Objective Ethics: Manifesto

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1

This Manifesto proclaims the universal principles of objective ethics.

Purpose and meaning of the activities of a free man is to maximize common good.

Common good is freedom from any determinism, both natural and social. Common good is achieved by cooperation of all free people. Everyone brings their own personal creative contribution to this common cause. Recognition of the contribution by others is the only objective source of its value.

Natural determinism is needs, threats and any limitations imposed by nature on man. This includes physical needs (favorable habitat conditions, including movement in space), biological (destruction of sources of fear, hunger, disease), psychological and cultural (satisfaction of curiosity, boredom, the need for variety, knowledge and beauty). Overcoming natural determinism requires changing the world.

Social determinism is any kind of violence, coercion, pressure and injustice, which may affect the creative result of a person. In the process of cooperation, free people, by consensus, develop formal rules that allow them to overcome social determinism. Consensus is reached on the basis of openness, trust and honest account of the interests and opinions of all people, each of which is the same party in common contract. Those reasonable people who deliberately withdraws from the contract are considered by others as part of the natural environment (natural determinism).

Formal rules govern the activities of people in the public sphere of society, which includes the interaction between strangers. Morality of personal relationships is informal and out of place in the public sphere. Free man draws a clear line between the spheres. He prohibits any conflicts of interest between personal and public. Personal sphere of everyone is completely closed to strangers.

Possible types of violence, prohibited by objective ethics:

  1. Physical, both individual and collective (including violence of power and majority), including indirect (threats, orders, creating dangers to life and health).

  2. Economic and financial:

  • Fraud, cheating, theft, misappropriation;
  • Exploitation, vandalism;
  • Use of market power, unfair competition;
  • Inequitable distribution of shared resources;
  • Manipulation of value of money, speculations, shifting risks to others.
  1. Informational:
  • Deception;
  • Distortion, imposition, withholding information;
  • Overflow by information, ignoring, silencing;
  • Generation of confusing terms and meanings;
  • Imprinting brands, slogans and symbols.
  1. Moral and ideological:
  • Imposition of moral norms, traditions and customs;
  • Evoking feelings of guilt and responsibility;
  • Calls for a universal brotherly love, for sacrifice in the name of “thy neighbor”;
  • Indoctrination, brainwashing, subjection.
  1. Psychological:
  • Blackmail, harassment, molestation, intimidation;
  • Reference to authority.

  1. Emotional: the deliberate evocation of feelings of pity, shame, complicity, desire, sympathy, hatred, resentment.

  2. Propagation of the morality of personal relationships to the public sphere:

  • Corruption, collusion, bribery, kickbacks;
  • Clanship, friendship, kinship and other personal relationships in public companies or institutions;
  • Concealment, mutual service;
  • Tips, handouts, rewards for “personal” service.
  1. Group morality, the opposition of “friend or foe” and discrimination on this basis:
  • Nationalism, racism, regionalism, patriotism;
  • Ethnic and cultural bonds;
  • Moral and religious superiority;
  • Professional and class solidarity.

Free man is not only guided by the described principles, but he also looks for ways of their widespread practical implementation through education and promotion of non-violence and universal equitable social contract. The present manifesto serves this purpose.

Only ethics makes people free!

(source: “Cult of Freedom & Ethics of Public Sphere” )

2

Ok, but, I disagree. Your manifesto will kill the human spirit. Humans need their pack/herd. They need to show it, work for it and live for it. To declare 3 trillion humans all one and the main clan is to become hive not individual. The individual cannot be lost or the spirit of sentient beings is lost.

3

Aren’t you confusing humans with animals? Besides, there is still a personal sphere.

4

In what sense are you freed by rules?

5

I will stop you right there. Objectivity goes a tad bit farther than merely the human world and even then, within the human world, objectivity is what it is because it ought to be an objective evaluation beyond pain/pleasure, gain/loss, else grounding it in such pathetic hedonistic principles is already smuggling in an apriori, an apriori that is all-levelling and defines the human via his appetite than his reason in Plato’s sense.

6

There are individual creatures in hives, bred to serve the hive. After some generations of serving the whole memes and individual purpose will wane. The need to serve will be the purpose of the individual. Humans are merely complex animals. We are not that much different.

7

I don’t think that you have specified the goal sufficiently.

Like so very much of today’s efforts at social reform, you seem to be trying to define a “negative goal”. A negative goal refers to merely the lack of something else without regard to what is to be gained by such a lack. In this case, you are defining the goal as “maximal freedom from all restrictions”, but freedom to accomplish what?

The rest of the post seemed to be the consequential socialism that results when the effort is merely to be void of something without regard to what is to be accomplished in its place.

Slavery and servitude is accomplished by default, even if “maximal freedom” was the goal.

How to Serve Man is not an ethics book, but a Socialist cook book.

8

Formal rules make complete independence from each other possible.

Freedom is an objective property of the universe. It is exactly determinism, not freedom, that is based on “pain/pleasure, gain/loss” and other “pathetic hedonistic principles”.

Freedom and ethics are exactly what makes us different.

Freedom leaves that choice to you. This is the beauty of freedom.

9

Is that freedom? Is that desirable? Humans didn’t develop to be completely independent from one another, and complete independence (or the illusion thereof) may well be harmful.

10

Complete independence is not possible either.

with love,
sanjay

11

Absolutely independent ‘Perfection,’ ‘Completeness,’ are impossible concepts.
However, relative-objective-independent ‘Perfection,’ ‘Completeness,’ are possible concepts.
The above may look very contradictory, but here is how they can be formulated;

Take the game of tennis (or any major international games).
The international game of tennis is regulated by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) with their own specific policies, rules and regulations.
These formulated formal rules are completely independent of the players, referees, officials and the public at large.
Once all disputes are cleared within the formal rules, the final result of a played-game is final and objective.

However despite the objectivity claim, the fundamental is this objectivity is grounded ultimately on human decisions, i.e. inter-subjectivity.
In this sense, objectivity is inter-subjectivity or meta-subjectivity.
What is significance is such objectivity works, i.e. most audience will agree with it, they are happy if their favorite player win objectively [within the rules as final even the losers may claim biasness]. The winners are happy with the win and the prize money, and advertisers made a lot of money of such objectivity.

Science also works on the same principle with its Scientific Framework and scientific methods.

Thus objective ethics out of such a process and formulation of rules is possible. The question is only how can we ensure the moral laws are sufficiently objective.

12

I think that’s a very good comment by James. Why is freedom’s leaving the choice to you beautiful? Why is that valuable? Isn’t it: because you can choose to do X with it, where X is something good? In any case, what you’re saying is basically that we should use our freedom to maximize freedom. It’s an infinite regress. “We should only use our freedom to maximize the freedom to maximize the freedom to maximize etc. etc.” It’s nihilistic. We must either establish a rational value, or have the guts to decree, “THIS AND THIS IS GOOD!!”

13

We are talking about independence from each other in the public sphere. It means dependence on everybody at once and nobody in particular.

It is a goal and as a goal it is reachable step by step.

If “human decisions” are reached by complete consensus, they are objective because otherwise the consensus is not possible. Additional explanations are here: http://ethical-liberty.com/freedom-ethics.htm

Because it is the free choice. If your goal is forced upon you, what kind of freedom is it? And freedom is beautiful because everything else is ugly.

Yes, freedom is paradoxical. But this doesn’t mean we do not need it.

14

As long as you’re depending on different people for different things, you have to be dependent on people in particular.

But why is this good?

This only begs the question. The free choice is beautiful because it’s the free choice?

If the goal is forced upon you, it may be no kind of freedom, but it can still be a good goal.