Human society is founded and guided by evolving sets of principles and values that empowers the people to confront the various elements of life in the course of their progression. It is a society’s ethics that helps shape a peoples cultural values, social structures, economic sustainability, political life; and defines the nature and praxis of participation in the political realm while enabling its critical consciousness and worldviews.
In the course of interaction with other societies and civilizations, the ethical worldview of a society is in turn profoundly influenced and transformed. This phenomenon indicates that the ethical framework of a peoples is never static – it is a dynamic concept that is always progressing around the inherent core principles and values of a society. It is the dynamism of a society’s tradition and ethical framework that enables and empowers the peoples in balancing the diverse aspects of their beings. It empowers them to harmonize with the natural forces that exist outside them, to respect the integrity of others and the diverse forms of power and to achieve peaceful co-existence.
We must however also acknowledge that our ethics and moral values do become a casualty of ‘real politik’ and pragmatism of state power. Politicians and the ruling elite have often created a dichotomy between principled values and politics. This tendency to sacrifice values and principles in the name of interest and convenience for a select few has had far reaching consequences. It has damaged societies, destroyed their social support system, has corrupted their way of life and thinking, has limited their capacity to confront crisis and above all it takes away their power to become makers of their own culture.
We must realize that philosophical principles and politics in the struggle for human security cannot be separated from each other. They are part of the same body. Thus, for an evolving society like the Nagas, how do we grow and progress as a nation without having to sacrifice our political principles, our social and spiritual ethical praxis?
Does modernization mean the same thing as westernization? Or can the Naga people modernize without having to westernize based on our own indigenous values and principles that have sustained our survival and existence as a peoples for generations? Have we learnt from the experiences of history that imitating and borrowing concepts and values that are not relevant to the society have only proven to be destructive?
These are questions that the people will invariably have to encounter in the struggle for justice and freedom. And while addressing these questions, it is fundamental to recognize that much of our pain and suffering today is also self-inflicted. Taiaiake states, ‘… the problem is not so much of blindness as it is aversion of the truth that, although ‘they’ began our oppression, ‘we’ have to a larger degree perpetuated it.’
In the struggle for humanity, any ethical framework will recognize that the liberation in one sphere of life does not mean it will cover all spheres of our lives. We must continuously struggle for the liberation of our complete being in all spheres of our human life. We must recognize that imperialism and oppression cannot be separated from the philosophical problem, but they can be overcome by confrontation through a philosophical and ethical framework and praxis. It raises the moral necessity of defining where our standing point on justice is located.
The profound observation made by Martin Luther King Jr. that if you do not stand for something; you will fall for anything, comes to challenge our conscience and our commitment to justice and peace. Archbishop Tutu says it is asking: ‘Are you on the side of right or the side of wrong? Are you on the side of justice, or on the side of injustice? Are you on the side of freedom or oppression? It is very clear! And once we have come to appreciate and accept this reality, then it is only a question of time!
