Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Post #7 "Universal Morality" #1

Once one starts with the three building blocks, then one has to deal with where they lead.  Let's start with the nature of life within each individual.

Nature, absent Man's mind, is amoral.  There is no right or wrong, no good or bad, only the fight to survive...and this is the nature of the physical side of all of us.

But the Mind allows Man to conceptualize the group and right or wrong, and all the other things that set Man apart from all other living creatures.  The challenge of philosophy has always been to integrate and explain how man relates to mind, and to define "right" behavior.

By nature, each of us wants to find our own way and live with the freedom to make our own choices.

But if each of us gets our own way at the expense of others, conflict is created that ultimately leads to anarchy, and anarchy is bad for individuals.

And anarchy invites the group to come in and force behavior, removing freedom of choice, and that can be bad for individuals

The answer for this conundrum is for the individual to be willing to share with others the same freedom of choices that he wants for himself.

If morality pertains to the rules of "correct" behavior, then, an individual who allows others the choices he would have for himself, is moral, because he allows all individuals to live closer to what their nature intends, and he helps avoid conflict leading to anarchy.

This leads to the first of two rules of the "Universal Morality"

As an individual, the more I am willing to allow others to have the same freedoms and choices that I want for myself, the more moral my behavior becomes.  I am doing this, not for altruistic reasons, but for the very selfish reason of protecting my personal choices.

Rule two comes in the next post.

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