Sanity. We the people too often fail to demand sanity as an essential component of any argument and any initiative for which our argument allow. Our societal decision-making processes are infused with good amounts of arguments that are something other than sane. We are far to accepting of this and acceptance has become our way of life and too our determent. There is the better idea and there is the horrible idea and the sanity of the deliberations which determine which is which is of incredible importance to a humane society, a society that is kind and generous because such are qualities of a humanely sane society. Anyone alive who lives to be mistreated, most sane people would agree, is not fully sane. The adverse should understood to be just as sane, that anyone who mistreats others, anyone who decides in favor of the mistreatment of others or decides for allowing others to be mistreated, should also be considered to be something other than sane.
I understand the reason fair minded people would think that to declare some not sane and not allow or not listen to what they have to say is undemocratic and, too, who is it who gets to determine who is sane and who is not? I think that sane people have a pretty good notion of what is what and who is who in regard to this matter even though they are too fair minded—too tolerantto make public the distinctions they make in their minds.
Really, I would like it if there were to be a public discussion of what stands as sane argument and what does not, this in the context of appreciation for all human beings and a strong desire for them all to be treated humanely. That some are very poor, deprived of what they need so that others can have lots of what they want, that some can get what they want bydepriving others of what they need would, I would hope, be found to be inhumane and not sane, the do onto others principle understood as something more than a convenient moral adage, as a basis for declaring arguments sane and otherwise.
We would have to look at or laws and the arguments made for them, whether those arguments sacrifice the well-being and the happiness in life of others and whether the sacrifices of some serve no other reason than making some much better off in their lives than others. The wealthy would not be alone in receiving sanity-oriented scrutiny but also those driven insane by their situation, those driven to understanding of the world that, in the light of good sense, would be shown to be the product of something other than informed good reasoning.
People have to be allowed to be who they are and think what they think but the criteria for participation in any decision-making process that has an effect on the well-being, on the quality of life of others must be that they engage in humanely sane thought, their ideas scrutinized for attention to not good for me than not good for them either kind of reasoning.
Debate, disagreement would not be eliminated. Nor would our public debates be wholly reasonable or necessarily cause all decisions to be good ones. But good, in those debates, made the foremost criteria, as in good for all and none harmed as the ideal might get us somewhere nearer to becoming a good and humane society, capitalism be damned and so to pernicious religious beliefs that interfere with good reason.
