Moral Compass

This is my "Moral Compass"

It belonged to my grandfather.  Maybe it dates from about 1900.  A time when traveling in the country required a compass as a basic tool to find the way.  I recall playing with it as a young boy, influencing the needle with a magnet.  Turning it and finding that it always pointed north.  Later, I learned about magnetic and true north.  In the navy I was taught navigation as well as how to steer using it on a chart.

This compass was among the things found to be with my mother after her recovery from the North Atlantic following the abandonment of a burning ship at sea.  It still has salt crystals inside it.

I kept it with me for the remainder of my navy career.  After retirement I carried it with me on my many world wide bike trips.  In New Zealand I had it in the side pocket of bike touring shorts when I fell on the bike and broke the glass case.  Until then I had actually used it often for navigation.  It continued to work but not as accurately.

Now I carry it in a small niche in the dash of my van.  It is a prized possession that I no longer take on bike trips for fear of losing it.  However its conceptual value is separated from its physical existence and will always be with me no mater where in the world the actual compass is pointing the way.  The moral conceptual nature is independent yet related to the object and to that extent I can never lose it but I can lose my way without conceptual structure to guide me.  That is the essence of the idea in the prior blog entry.  The thing in my life that a moral concept is connected to in my conceptual/physical world.  Some people choose other objects to which conceptual structures are connected by association to a representational object of choice.

This guy has his compass:  The Bible.   My Compass is logical truth as I know it by structure of logic created by a logical language used to express pure logic.

The triangle of Logic --Language --Structure.

His triangle:  The religious trinity expressing God through the language of the Bible to create religious structure.  Father ---Holy Spirit ----(as a language)  -----Produces Jesus (the structure of His Word as written in the Bible).

I go with Logic.  It transcends and encompasses the cults that have various degrees of conceptual interpretation purity.

My blog entry on the Trinity Meme.  Also here.

Also expressed elsewhere in my blog entries in various places because it is so conceptually fundamental.   Guess that makes me a Fundamentalist!

Praise the Logic!  The Compass is my symbol.

In Hoc Signo Vinces!