User:Pontius Ethics
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[edit] Pontius Ethics
To bring ethics to the world of humans, you have to continually define the world of humans. All people are composed of various systems that sustain them. All people form systems to create a society, and all societies form our species as one system.
If someone were to seek the greatest good from the orders of nature, they would seem to be in harmony with the rest universe. I believe that nature is hypocritical in that sense: One of the laws of nature is to survive as a species. If the summum bonum was to be in harmony with nature or the universe, the idea would only hold as good as long enough as to allow our species to live out its natural span of existence. As a part of nature, we are innately born with the desire to prolong our stay as a whole as far into time as possible. While most of us don't use this desire rationally due to lack of sight or control, we indeed have it. That being said, our harmony with nature must not take priority over our will to live, and we must continue living until a way of ascension is found for our species. It can be dually noted, however, that failure to regard the security and harmony of nature would ultimately result in Nex ut Totus, or simply "death to all".
While we belong to a set of systems, the preservation of our selves is logically the first value in human thought. Beneath our sophistications and temperaments dwells a selfish monster that has no ethical problems killing another human being for the salvation of its existence. In that direction, I believe my ethical system bears a resemblance to the existentialist argument. While most of modern society has overcome this instinct to a small degree (like many other instincts), it's not a question that naturally we are prone to preserve our selves ultimately -and within a degree of appropriate logic- regardless of our cause or purpose in the grander scheme of the universe.
The Summum Bonum of life is control, in good will, and sight. While security and comfort go hand in hand with control, for the sake of ethics, it's necessary to control yourself in good will to pursue virtue through reason and education. Control is freedom, and freedom can't be total freedom without a complete education. Only by self-improvement through education and experience can someone increase their ability to improve others by control in good will.
This concept could parallel with some of Aurthur Schopenhauer's work in The World as Will and Representation in that life essentially is evil, futile, and full of suffering and death at its root (which is Thomas Hobbes in a nutshell), and the contrast (by Shopenhauer) that the cure for this lies in aesthetic contemplation, empathy towards humans, and balanced, healthy restraint from indulgence. It is existentialist in that life is futile or unknowable while burdening one with the responsibility of freedom by control, and it is essentialist in that reality is composed of Will and Representation.
Control is a loaded term without Good Will: The Control would not seem to create freedom given that when control is implemented it inhibits the natural, absolute and dangerous freedom of whatever is being controlled. But Control in Good Will would bear the following in mind for the person(s) to be controlled or affected by this control: the Comfort, Security, and Education towards the pursuit of ethical control, of both the subjects and the persons affected by the freedom of the subjects. Absolute freedom is dangerous, and to be avoided in any civilized society. Free will is not necessary for comfort and security. In fact, total free will for anyone always results in the restriction of freedom in others. However, a certain degree of freedom results in comfort.
In a practical sense, control is inevitable. One of the most signature traits of humans is that they control their environment to increase comfort and security. To control other humans is also a trait signature to dominant or intellectually acute humans. But if control is not in good will and is also over other people as part of the controller's environment, those people will reject their individual environments, including the control over them. People naturally will band together to resist control over them that is not in good will regardless of their education. If there is no comfort or security resulting from control, then it is not control.
One example of how control in good will would keep leaders from behaving unethically would be Hitler's genocide against the Jewish Population prior to World War II. While Hitler believed he was controlling in good will, he didn't take into consideration the effects of his control on the people he was controlling, or the people affected by the controlled population. There was no comfort or security for the Jewish population by his control of his military and german population, and all humans are just that: human. By only providing comfort and security to German soldiers and families on the conformity to his mandate (which resulted in loss of security and comfort to the Jews) he was acting unethically.
The only way to improve good will and the control to implement it is to better yourself through a pure education: To see and research elements in your (or other) societies that limit the comfort and security of the people therein and to continually find ways to eliminate or change those elements without compounding the problem or creating a new one of equal value. A utilitarian rule of thumb would generally consider the greatest comfort and security for the greatest number of people and then obtaining the means to make that possible. This can only happen through control; not necessarily in a stereotypical sense- people can be controlled and be totally unaware of it. People's decisions and environments can be altered by the slightest things. A beautiful woman who is abstinent and stalked frequently could eliminate a great deal of the insecurity associated with her situational lifestyle by telling one of her close friends that she has a venereal disease, on those lines – although that would be an extreme reaction to a problem of that nature.
In addition to this, in every day living, a sense of duty and virtue is necessary for an ethical life. Simply finding problems in society and attempting to correct them is good for the whole, but for the individual, to add harmony to society someone would need to pursue honesty short of the point that it begins to interfere with their security. Personal comfort is irrelevant in regards to virtue.
Comfort is distracting when it is indulged in frequently, but as it is a core necessity of a society to be controlled ethically, it can't be limited by control—this can only happen on an individual basis. To fail to be virtuous for comfort is an atrocity and the sign of a degradation of higher controls over the presiding society – the act of the unvirtous individual would be a marker of a flawed element in need of correction.
In this system that I have outlined, a utopia, or a very close facsimile is entirely possible. A global revolution and the establishment of a New World Order using Good Will Control in all aspects of its systems would be a prime example of an application in the modern world.
