Living as though there is a Tomorrow, Creating the Future by Choice Using Reason, Duty, Love, and Belief

About the Book

Living as though There is a Tomorrow examines the causes and effects of moral Growth and moral Decay for individuals and families, education, civil society, and governments. Decay is easy but dangerous and destructive for both the human and natural world, while moral Growth is difficult but powerful. Using our reason, sense of duty, love of life, and deepest beliefs, all of us can choose Growth. We can create our personal, family, community, and even national future by choice. We can live as though there is a tomorrow by deliberately choosing ethical Growth. The Thought Experiments in this Practical Handbook for Moral Growth provide opportunities for thinking and discussion about the practical questions of everyday life for individuals and groups of all sizes. Some topics include finding the common good, the contagious effects of moral Growth and Decay, parenting and teaching, leadership, justice, uses and misuses of power, taxes and their effects, economics, public policies, foreign aid, and environmental and humanitarian ethics, among others. Open ended questions challenge us to understand where we are heading individually and together. We can choose to love life in all its chaos and complexity. We can choose to love others and to love the Earth. We can choose to act with independence, freedom, courage, and personal responsibility. Living as Though There Is a Tomorrow, Creating the Future by Choice Using Reason, Duty, Love, and Belief speaks to our deepest and widest needs as people of conscience living in the real world.

About the Author

Phyllis Ballata has written Living as though There is a Tomorrow, Creating the Future by Choice Using Reason, Duty, Love, and Belief: A Practical Handbook for Moral Growth as a meditation on and examination of the meaning and importance of choosing life and moral Growth rather than death and moral Decay in everyday life. Moral Growth means acting as if healthy humanitarian and environmental ethics are not only possible but also practical and necessary. Living As Though There Is a Tomorrow is focused on the need for public language about ethics and brings together pieces of a lifetime of teaching, reading, and thinking. Phyllis is an English professor at Century College in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, as well as a musician, business owner, tree farmer, parent, and poet. The Nest, her retail store in downtown White Bear Lake, offers customers choices that support environmental responsibility, fair trade, and local community. She believes that individually and together, for good or ill, we are creating our common future every day, whether we stop to consider it or not. So it is best to stop and think, then choose and act wisely. She has a B.A. in vocal music and a M.A. in English and American literature with additional advanced study in history and philosophy. Her last book was Writing from Life: Collecting and Connecting (McGraw-Hill/Mayfield Publishing, 1997), a college-level text for reading, writing, and thinking.