End goal of ethics, for you?

Post Reply New Topic

Morality is all situational, you've got to take a situation and pick it apart, find the heaviest factor, the bottom line factor, to be able to think and judge without bias but according to existing facts and evidence. Morality doesn't know a label, it's not christian or jewish or muslim or pagan, it's not liberal or conservative, it's having the balls to be an outsider in order to stand up for what is morally right. There is no blue print for morality, it is mere deductible logic. The main questions you have to ask yourself is: a) are your actions hurting anyone for reasons other than self preservation? b) has this person did something to warrant being hurt? examples here can range from mild (stealing from someone) to severe (rape or murder), one's punishment should be equal to their misdeed..... Meaning there is no such thing as cruel and unusual punishment for a mass murderer or a rapist, because they were cruel and unusual to their victims. But if you executed someone for a simple lie that would be excessive. c) if you have hurt someone out of self preservation, was there another way to preserve? Would it have been at least comparible efficient, realistic, and reliable of a way?
Labels such as liberal/conservative, or religions, etc can often cloud peoples' moral judgement because they'll condition people to defend any coarse of action without question in order to fit into the group. Sometimes you might HAVE to do immoral things for survival, things like war, or protecting our borders from illegals, however a moral person would not support this position because they wanted it to be that way, they'd support it only because they had to....

My Prime Directive is to pursue my own desires and interests as much as possible without causing harm to other beings. Kind of like "Follow your bliss" blended with Ahimsa.

In real life, this is rather difficult to consistently put into practice. For instance, I'm not a vegetarian (although I have been one). If I were physically threatened, and the situation required me to use lethal force to defend myself, I would definitely kill someone else to save myself. And I'm long past putting other people's desires in front of my own just because they'd like me to do so.

But, despite the difficulty in being consistent, I'll keep trying.

Depends if the greater good of society were moral or not. The reason I saw this is some societies such as ancient Rome, eventually became utterly decadent. Then again, the greater good of society could have been to allow the decadent society to die out or try and get rid of the decadence.

I believe that my goal in life is to love God and my neighbor and everything else will fall in place. Dawn