For several years I have myself been searching for what I refer to as "absolutes". By "absolutes" I mean ethical laws that are always true, no matter the conditions. Kind of like the
Ten Commandments or the
Golden Rule.
Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the greatest thinkers of modern times...The reason why I have undertaken this task is first of all because I believe the Ten Commandments to be bad guide-lines for us. There are several situations where I can see that the Ten Commandments can (and *should* in fact) be broken in order to be Morally and Ethically right, and I am sure every reader here can easily construct some scenario where he can agree on this. And the same is true for the Golden Rule.
Imagine for instance your aunt Maggie who have just gotten a new hair cut, she looks like a bag of sea grass, and if you had met her with that hair cut in a dark alley, you would probably have used your Kung Fu skills on her to protect yourself from something you thought were aliens, gang members or some other obviously threatening dangerous being. She comes over to your house and is so proud of her new hair cut, should you obey by the 8th Commandment and "not bear false witness" and break the truth to her? Or should you be a little bit more polite and say something like this; "It is not something I would have chosen, but it is definitely interesting"...
We all understand that the second option is the morally right thing to do! Obviously we should all use innocent small "white lies" where the truth only serves to make the recieving person sad and bad about themselves. Imagine your child coming to you in 2nd grade telling you that he or she scored 5 goals in the last soccer game he or she attended, most people would in such situatons say something like; "Wow, you are so skilled. You're a true Maradonna or Pele my little child."
Of course your child is neither Maradonna nor Pele, and in fact you could as a grown up probably play against his or her entire soccer team and easily kick their ass 50 to zero! Still when we play soccer against our kids as parents we tend to pretend that they're better then us and let them score more goals then us. All in the name of encouraging our kids to feel better about themselves and help them grow their self esteem. Notice that even though this is 100% morally and ethically the correct thing to do, it is still breaking the "Laws of God" in regards to the 8th commandment.
Similar scenarios can also be constructed around the Golden Rule too. The Golden Rule is "better", but it too holds a lot of contradictions in regards to good morals. And in fact according to the Bible (which I believe is not the "writings of God" and not anymore Holy then whatever other piece of text in this world) Jesus said that humans don't need laws, we know in our hearts what's the right thing to do. But since we collectively in our ignorance and lack of faith in ourselves insist on having "laws" to follow, Jesus according to the bible gave us the Golden Rule. "Do against others as you wish them to do against you". Which by the way is nothing but the negative version of what Confucius said almost half a millennium earlier. Confucius said; "Do not against others as you do not wish them to do against you". So the Golden Rule was in fact not given to mankind from the "Living God on Earth", but in fact just a rewrite of ancient Chinese Philosophy! However what's more interesting is that it too is false! If you like to get spanked for sexual pleasures, does that mean you should go around and spank others? And some people even have "rapist dreams" where their biggest sexual desires is to actually be raped. Does that mean this person should go around and rape others? Of course not!
So the conclusion must be that both the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule are both obviously seriously flawed!
What I think though is even more interesting in this regard is the fact that Christianity in Europe have had a "patent" on Ethics for almost 1700 years now. And the main criticism towards Science - which do give far more plausible explanations on a lot of the questions that Christianity have had the "answer" for for the last 1700 years - have been just the "lack of Ethics" in Science! And with billboards outside churches around the world saying stuff like; "Good without God is 0" and similar I think it is time to move into Ethics with a scientific approach instead of a superstitious-like approach. I think it is time to prove that Science can do a better job than the Bible in regards to explaining how humans should behave to do Good!
So does there exist some "Natural Laws" in regards to Ethics and Moral that we can follow then? Something that in regards to Ethics can hold the same amount of authority that the Relativity Theory can hold in regards to physics? Something that can be proved to be right. And something we can excercise scientific research on? If we find such laws then they are in my perspective what I refer to as "absolutes". And here comes the entire conclusion of this blog...
I think I have found such a Natural Law!
"Do not force your will upon others!"
I think that sentence sums everything up to be honest! It works in all scenarios I have tested it on, and all the scenarios that neither the Ten Commandments nor the Golden Rule works in regards to! And it seems to me that this is the only law we need as humans to avoid doing Evil! If you can go your entire life without breaking this law even once, then you have lived your life completely cleansed of Evil acts!
While at the same time it also fixes all the "blury areas" where the Ten Commandments doesn't help at all. Like for instance it enables you to assist your deadly sick mother to commit suicide, if she is filled with pain and agony, living completely without any happiness left due to some terminal illness, then there is no doubt what so ever that if she wants to die and can't do it herself alone for some reason, it is the morally correct thing to help her out. However the 6th Commandment completely stops you from doing this.
It also fixes the "being raped dream" problem from the Golden Rule. In fact I have tried to approach that rule scientifically, searching for areas which could break it, so far I have found none.
"Help others have their will"
And it is also extremely easy to remember and in fact also to implement. And in fact I think this one rule could completely replace every nation's entire collection of laws! And since it is actually logically polarized, we can also derived Good out of it! If evil is forcing your will upon others. Then we can derive what "forcing your will" is denying other people to have *their* will. This is a
Zero Sum Game where the will of one person is compromised because of the will of you. So what makes forcing your will upon others actually become Evil is the fact that you are denying them to have their will. Now if denying others to have their will is Evil, then
Good is helping others have their will.
And in fact this does not in any ways destroy the "cosmic balance" of
Yin and yang like most Ethical laws often ends up doing, there is nothing in the "Balance of Tao" that makes the world go out of balance if we all stopped forcing our will upon others and instead helped others have their own will. These two laws kind of lives in a higher dimension than the laws of Tao and Yin and yang. Meaning they can easily be implemented in a "balanced cosmic perspective". And the
Law of Good even makes helping a terminal ill person to commit suicide a GOOD act - if he wants it. Which is actually where such an act belongs in the scale of Ethics. And not in the "Death Sin" parts of the scale where religion puts it.
Some thing I have tested it on to verify its correctness are;
- Holocaust - Hitler forced Jews to the gas-chambers
- Wars in general - Occupying another man's land is forcing your will upon others
- Robbery and theft - Stealing from your kind is forcing him to loose something he does not want to loose (at least most of the time)
- Lying in general - Telling a lie is just a fancy way of convincing your kind that "your will" is correct and deceiving him into believing that "your will" is the right thing to execute on. Or rather the *motivation* of lying is mostly always to convince your kind to believe something that makes "your will" prevail. Even though you know he wouldn't let you have your will if you asked him honestly.
- Taking a man's life against his will - Murder - is "forcing your will" on him.
But what it DOES allow is even more interesting, especially since this is the area where the traditional religious laws have seriously collapsed ever since their inception...
- It allows you to lie about your aunt Maggie's hair cut and tell her how "beautiful" she is.
- It allows you to "lie" to your child when playing soccer against him or her, letting your child win against you.
- It allows you to catch fish in the river, even though it is your neighbor's land, if you are hungry and need to fish there for survival. As long as "his will" is not compromised, being you catch ALL the fish in his parts of the river, he is without fish himself somehow which he needs or something similar.
- It allows you to "steal" what is "nobody's property" to avoid starvation for you and your family. Like for instance the fruit and vegetables your neighbor have thrown away to rot because he couldn't sell them on the market that day and they will become old and impossible to sell the day after.
- It allows you to assist a terminal ill person to die, as long as it is his or her will.
- It allows two grown-ups excercise any forms of love or sex as long as they are both agreeing on it and have concent about that it is the right thing for them. So it doesn't judge any forms of sexuality.
I think it is time that we prove that Ethics can be approached with a scientific view and better solve the problems of Good versus Evil than religion can. Here is my contribution so far. And I hope that 100 years from now we will all take these things for granted, because I can shimmer a better world out there. But it must be a world constructed on Freedom, Respect and lack of Condemnation! And I don't see religion giving us any of those. But to replace religious dogmas, we need to prove that science can do a better job, also in those areas which have traditionally been exclusive to religion and religious dogmas. And with an open mind, searching for the truth, never giving in to dogmas and superstition we can all live to see such a world in our lifetime!
So the definition of Evil is to
force your will upon others and the definition of Good, which can be derived out from the definition of Evil is to
help others have their will, as long as helping others getting their will doesn't compromise the will of a 3rd party of course! Not doing Evil always have precedence in this scientific natural law.
And it also pretty easily installs into Buddhism in fact. Buddha is known to have said roughly something like this; "All sorrow and pain comes from people trying to hold on to things which they should not. Things vanish, it is the natural law. But our attempt at trying to 'hold on' to them makes us sad and filled with pain. The only constant here in this world is the constant flux and movement of everything". Things here meaning something more general than pysical objects. Now when "forcing your will upon others" you always end up making people sad. This because you make the "death of their things" happen temporarily or prematurely and denies them their right - which is to hold on to whatever "thing" they wish to hold on to for as long as the cosmos allows them to do so. So just as we can see reflections of this law in some parts of the Bible and Quran, we can also see reflections of this law in ancient Eastern religions and Philosophy.
"They must have a hard time those who take authority for being the truth rather than the truth for being the authority"One sentence from the Bible which I personally think of as divine is this one;
"The truth shall set you free"...
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