Thursday, November 11, 2010

New Ethics

When you are a kid, you have a type of Ethics based on a binary division, composed of the "good" and "evil". This type of categories of opposites has been useful for us for a long time.
We have already grown up and now we must face the challenge of sharing a new type of Ethics. "Ethics" is the same as "moral" or "values". I don’t use the word "moral" anymore because it has religious connotations that many unconsciously reject, so I propose to unify with the term "Ethics" or if you want, to speak of "values".

In the fundational myth of the Bible, the Genesis, it is explained that to "eat from the tree of the science of Good and Evil" was the first mistake (again, I am avoiding the word "sin"). All the rest of mistakes followed that one: to pretend to determinate for ourselves that which is "good" and that which is "evil". But what is good and what is evil? Why to speak about this?

Basically, for the majority of persons today, the "good" is that which I like and the "bad" is that which I don’t like. This blog is not a "democratic" blog, I am not interested in what the "majority" says and my science is not based on statistics. What I am saying is that in reality, for all of us, it is better to consider good and evil as subjective matters, as "that which I like" and "that which I don’t like". Now, to this "subjective" aspect, or relative aspect, we must confront another "objective" or non-relative aspect, an absolute aspect. I call it the pair "correct" and "incorrect".

There are some relations between the subjective and the objective: when you do the incorrect, you always obtain that which you don’t like. But there is no symmetry here: when you do the correct, you not always obtain what you want, because the "punishment" (from a legal or juridical point of view) is immediately necessary, but the "reward" is not. The reality of our juridical systems seems to say the contrary, but I am considering the reality of a Justice in which human systems are only a part… This topic is long. I will only say that it is related to the oriental concept of "karma" or "law of action and reaction", about which there exists a lot of knowledge circulating today. Go and get it!...

By the contrary, I would like to go in another direction. We must understand what is correct and what is incorrect. This two terms refer to action. We have two ways to approach them:

1) The first way is by authority: this means that we take a person as our personal guide. This person can be like me, but more advanced: to this kind of role you call "master". It can be also an "absolute person", to this one you call "God". In this way there are the many religious and semi-religious ways and I will not go about them.

2) The second way is to amplify our comprehension to be able to advance without an authority apart from ourselves. In this sense, I propose an Ethics based in auto-comprehension and auto-knowledge. Much as Socrates' style.

True Ethics doesn’t mean that I do anything, it means that I do what is proper, the right or correct thing; not by obedience, but because I know what I will call: The True Knowledge, the Sincere Love and the Correct Action. About it I will write on my next post…

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