today's civilized man has a worse fate than Rousseau's Emile; he has a virtually impossible task to get back to a full life that is authentically his own. The worldwide infrastructure of the new capitalism has literally chained everyone to the virtual corporate building, like a piece of furniture forever fixed on the polished office floor. Thoughtful reflection, which leads to an inner sense of self worth and a firm conviction to true justice and compassion, is simply mutually exclusive to the corporate commandments of quick-fix dollar efficiency and politically-correct codes of conduct.

The whirlpool style of managerialism ensures that almost every quark of the psychic energy of a civilized man is dragged down to the vast black hole of wasteland. The ever-cumulating feeling of empty-handedness and bewilderment gives rise to a life of superficiality and ignorance. A vicious cycle ensues: an ever-increasing number of "consultants" ("coaches" and therapists alike) now need to be commissioned for the diagnosis of both the outer corporate mess and the inner psychic turmoil. The more the civilized man's psychic energy is centered on such a superficially extrinsic existence of a corporatized life, the more he is to become alienated from his own intrinsic innermost self.

Such a civilized existence entails its own paradox: it affords material and psychological security and yet it robs man off his elementary sense of freedom and his right to be his authentic self. But as the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman says of this paradox in his book Community: Seeking Safety in An Insecure World, " We cannot be human without both security and freedom; but we cannot have both at the same time and both in quantities which we find fully satisfactory."²²⁵ So, today's civilized man must make a choice. But how?

Perhaps the age old wisdom from the great thinkers in times past can be of help. Schopenhauer advised that man has the "will to negate" his own ego's worldly desires. Jean Paul Sartre told that man is condemned to be "free" for he makes his own rules through "the will to choose". Friedrich Nietzsche maintained that man's "will to power" is his basic instinct and a mighty inner source for change. Henri Bergson taught that man is neither alone nor powerless as his own life force identifies with the elan vital, the one creative energy that moves through and pervades all existence. Here, William James concurred by asserting that man is free to exercise his "will to believe" and that in whatever belief that betters his life, there lays his own "truth".

So, it is with the freedom of our own will that the choice of today's civilized man ultimately lies. It is also through the exercise of our will that an authentic existence, untouched by the larger social and systemic contradictions, can be attained. However, freedom of will requires inner-directed reflection and contemplation. By choosing to focus one's psychic energy within, one's life's purpose inevitably reveals itself.

Centering one's psychic energy on life's purpose also loosens the ego's bonds to a quintessential external existence of "demeaning superficiality". It further helps one to sidestep the traps of the insatiable greed for wealth and the unquenchable thirst for power. Such a freed psyche then helps us to reclaim the essence of life in the fullest sense. It is also in this state of inner freedom that one naturally and effortlessly attends to one's own sentient experiences that life generously and continuously affords. Such experiences are more than life-affirming: they are life itself.

CONSEQUENCES FOR EDUCATION

The early Greek philosophers saw education as the key to the knowledge of the purpose of human existence and to the actualization of human potential. The Latin word "educate" means "leading or drawing out" and implies the bringing out of the good and potential that already exists within each individual. To the early philosophers, the end of education is a "happy" and "balanced" life in the sense that the individual attains a state of harmony both within and without. This classical view of education thus has a dual intrinsic and external focus: education has both an intrinsic end and an operational end. However, this dual-focused ethos is in clear contrast to the currently prevailing new capitalistic Zeitgeist that either exteriorizes or demolishes the intrinsic self. Couched within such a collective climate, present-day education has accordingly assumed a single and outer focus on its operational goal alone.

However, to attribute the shaping of today's shrunken educational ethos entirely to the collective econo-political Zeitgeist would be oversimplifying. From a historical perspective, the legacies of the Enlightenment philosophy and the postmodern deconstructionist philosophy have also played a part. Their converging influence happens to coincide and resonate with the current econo-political collective Zeitgeist. As all these three forces converge in weakening and illegitimizing the intrinsic self, the intrinsic end of education is thus marginalized and diminished.

In Classical philosophy, the self being the intrapsychic core that constitutes intrinsic human good was never questioned. It is through the agentic and guiding operation of this inner-core self that an individual may attain a state of harmony. However, the Enlightenment philosophers formally denied the existence of this intrinsic self. Its role as sentient humanistic guide was now played by external socially-contracted rules. As a result, the entire void of the inner psyche was now referred to as "a blank slate", Locke's tabula rasa. The self is empty without inner potential and is in need of being filled and furnished from outside. The then outside world was bewildered and fascinated by science's new discoveries. The Newtonian and Darwinian sciences depict a mechanistic, nonliving nature and a random, accidental life, devoid of any meaning or purpose. That world view has ensured a standard for education: filling in the blank mind with scientific facts. Thus, the Enlightenment legacies for education consist of a denial of the intrinsic self and a focus on scientific facts and disengaged reason. Such an educational ethos has persisted without abating.

The postmodern deconstruction philosophy had a similar impact on the notion of self. The central task of deconstructionism pertains to a reformulation of the "identity of being human", a sentiment expressed by many including historian Roger Smith²²⁶ and philosopher Charles Taylor.²²⁷ Such an attempt at reformulating human identity has its greatest impact on the notion of the "self": The reformulated self retains only its outer-orientation and hence is solely directed externally.

The issue of whether the self has an internal or external focus is essential, not only in the understanding of human nature but in the very practice of education. To reformulate the notion of self by amputating its inner core is to deny the existence of inner potential. For the reformulated self, like the Enlightenment's blank slate, nothing exists within and hence nothing can be brought out. A standard education then means to indoctrinate and to instill a herd mentality into each self. It is with this specific regard to the denial of the inner-core self that the postmodern deconstructionism is resonating in perfect harmony with the Enlightenment legacy.

In addition, the current collective econo-political Zeitgeist also exerts an influence over the ethos of education. In the present-time, a new post-industrial world view has also been making its stamp on the notion of self and education. As mentioned before, the new capitalism has unmercifully "colonized" the individual self. In this joint climate, education thus entails the filling-in of either verifiable scientific facts or the unfalsifiable "management skills".

However, with business' ever accelerating expansion of its power base, its ethos of profit-maximization is threatening to take over that of science and give rise to a new world order of totalitarianism. An obvious consequence amidst this still-reforming post-industrial Zeitgeist is that present-day higher educational institutions are fast becoming, and many have already become, what Casti referred to as "the trade schools for the bewildered".

A balanced view of education needs to be grounded in a dual-aspected notion of self and entails a maximal fostering of the actualization of the inner self's potential. By this criterion, an education based on the Enlightenment ethos of reason over sentience, while it can foster disengaged reason, is nonetheless already flawed in its denial of the inner self. For disengaged reason is an impoverished intellectual exercise. But an education, that is focused on trade skills and grounded in the new capitalism's business mentality of superficiality, has an even worse fate. For, such an "education" not only fosters nothing enduring but also suffocates all potentials within.

But, despite its seemingly powerful colonization of the shrunken self, the new capitalist corporate Zeitgeist can not put a stop to all the natural unfolding and manifestation of the inner self. Those who have experienced the ever benevolent and life-affirming guiding hand of the inner self cannot help but loath its suppression and want to work for its liberation. While standard education is to some putting chains and shackles around the shrunken self devoid of sentience, there is hope, as Henri Bergson puts it, that man's consciousness will break the chain.

The hope then rests ultimately on the recognition of the potential of the intrinsic self, which itself is what Charles Taylor calls "the nature as source within". Recognizing the essence of the intrinsic self and its role in the co-creation of humanity's future would mean a recognition of a dual-aspected self, a self in its entirety that extends to the deepest depth of the collective human cultural heritage.

This recognition may represent a second renaissance, as it were, of the humanistic self. Not unlike seven centuries ago, this second renaissance is against a dogma that represses the intrinsic self; except this time the dogma constitutes religious as well as scientific orthodoxies. Further, similar to seven centuries ago when the Hermetica replaced the then church doctrines, this second renaissance will also once again see the revival of the lost wisdom of the perennial philosophies that teach man's spirituality within. Equally important, this second renaissance will also be open to the new sciences that are beginning to take shape; just like Francis Bacon and Giordano Bruno's espousing the Newtonian science, the "humanists" of the second renaissance will also embrace all the new frontiers of contemporary sciences.

Education in its truest sense and to its fullest extent can only come about when this second renaissance takes shape and when the inner self with all its potentials is given full recognition. But in the interim, small steps are necessary. They are being taken by dedicated educators who recognize the enduring value of education and strive to attend to both reason and sentience. By not bowing down to the pressure of a Zeitgeist of demeaning commercial superficiality, these teachers are perhaps "out of synch" with their own times. Nonetheless, they are honoring the true spirit of education.

Cast in the eternity of the thesis-antithesis dialectic, the small steps these true teachers are taking may be seen as "anomalies" that contradict the prevailing Zeitgeist and hence are resisted with intolerance. But it is precisely through the accumulation of these anomalies into a critical mass that a new synthesis Zeitgeist, a second renaissance, can happen.

Such a dual-aspected education focusing on both scientific reason and humanistic sentience is not in contradiction to the thoughts of many prominent contemporary educators. John Dewey's "progressive movement" of education involves a student-, rather than content-, centered approach. Education for Dewey is a balance between "value" and "facts", and both can be discovered as well as sanctioned by individual subjective experience. Although Dewey advocated the importance of the instrumental end of education, he nonetheless warned against an education that entails only "amusement and vocational training".

William James was Dewey's senior colleague at Harvard University. James's view on education is clear when he writes about his retirement from Harvard in 1907, "A professor has two functions: (1) to be learned and distribute bibliographical information; (2) to communicate truth. The 1^st is the essential one, officially considered. The 2^nd is the only one I care for. Hitherto I have always felt like a humbug as a professor, for I am weak in the first requirement. Now I can live for the second with a free conscience "²²⁸

James also emphasized the paramount role that the educator's own character plays in education, "What doctrines students take from their teachers are of little consequence provided they catch from them the living,, philosophic attitude of mind, the independent, personal look at all the data of life, and the eagerness to harmonize them."²²⁹ And a student so educated will gain a habit of "always seeing an alternative, of not taking the usual for granted, of making conventionalities fluid again, of imagining foreign states of mind. "²³⁰ Such a scenario truly depicts the effect on the student of a fitting education afforded by a fitting educator. And not coincidentally, many of today's great universities still stipulate in their charters that a university education is to foster the development of mind and spirit, to promote intellectual independence in their students; at the same time the institution and its faculties are to serve the role as the critic and conscience of society.

Not long after James and Dewey, another Harvard prominent, the anthropologist and social scientist, Gregory Bateson, also advocated a balanced education: one that places equal emphasis on scientific "rigor" and subjective "imagination". Bateson's rigor-imagination dichotomy identifies with that of fact and value, of objective science and subjective experience, and of reason and sentience. Bateson recognized the inadequacy of an education lopsided towards rigor and urges for a shift in the direction of imagination. He wrote in his 1978 letter to the University of California's Committee on Educational Policy thus,

"So, in this world of 1978, we try to run a university and to maintain standards of 'excellence' in the face of growing distrust. . . and quick commercialism . . . As a technical school, we do pretty well. . . It is perhaps not the main duty and function of a great university ...", "rigor and imagination, the two great contraries of mental process, either of which by itself is lethal. Rigor alone is paralytic death, but imagination alone is insanity".

Bateson then asked the committee members to see their own place in history and to see beyond the "one-sided progress" of a university education by keeping in view a larger gestalt,

"seeing that place in a wider perspective: The place is a university and we its Board of Regents, The wider perspective is about perspectives, and the question posed is: Do we, as a board, foster whatever will promote in students, in faculty, and around the boardroom table those wider perspectives which will bring our system back into an appropriate synchrony or harmony between rigor and imagination? As teachers, are we wise?"^231.

Bateson's views are more relevant today than two decades ago. As the historical legacies of Enlightenment and deconstructionism working together with the current econo-political Zeitgeist in demolishing the intrinsic self, the reason and sentience divide has become even more difficult to bridge. Yet, it is precisely for this reason that we need to poise and reflect over the wider perspective: indeed, are we wise?

CONSEQUENCES FOR MORALITY

Morality embodies a founding pillar of human civilization. The earliest known writings of perennial and wisdom philosophies, both East and West, presuppose the nature of the one continual universal consciousness as being "primal goodness". The recurrent and converging theme of these philosophies is that nature itself has good-intent and that all natural workings tend toward nourishing and fostering simultaneously the individual and the collective minds. Through such natural workings, a larger overall perfection is kept in balance.

Perennial philosophies aside, the early Greek philosophers also held that morals, together with beauty and truth, constitute the "intrinsic human good". The sense of morality is then an inalienable aspect of being human. As such, classical ethics are grounded in "natural law", which presupposes the existence of the idea of good (in Platonic ethics) or the final cause of human action (in Aristotelian ethics). "Good" exists either as an immutable form or as the natural purpose of human existence. And in either case, good can be identified objectively through the exercise of reason. Through thinking, reflection and contemplation, individuals are capable of coming to know their intrinsic nature and its inseparableness from nature itself.

Morality, in classical philosophy, thus entails the "cooperative" workings of reason and sentience. The intrinsic nature of one's being, as part and parcel of nature itself, is knowable through the exercise of one's intellect, the faculty of self-reflection. Man's intrinsic nature so revealed is captured by the "Moral Ideas", chief of these are the Ideas of Justice and Good. Given that classical philosophers see man as an integral part of nature; these Moral Ideas can therefore be seen as also characterizing the reality of nature itself. It is in this respect that the classical philosophy seems to be closely aligned with the perennial and wisdom philosophies.

Classical philosophers not only consider morality as an intrinsic human good, they also see that the intrinsic self is capable of knowing that which is good. However, since the classical era, the very existence of the intrinsic self has been called into question. Along with this, man's intrinsic capacity to know good and to make corresponding moral judgements are also called into question. In the subsequent Scholastic period, good was redefined as existing outside the intrinsic self in the form of an external impersonal God. The church then assumed the supreme moral authority by dictating the right and wrong of human conduct.

While the intrinsic good of the self was denied during the Dark Ages, it enjoyed a partial revival in modernity. There are two main schools of ethics in this period: teleology (telos: the Greek word for end) and deontology (deon: the Greek word for duty).²³² The ideological moral norms focus on extrinsic consequences and hence involve only an external "outcome" analysis. The right or wrong of an act is determined by its outcome as to whether it maximizes the net gain for either the individual or all the parties concerned.

On the other hand, deontological ethics focuses on intrinsic principles and hence involves an "intentional" analysis. According to Immanuel Kant. the key advocate of a duty-based ethic, it is the goodwill or good intention alone, regardless of the outcome, that determines the goodness of the act. Kant wrote of goodwill in his Critique of Pure Reason, "If with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing, and there should remain only the goodwill . . . then, like a jewel, it would still shine by its own light, as a thing which has its whole value in itself. Its usefulness or fruitlessness can neither add to nor take anything away from this value. "²³³ It needs to be noted that Kant views duties and rights as the two sides of the same coin: for any fundamental right there is a reciprocal duty. Therefore, deontological ethics are based on moral obligations of doing one's duties and respecting others' rights. Regardless, the key point is that it is in Kant's ethics that morality is seen once again as stemming from the good of the intrinsic self. However, this revival of the idea of intrinsic good was rather short lived, as the overwhelming collective consciousness of the Enlightenment again deemed the intrinsic self unworthy of human reason. The Neo-Kantians' rejection of Kant's original "thing-in-itself" thus finally sealed the fate of the intrinsic self in virtually all "rational" considerations of being human.

Therefore, as is the case with the shaping of the ethos of education, the shaping of contemporary morality has also been subject to the fierce joint force of the intellectual and the econo-political Zeitgeists: deconstruction-ism and new capitalism. To the extent that these two forces have significantly weakened and illegitimized the intrinsic self, the present-day morality has accordingly lost its intrinsic directive, and right or wrong can only be dictated from without.

Moreover, the collective intellectual Zeitgeist of deconstructionism has had a double assault on morality. The deconstructionist mission does not end with the rejection of the existence of the intrinsic self; it also denies the existence of any single set of unifying or totalising truth. In moral philosophy, these unifying truths identify with the Moral Ideas of the classical era and the absolute moral norms and imperatives of modernity (Lyotard termed the latter "grand narratives"). While the Moral Ideas are inalienable from the intrinsic self, the moral norms of modernity are prescribed from without, serving as "a priori" and universal guidelines of moral conduct. The deconstructionists' rejection of any absolute truth also makes the Moral Ideas and moral norms, all the moral absolutes prior to the present postmodern times, the direct target of their deconstruction. As a result, the present-day collective consciousness concerning morality has negated both the intrinsic self (along with its guiding role in moral conduct) as well as the absolute moral norms furnished from without.

The present-day morality reflects keenly this double legacy of deconstructionist thought. Thus, today's postmodern morality is not only relativistic but also without an intrinsic anchor. Good or right is defined, neither by the conscience of the intrinsic self nor by the universalizable moral norms; rather, it is locally determined by the ever-changing particularities of each specific social-political context. Critics of postmodern morality have painstakingly pointed out that such a morality is as good as no morality at all; as its negation of the intrinsic good and commonly-shared moral norms seriously risks the unfortunate consequence of moral nihilism.

Indeed, this feared future is in the process of being rapidly shaped into actual reality. In the name of the postmodern thesis of pluralistic morality, each "perspective" to a moral issue is credited with the status of having equal "moral merit", irrespective of its true reasoned worth. In the absence of agreed-upon moral norms, it is the voice of the louder and the more persistent particular perspective that takes hold. These perspectives, often untested even as shared communal beliefs, take hold with the benefit of the silence of the majority; and once they take hold, they become the formal guiding "moral thought".

It has been evident that one such loud and untested voice today comes from the new capitalism and managerialism. As human society is under the increasingly firmer grip of such consciousness, there have been clear signs that the moral vacuum left by moral philosophers are being filled by this collective econo-political totalitarianism. Right or wrong is now dictated by the econo-political and business elite through endless and ambiguously worded legislations and codes of conduct. The present-day moral consciousness is unmistakably being shaped by the new capitalistic ideologies of image, power, and profit. Driven by such exterior-oriented consciousness, the new capitalism fosters a systemic and institutional fabrication of morality.

Through its profit monopolizing and power holding strategies, the new capitalism has put in place, via its cohort managerialism, an infrastructure that Bauman identifies in Community as an intentional "systemic distraction" from genuine equality and true morality. The recent collapses of Enron and WorldCom have seriously damaged a great many lives; yet, it has left virtually unaffected the personal profit of the management elite. With new capitalists' infrastructure occupying the vacuum of the collective moral consciousness, neither equality nor morality is ever attainable in the actual reality of daily lives.

To the extent that such an outer-oriented collective moral conscious is taking shape in the present, that it becomes humanity's future consciousness is equally ensured. The question of morality thus needs serious attention at this point in history. We need to pause and ask, as co-creators of future human conditions and collective consciousness, whether we want to see the future actualization of such a consciousness: a future consciousness that focuses solely on the exterior superficiality of human existence devoid of intrinsic meaning and purpose. However, the collective future of humanity can be steered away from this dire possibility if we could become cognizant of the true nature of morality and its practical significance in the context of the proposed mind reality.

The true nature of morality can be understood in the light of the dynamics of the mind reality: covert multiplicity, and intent-corresponding overt manifestation. Whereas the former dynamic rule stipulates that all moral alternatives co-exist as covert multiple possibilities; the latter rule sees the manifestation of specific moral alternatives as overt moral action, as the result of a corresponding intent. This conceptual framework sheds light on several key issues of morality. First, the perennial moral debate over good and evil; second, the significance of moral intent; and third, the practical solutions to moral conflicts and dilemmas.

First considering the good versus evil debate, the covert multiplicity rule means that good and evil, and all alternatives in between, coexist in the covert unmanifested mind reality. The two opposites of good and evil, being inseparable like the two-sides of the same coin, are intertwined as the wave and particle in the quantum reality. However, no matter how good is defined, whether as the very nature of the universal mind or the intrinsic self, as classical philosophers' Moral Ideas, or as external moral norms in modernity, good is always held as a humane ideal. Regardless of how evil is defined, whether as Socrates' "ignorance", or as St. Augustine's "imperfect expression of good intent", it is flawed and can be made good and perfected. In the covert mind reality, all possibilities co-exist as potentials for overt moral action; potentials of good thus coexist with potentials of evil.

As all covert potentials are unceasingly ready for overt actualization into exterior reality, it is at this transition point that the importance of intent assumes its paramount importance in the mind reality. The mind reality rule says it all: the covert moral reality is made manifest by corresponding intrinsic intent. Were it not for the intricate and enigmatic workings of the intent, morality would have become neither philosophers' perennial obsession nor humanity's existential struggle. Morality has become both, for even with the exercise of intellect and will, individuals are unable to completely free their mind from selfish or ego-centered intent. This is because individuals have an in-built programme against the capability of selfless impartiality; and with it, against the capability of true selfless intent.

The ultra-Darwinists and the social Darwinists assert that our genetic and social-cultural evolutions are both driven by an underlying principle of "selfishness". The rationalist philosopher Ayn Rand concurs and cogently presents a philosophical case for "the virtues of selfishness". In recent years, this view has been espoused by the extreme individualistic and capitalistic political ideology, partly through Rand's followers such as Milton Freeman and Alan Greenspan.²³⁴ The same idea has also surged within academia and has recently become the central tenet of evolutionary psychology, a currently-in-vogue branch of academic psychology championed by influential positive philosophers and neural cognitive psychologists like Steven Pinker. So, humanity's evolution and its genetic endowment favour self-centered partiality.

Try as we might towards selflessness in intent, it seems that humans can not escape the grips of many existential tendencies for partiality. Traditional Sociobiologists and the neo-Darwinian evolutionary biologists have been adamant about the ruthless competition-based "survival of the fittest" thesis of humanity's social and cultural evolution. Even our altruistic tendencies are only typically extended to our own kin. When we are altruistic to others not bound by common genes, there is always a string attached: "tit-for-tat", "win-stay-lose-shift" or "reciprocal altruism" at best. This string underpins all the strategies we adopt in our social relations; even altruism seems also self-centred and grounded in a selfish intent. Therefore, given that human evolution itself rests upon an intent of selfishness, the evolution of humanity's consciousness can not be totally devoid of, nor set completely free from, the natural workings of selfishness.

However, the natural workings of "selfish intent" may not lead humanity to negative entropy. From a systemic perspective, the dynamics of the mind reality entail an entropy and self-organizing balancing act. The mind system, human consciousness, also has the in-built program for self-organizing, as a natural counter force to entropy. As such, the natural workings of selfish intent are kept in balance by those of counter-selfish intent. In the system of moral consciousness, the in-built counter force is the conscience of the intrinsic self at the individual level, and the shared social agreements at the collective level. It is here that the importance of the intrinsic self and the external moral rules is clear in the reality of moral consciousness: they are part and parcel of its indispensable self-organizing dynamics pertaining to moral intent. It is also in this context that both the explicit mission of deconstructionism and the cloaked goal of new capitalism and managerialism are revealed and shown to be flawed and perilous. As the natural dynamics that serve the function of steering the system away from entropy, the intrinsic self and universally shared moral norms can not be deconstructed; nor should the former be colonised, nor the latter be replaced by the single-minded selfish intent of new capitalism.

Conceptually, we have thus far reached the conclusion that morality rests on the coordinated workings both within the individual intrinsic self (balancing its selfless conscience and its natural selfish inclination) and between the individual and the collective environment via shared moral norms. This conceptual conclusion has paved the way for practical solutions in our moral life: any practical solution to moral dilemma needs to be regulated both intrinsically through self reflection and exteriorly through moral norms. Whereas self-regulation constitutes the exercise of reason and conscience, social regulation involves the following of universally held moral norms.

However, as already noted, in the present-day collective ultramaterialistic Zeitgeist, the econo-political elite is exerting an unprecedented social influence. Such a social influence stemming from an ideology based on superficial and egoistic concerns necessarily comes into conflict with the social regulation traditionally defined by universal moral norms. Indeed, most personal moral dilemmas often arise when one feels caught and vacillates between the "social call" for not rocking the boat and the inner call for following one's own conscience. In existential terms then, the entire ethical decision process revolves around how one can best attend to both calls and to find a balanced practical solution.

A balanced practical solution necessarily includes in its first stage thoughtful reflection and educated reason. But, by virtue of the very nature of moral dilemma, it is likely that after giving due consideration to all sides with careful reasoning, we may find ourselves either coming back to the same dilemma or facing another dilemma. This led Jung to conclude late in life that, "By no means every conflict of duties, and perhaps not even a single one, is ever really 'solved,' though it may be argued over, weighed, and counterweighted till doomsday."²³⁵

But as the modern moral philosopher Immanuel Kant has said about morality, the end is not as important as the means, so long as we have reasoned long and hard, and tried our best to reason and balance our natural selfish tendency against the moral ideals. It is this reflecting process that is truly important. When and only when we have reached this far with reason, the Romantic philosophers' motto may then take over in guiding our moral deliberation, "The heart knows what reason knows not." After having traveled with reason to the very end of the road, we need to take heed of the message of the heart, the conscience, the self within. This approach to the seemingly irresolvable moral dilemma thus gives equal credence to reason and intuit.

Knowledge of the conscience, the intrinsic self, is often revealed through private sentient experience including visions and dreams. In the context of the proposed mind reality, it is revealed as a result of an intent. When confronted with a seemingly irresolvable moral dilemma, the individual's intense intent of making the best possible judgement or taking the best possible action can make manifest the corresponding covert larger wisdom of the mind reality. It is only when the exercise of reason is accompanied by the insights gained through self's guiding sentient experience that a balanced practical solution, the classical philosophers' "golden mean", can be truly attained.