In the same way, every interpretation of a situation can make a determinative difference I how we relate to what is occurring there.
One sees the surface, or the inner meaning. Continuing to look begins one formulation of a relationship towards a setting, including the other person who is part of that setting. Perception is evaluative. Perception of other people is intrinsically moral. To be aware of one’s neighbour is to perceive the neighbour in a morally evaluative light ̶ as trustworthy, criminal, or whatever. To turn our knowing glance towards or away from some reality is a moral act. To see or not to see is a pre-conscious moral commitment. If I do not see suffering in a world of starving people, if I do not see racism where it is virulent ̶ that is already a moral ordering of the world.
A person who routinely perceives the world in moral terms is one who is sensitized, morally aware. A moral frame of reference is a frame through which one intends with care towards a world perceived as social, that is, comprised of people (and nature) who (and which) in meaningful respects are like-me and yet not-me. To intend with care is to care about, be appreciative of, and assign priority in seeing and doing to moral dimensions of the social and natural. It means putting the questions “Is it good? Is it beautiful?” to the multiple contexts of one’s lived engagements. Perception and interpretation of the world as a moral phenomenon is requisite to taking the responsibility that leads a person to act in behalf of the general good, every action in a setting is based on an interpretation of just what’s happening there. Studies in behaviour have explored many factors related to one’s interpretation of a setting. For example: a person is more likely to help someone who has fallen to the pavement with an apparent heart attack than someone who appears to be “merely” a chronic alcohol.
One crucial factor in how people respond to emergency is whether or not they interpret it to be an emergency. Albert Camus dramatically portrayed the difference that a mistake in interpretation can make in THE STRANGER. The leading character kills a man, in a confusing set of exchanges, although it is never clear they have any reason to be enemies ̶ just strangers. As he sits in gaol awaiting trial, he finds a piece of yellowed newspaper clipping on the underside of his straw mattress. The clipping tells the story of a person who leaves home to make his way in the world. After 25 years or so, he returns to his old home to surprise his old mother and sister with his new wealth and family. To make his planned surprise complete, he books his wife and child into the hotel and himself goes to story at the modest inn run by his mother and sister. He uses an assumed name and they fail to recognise him after so long but they do see a roll of bills he flashes rather ostentatiously around. In the latter part of the night, the mother and the daughter kill the homecoming son and brother for his money. In the morning (having hidden the corpse for diposal later), his wife and child arrive and reveal the identity of the rich lodger at their inn. Whereupon the murderers, mother and sister, kill themselves. The son unwittingly sets a deadly drama in motion but fails to notify all the players of their roles. His mother and sister interpret him as a stranger, a rich tourist-stranger who’ll likely not be searched for in their town, much less their inn. It is easier to rob and kill a stranger tha son and brother. Their interpretation of he was (and was not) makes all the difference. In the same way, every interpretation of a situation can make a determinative difference I how we relate to what is occurring there.
This tragic outcome might not have come about if the son had been content to start the reunion with a Camusstahan, a regular HOW-DYE-DO. Surprises, in times of crises, should not be sprung on mom and sis.
P.S. To summarise the prose in a 10-line poem:
To act in behalf of the common good
In one’s assumptive frame of reference
One must perceive the other as one should
Both similarity and difference
Conscientiously evaluated first
In moral and aesthetic terms, but not
Residually, as if Sir Philip Sidney’s thirst
Were more deserving of quenching than that
Of his co-soldier in the battlefield:
“TO HIM THIS DRINK I MUST NOW YIELD.”
