Basics of The New Ethics - action-oriented

@deepthot,

Community is morality... Work on hanging with those who will hang with you... It is negative... Don't do wrong by your people...Its not rocket science... Babies get it..

@deepthot,

Thank you for your views, Fido.

Affirming how great true community is does raise one's morality. It is one of the many ways to do it. Why? Because community, as distinct from the collective, or from society, is one of the Intrinsic values, along with beauty, truth, and goodness. The fellowship and brotherly-sisterly-love attained in a true community is indeed something to work for. So thanks for reminding us of it.

I define morality as self being true to Self; and to the extent we are true to ourselves we will be true to every other person. So let's each of us aim for moral health.. Let's not just settle for physical health as a goal to which we aspire. We are the world. Let's start living.

@deepthot,

deepthot;78931 wrote:

Thank you for your views, Fido.

Affirming how great true community is does raise one's morality. It is one of the many ways to do it. Why? Because community, as distinct from the collective, or from society, is one of the Intrinsic values, along with beauty, truth, and goodness. The fellowship and brotherly-sisterly-love attained in a true community is indeed something to work for. So thanks for reminding us of it.

I define morality as self being true to Self; and to the extent we are true to ourselves we will be true to every other person. So let's each of us aim for moral health.. Let's not just settle for physical health as a goal to which we aspire. We are the world. Let's start living.

Well try to remember that we identify ourselves apart from our communities while the most moral people the world has known, primitives, identified themselves as one of the: insert the name of the group...

@Fido,

The use of the word heathen to describe someone without morals is out of order, as heathens are pagans,the first peoples to inhabit the british isles.They built stone henge so they did have some form of moral code.
Morals are distinguished by the group even though certain moral behaviour is universal,so the"i" and not "we" is more relevant.I have made my feelings known before, religious ethics are for the main constant while secular morals can be altered to fit the ethical problems that overlap other faiths and are not restricted by faith driven dogma.Ethics have to have a consensus of opinion before they can be accepted and in general dogma is the barrier for change.

@xris,

xris;78954 wrote:

The use of the word heathen to describe someone without morals is out of order, as heathens are pagans,the first peoples to inhabit the british isles.They built stone henge so they did have some form of moral code.
Morals are distinguished by the group even though certain moral behaviour is universal,so the"i" and not "we" is more relevant.I have made my feelings known before, religious ethics are for the main constant while secular morals can be altered to fit the ethical problems that overlap other faiths and are not restricted by faith driven dogma.Ethics have to have a consensus of opinion before they can be accepted and in general dogma is the barrier for change.

Dogma is a form, and human progress demands a change of form...

.Heathen and Pagan are synonyms...Both words describe country people who like our country people: Cling to their guns and religion...When people's lives are going well they thank God and believe... When nothing else is working, an old form like religion will not be enough to fix anything, and in fact, will inhibit change... The Change from Pagan to Christian was attended with a lot of violence in Europe, even against the dead...I think that what won the battle was economy, because a single God, especially one which demands no blood, is more affordable... Well, seeing what we get from our Gods, more bloodshed and poverty, then there is no reason we should not economize... A God that don't come when you call him is as good as a dog that won't hunt... Some people spend more time hunting for their God than hunting with him if you catch my drift, and that is the mark of a failed relationship, where you put more life in than you get out...And that is where the city folks are, surrounded by steeples, and people out of work, and if they seem to be trying hard to take the situation in hand, it may be because they are tired of asking God to take the situation in hand... There are battle lines drawn, and the people with religion are clinging to their guns...I bet it hurts to get shot, at...

You seem about that far from telling the truth about morals...Yes, Primitives were and are more moral... What you are missing is that the moral sense may be inate in mankind since we clearly want that moral feeling...But if it is not inate, it is born in the relationship between mother and child...Those who try to rationalise ethics inevitably fail... Immorality is rational, it is always reasoned, and justified...Look at violence, the extreme of immorality...Violence is always justified... I shot him because he looked funny and I was mad, is an apology...It's just that you have to have a reason to do it, or they will haul you away, and the biggest morons in prison have figured that out...And politicians, and even some good Christians...Thou shall not kill without a good excuse...If we recognize people as human and part of the human family then there is no good excuse... If we would be moral to mankind, we must first feel it, that they are our nation, our community, our family, and our kin... We cannot reason our selves into goodness...It is not excuses that make people good...We do not need excuses, or reasons, or justifications...People need to feel to be moral... They have to make that unconscious connection to people out of the recognition that they are people like your own, and they are our own.. We belong to each other, and should be there for each other, and understanding that this is a reason, that we should recognize that biologically we are a single organism...We are like one hand, or the other, part of the same being, and not really in competition for anything...We need to work together to reach a common goal...

@Fido,

The pagans simply outbread the heathens and the christians simply killed the pagan priests, made christianity to look so much like paganism they fooled them into converting.BUT the old gods will return...

@xris,

xris;78965 wrote:

The pagans simply outbread the heathens and the christians simply killed the pagan priests, made christianity to look so much like paganism they fooled them into converting.BUT the old gods will return...

Oh ya...I can't wait to see one of those trees full of suspended corses of all kinds, including humans...I know the Chirstians may think I am talking about them, but we all need a god who will take a bribe and come through with the goods... If the life we keep is more than the life we waste then we have a bargain....

---------- Post added 07-23-2009 at 09:12 AM ----------

Fools do, and philosophers teach that doing without knowing is a sin....People set off to do good and in doing welll do much evil...If a reasonable fraction of the energy of youth were turned away from do, do, do, and into think, read, and write; Geniuses would abound and our problems would be solved...

I do not think the effort toward a new ethic is justified...It is a strange fact of human nature that we build our forms to capture the present, but the forms changes and robs us of the moment... So if you want a new ethic you can only get it by trying to capture the essential of the old ethic...People fear the future so they must be convinced to take the back door into it...People can never recapture the past, nor hold the moment, with their forms or their hands... People need forms, but they should become aware before their forms become oppressive, that what we are we cannot change, and so to preserve life and the quality of life we must sometimes trash the old and get new..

.People are forever picking the corn out of their crap... They recycle the best of the past in their new forms, just as we recreated ourselves as a nation out the the failed junk of Rome because we thought it worked...It only seemed to work while it was ruining the country and most of Europe and North Africa, and all the way to Asia...Rome was a product no one in their right mind would buy, and for that we celebrate our founding fathers....Do you see the irony here, of a people building an nation with a simple document meant to help structure and preserve the relationships between people, only to have that document modified by later generations to help destroy the relationship it was mean to preserve...It is the effort to preserve the moment that chains humanity to the past...That is good in a sense, and in a sense worse than evil...The part of the past people should most try to preserve is themselves, and to do that they need effective and dynamic forms of relationship...Or they need the insight and the ability to change their forms...The first step is to understand what you are dealing with...

@deepthot,

I wrote "My job is not to "convert the heathens." It is to strengthen the good people..." You will note that I put that expression about "heathens" in quotes. That is because I was ridiculing a remark that others used. And I was rejecting the concept.

I did not want nor intend this thread to turn into a religious discussion. It was meant to be about implementing Ethics, in practice.

Please let's not digress over a phrase that I was denying as a focus of interest. Let's instead focus on how we can strengthen those who are already aware and sensitive to human values. One way is by encouraging their continuous self-improvement so that they increase in effectiveness and influence, providing a good role model for the rest of the world.

We are no longer primitives, but we can discern what made them so moral, granting that they were, and we can learn to adopt the best from all cultures for our current mutual benefit. Okay?!

@deepthot,

deepthot;79401 wrote:

I wrote "My job is not to "convert the heathens." It is to strengthen the good people..." You will note that I put that expression about "heathens" in quotes. That is because I was ridiculing a remark that others used. And I was rejecting the concept.

I did not want nor intend this thread to turn into a religious discussion. It was meant to be about implementing Ethics, in practice.

Please let's not digress over a phrase that I was denying as a focus of interest. Let's instead focus on how we can strengthen those who are already aware and sensitive to human values. One way is by encouraging their continuous self-improvement so that they increase in effectiveness and influence, providing a good role model for the rest of the world.

We are no longer primitives, but we can discern what made them so moral, granting that they were, and we can learn to adopt the best from all cultures for our current mutual benefit. Okay?!

You cannot adopt a morality anymore than you can conjure one up with reason...You can understand why primitives were moral, and perhaps the most moral of people, and then create the environment where people can grow into it...We could certainly help ourselves if we would stop rewarding immorality...But true morality is based upon a common community from which people get their sense of justice, and love, and identity... Individualism is immorality dressed as a philosophy...Individualism is rational...Morality is irrational...morality only makes sense in its milieu...

@deepthot,

fido-
morality is irrational-i like that. seems to me you mentioned that before, and i find it really interesting. the faculty of reason gets in the way of a lot of concepts for me. someone may ask me 'what is your reason for doing that, believing that? and i wont be able to answer. it just 'feels' right. but there still should be a way of going backwards and finding out how to explain it to someone else. or are you saying our reasons are always going to be made up so that it sounds like we have some when there arent any?

it would seem to me that ethics is not an intellectual issue as much as a spiritual one. but for those people whose sense of ethics has been blunted or warped by whatever circumstances, they would need some reason to change or to want to learn a different way of living and relating to their environment and neighbors. i think a new sense of morality can also develop in time through experience-but one would have to be a very fast learner or live a long life of nonstop adventures. otherwise death would cut the learning process short before the course was over.

the society in which we live shapes our morality of course, and i see some primitive society here that is catapulted into the modern world but still clinging to their old morality. take the custom of sati for instance-the practice of a widow being burnt alive on her husband's funeral pyre. when this custom began, i would surmise that it was a practical solution to the question of who was to care for those women who outnumbered men by far in their old age since men died earlier from hard work or war. within those societies there was no way for a woman to support herself and it would be a burden on her children to expect them to live in even a worse condition because of her, so it was accepted. under those circumstances i cannot say it is an example of immoral behavior. today sati is illegal, but happens all the time. the government has gone so far as to arrest whole families and threaten penalizing entire villages where it occurs to try and stop the practice. it is more than a case of ignorant people following tradition blindly-even more sadly, it is often a case of relatives wanting to inherit some property or simply not wanting to be burdened with an aging parent even when they have the means. they aid and abet the woman's death and sometimes it becomes what can be called nothing else but outright murder. what kind of classes in primary school will teach their children a different path? parents are still fighting sex education in schools. i am not saying it cant be done, or that it shouldnt be done-because it will most certainly catch up to the times sooner or later. but trying to intervene and speed up the process other than enforcing laws to protect the weak may not really help.

but deepthot, i understand you to be saying that what you are proposing is to help those who are already in the process of trying to perfect their own concept of ethics. i am one of those people, and what i have noticed is that once a concept becomes an ideal there is no way of going back. i also seem to notice a speeding up of progress the closer the vision of that ideal appears. so i am very happy to see your enthusiasm and the amount of thought and work you put into what you believe in.

@deepthot,

I sense a confusion between "irrational" and "nonrational" on the part of some writers at philosophy forums.

I'm getting the distinct impression that my proposed definition of the concept "morality" is not being accepted -- on grounds that it is rational and reasonable. I have heard of the fellow who said to Frege, "I like your system of Arithmetic, but I just can't swallow that implication of it that 7 + 5 = 12. It rubs me the wrong way. If you would just leave that out, your system would be fine."

@deepthot,

Irrational does mean non rational...Irrelevent means not relevent... Some times morals are anti rational... The fact is that all immorality is rationalized...Who cares that it is based upon a false conception of the human inidividual... That is what we are, mentally; but our biological reality is that our individual is much larger, like a tribe or something...

@deepthot,

deepthot;79534 wrote:

I sense a confusion between "irrational" and "nonrational" on the part of some writers at philosophy forums.

I'm getting the distinct impression that my proposed definition of the concept "morality" is not being accepted -- on grounds that it is rational and reasonable. I have heard of the fellow who said to Frege, "I like your system of Arithmetic, but I just can't swallow that implication of it that 7 + 5 = 12. It rubs me the wrong way. If you would just leave that out, your system would be fine."

I believe your theory could be considered by almost everyone on this forum since they as a majority use reason to reach the worldview that divides them into distinct 'camps'. there does seem to be some resistance to the idea of a universal moral standard. relativity is a fact that is undeniable. while I believe it is possible, (a universal moral code) once it has been defined there needs to be a way of evaluating choices that the individual must reason out on his own. no doubt a rational theory on what ethics are and why it is crucial for every individual to be ethical can be proposed. you may have a mathematical method of identifying the ethical validity in any given action, I am still reading...i sincerely hope you do!

my main cause for hesitation is that no one can sincerely follow an ethical code that includes considering others as equals or the whole as superior because the ego intervenes. (true, sometimes it completely negates itself, and that is just as detrimental.) I am stuck on the theme of unity and it is difficult for me to disengage from it, which may be why I say that a comprehensive and all-inclusive, universal morality can only be realized as seen from a perspective of the whole as if there were no others-derived both from experiential data and rational analysis. if you have a method of making choices logically that would identify an action as moral, I would love to make use of it, because I know I cant depend on my own reasoning. too often it has proved to be nothing more than a process contrived by an unruly and self-serving ego that has yet to be mastered.

@salima,

salima;79562 wrote:

I believe your theory could be considered by almost everyone on this forum since they as a majority use reason to reach the worldview that divides them into distinct 'camps'. there does seem to be some resistance to the idea of a universal moral standard. relativity is a fact that is undeniable. while I believe it is possible, (a universal moral code) once it has been defined there needs to be a way of evaluating choices that the individual must reason out on his own. no doubt a rational theory on what ethics are and why it is crucial for every individual to be ethical can be proposed. you may have a mathematical method of identifying the ethical validity in any given action, I am still reading...i sincerely hope you do!

my main cause for hesitation is that no one can sincerely follow an ethical code that includes considering others as equals or the whole as superior because the ego intervenes. (true, sometimes it completely negates itself, and that is just as detrimental.) I am stuck on the theme of unity and it is difficult for me to disengage from it, which may be why I say that a comprehensive and all-inclusive, universal morality can only be realized as seen from a perspective of the whole as if there were no others-derived both from experiential data and rational analysis. if you have a method of making choices logically that would identify an action as moral, I would love to make use of it, because I know I cant depend on my own reasoning. too often it has proved to be nothing more than a process contrived by an unruly and self-serving ego that has yet to be mastered.

Truth is always true from a certain perspective, as is reasonable... The moon crosses the path of the sun for some and not for others, so truth and reason are limited to pointless specifics, or mindless generalities... We can see that when people act morally they do so without thought, and yet every adult must consciously accept his community morals... But if you look at the Jews in regard to the Arabs, or the Arabs in regard to the Jews, you can see that while their actions are moral, that is, in defense of their community, they are not reasonable by any objective standard...The Jews kill 100 to 1 if they can, and with little regard for who dies, which is fitting with group responsibility, as all primitive consider responsibility...

The notion of a moral code, and the effort in that direction is a movement from relative informality to formality...In the sense that we can talk about morality at all we know it as a form... But when it is really made formal, the authority of the state enforces morality as law...The reason we have laws and nation states is to allow great numbers to live in a society at peace... The Romans had their Law of Nations which is the first official recognition of the equality of all nations...But, it is not the same as saying all men are created egual..But what happens when we try to give a sort of behavior based primarily upon emotions and affection the force of law... When we attempt to force people to behave in a certain fashion, as they would behave given their natural affection, then we are doing something immoral in the extreme, and limiting human freedom of choice and action...Relationships should be informal... All relationships are in part, formal... Rather than considering the ideal, the form, and trying to get humanity to fit that mold, or structure of behavior; why not give people the means and the desire to act morally...Sure, build larger nations; but build them out of the desire to be together..

@deepthot,

i have read the article in the NYT by Steven Pinker and i like it a lot. here is what i read that applies:

(as regards to the possibility of a universal moral code)
"The Varieties of Moral Experience
When anthropologists like Richard Shweder and Alan Fiske survey moral concerns across the globe, they find that a few themes keep popping up from amid the diversity. People everywhere, at least in some circumstances and with certain other folks in mind, think it's bad to harm others and good to help them. They have a sense of fairness: that one should reciprocate favors, reward benefactors and punish cheaters. They value loyalty to a group, sharing and solidarity among its members and conformity to its norms. They believe that it is right to defer to legitimate authorities and to respect people with high status. And they exalt purity, cleanliness and sanctity while loathing defilement, contamination and carnality.
The exact number of themes depends on whether you're a lumper or a splitter, but Haidt counts five - harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity - and suggests that they are the primary colors of our moral sense. Not only do they keep reappearing in cross-cultural surveys, but each one tugs on the moral intuitions of people in our own culture."

"Juggling the Spheres
All this brings us to a theory of how the moral sense can be universal and variable at the same time. The five moral spheres are universal, a legacy of evolution. But how they are ranked in importance, and which is brought in to moralize which area of social life - sex, government, commerce, religion, diet and so on - depends on the culture."

Pinker also makes the point that it would be a process of natural selection to keep morality-there has to be a balance between individual survival and survival of the species. if that were not so, there would be nothing but violent aggressive murderers running around because they would be the strongest. strengthening the characteristic of a moral code which looks out for the individual and the community as a whole would be most conducive to the propagation of the species.

i must admit that it seems a lot less irrational to be moral than i thought at first. i very much appreciate the link to that article, and i am getting back to reading your thesis, deepthot...

@deepthot,

By the time the informal feeling binding people to their nations becomes a formal code it is because they have already moved out of gentile communities through their economies, or out of conquest...For the most primitive, there is only one morality, and it is community... The great advance of Islam has been that it gave many primitive peoples a larger form through which to relate, and a larger community... But try to tell so afghani tribsman that there is anyone deserving of respect who is not his kin, and you would find a barrior to intercourse... People once traded in wives because it built their community, and firmed up community relations...What makes our rich, and our religious leaders, and our politicians so immoral, is not just that they are idealogues who miss the human element, but the fact that their technology gives them the opinion that they can do without us... They do not need us for jobs a trained monkey could do...They do not need us to cast manipulated votes...If they ring the bell, and we salivate, they want us just to salavate without them troubling to go through the motions...And Rand is selling good...The rich who think they are indispensible are thinking of how they can shrug off from under any responsibility for the mess and damage they have caused, and how to run off with all our capital... But they cannot go anywhere because the land is 90% of the capital, and we are still on much of it, even if they own it all...They are not a part of our community...They feel no responsibility...The can rationalize themselves out of doing any good for the community, because to speak accurately, they have put themselves outside of the community in the effort to put themselves above us...

If you draw a line around every community which represents a certain morality then you would find that at an elemantal level, we are all divided, but that we are all a part of one community, the human community...Our communities unite us, and divide us... Same with forms...Our form unites us to those within, and keeps us from those apart...The object of a universal sense of morality is a universal community that exclude no one, and accepts all...But Grouch Marx said it well: I wouldn't join any group that would have me as a member...No one wants to be a member of a group that does not exclude...That is what NIetzsche said of the officer in church: Who do they refuse...It is not just Nietzsche, but many who reject out of hand the notion that all are equal in the eyes of God... We do not want equality...This country was formed with a declaration of independence that made the statement that all men are created Equal...Now even if the obvious metaphysicism is discarded, the equality of human beings is something our actual society and government have done all in their power to deny... Our economy, which is not a goal of our constitution has become its prime focus, and yet the economy is designed to make people unequal finanacially, which destroys their civil rights... Not one single contract is signed on equal advantage...One needs what another has, and pays for the privilage of borrowing...As our whole society has been made dependent upon credit -that is always used to advantage, the people have been reduced to slavery...It is across the whole reach of our society so that no one can do without credit, and credit often paid for at high rates that must inevitably be squeezed out of working people... So equality, which is an essential element of any true community is destroyed for an ideal of an economy which can hardly be ideal if it destroys the whole society...

@deepthot,

While we do not want equality, we might be a lot better off than we are if every business were worker-managed (with the right to hire the most expert management-consultants) and also worker-owned ...in the sense that they share in the profits via some profit-sharing arrangement, such as the same right to get options in the company that the senior officials enjoy now: the CEO, the Chairman of the Board, etc. This will provide the proper incentives and would be the Ethical course of action.

This would be the spread of Democracy to the workplace, and it is difficult for me to see anything wrong with it. It really hasn't been tried on enough of a scale to allow the best examples of it to emerge that other firms could emulate.

We also need Campaign Finance Reform to take the corruption out of government on the part of elected officials. It has to be pushed hard on to the congress-people for they will never vote for it themselves since they benefit so much from the current lobbying arrangements.

Anyone agree?

@deepthot,

deepthot;80875 wrote:

While we do not want equality, we might be a lot better off than we are if every business were worker-managed (with the right to hire the most expert management-consultants) and also worker-owned ...in the sense that they share in the profits via some profit-sharing arrangement, such as the same right to get options in the company that the senior officials enjoy now: the CEO, the Chairman of the Board, etc. This will provide the proper incentives and would be the Ethical course of action.
This would be the spread of Democracy to the workplace, and it is difficult for me to see anything wrong with it. It really hasn't been tried on enough of a scale to allow the best examples of it to emerge that other firms could emulate.
Anyone agree?

i stumbled upon a couple of really good books in the old dusty unused library room where i used to work-one was called On Personal Power by Carl Rogers, and the other was called Breaking Free by Dr. David Noer, and i quote from the latter: "...we can choose to be free from the stifling constraints of a one-down, dependency relationship with our orga*nizations. We can break the bonds of organizational codependency and choose the path of freedom. The power of this choice is that we can invest ourselves in the satisfaction of meaningful work, serve others, reclaim our self-esteem, and pursue the learner's path."
so much needs to change, but i think the basic understanding of personal ethics is the foundation stone. until that is established, i dont know how much progress can be made...

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