Let us begin with the assumption that rapid economic de-velopment posses a threat to traditional cultural values and to ge-nerally accepted norms of morality. Let us go on by asking whether economic development can be achieved in a way that is conducive to greater harmony in the lives of individuals and society. Here greater harmony is understood in the sense that harmony is "agreement in feeling, action, ideas, interests, etc., peaceable or friendly relations." (Webster’s New World Dictionary).

What can be done to preserve the best of traditional values but not others? In practice can this good be separated from the bad so as to achieve a kind of moral development both for society and for individuals.

Here I would advance and defend four propositions most are drawn from psychology and political science, more particularly from research at the Kohlberg Center for Moral Development at Harvard University. This includes studies on how an individual and a society develop successive concepts of justice which trace the development of the moral judgments which actually prevail for individuals and societies.

This chapter also will draw selectively upon moral philo-sophy for a growing consensus on what moral judgments indi-viduals and societies ought to make. More particularly, it will examine what appears to be a growing consensus among the people and nations of the world on what constitutes justice. In tracing this developing sense of justice, it will draw upon the work of, Law-rence Kohlberg and, in particular, upon his "From Is to Ought: How to Commit the Naturalistic Fallacy and Get Away With It". It will draw also on several judgment, from G. E. Moore to William Frankena, on whether there is philosophical justification for the tendency in many societies to commit the naturalistic fallacy, that is, to conclude, on the basis of cultural tradition and group identity, that what has been, and is now, ought to be.

PROPOSITION 1) Rapid economic development often has pernicious effects. It tends to establish new sources of power and authority which, for most people in most societies, tends to weaken existing power and authority including the authority of cultural values and tradition and the authority of one’s own self.

PROPOSITION 2) The ends of economic development and the preservation of cultural values in a society are, or ought to be, much the same: both should be directed to achieving greater justice and harmony.

PROPOSITION 3) The means to economic development and moral development -- to the preservation and improvement of cultural and moral values -- are much the same. Both are achieved through the development of better judgment and greater creativity on the part of individuals.

PROPOSITION 4) There is a natural tendency, in the development of individuals and societies, to tend toward a harmony of thought and feeling, of interests and action.

PROPOSITION 1: Rapid economic development often has pernicious effects.

For most people in societies, one’s sense of justice and one’s sense of self come mostly from society, from one’s family and associations. For most people, by later childhood, justice has come to be defined by custom, tradition, and the opinions of one’s asso-ciates, while one’s self is defined largely by one’s role and standing in society.

Greatly simplified, the longitudinal studies conducted at the Harvard Center for Moral Development indicate that there is a universal human tendency to progress in an invariant sequence through a series of well-defined stages of reasoning regarding what is right and just. This begins in childhood with a first stage of reasoning where "might makes right," then progresses to a second stage where justice is equal exchange, good for good, bad for bad, and then to a third where what is right is what the tradition and conventions of the group to which one belongs hold to be right. Cross-sectional studies in over 50 societies throughout the world establish this as the thinking of most adults in most countries. But most well educated people who have had complex responsibilities in a modern society progress to a fourth stage that can be thought of as civic reasoning. It produces a sense of justice that is based upon an implied social contract to uphold the laws of one’s country; it is, in effect, the right thinking upon which the maintenance of a democracy depends. A small part of a society -- generally not more than 20% of the citizenry in an advanced society, and much fewer in a primitive society -- respect laws that foster a stable productive society, but give primary allegiance to the principles of justice upon which most advanced societies ostensibly are based.

It cannot be emphasized enough that throughout this stage-by-stage development of reason one’s stock of thoughts and ex-periences is not supplanted as one stage is succeeded by another. The processes of reason are reorganized, but the content of reason remains much the same. One’s cultural traditions are not replaced; one’s sense of identity still depends primarily upon one’s roots, even though a broader sense of identity is formed and a more uni-versal concept of justice is developed.

For most people, a rapid change in one’s society requires an equally rapid, and often unsettling, change in one’s self-concept. An explanation can be found in the evidence that the fundamental force for all living things is self-preservation. This applies to all living things, including both the vegetable and animal; it is in combination with this force that random genetic variability pro-duces the adaptability and progress of species. For humans, this force for self-preservation is manifested as a drive, from infancy until death, to establish and preserve the self, a process which involves a search for understanding one’s place in the cosmos or one’s relationship to God.

PROPOSITION 2: The ends of economic development and of the preservation and improvement of cultural values ought to be the same: to seek greater justice and harmony.

The end of economic development for a society is, or ought to be, greater social justice; greater equality of opportunity for greater numbers for a better life. The end of shared cultural values and the improvement theirs is the same. Its end is justice in which an individual’s claim to equal rights and opportunities imposes the obligation to honor claims to these same rights and opportunities by all others. But, while justice is the measure of moral development for a society, the moral development of an individual requires more: both justice and compassion, where compassion encompasses kindness, sympathy and beneficence.

PROPOSITION 3: The means to economic development and to the improvement of cultural and moral values are much the same.

An American effort to foster economic development may provide an example. In its efforts to help schools and businesses develop a more productive work force, the United States Depart-ment of Labor attempted to define the skills needed for every kind of job in America. In the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, the requirements for each job were classified according to the level of skills needed to deal with persons, with data, and with things such as machine tools or laboratory equipment. What seemed clear from this effort was that the higher level and more responsible the jobs required a higher level of abstract thought -- the ability to conceive the interaction of several factors at the same time -- which was about the same whether it applied to persons, data or things. Indeed, many top executives concluded that experience with a broad variety of responsibilities and a liberal education which, through literature and history, provides vicarious opportunities for taking the viewpoints of others, constitutes the kind of preparation that promotes the development of abstract reasoning and hence provides better preparation for creativity and for management than does a narrow technical education. And it is a broad liberal edu-cation, plus broad experience with responsibility, that appears to foster moral development as well. For a highly developed sense of justice requires the ability to understand the reasoning of many others and the quality of kindness involves a predisposition to share the feelings of others.

In all the studies that were conducted in several dozen societies by the associates of the Center for Moral Development, individuals first developed a capacity for abstract thought as it applied to things and to data, and only later as it applied to the capacity to take the perspectives of others. Only after that were they able to reach an equilibrium of judgment in which the justice one seeks for oneself is viewed as the justice that is due all others.

PROPOSITION 4: There is a natural tendency in the de-velopment of individuals and societies to approach harmony, particularly. As it involves concern for the rights of others. The research cited above is quite clear that the tendency of an individual is toward an equilibrium on the part of reasoning in which one’s rights and responsibilities become much the same. But only about 20 percent of the adult population of a well-educated society reaches this harmony of reason. Most of the adult population of a modern society sees justice defined by the laws of their religion or state or by what is good for the group to which they belong -- their nation, tribe, or ethnic group. Fewer still reach harmony of reason in village communities though they may achieve a stable harmony of feeling, interests, and action with fellow members of their tribe or ethnic group. It is a harmony consistent with Aristotle’s Nico-machean Ethics in which he says that, "in our relation to our kins-folk, our fellow-tribesmen, our fellow-citizens, and all other people, we should do our best to render them their due, and to estimate their claims by considering the nearness of their con-nection with us and their character, or the services they have done us."

As individuals progress in moral development it appears that the harmony is extended. The sense of "nearness of their connec-tion" extends toward others of different races or ethnicities or nationalities. There is a greater ability to share feelings, ideas, and interests and to take action that is consistent therewith. As more members of a group or nation develop this broader and more equilibrated sense of justice, the group or nation becomes more disposed to agreement in feeling and ideas with outsiders. Al-though the evidence is rather clear that not many individuals in the world’s populations have developed the reasoning that underlies the International Bill of Human Rights, increasing numbers of leaders of the world’s modern nations either share this reasoning or find it expedient to profess it. The covenants of the International Bill have come to establish a standard for justice against which the actions of nations can be judged and held to account, both by other nations and, perhaps more importantly, by their own citizens.

The moral development of nations has not been widely studied, though Leonard T. Hobhouse and several recent studies have attempted it. This work has not had much of an audience, largely, I think, because there is not much agreement between philosophers or nations on what constitutes moral development and hence little confidence that the moral development of a nation can be measured in a useful way. For many, the International Bill for Human Rights represents a false universality because unrealistic and hence impractical, for the actions it calls for often clash with national interests or the self-interests of nationalities or ethnic groups.

Still the balanced reasoning about justice that underlies the International Bill of Rights provides a partial and insufficient standard for determining which of a society’s cultural values are good and ought to be preserved, and which are not. It is an in-sufficient standard because many, perhaps most, cultural and religious values go beyond justice. Much of the cultural tradition fosters harmony of feeling through its epics, parables, legends, fables, history and fiction as models for kindness, perseverance, fidelity, sympathy and love that go beyond justice. And, though Socrates thought that "there is but one virtue and its name is justice," many, perhaps most, philosophers would agree with David Hume, Adam Smith, and others that for an individual -- though not for a state -- sympathy ranks higher than justice.

Thus, it may be said that cultural traditions are not good in themselves; they are good and worthy of preservation only to the extent that they foster justice for all, or love, sympathy and com-passion for all, or provide a sense of self or group-identity that sustains these values.

The predictions of Marx and Engles on the prospects for further technical and moral development of human beings seem to be supported by the findings of research in dozens of societies from the most primitive to the most technologically advanced. Marx and Engles believed that social equality along with educational opportunity for all would foster human development at a rate that would permit the State to quickly whither away. But the founders of the United States, while agreeing that "If men were angels, governments would not be needed", but they assumed that for the foreseeable future men would continue to be driven by fame and fortune and that it was safer to assume that they would be factious and rapacious. They believed, however, that the competition of opposing factions in society, along with a balance of the powers of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, would better assure liberty and justice than government impositions to prohibit faction.

It seems that some idea of the maximum rate at which harmony can be approached in a society could be derived from an analysis of the research in several dozen societies. This indicates a relationship between the conditions under which the life of in-dividuals -- including their education and experiences with res-ponsibility -- and the rate at which they actually progress toward an equilibrated sense of justice. That is, a sense of justice which requires that what they want as fairness for themselves involves a responsibility to see that it is assured for all. These rates of progress for individuals can be joined with analysis of the rates at which various societies have actually moved from a prevailing standard of justice based upon raw power or "an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth" toward justice based upon "equal rights and opportunities for all." The results provide at least room for conjecture about the rates of progress that might be anticipated for various kinds of societies in the future.

Though the rate of technical and moral progress may be uncertain for any society, for thousands of years human judgment has progressed step by step, stage by stage. Though it has not progressed in all societies nor with all individuals in any society, and there have been reversals in all societies, progress is unmis-takable. There is no reason not to expect it to continue; rather, such progress can be expected because of the fundamental life force striving for the preservation of individual and society, which for humans manifests itself in a search for greater understanding.

The leaders of a country undergoing rapid economic deve-lopment might say something like this about these propositions:

"Yes we agree with Proposition 1 but we are not sure about the others. Even if there is some truth to them, how can they help us? How can they help our ministers and legislators, our teachers and our parents to make this a better society?"

One might reply, "There are two ways the propositions can provide insights for economic and moral development. First, a rapidly developing society must do more to assure the transmission of the best of its cultural values through families and through opportunities for young people to belong to a succession of groups that hold to these values. Cultural values may be transmitted through religious faith, or secular reason, or a combination of the two in which faith sustains the person and developing reason undergirds justice. Second, a modern society must be founded upon principles of justice that are well stated in "The International Bill of Human Rights" with its "Universal Declaration of Human Rights", its "Covenant on Civil and Political Rights", and its "Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights".

The leaders might object, "we cannot afford greater ex-penditures for parental assistance or youth opportunities. And we are not yet ready for universal covenants on human rights; not if they clash with our cultural traditions, and our traditional separa-tion of roles for men and women, for example."

One might reply, "Rigorous cost-benefit analysis shows that, in the United States for example, it costs less to provide certain kinds of help to parents and to youth than not to provide it. The costs of crime and incarceration and of counter-productive lives is greater than the costs of the programs. The economic benefits from more productive lives covers much of the cost. As for human rights, a society that does not stand for them cannot stand for much less."

Women refused to be masculinized.

However, people have no answer to the question what is the ideal personality for women? They sink into puzzlement and inertia. Men are afraid of their wives being "strong women", and women themselves fear being "strong women". In order to be thought of as tender, many women do not dare to show their talent, but then they worry about being too feminine; they do not know how to mould their personalities. The solution to the problem requires further development in the economy as well as constant progress in ideology; one is complementary to the other.

The modernized economy is a great revolution over the traditional one and will bring about change in all facets of society. The female personality will be developed and improved in the process of the modernization of society and its ideal will be realized.

First, the productive mode of the modernized economy helps manifest the personality of women as subjects. In modern industry, what determines the production is no longer physical human strength, but the application of a high level of technology, which increases the proportion of mental work. Now in some developed countries, the proportion of mental work versus physical labor approximates 1:1, while the value created by the former far exceeds that created by the latter. Therefore, the application of high level technology will reduce or eliminate the physical inferiority of women in production, and enable women to give play to their superiority in patience, carefulness and nimbleness. This is obviously indicated in developed countries: in the U.K. women have more job opportunities than men.

Second, the operational mode of a modernized economy enables women to choose the job suited to them. The open, dynamic pattern of the economy enables women to find positions of their own in a wider range of social activity. In developed countries, women are exploring molding ideal personalities. They are not the traditional good mothers and wives who sacrifice themselves in a closed family context, nor are they the so-called strong women of industrial times. They develop their own standard and hope to get a valuable job with flexible hours and a good location; they hope to take account of both family and career. Some women give up work and become housewives while bring up their children, but their return to the family is for the purpose of educating their children and giving their children the natural love of a mother so that the children can grow soundly. In the meantime, they engage in further studies to give play to their potentialities or to develop their interests, so that they will be more competitive when they take up a career after their children have grown up. Such exploration is praiseworthy under the conditions of a modernized economy; it advances the civilization of the whole society.

Third, the high educational level of society, the high degree of democracy and the modernization and socialization of house work due to the modernization of the economy will enable women to elevate their quality as human beings, to demonstrate their personality, to strengthen their competitive power in social life, and to realize a sound personality. There will be a day when we need no longer emphasize that the male and the female differ and recognize that there is something common to both sexes. Then the peculiar and varied beauty of the character and personality of the female will demonstrate itself naturally in the world.

Of course, molding the female personality depends not merely on the progress of economy and is not merely a matter for women alone. It depends on the consistent efforts of the whole society; this requires theoretical work by scholars to find the incompatibilities and in time eliminate them.