Am I Right?

How to live ethically

by Arthur Dobrin

Good Food, a Good Life

Plants need sunlight; a person needs love

Published on October 19, 2012 by Arthur Dobrin, D.S.W. in Am I Right?

Albert Einstein, in a letter to the New York Society for Ethical Culture, wrote, "Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity." While Einstein was congratulating the New York Society for Ethical Culture on its 75th anniversary, he stressed, not the need for an institution to save humankind, but the need for the cultivation of ethics.

Einstein wrote not about educating for ethics but its cultivation. But what does it mean to cultivate ethics? The analogy can be found in the field of food.

Food is necessary for the survival of the body; ethics is needed for the survival of the species. While food may be gathered in various ways, only the proper care of the soil will provide for crops for future years; while people can relate to each other in an infinite number of ways, only the proper nourishment of relationships will provide decent lives for future generations.

Seeds are planted in soil; people are rooted in community.

Plants need sunlight; a person needs love.

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Plants need water; humans need respect.

If we abuse the soil, the food we eat will be less nourishing. If we abuse the people we live with, the lives we lead will be less enriching.

Soil builds in incremental layers. We build meaning in our lives through small encounters in daily life.

As the varieties of healthy foods are too numerous to list, there is no one right way of living. As we now are beginning to realize the ways in which synthetic and adulterated foods are no substitute for foods rising from earth's bosom, we know, too, that only well lived adds to the earth's bounty.

The good gardener cares for the garden; good people care for one another.

Good food nourishes the body; good relations nourish the soul.