Common SenseEthics Definition / sense in ethic Sense of Accepted/Unaccepted Rules for LOCAL escape of Shame and Dishonor 
Unlike 'morals' the value 'respect' is not one-dimensional and has different outlooks depending of the culture. A poisonous snake might look like a terrorist PREDATOR, but in common sense cultures is seen as fighting for freedom to be RESPECTED King of the Jungle. The earth looked flat from earth standpoint, but Columbus showed it is round. 'Flat' and 'Round' are cultural dependent. Roman Christian thinking pointed at fantasy of 'divine' persons as 'spiritual'. Roman Christians are also known as 'The Whites' or 'Western People'. In 'meta-ethics' or Philosophy of Rationality 'The Whites' try to find out what are the 'Rules of Rationality', and to locate 'THE Rational Source'. Following basic guidelines of the religion Roman Christianity like: Split of Mind and Body, spirits exist and God exists. In Roman Christian view Christian humans have RIGHTS. That's like addicts of 'rationality' studying own addiction by taking more of drug 'rationality', and fighting for the rights of 'rational junkies'.
 Juggling with Logic Albert Einstein undervalued the Right Brain with his 'blind' quote: Relativity applies to physics, not ethics Quote John Ziman: Ethics is not just an abstract intellectual discipline. It is about the conflicts that arise in trying to meet real human needs and values Immanuel Kant and Giambattista Vico already posed (with different conclusions): 'the ONLY guideline for ethics is common sense'. And common sense is very deep but also quite relative Life is a game that is played in many ways, all maximizing in some way Love (Respect). There are as many views on the world as there are people. A fine example of partly perpendicular cultural views is seen in the 21st century Iraq War. Ethics or Moral Philosophy is more than defending and extending the social rules of 1 dominant paradigm. It also is the guts of triggering a paradigm shift. Important is only to respect beings who play other games. What matters is their history. Governments use CULTURAL rules. The Western Christian essence is the worship of the Unidentified Flying Object 'spirit'. 'spirit thinking' creates a virtual reality (dream) in which beautiful 'unity of body and mind' cultures are annihilated as having little 'spirit'. Like the Red Indians, the Eskimo's, the Aboriginals. And black Africans are made into 'slaves'. I didn't get sucked into this virtual reality, by evading it through 'slumbering' from 15 to 45. Until a brain stem attack awoke me again, 16 years old.
Collision of different Ethics
Moral systems can be PARTIALLY very different, as in the 21st century the American Army noticed in an unpleasant way in Iraq. It's no use to try by force to make another culture resemble your own. Christian democracy in whatever shape (American or European) does not fit in Islamic or Buddhist countries. And what is more, I'm sure democracy in the current shape doesn't fit anymore in the Western World. Whether such a culture is Capitalist or not. A war about ethics in the Muslim copy of Roman Christianity Mohammedanism is called a 'Jihad'. In earlier times Catholic Christians spoke about 'Crusade'. The last series of wars about ethics were the Crusades to 'liberate' Palestine (read 'colonize'). Crusades were in modern measure each worse than a world war. They almost destroyed two major cultures, and completely influenced the course of history. The present Israel Palestine Conflict is a Crusade in collision with Jihad. An example: the Polynesian culture was conquered and exploited by The British Empire. Even much more brutal than India. And Polynesian isles are still exploited by the United-States-empire. For instance for doing nuclear experiments Armies stole and destroyed in the name of the Holy Industrialism and the Almighty Capitalism, missionaries repressed in the name of the Almighty Catholic god 'God'. The creative Polynesian culture was almost made extinct (in Hawaii, Tahiti, Samoa, New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, Philippines etcetera). The Polynesian Empire used even older Austronesian language, a language family with still 82 million native speakers. Indonesian (23 million speakers), Tagalog (22 million Philippinos), Malay (18 million in Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei) Malagasy (17 million on Madagascar), Tetum (800,000 speakers on East Timor), Fijian (350,000 on Fiji), Samoan (370,000 on Samoa), Tahitian (120,000 on French Polynesia), Tongan (108,000 on Tonga), Gilbertese (100,000 on Kiribati), Maori (100,000 on New Zealand), Chamorro language (60,000 on Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands), Marshallese (45,000 on Marshall Islands), Nauruan (6,000 on Nauru), Hawaiian (8000 on Hawaii)
During extended periods of time cultures show only linear progress (static innovation).
Also when temporarily a mistaken direction was taken.
Such driving on a false road may take a couple of thousand years. Then by pure chance some jump in usually
semi-continuously growing intelligence causes a jump in creativity and afterwards in ethics. Such a jump was called paradigm shift by Thomas Kuhn.
This change in ethics is a possible start for uniting slightly different major cultures. Juggling with Words Dominant views in the 21st century Western World 'juggle' with the logic rational logic. The best jugglers call themselves politician, manager or scientist. Jesus in his time spoke about 'pharisees', discussing with them proves useless. That is because in their abstract logic EVERYTHING can be defended that makes no sense in 'common sense'. The reason of such 'wishful dreaming' in the Western World is found in ancient Athens with the thinker Aristotle. Aristotle was tutor of Alexander the Terrible, a young man with Hitler talents. And Aristotle designed a world view that had no problem with seeing brutal murder as succesful. Imagine CEO Alexander the Great of the multinational 'Alexander the Terrible and Co.' giving following speech to his employees : 'Alexander the Terrible and Co.' again had a successful year. All financial goals were accomplished. The firm had some minor (ethical) setbacks and had to annihilate a highly advanced ununderstood culture, say two hundred thousand leaders and a huge cultural library. But all in all Alexander the Terrible and Co. did a fine job. To make such a speech meaningful Aristotle divided reality in two independent parts: (1) 'reason' and (2) bodily affairs. And Aristotle invented the notions objective and subjective. Reason was 'objectively' triggerered by eternal 'spirits' executing the natural laws of some God, and bodily action 'subjectively' executed by human bodies blindly following animal instincts. Ages later in Enlightenment provide a formal logic to this dual thinking: 'Rationalism'. 'Rationalism' currently imitates the Christian American Standard or 'Code of Ethics', in a money economy.
Love and Morality 
Defining ethics or morals can be done by using a lot of difficult words.That's only confusing. Then secondly often one only stresses the necessity of local cultural laws, and of having an army and police to defend such local rules. Such institutions are meant for defense, but often used in a quite offensive way. And armies live in symbiosis with power thinking deploying 'defense' industries that equip them with extremely expensive offensive weapons. In practice armies are often used as BIG BROTHER (defensive AND offensive) in the interest of a locally dominant subculture. That is confusing as well. That is totally different from loving all thy neighbors as brothers or sisters (maximizing 'love'). Only because 'love' is locally undistisguishable from 'hate', it is this 'hate'(or love disguised) that must be bordered. Think of the saying: without farmers no food. While most farmers show respectful moods towards their animals. Hate tends to become 'absolute' or 'fundamental', it is the relative mood 'love' that helps to get out of local 'dips'. When an absolute value like money becomes the major value in an ethics, and not a relative one like love/respect, then anything can happen. A good example of money ethics is the world wide diamond monopoly. It is completely based on the extremely high value in money of NATURAL diamonds. It tries with all means to stay a monopoly. No offense, but in the end even murder will be considered allowed (but then called something like 'compromise' or the price of democracy and capitalism). But artificial diamonds are seen with the human eye using common sense not at all different. Nevertheless one tries to prove that artificial has a different emotional value than natural, to save the myth. For evolution human made 'logically' also is natural. But to keep the monopoly, i.e. many billions of dollars gain per year.
Local Commandments or Morals 
The sum of rules based on such values is called morality or an ethical system. Take care, the word 'moral' is used in two ways.
One is to point at one specific ethical rule, and the other is to point at the sum of all basic ethical rules.
Killing a fellow human being is 'morally' strongly discouraged in Christian ethics (rule = thou shalt not kill), and such persons are 'discrimated' as being 'bad' (sum of rules).
Weird that Christian soldiers do practice killing. But the egoist capitalist rule 'making personal profit' dominates. Morals are absolute opinions based on local rules. Armies should defend them, but rules say NOTHING about relative truth, only about some absolute truth. They are 'deep-frozen' dogma's, often a religion. There are better causes to die for. The One: I'm sure army leaders and police responsibles realize that people are the greatest asset of any nation. Using millions of young people as uniformed war fuel is quite unwise.
Ethics: locally absolute BUT relative to the rules of shame Present ethics became based on a small 'subset' of human intelligence instead of on the much more general talents in overall intelligence to change moods. Western Christianity and Western rationalism led to a dominance of IQ. That is discrimination of non rational moods as part of 'intelligence'. Outside the Western World rationality became in slightly different shapes also dominant part of views. But especially in ethics there remained important alternatives (it is easier to refer to ethics as rules for a particular way of playing the game 'life'). Police officers in multicultural neighbourhoods of international cities will know very well that people from different cultures defend different basics. What is a crime in one culture, in another is seen as honorable Typical is the way in which christian rationalism was (is?) treated in Buddhist Japan (see here). As engineering tool virtual 'rational analysis' became accepted, but in ethics Buddhist BEHAVIOR was preferred. But even older is the relativism found in Inca Culture, and kept alive in the native inhabitants of South America. Cultures in this part of the world once were amazingly refined, complex and successful. In this social lab a mix between absolute Catholic Christian rationalism and Inca relativism is developing. (see symbiosis) A definition of any Ethics (Moral Values made into a Moral System):
3 Lessons
Myths create values. At present all 3 major cultures have slightly different ones. But all 3 teach an important lesson:
My conclusion: This looks like a 'trick' of evolution. It produced 3 very succesful and essentially different cultures that in the end need each other. This points at a knowledge 'economy', defending itself by dosed offensive agression through wise leadership. A knowledge economy is an economy where the main value is knowledge instead of power or money. In fact knowledge economies always existed, and still are found outside the Western World. These markets are based on exchanging goods and inherent knowledge, instead of paying with money related to instable wealth. To keep creativity within borders it is wise to respect knowledge, leadership and skill. Only: money or wealth in itself is not a value, and power alone doesn't guarantee leadership qualities. A proud world culture based on strong leadership without egoism and helped by considerable skill can reach amazing results. BUT possessing skill causes much egoism, leadership became commonly based on power, and power usually based on dominance in skill. To realize for all 'equal' opportunities, it is wise to take time to diminish the present domination of skill. This to develop leadership and respect. Say 50 years. Shame and Ethics Shame according to dictionaries:
As I see it (a) is dominantly Hebrew Christian and (b) ancient Greek The ancient Greeks utterly believed in an endless cycle of fate, fed by a never ending stream of by avenging shame to uphold honour . Shame to the Hebrew deserved those:
Shame to the historical Christ had to be met with: love and forgiveness Shame to the Bible: An oft-recurring word in Bible text almost always pointing at a Hebrew sense of sin and guilt. sham (bosh, "to be ashamed," bosheth, "shame," qalon; aischune, "ignominy," atimia, "dishonor," and other words).
Value Money and War Looking for the most used search-words on Internet in the USA I noticed that very high scoring words were: 'money' and 'war'. Not as high as 'sex', but very high. Top search-words related to war: world war 2, civil war, war, world war 1, Vietnam war, Iraq war, dope war, war in Iraq, cold war, Korean war, world war, gulf war, war on drug, war on terrorism, total war, second world war, Mexican war. Top search-words related to money: money love, make money, free money, cash money, easy money, money to loan, fast money, make money fast. That was an eye-opener to understanding USA ethics, American values are focused on possession of money and its short history is filled with devastating wars. It is nor really surprising, because most early immigrants were obsessed by 'a better life', and many of them ready to kill for it. Such people didn't leave Europe to find a more beautiful life, but to produce a more wealthy life. The value property is highly devoted in capitalist thinking. Nothing should prevent this goal; no Red Indians; no government; no Mexicans; no Germans; no communists; no Chinese; no Muslims. When the USA doesn't change direction, that leaves to 2 options: (1) A world with only USA (total capitalism), (2) a world without USA (total war). I don't think 1 is acceptable. 
Military Ethics
By 2010 the US will have invested $4 billion into robotsA British robotics expert will advise them on building robots that kill without violating the Geneva Conventions.
MISSION Provide timely, objective, and cogent military intelligence to warfighters, defense planners, and defense and national security policymakers. VISION Integration of highly skilled intelligence professionals with leading edge technology to discover information and create knowledge that provides warning, identifies opportunities, and delivers overwhelming advantage to our warfighters, defense planners, and defense and national security policymakers. VALUES: We are committed to... - Service to our country, our community, and our fellow citizens. - Dedication, Strength, and Urgency of Purpose to provide for our nation's defense. - Customer-Focus in the products and services we provide. - Integrity and Accountability in all of our actions and activities. - Commitment to inquiry, truth, and continuous learning. 
- Creativity and Innovation in solving problems and creating rational knowledge.- Teamwork through internal and external partnerships. - Leadership at all levels within Defense Intelligence and the Intelligence Community
Ethics are like Trees It's a common mistake to think that any ethics is based on a logic as fundamental. Because the accompanying logic evoluates from the ethics, that's why it fits like a glove An ethics like 'apartheid' developed a logic to defend that ethics. People practicing 'apartheid' were not 'bad', only executing a logic that fitted this moral system better and better. An ethics like 'capitalism' is seen from 'outside' awfully limited, and based on the principle egoism and the logic rationalism, but 'inside' this ideology there's nothing wrong with it.
Weirdness, Egoism, Arrogance, ....are Relative It is a great help in accepting people from other subcultures or major cultures to realize:
It takes time, but you'll get used to it. 'Everybody' in the world learned to listen to the same music, and this is in general no different. Pain, Death, Sex: Inventions of Christian Church To make a fresh start after fall of the Western Roman Empire the Roman Catholic Church invented some ethical myths that before were totally unexisting. Until then 'pain' was un unfamiliar concept. Wounds, bleeding, sickness were known, but not connected to imagining 'pain'. That explains the seemingly cruelty of ancient cultures, and their death sacrifices. When loosing a leg a person thought "oops, my leg is gone". Or when being sacrificed: "this really is an honor". And free sex was really annoying for the wanting to be leaders. It obstructed the abstract fantasy slavery, that says as rule nr 1: the value of bosses is 'higher' than that of slaves. Later in Capitalism it became, the following rule nr. 1: the value of managers exceeds that of workers. Such rules of 'the game' are necessary for fresh supply of slaves. Any natural ethics would limit such egoism. The solution was much 'hocus pocus' to create new myths. But at present still Islam and Buddhism see dying as inevitable and very different from Death in Christianity. Poverty and Wealth / Ethics and Respect Some people earn millions of dollars PER DAY, other less than 100 dollar PER YEAR. Ask yourself what makes you so respectable that you deserve thousands of times more earning than others?
History in the perspective of the ethical question of slavery My standpoint is clear: what distinguished 'western' human animals from other human animals was 'dualist thinking' resulting in ethics of supremecy that tolerated slavery, quite different with ethics of unity/balance as in Zoroastrianism/Gnostic Christianity/Buddhism/... - Original Christianity: the (temporary) end of Slavery Fall Roman Empire - Start Roman Catholic Church - The Dark Middle Ages - Industrialism, a way to continue slavery or 'apartheid' - Industrial Slavery or Poverty: Modern Slavery - Influence of rationalism today - Relation between Rituals and Ethics - 'absolutism' and relativism - Individualism and Collectivism - Capitalism - Buddhism and Christianity - Paradigm Collision or Cultural Conflict - Scientific Revolution - Paradigm Shift - Life and Sex Quasi 'absolute' terms like 'human right', 'civil right', 'cultural norm', 'international law', suddenly get a totally different perspective when looking at them honestly relatively in a ethical way. To be clear I have no problem at all with individual Americans. Only their ethics of 'survival of the fittest' combined with mainly rationality is disastrous. It's a step 'back' towards animal ethics. Locally 'survival of the fittest' may be right, but when 'local' gets worlwide then it stops progress. Natural selection locally can give 'nasty' results, awfully dominantly behaving leaders and extremely submissive 'followers' - Ethics for Freethinkers Ethics and Language Language is not restricted to hearing and seeing, and between 2 languages (2 ethics) there is mostly no 1-1 relation like The Stone of Rosetta. It is even possible that 2 ethics are too different for mutual 'having an intuition'. Logic can make ethics more consistent, but any logic might do so. Ethics and logic are not inseparable. It SEEMS that 4 variables decide 'having an intuition of each other' between 2 ethics: 1. how much do different members of ethics-1 'have an intuition' of each other 2. how much do different members of ethics-2 'have an intuition' each other 3. how much do members of ethic-1 'have an intuition' of members of ethics-2 4. how much do members of ethic-2 'have an intuition' of members of ethics-1 In the Israel Palestine Conflict my rough guess is: (85%,85%,60%,60%) On earth as non-human logic dolphin ethics seems to score highest. The relation between HC (human creativity) and DC (dolphin creativity) is something like (90%,51%,10%,10%). Then why do Jews and Palestinians fight, and humans and dolphins live in peace? My guess: dolphins can't talk in human way, that gives much smaller chance of being misunderstood. Because dolphins have human size and can be very cruel. Different ethics can be combined: 
The 'primitive' introvert tactic is roughly what the Western World did until now, as was seen in 2 world wars. The extravert relation is found in love or respect. THE challenge for the next time is to unravel dolphin logic (ethics). That quest will force humans and dolphins to make a HUGE jump in logic. No references found. Anyway I hate articles with miles of references. In case you have a question just send me an e-mail The One, November 2003.
|
