Of late I am wondering if rather than just having a set of ethics, that there is in fact a hierarchy of ethics. For example we can make good arguments for anti abortion, anti porn, andti war etc, etc. yet with most or all ethics we have to compare the moral stance with real world situations, whereby they sometimes fail to recognise the peculiars of a given case.
If you had an ethic tree what would be at the top for you?
For me the highest ethic is that of ‘the greater dynamic’, as life produces a rich tapestry of different types of people and situations, I think it is better that it has all its good and bad points, or at least where they are beneficial to the ethic. In fact invention and inspiration relies on such difference, and it is that by which we grow.
Peasants are too dumb to employ rational conduct as a way of life; thus we must apply universal standards to regulate everyday living. Of course it’s flawed, but not in comparison to the average dipshit.
Currently thanks to the recession I am a peasant, I don’t think I am dumb and nor are most people, that’s just intellectual ego. You should ask yourself what you know that isn’t in a book somewhere, then ask if that is so much greater that what your average person ‘knows’, indeed computers will eventually know all of human knowledge but intelligence is surely in the ability to formulate that in the first place, and also in adapting to new understandings. I am not having a go at you btw, its just that intelligence comes in many flavours.
Ok here is one for you; what is the greater compassion ~ what is the path of least suffering!
Let humans live, destroy them all? Does survival simply cause more suffering.
How do we know evolution isn’t just completely dumb, I mean it believes in survival and yet absolutely everything does not survive, it continually fails in its goal. A species may survive for a while but that doesn’t help any life forms within it, nor even the species eventually, indeed can we rightly describe that as survival?
No matter what we do, I think it is worth recognizing that clan loyalty shall ever be our second highest calling, and if we aren’t careful about it, our highest calling. This isn’t a defense of such behavior, quite the contrary. But it is very much there. Were we to establish a natural list, it would top it. But we can beat that. But only if we recognize it and give it its due . . .
Clan loyalty is one of those things that you’d like to give up, but you know that other people from other clans are not giving it up and so you feel obligated to stick with your clan or face destruction from those clans which do not disband.
The way around that problem is and has always been to expand how we conceive the clan.
Athens was a fairly standard Greek oligarchy until one enterprising individual decided to expand his clique to include the entire city. That is a paraphrased quote from a contemporary of his and we ought heed the wisdom of that lesson.
Sunzi said that invulnerability lies in coiling one’s forces into a tight ball. But he also pointed out that victory is impossible with such a formation. We ought also heed the wisdom of that lesson.
Man is interested only in solutions, and not in looking at the problems. You say that these lessons had answers for our problems. Then, why are we still asking the same questions?
Why are we still asking the same questions? So, they are not the answers. If they were the answers, the questions wouldn’t be there. The fact that we are still asking the questions means that they are not the answers. So, the solutions that have been offered for our problems are not the solutions. Otherwise, why would the problems remain as problems?
So, each individual has now the responsibility; not any particular nation. The individual has to find out his answers for the questions. That is why every individual is the savior of mankind – not collectively. If he can find out an answer for his question, or a solution for his problems, maybe there is some kind of a hope for mankind as a whole – because we all are brought together: whatever is happening in America is affecting us; whatever is happening here is affecting the other nations too.
The whole world is now thinking in terms of one world – at least theoretically - – but nobody is ready to give up the sovereignty of his nation. That is really the crux of the problem. Some countries have joined together only for economic reasons, and not for any other reason. Every nation is still asserting its sovereignty – but that is the thing that must come to an end first of all.
So the individual is the only hope. And the individual also seems to be totally helpless because he has to free himself from the burden of the past, the entire heritage, not only of the clan, but of the whole world. So is it possible for man to free himself from the burden? Individually, he doesn’t seem to have any freedom at all. You see, he has no freedom of action – that is the crux of the whole problem. But yet the hope is in the individual – if through some luck, some strange chance.
I’d say those lessons have worked and are working. The progress is slow but it isn’t untraceable. We’ve gone from tribes to large, multiethnic nation-states! And there is a lot of pan-humanist trends that are trumping allegiance to nation-states as well. We still manifest loyalty to our group but what that group consists of is substantially larger than it used to be.
So being ethical is about forcing your way of life on those less powerful than you are?
I guess the strongest person with the strongest most epic and ultimate ethics will eventually “win out”???
Is there a a tree of Ethics?
Is there some ultimate set of comprehensive ethics out there?
I’m going to do you all a favor and answer these questions.
Different people find different things useful and true.
You can say that two people might find different parts of the ethic tree more useful.
Given this it’s easy to say that forcing one particular ethical set on someone is simply unethical, because your previous justification of your ethical set being “better than any regular dipshits”, turns out to nt hold true for the dipshit.
If i danced around in front of you with a gun, talking about advanced physics, then pointed a gun at you and said “accept my ethics”, you would refuse simply on the basis that you do not understand, desire or prefer them to your own. (aside from agreeing only to save your own life)
There is no one ultimate code of ethics which can save all of our souls. In order to achieve the ultimate in moral or ethical comprehension each person has to delve straight into their own circumstance and create an ethical system of their own.
Good point, an extended family one could say, but wont that put family above clan? Equally people at other forums are saying that selfishness is top, that everything we do for the benefit of others comes down to that ~ I disagree, but I can see what they mean. …something to do with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs or something.
I hope not, I am a bit of a moral relativist rather than a moral absolutist [though it may not seam so on many of my posts]. I suppose that puts absolutism at the bottom.
Indeed. There seams to come a point in the furthest extremes where absolutes become most apparent and seemingly right, for example, rape of a child, cannibalism, human sacrifice [though some will always refute that]. As I see it relativism is still the correct approach even to the most apparently wrong things, absolutists tend to be just as extreme in the way they deal with wrong doers as the wrong doers are.
The problem is that killing and eating your mountain guide who got you lost is right for you, given the justification of survival, but wrong for the guide, given being murdered and eaten…
We don’t argue about whether the act is right or wrong, we say “look, Joe’s back, and it seems he was successful”.
When you look at a ball from a different angle then someone else, sometimes you see something different.
Any arguments we have with each other might be as successful as a duel to the death…
Morality isn’t really about establishing truth or justifying actions to others. It’s primarily about justifying actions to yourself.
True, good point! With my top ethic being ‘to the greater dynamic’ then perhaps like life generally, morals are primarily irrelevant, everything adds to it no matter if its right or wrong. In contradiction, that we all have our morals ~ and groups do, is part of that dynamic also.
Whatever we believe; ‘the world lends itself to ones persuasion’!
