Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life

PART 1

LOOKING INWARD

This is not a how-to book with prescribed choices for doing the most good and the least harm. It is, instead, a call to define for yourself your deepest values and to live accordingly, and this call is followed by practical information and guidelines that will help you achieve this goal. Part I offers you keys for discovering not only what is most important to you, but also what will help you traverse the MOGO path in a way that it is as healthy, joyful, and positive for you as it is for all whom your choices affect. By looking inward, you will lay the groundwork for a life that consistently does the most good and the least harm.

1. The Most Good, Least Harm (MOGO) Principle in Practice

As I wrote in the introduction, I am a humane educator. Humane education examines the challenges facing our planet—from human oppression, to environmental degradation, to animal cruelty, to escalating materialism—and invites people to live intentional, examined, and meaningful lives that solve the problems we face. Humane education includes four elements:

1. Providing accurate information about the issues of our time so that people have the information they need to confront challenges

2. Fostering the 3 Cs: Curiosity, Creativity, and Critical thinking, so that people have the skills to meet challenges

3. Instilling the 3 Rs: Reverence, Respect, and Responsibility, so that people have the motivation to face challenges

4. Offering positive choices and tools for problem solving, so that people are empowered to make healthy decisions for themselves and the world, and solve challenges

These are the elements I use as a humane educator, and I have incorporated them into this book so that you, too, will have the knowledge, tools, and desire to make MOGO choices. But as the reader, you will first need an element for yourself, the fifth element: to actively and consciously cultivate what I call the 3 Is: Inquiry, Introspection, and Integrity.

Inquiry

In order to align your life choices with your values, you will need to inquire about the effects of your actions (and inactions) on yourself and others. Although we are always stumbling upon knowledge that shifts our choices and life direction, bringing conscious inquiry to life means that we continually ask questions that lead us to the information we need to make thoughtful decisions. Asking questions is liberating because we develop greater understanding and discover more choices with our new knowledge.

Introspection

As you ask questions and gather information, if you are to make meaningful changes, you will need to introspect—to look inward and see where the confluence of new knowledge and your life choices lies. It is likely you will periodically feel some conflict between your habits, desires, and the truth of what you have learned, but this is why a commitment to introspection is so important. When we dive below our surface desires and habits, we are able to discover our deepest visions, dreams, and commitments, which can also be quite liberating.

Integrity

As you open your heart and mind to inquiry, as you acquire the information you need to make informed and conscious decisions, and as you introspect, you are then called upon to act in accordance with your new knowledge and your deepest values. This is integrity, and it brings with it inner peace.

Together, these 3 Is help you to bring your dreams and hopes for a healthier and more joyful life—and a better world—to fruition. They make MOGO living possible by informing your everyday decisions, as well as your career, relationships, political involvement, volunteer work, recreation, and all of the ways in which you participate in creating positive change.

So far, this is all rather theoretical, so I’m going to explain how MOGO works in practice. When I teach, my students learn how to analyze products, structures, and systems, and they come to realize that there is much that is harmful in our world. In age-appropriate ways, I teach them about persistent and escalating problems and abuses behind many products, foods, clothing, and recreational options in their lives. But then, as they learn to effectively use their critical and creative thinking capacities toward imagining solutions, they begin to envision healthy and humane products, and better and more sustainable structures and systems. They discover that they have the ability to make a positive difference. Then they often make personal choices to divest themselves of those things that cause suffering and harm, as well as become change agents in an effort to bring about a better world.

In one of the activities we do, students analyze and discuss different behaviors and products, and answer the question, Which does the most good and the least harm? Students might compare riding a bicycle to using public transportation, driving a highly fuel-efficient car to driving a large SUV; or they might contrast a fast food hamburger to a hamburger made from grass-fed cows to an organic veggie burger. (for more information about fast food.) They might examine the effects of a cotton T-shirt produced in an overseas sweatshop, to a cotton T-shirt produced closer to home, to an organic cotton T-shirt, to a secondhand T-shirt from a local thrift shop. (for more on cotton T-shirts.) They might consider spending $3 a day on sodas or junk food from vending machines, versus $3 a day on healthy snacks. Or they may also consider bringing food from home and donating a percentage of their spending money to help others. There is always plenty to discuss and debate, and much to take into consideration when accounting for the effects of a choice on oneself, other people, animals, and ecosystems.

By also examining systems that perpetuate problems, these students discover that systems can change, and that their voice and involvement can make a difference. For example, they might learn about corporate charters that give corporations the rights of citizens without the concomitant responsibilities, and then learn about efforts to modify corporate charters so that companies can still pursue profits without harming the environment, people, or animals. (Please see page 100 for more information on such efforts.) Thus, not only do they become aware of the impact of their own personal choices on food, products, entertainment, and transportation, but they also learn about the power they have as citizens and members of the work and volunteer force.

As people learn to think in these ways, they generally come to discover that the MOGO principle can have far-reaching and very profound effects if put into practice by large numbers of people. Although there are rarely perfect answers to complex problems, there can be a perfectly simple principle for making choices—the MOGO principle.

As straightforward as the MOGO principle is, carrying it out in our daily lives can sometimes seem complex. Periodically, we discover a conflict between what feels best for us personally and what is likely best for other people, or what we think is best for a whole ecosystem and what might be best for individual animals, or what appears best for a specific group of people and what seems best for the environment, and so on. There will be many times when none of the individual choices within your view are ideal, and you may feel that the effort to consistently make MOGO choices is either irrelevant or too arduous.

For example, I’m typing this book on my laptop and I cannot imagine how I could do my work without this amazing machine. Yet computers are currently filled with metals that are mined in a destructive and highly polluting manner, and their components are often produced in factories where laborers suffer health problems from working with the toxic chemicals involved in computer production (and who also frequently endure sweatshop conditions). Additionally, since the lives of computers are so brief, these toxins wind up causing significant pollution if we discard them in landfills or incinerators.

As someone committed to living a MOGO life, what am I supposed to do with this conflict between my ethical goals and my practical need for a computer? How can I help solve the problems associated with computer use even as I rely on a computer? And, since computers represent only one example of products that come with problems, how can I address such challenges wherever and whenever they appear? What’s the MOGO answer?

First, we can use the 3 Is, while recognizing that we may not always have perfect solutions in place right now. We can learn about the effects of our choices (bring our inquiry), figure out MOGO choices taking everything we’ve learned into consideration (introspect), and make MOGO choices to the extent we can (live with integrity). If ideal solutions and choices aren’t available, then we can employ what I call the 3 Vs—our Voice, our Vote, and our monetary Veto—to transform systems, structures, businesses, and governments so that they, too, do the most good and the least harm.

In the case of my computer, I can educate people about the problems inherent in current computer production; support those working to create clean electronics and ensure that computer components are recycled safely; and engage in the democratic process to promote fair and safe labor standards worldwide. When I use my voice or money in favor of solutions, and vote for legislators who share my commitment to restorative, sustainable, and humane technologies, I help bring about positive change.

The MOGO principle can—and must—become the ethic that guides governments, institutions, and corporations, not just individuals. There are too many systems in place that we cannot change simply through our personal choices (such as toxins in electronics). Our world needs a revolution of values in which the MOGO principle takes root deeply and inexorably, so that we change structures that are myopic and dangerous into ones that are visionary and safe. But this won’t happen unless individuals like you commit to playing a role in such a transformation. If each of us does this, we will not have to decide between our ethics and the available products and systems in place to meet our future needs. Collectively we will have resolved such problems as toxins in electronics.

Down the road, I believe we will see clothes, personal care products, transportation, appliances, food, electronics, and much more produced without destruction to the environment, without the exploitation of laborers, without cruelty to animals, without the production of toxins, without disposal systems that result in pollution, and with renewable and clean fuels. At the same time, more of us will discover that rampant consumerism is not satisfying or sustainable anyway, and we will begin to find greater joy through healthy interactions with each other and the natural world, only choosing products to meet our needs and strongest desires, and not to satisfy every whim or fill internal emptiness with stuff.

The evolution toward such a world is both essential and possible. With shifts in the way we think and changes in educational, political, and corporate priorities, we can make the world evolve. But these changes won’t come about without a group of people working to make this vision real. And this group will not come from one political party, one socioeconomic bracket, one religion, one age group, or one nation. It will form from people across all spectrums of life who want future generations to thrive and survive; who cannot bear the rapid extinction of species or the despoiling of our earth; who believe in justice and equality; who long for meaning and joy; and who are committed to doing the most good and the least harm. It will be both our individual lives and the collective movement growing from our combined efforts that will transform the world into one in which our choices are healthy, sustainable, peaceful, and just.

MOGO is a way of assessing choices; it is not a cookie-cutter formula. What is most good and least harmful will often be somewhat subjective and need to take into account many variables. It will be up to you to decide for yourself. The challenge is to do so with commitment, honesty, and integrity.

You may wonder whether bringing the 3 Is to every choice and employing the 3 Vs wherever entrenched problems exist might turn your life into a state of constant analysis and weigh you down with a moral nag. That hardly sounds like it would bring much inner peace. The truth is that you could become caught up with every detail of your life and drive yourself crazy, but that would definitely not be MOGO.

Instead, you can bring open-minded effort and commitment to examined choice-making to the decisions in your life—what you buy, eat, and wear; what you do for work; how you participate in creating positive change; how you take care of yourself—all without berating yourself for being imperfect. If we ask what will do the most good and the least harm (or sometimes, what will simply do more good and less harm) in relation to these and other choices, we set the stage for far-reaching positive effects rather than for personal purity.

Ultimately, when we choose the MOGO principle we will:

Have a simple, helpful, and meaningful guide for every choice, conflict, issue, and life decision we will ever face

Cultivate our own wisdom and kindness

Increase our freedom from others’ imperatives, whether these come from advertisers, social norms, the media, or individual people telling us what we should or shouldn’t do

Improve our own lives without unknowingly or unjustifiably harming others or the environment to do so

Stay honest

Remain humble, open, and nonjudgmental

Balance strong concerns with level-headed choice-making

Develop our self-discipline and equanimity

Free ourselves from the specter of guilt, indignity, or shame caused by unreflective, inhumane, or rash decision-making

Be liberated from the oppressive pursuit of perfection

Seen in this way, what at first might seem like work turns out instead to be an opportunity for a better life for ourselves, everyone our lives affect, as well as our environment.

We’re all aware of the Golden Rule to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Whether phrased in the positive or negative (don’t do unto others what we wouldn’t want done unto us), this rule is integral to every major religion and has been prescribed by philosophers over millennia. In the King James version of the New Testament, this rule reads: And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. Buddhist scripture asks: A state that is not pleasing or delightful to me, how could I inflict that upon another? In Islam: None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself. In Judaism: What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary. Plato wrote, May I do to others as I would that they should do unto me. And the British Humanist Society left it simply as, Don’t do things you wouldn’t want to have done to you.¹. There are many more versions from Hinduism, Taoism, Sufism, Jainism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, and numerous spiritual traditions among indigenous peoples across the globe, but I think I’ve belabored the point enough. The Golden Rule is a foundational principle among humans everywhere.

But now our complex world requires a new Golden Rule, one that enables us to put into practice the original Golden Rule universally. In a world in which our clothes, food, transportation, fuel, products, and homes come to us through a web of connections that extend around the planet, we need a principle to guide us so that we actually can do to others, no matter how geographically distant, as we would have them do to us, and refrain from doing to others that which is abhorrent to us. Most good, least harm is that principle. MOGO calls upon us to raise our awareness and connect the dots between ourselves and others whom our life impacts so that we can make sure that we are not being abusive or oppressive, and instead are increasing joy, health, and equality for everyone.

2. Seven Keys to MOGO

It is easy enough to say that if we do the most good and the least harm, our lives will improve and our positive impact on the world will increase significantly, but to actually live the MOGO principle, it helps to use the following seven keys:

Key 1—Live Your Epitaph

Key 2—Pursue Joy through Service

Key 3—Make Connections and Self-Reflect

Key 4—Model Your Message and Work for Change

Key 5—Find and Create Community

Key 6—Take Responsibility

Key 7—Strive for Balance

There are likely other keys that you will discover on your path, but by using these seven as a guide, you’ll have solid, helpful tools to put MOGO into practice; achieve your goals; stay balanced, healthy, and peaceful; and contribute to a better world.

Key 1—Live Your Epitaph

Imagine that you are very old, approaching the end of your life. You’re sitting on a park bench, remembering a time when we humans killed and exploited one another, despoiled our planet, abused animals, and allowed our neighbors around the world to go hungry. While you are breathing the clean air on our now safe and healthy planet, and thinking about that dark period from your past, a child comes up to you. The child has learned about that dangerous, destructive time in history class and asks you, What role did you play in helping to bring about the world we have today?

What will you tell this child?

Please consider this question for a few minutes before you continue reading.

Each day of your life you are part of creating this child’s future. When you do the most good and the least harm, you set in motion the forces that will make a healthy and humane future possible for generations of all species on earth. Your response to the question above is a way of answering, What would I like my epitaph to be? If you can imagine an epitaph that feels worthy of your life, then you can choose to live it—to embody and realize your goals and values more consciously and effectively.

To lead a MOGO life, each of us must determine our deepest values