Spirituality
Spiritual, Ethical, & Moral Health
The department head of Spirituality is responsible for monitoring the spiritual health of the people of Augury. An eligible individual would have a graduate degree in ministry, philosophy, or significant experience in a related field, and a demonstrable commitment to altruism.
The head of Spirituality must lead their department in promoting kindness, selflessness, and altruism in the culture of Augury. Spirituality must ensure that the other Judicial departments are keeping the people of Augury in quality of health such that self-actualization and altruism are attainable goals. Spirituality must also address any significant trends of immorality in policy or culture. If any issues regarding the general moral health of the population arise, the department of Spirituality would assess the situation, determine the cause, and address it promptly by whatever means appropriate.
The most crucial function of the Spirituality department is to advocate for the weakest and most vulnerable members of society, to care for them, defend them from being mistreated, and help them back to self-sufficiency if possible. If there is a trend of any group of people being mistreated or downtrodden, Spirituality should determine the cause and address it by any means appropriate.
Members of the Spirituality department must actively lead by example, demonstrating good ethics and morals by serving their community, putting others before themselves, organizing charity campaigns/funds/events, and so on.
Spiritual, Ethical, & Moral Health
“As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.”
—Arthur C. Clarke
Oftentimes, people are too desperate with their physical or mental health to even think about spiritual things, which is why—even though I believe spiritual health is the most important kind of health—it’s last on the hierarchy. Once we are fed, housed, well-rested, and we have inner peace, we have all we need to look to the needs of others.
Before exploring the ways we can encourage a community of good moral and ethical health, let’s explore the legitimacy of the issue by establishing a clear image of poor spiritual health in a community. Poor spiritual health looks like selfishness. If our community has human beings struggling alone to survive, or industries which actively benefit by taking advantage of others, idolizes people who consider themselves better than others—if we have a weak or nonexistent sense of guilt and accountability for our actions or obligation to right our wrongs, we should consider it a moral failing. If the people of Augury are not kind, selfless, compassionate, and humble, we must immediately seek means of improving.
Altruism
“the principle and practice of concern for the welfare and/or happiness of others.”
Compared to mental and physical health, spiritual health may seem relatively unimportant—and more of a personal choice or journey than something a government department should be regulating. But since Augury has departments dedicated to promoting mental and physical health, spiritual health is crucial for balance.
Just like children, if we have our needs met and have to endure minimal struggle, we will grow spoiled. This leads to self-centered and immature behavior, entitlement, laziness, and eventually a kind of learned helplessness. Struggle to the point of mass suffering and chronic stress can kill us—but in the complete absence of struggle, we slip into hedonism. A person who lacks purpose and meaning will distract themselves with pleasure. Without a culture of spiritual health, Augury will quickly fall apart. This cycle has repeated endlessly throughout history, as societies develop to the point of overcoming the struggle of survival through technology and support systems, then subsequently grow soft and complacent, and are eventually overcome by the hubris of their misconception of self-sufficiency. “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
So how do we balance these? How do we design a community which protects its members from difficulty but does not deprive them of hardship altogether? It’s simple: we seek out the struggle.
Augury will provide for our basic needs. Citizens should never have to worry about getting enough to eat, access to clean water, having a place to sleep, access to healthcare, or having clean air to breathe. They will have security in their ability to provide for themselves. That security establishes a strong foundation—which can be used to support a lackadaisical lifestyle, or to support greater courage. We see this phenomenon in children. Young children who cry and receive attention promptly grow braver, less sensitive, secure in the knowledge that they will receive support if they need it. They are emboldened to pursue higher goals sooner. How we choose to use that security, that boldness, will define us.
At the top of Maslow’s pyramid is a section called “self actualization.” His idea was that, if all the lower needs are fulfilled, we can begin to seek a sense of fulfillment and realizing our potential, becoming the best version of ourselves. This will look different for every person. For some, self-actualization looks like developing a skill or passion, like the arts; some creative contribution to the world. It may be a project, repairing a relationship, mastery of a skill, seeking answers or higher education, teaching others, or any number of things.
I posit that this stage of self-actualization is the stage at which we have the greatest capacity for selflessness. The foundation of having our needs met has the risk of enabling a sense of lethargy, lulling us into a sense of not needing or caring about others. But if we promote a sense of self-actualization, of becoming the best version of ourselves, and then think beyond ourselves, we can use that strong foundation to help others. We can care for the weakest members—not just of our own society, but distribute surplus supplies and humanitarian aid to people in need internationally. With extra time and energy, our basic needs met, and a surplus in our production, we can take in refugees of war or conflict, we can feed the hungry, care for the sick, rehabilitate the hurting. We must shift our culture away from the competitive, individualistic mentality and become generous—not begrudgingly, but be cheerful givers. We can do more. It is possible to help too much, as well—if we provide support to the point of enabling unhealthy behavior, or teaching learned helplessness. We must learn a proper balance of providing the right kind of support, driven by data and research, as each individual needs.
This is our purpose. The struggle of others will become our struggles and the world will be our neighbor. This is the key, I believe, to our spiritual health: to care for others as we care for ourselves.
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold: service was joy.
—Rabindranath Tagore
National Anthem
Good moral health and altruism should be the highest goal of Augury. To promote this, I propose the following song as our national anthem:
Religion
The first amendment to the U.S. constitution reads as follows:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Most people remember the first amendment as merely a protection of free speech, and entirely neglect the very first mandate: “no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Many of the laws which shape our lives in America have no basis outside of Christian influences. America is described as “a Christian nation” (though this largely comes from propaganda campaigns during the Cold War), and politicians use and abuse “Christian values” to manipulate the people. Augury should not ever be a theocracy. I am a Christian, and I do not want to create or live in a theocracy. I do not believe in theocracy. Faith is an individual choice, not a lifestyle to be enforced on others by anyone, least of all a governing body. Separation of church and state should be very carefully maintained. The Spirituality department, especially, must never show preference to a specific institution or denomination of religion (this is not limited to a specific religion, such as different denominations of Christianity, as someone I know has suggested as an interpretation of the american first amendment). The core value of the Spirituality department should simply be impartial altruism.
As far as the government interacts with religious organizations, here is what I propose. In America, churches are non-profit organizations and are exempt from some/all taxes, based on the assumption that they operate as a sort of charity organization. Though this concept often doesn’t work in execution (when religious organizations take advantage of their tax exemption to maximize their wealth), I like the idea in principle. I propose that in Augury, we exchange facilities for service with religious organizations; perhaps something along the lines of a certain number of hours of volunteer service (for the Spirituality department, after which they may be delegated to another department) per registered member, which translates to a certain amount of square footage in a meeting place. This will ensure religious organizations operate as a charity organization in the community, and prevent any organization from using wealth to be exempt from service. A simple, publicly available formula could keep the exchange rate fair and open. Any religious organization (with the exception of dangerously fanatical or radical organizations) which agrees to exchange service for a meeting place should be welcomed. If the service is repeatedly dissatisfactory or the organization is repeatedly disruptive or problematic to the rest of the community, the offer should be revoked.
Rehabilitation & Penal
The U.S. incarcerates a massive amount of people– around 0.7% of the population or 698 per every 100,000 people (which is about 20% of the world’s population of prisoners, though America as a whole represents only 4.2% of the world population). America’s incarceration rate is one of the highest in the world, and “approximately two-thirds will likely be rearrested within three years of release.” Our penal system is just that—a system focused on punishment far more so than rehabilitation, motivated to keep people in than to keep people out. This is because time spent inside prisons does little to improve the conditions of prisoners; poor nutrition, the high stress environment, overcrowding, abuse from guards, and solitary confinement all take an enormous toll on a person’s health and leaves them worse off than when they went in, and ill-equipped to reenter society upon their release. Around 10% of American prisons are operated as private, for-profit entities and actively benefit from the retention of prisoners. Conditions are cruel, inhumane, and destructive. Ex-cons are treated with prejudice from landlords, employers, and almost everyone around them.
Consider in contrast the Scandinavian penal system, which has a reputation for focusing on rehabilitation. Prisoners are not treated like animals or sub-human. Depending on their facility, sentencing, and conduct, they may be afforded luxuries like flatscreen televisions, sound systems, their own personal clothes, wages, and even varying degrees of freedom, as some prisons don’t even have walls. Sweden, for example, has a prison population of about .07% or 74 per every 100,000 people, and only a 30% recidivism rate, which has been falling in recent years.
When a member of our community makes a mistake, we have a choice in how we want to respond. We can choose to punish them and make them suffer to motivate them through fear to never commit the crime again, or we can choose to help them and rehabilitate them so they are less likely to want to commit the crime again. Many principles in parenting apply to how we treat each other—the authoritarian parent focuses on the punitive, is strict and inflexible, is prone to demoralizing the child, ignoring their point of view, and not showing compassion, and may become abusive. Mistakes are met with harsh retaliation that breaks the child down. This focus on control and obedience results in an aggressive, socially inept, and rebellious child with low self esteem. Alternatively, “authoritative parents are nurturing, responsive, and supportive, yet set firm limits for their children. They attempt to control children's behavior by explaining rules, discussing, and reasoning…children raised with this style tend to be friendly, energetic, cheerful, self-reliant, self-controlled, curious, cooperative and achievement-oriented.” Our governing style should follow a similar model. If our goal is to reduce crime and the number of criminals, our approach must be centered around rehabilitation. To rehabilitate people, we have to be goal-oriented and address problems at their source. Either on an individual basis or as a societal trend, what motivates a person to commit a given crime? If the motivation is desperation, can the person’s living conditions be improved? If the situation was circumstantial, how can the circumstances be avoided—or can counseling improve internal pressure or motivations?
According to data provided by the United States Sentencing Commission, in 2018 more than half of federal crimes were either immigration and drug-related—both of which speak to deeper issues than mere selfishness. In some cases, very violent or cruel crimes must be met with firm accountability to defend the victim(s). However, in many cases, criminal activity can be considered an indicator of some failure or shortcoming in culture. Should they still be punished for breaking the social construct of the community? Of course it should, and where possible, the punishment should be tailored to fit the crime (towards making reparations). Rehabilitating people is always a combination of improving their physical, mental, and spiritual health and should be treated as such. The main goal should be that after a criminal has served their sentence, they are well equipped to reenter society, in better condition overall than before.
As in America, no citizen in Augury should be punished unless they are convicted of a crime by a jury of their peers. Every citizen must have the right to a fair trial, and legal representatives should be publicly employed exclusively and assigned impartially. Wealth or status should never give a person or organization an advantage in a court in the pursuit of truth.
Unforgivable Crimes
Certain extreme crimes like rape, aggressive molestation, molestation of people unable to defend themselves (children, elderly, handicapped, etc.), human trafficking, physical torture, and first degree murder, especially serial repeat offenses of these crimes, must be punished drastically. Capital punishment should only be used as a last resort, as it could encourage perpetrators to murder their victims to avoid getting caught. Banishment is appealing, but unfair to the nation the perpetrator ends up in. Chemical castration and/or permanent incarceration may be the most viable option. Though incarceration is not ideal, sometimes it’s necessary in order to maintain a safe environment for the general population. Perpetrators of past sexual and violent crimes should not be allowed to emigrate to Augury.
Fortunately, the ocean is facilitative to a high-security penitentiary. Consider a facility in deeper water than the rest of Augury, where water pressure would make escape by swimming impossible. Supplies could be transported in an unmanned compartment—if this compartment traveled quickly enough, it would prevent stowaways by threat of decompression sickness (alternatively, the compartment could be divided into smaller compartments internally too small for a human to fit, or the compartment could be programmed to flood before returning). This facility could be self-sufficient and remotely operated through the use of mechanisms like cameras, microphones and speakers, shock collars, and so on, which may reduce or eliminate the need for internal guards (though guards would still need means to quickly enter and exit the facility when needed; consider perhaps having it only accessible from above to use gravity as an obstacle). Inmates should not be exposed to any provocative stimulus. Sedatives in food or water could reduce the risk of violence. This facility should not be completely miserable—inmates should enjoy reasonable comfort that they may be content to calmly live out the rest of their existence isolated from the rest of the world.