Values to Guide Us in the Internet Age

The internet opened up unlimited new opportunities and challenges.

According to Daisaku Ikeda "The greater the influence of the Internet becomes, the more energetically the ethics and responsibility of its users come into question. Setting up rules based on reliable ethics and value criteria is indispensable."

The above quote and the rest of this blog is primary based on Dr Daisaku Ikeda's dialague with Dr Harvey G. Cox titled 'The Persistence of Religion'.

The authors discuss the role of values drawn from religions to help define rules of engagement online just as these religions have guided human beings in their real life interactions. Dr Cox quotes the late pope, John Paul II, who in 2002 stated that the cyberspace, like new frontiers in past ages is filled with a sense of adventure but is also accompanied by the interplay of danger and promise.

Dr Ikeda and Dr Cox go on to agree that...

• Most religions share certain values. These near universal “golden values” prohibit the taking of life, stealing and deceiving.

• Compassionm the fourth universal value comes with varying interpretations

  • Christianity teaches: Love thy neighbor and even your enemy.

  • Judaism embraces compassion but with a caveat: Without justice, love/compassion are merely sentimentality.

  • Buddhist compassion: Focusses on relieving suffering and giving joy. It requires developing a caring heart that endeavors to rip out the cause of suffering from the root. Essentially, one cannot be a true friend without the mercy to correct another. “Mere superficial kindness is not the true meaning of either love or compassion. It is the product of indifference.”

  • Islam: According to Prof Nur Yalman in ‘A Passage to Peace’, Islam strongly emphasizes divine love which is a metaphor for the love of human beings for each other.

• The above values espoused across religions point to a common view of the value of human life.

  • Buddhism upholds that the pure and mighty force of life itself – the Buddha nature – is inherent in all human beings.

  • Christianity and Islam meanwhile uphold respect and recognition of the image of God in all human beings

• Thus, to solve the problems accompanying the advent of the internet, the starting point of efforts must be the universally accepted notion of the supreme dignity of the human being.