Naked Ethics

since the above post appeared, it became apparent, even to a cont-artist who is the head of a Crme Family, that this policy was not politically effective, the Trumper troops have been withdrawn on July 31, 2020 from Oregon.

As an Ethicist [who has seen-a-thing-or-two due to longevity] and as one who has taught College-level Psychology, my considered judgment is that the man holding such power, a man who is corrupt through-and-through, corrupt to the core, is worse than the media portray him to be. He is the most dangerous man on the planet.
He (very much like the head man in North Korea) is the head of a Death Cult …taking his supporters down with him. We have seen this before with the Jim Jones experience. Unfortunately, due to his governing incompetence, 180,000 unnecessary deaths have already occurred.

Sixty-or-more psychoanalysts and analytic psychologists have signed on to a diagnosis revealing him to have a Malignant Personality Disorder, characterized by Extreme Narcissism, Authoritarian tendencies, Compulsive lying, inability to admit weakness nor to take responsibility for any mistakes, readiness to blame others, and a readiness to dissimulate, disparage, manipulate others. :-& :frowning:

Is this type of character ethical?

Hardly.

Is this what citizens of the USA want in a president? Should an individual with an unethical character get another four years in office?

What do you think? :question:

since the above post appeared, it became apparent, even to a cont-artist who is the head of a Crme Family, that this policy was not politically effective, the Trumper troops have been withdrawn on July 31, 2020 from Oregon.

As an Ethicist [who has seen-a-thing-or-two due to longevity] and as one who has taught College-level Psychology, my considered judgment is that the man holding such power, a man who is corrupt through-and-through, corrupt to the core, is worse than the media portray him to be. He is the most dangerous man on the planet.
He (very much like the head man in North Korea) is the head of a Death Cult …taking his supporters down with him. We have seen this before with the Jim Jones experience. Unfortunately, due to his governing incompetence, 180,000 unnecessary deaths have already occurred.

Sixty-or-more psychoanalysts and analytic psychologists have signed on to a diagnosis revealing him to have a Malignant Personality Disorder, characterized by Extreme Narcissism, Authoritarian tendencies, Compulsive lying, inability to admit weakness nor to take responsibility for any mistakes, readiness to blame others, and a readiness to dissimulate, disparage, manipulate others. :-& :frowning:

Is this type of character ethical?

Hardly.

Is this what citizens of the USA want in a president? Should an individual with an unethical character get another four years in office?

What do you think? :question:

The parts and the whole are always in complementarity.
“No man is an island” as the saying goes.

Therefore a person cannot be absolutely selfish but a responsible citizen is one who attempt to understand how to fit to optimize oneself without sub-optimizing the whole.
The moral principle is one has obligations to oneself and at the same time an obligation to the whole that sustain it, else it would be self-defeating.
Note the example, what if individual is on his own and very selfish, thus polluting the environment without giving a damn [or other selfish acts] and in the long term the human species is exterminated because of such acts.

So it is the responsibility of everyone to understand how their individuality [role] plays a part in maintaining the optimization of the whole of humanity.
At present it is everyone for oneself, but this is not likely to last long, since the average person at present is not slowly behaving more co-operatively with greater understanding of the whole, e.g. climate change, space exploration, the threats of WMDs and pandemics, etc.
The fact is DNA wise, all humans are “programmed” with certain generic features to optimize for the whole of humanity while leaving room for individual freedom within the requirements of the whole.

The fundamental is reducible to tribalism, i.e. the instinctive ‘us versus them’ and the rest are its various forms.
There are other inherent and instinctive issues, e.g. the existential crisis that compound the issues into various forms.

Trump is very boorish, narcissistic, ego-maniac and the likes [I personally don’t like it] but I don’t believe these are the critical factors but they did contribute more to the already inflamed existing situations from tribalism and the us versus them instincts in combinations with a cognitive dissonance* issue and Trump Derangement syndrome.
During Nixon’s time his victory was not as marginal as Trump’s win, thus there are no significant cognitive dissonance to deal with.

  • this terrible cognitive dissonance arose from the expectation that Hillary was ‘confirmed’ to win but she did not, thus unleashed a cognitive dissonance of tsunami proportion that manifested the Trump Derangement Syndrome. The culiminating responses are due to those who are attempting to do whatever it takes to generate consonance to soothe the dissonance, and the consequences of such always end up with evil thoughts and acts.

Trump is an employee of the US Government, objectively Trump should be judged with an Employee Assessment and Review of his official responsibility as in his Terms of Employment. On this, taking the positive and negative, I believe Trump performance so far is net-positive taking into account all necessary criteria specific to this term of employment.

As I had stated, we have to judge objectively whether Trump has done his job in accordance to the terms of his employment with the US Government.
If Trump is officially mentally ill and unfit for office, he would have been rejected by the GOP, if not by the voters.

If you do research on successful leaders, one will note most [not all] successful leaders are psychopaths [benign] and has many of the characters you listed for Trump but within acceptable limits and their positions are sustained by the results they produced.
There are bad apples but they are often exposed in time (e.g. Madoff, Enron, etc.).

That “He is the most dangerous man on the planet” is a very subjective opinion.

If Trump is really as bad as you and the media portray him to be, naturally the voters will not vote for him this November.
Btw, to run for President again, surely he has to pass the mental fitness and health tests by the assigned authorities.

Note the question is ‘why now?’
Trump is 70+ and was well known in the business world and has the typical flaws, but he was not condemned as bad as a businessman as he is as President. Why??

The significant factor is politics, and politics by nature is dirty and one side will always try to present the other as dirty and possible. Why the situation at present is so diversive and that bad is due to the very lasting and lingering cognitive dissonance that arose from the 2016 election.
Do you have any idea of the how evil the consequences of cognitive dissonance that arise from politics [or other especially religion] can be?

Btw, how come you are not condemning those who are committing the real evil acts, i.e. the protestors who burn building, destroy businesses, kill people and other evil acts???

If one wants to be objective one would listen to both sides.

Dr. Justin Frank, in his book TRUMP ON THE COUCH, comes to the conclusion that anyone who makes statements like “The more tests, the more there will be the disease” is on the border of being psychotic. This fellow who is Borderline Psychotic when he first got the job showed us a statement from his own physician, on retainer, saying he was healthy.

The job he has been doing: systematically disabling each important agency of government.

Are you sure you want to re-elect him?

Also see the findings of this deep-thinking radio host who is the author of dozens of books: thomhartmann.com/podcast
His name is Thom Hartmann.

ethics is behavioural fluency. it is talking nonesense beautifully. ethics is an art and following it is much more artful. observation and discipline is necessarily intended to be done eloquently. it is something much more deeper, much more profound than contemporary society. it is the presence of chaos amidst order and harmony.

Is this merely words chasing words? No. Sacrosanct is right: following Ethics is artful. And some people are more artists at complying with moral principles than are others. Although it is true that some are better than others at creating value in human interactions, we ought all attempt to create some value.

Perhaps the references below will give you some ideas as to how this is done. Check them out. Click on the links. and then …
Happy reading :exclamation:

It is true Trump has said silly things. So far, Trump had not done anything that a typical psychotic person would do. Has he?

In my opinion, Trump is not doing a good job with this Covid19 epidemic, but this is only one aspect of this total responsibility and thus we cannot judge merely on one specific performance.
It is not easy for any President of the USA, since the president do have have total control over the Senate and Congress.

However to be fair to any employee, in this case, Trump is an employee of the US Government, one has to prepare a report card and list down all the jobs [weighted] within his responsibility and he had done then produce a net result of his overall performance.

From what I’ve read, heard and noted, overall Trump has done a reasonable job [including the bad ones] until the emergence of the Covid19 pandemic.

Do you think Biden could do a better job than Trump. I noted Biden had cognitive deficit and at times incoherent.

If given the two ‘devils’, in the present circumstances, I believe Trump would still be the devil who can do a better job as President of the USA.

One who is ethically sensitive would have noticed, during the Republican debate for the party’s nomination for President, that Trump’s procedure was to disparage and demean his fellow candidates (and bestow on them a childish, derogatory nickname) – unethical conduct.
Then we learned by hearing his voice on a video, just before he stepped out of the bus he was on, that he bragged about grabbing women by the cr-tch. – vulgar, crude and unethical without prior consent.
Then, once he got the nomination his authoritarian lack of humility was exhibited when he blared out: “I’m the only one that can save you!!” - unethical.

The judgment that the guy would turn out to be corrupt has been confirmed time and again …violations of thee Emoluments clause in The Constitution, etc - unethical conduct.
Then came the impeachable offenses which continue to this day. Then when he learned that Russian bounties were paid for the killing of our soldiers in Afghanistan and he made no notice of that, no protest about it, that showed what a great Commander-in-Chief we have. - Utterly incompetent.

Now we are getting hints from Trump that he wants to be President-for-life: he said he might delay the Election, that the results would not be in by Election Day, that he intends to holler, “Fraud!!!”; etc. He has openly admired “Strong Men,” such as the ruler in Hungary, and the head man in in Brazil and in The Philippines.

Yes, Biden slips up at times. He may even sound incoherent for a moment. He is, like me, a fallible human being. [My quota is 40 bloops a day.} …but this is not about me. Rather it is about who is fit to be President. I would argue that Biden is infinitely-better than Trump for that job.

[size=85]pBTW, of what country are you a citizen, Prismatics?[/size]

You are hinging on too many speculations.
Let’s get back to being objective.
If you are an employee [as Trump is], don’t you want an objective assessment based on empirical evidences relevant to your performance.
I don’t think your employers would care what you say and act [unless it is evidently evil] outside work and within the company but rather what productive work you can contribute to the company.

[size=85]No precision. I am not from the ‘West’ but from the ‘Eastern’ side of the world.[/size]

This does not explain why tribalism has always existed in our species and still does no matter how advanced we become
So were we all programmed to think of humanity as merely a single entity then there would never be any divisions at all

That’s an interesting categorization you put forth. Some of us favor the traditional American value, along with social justice and civil disobedience. I count myself among them.

The topic of this thread is Applied Ethics, and what are the bare facts.

Yes, 30% ti 40% so far love him; and 60% are ‘turned off’ by him. He is indeed “the face of something deep”: namely, the attempt by multi-millionaires and billionaires to introduce fascism to the USA. I mean by “fascism” the merger of government and corporate administration run by oligarchs and favoring corporations. Often it results - as we have with Trump (and with Putin) today - in a kleptocracy.

Tribalism emerged out of necessity and is adaptive, i.e. has survival values.
It is noted humans in the early stages started with the realization of the advantage of being in small groups but they also realized the greater advantage of larger groups, thus larger and larger groups [tribes] are form as evident in modern times.
Naturally there are the cons of larger groups, thus the need for rules to manage whatever is immoral.

While the progress is towards larger group into one single entity, the thrust here is to develop common shared goals on critical issues, e.g. survival of the species.
Even with the drive for one single entity in terms of shared visions and goals, divisions are still needed re the necessity of specialization and its advantages.
E.g. an ant colony will act as one entity when the nest is under threat, but there are nevertheless different divisions and groups of ants doing their specialized task.

Thus the target is to strive for humanity to act as a single entity especially toward threats against the human species as a whole, e.g. climate change, limited resources, WMDs, rogue meteor/asteroid.

For example if there appear a rogue asteroid heading Earth’s path and is large enough to destroy Earth to smithereens, it is imperative that everyone on Earth think and act as one to deal with the threat rather than on their own group or tribe.
The same attitude need to be developed to deal with the other critical threats against the human species.

THE JOY OF LIVING ETHICALLY

Here is something to think about.

I will define three emotions in the order of how valuable they are. I’ll remind us of a key imperative of Ethics, the violation of which impedes the experiencing of the most valuable emotion. And will then draw an important conclusion from these deliberations.

The Unified Theory of Ethics is that new paradigm everyone has read about here: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=195234 as well as in the References listed below which provide more details and clarification.
The following are three definitions derived from this Unified Theory of Ethics, using the three major Dimensions of Value to do the derivation. Those Dimensions are Systemic (“S”) value; Extrinsic (“E”) value; and Intrinsic (“I”) value.
Satisfaction is a Systemic emotion. Pleasure is an Extrinsic emotion. And Joy is an Intrinsic emotion. So here is an analysis of certain select emotions, arranging them from least (at the top) to most value.

S: Satisfaction
E: Pleasure
I: Joy

[Recall that one of the early theorems of Ethics (when phrased as an imperative) is Do no harm! To do harm is to conduct oneself immorally.]

Joy is the result of love (I-valuation.) Those who act immorally are not behaving lovingly toward those to whom they have done harm. Therefore to act immorally is to miss out on joy, to lack joy in their life.
Since a major benefit of complying with, and practicing, Ethics is to gain joy …as a result we feel sorry for those who don’t live their ethics. In an important sense, they are losers :exclamation:

You speak a lot but say nothing. You don’t know heaven and hell and beyond. It’s not your fault.

Again, you speak a lot and say nothing.

@ Progress:

To me, progress means trying to reach a goal.

Your idea of goodness centers, for example, is a form of progressivism, because it is an idea with a greater goal.

Most progress is considered as a moral obligation.
Sometimes progress runs backwards to what it normally does.

I like the idea of progress.

Thank you for speaking up.

I’m with you, Dan. I like the idea of progress also.

I am not sure I understand what you mean when you say “…progress runs backwards.” Isn’t the concept for that “regressions]”? Or “reaction”?

Please enlighten me here…

Yes, regressions.
Like saying life was better before the industrial revolution.

If I had a godly position, id probably take on the idea of leaving things alone,
unless they want to be some other way.

On the other hand, christian moral imparatives would say I must help all those in need.

This is yet another difficulty.

I used to want a revolution, where all beings are protected from death and helped to mentally evolve at a very fast rate.

Am I making an error in reconsidering this?

Let’s say aliens gave new technology to humanity.
There are many ups and downs with this,
but is it better that we get a boost?
In a way, more fortunate people can give a boost to less fortunate people,
sometimes. Maybe we all need a little boost?