what is the basis of ethics?

[Jungle Boots]

What is the basis of ehtics, why do we have morals and why should we follow them? Is there Divine presidence involved with their establishment and enforcement? are they just popy c**k bull s**t to keep a brotha down?

why shouldnt i get angry with people? why shouldnt i steal from people? why shouldnt i harm other people? why should i be charitable? why should i still be nice to people that are not nice to me?

i have my own contributions to the topic that i will provide later on in time. please say what ever you would like, rant, ramble, ... dance, i dont care.


domokun  

[bluecherry]

Well, I think many systems of "ethics" are unfounded, baseless fluff, but the one I follow is based directly off of what makes sense in this reality to maximize the possible amount of happiness individual people can possibly obtain and fairly well evening it out too with making it at least fairly likely that they can achieve it so long as they have deserved and earned it.

 

[Jungle Boots]

i hold somewhat of a de-mysticised buddhist sense of ethics.

i beleive that there are consequences based around actions without divine or supernatural authority. the sense of karma is simply action and reaction, cause and effect, basic physics in the physical sense, push something it could fall over.

in the concept of dharma (practicing loving kindness, and proper behavior), i beleive that the strict moral constraints based around action are also cause for phsycological, and sociological effects. -if you push some one and they get hurt, not only dose that effect the dignity of your own psychological situations (on a small scale) and it upsets the indiviidual you pushed creating tensions between you two.  

[Jungle Boots]

bluecherry

Well, I think many systems of "ethics" are unfounded, baseless fluff, but the one I follow is based directly off of what makes sense in this reality to maximize the possible amount of happiness individual people can possibly obtain and fairly well evening it out too with making it at least fairly likely that they can achieve it so long as they have deserved and earned it.

what measures what or how much one person deserves over the other.  

[bluecherry]

You deserve it as long as you got it without initiating or threatening to initiate force or fraud on any innocent individual(s). That's about it. 3nodding If you use force or fraud or the threat of them to get something, you don't deserve it.

 

[Nosferateu9]

Ethics are a personal choice. No one should say differently! DX  

[Just Dessy]

In society there are ethics, if you squent your eyes hard enough to see it. People now an days are ruthless, but there is still some moral left in the world.

I say it could be worse. We could be like ancient Greeks who had no ethics an blamed everything on the gods.  

[Je Suis La Vie]

Karma, or Cause and Effect, is the basic "Law." It is impartial to judgment. Its not like a "god" that passes judgment, its your own actions that causes the effect... xd  

[TheHellDevil]

A lot of our moral values are learnt in our childhood so it probably feels more like second nature to us. But the real reason we do not steal, for example, is because an authority figure could catch us in the act or the owner of the item you're steal could have his friends beat you up. If you felt guilty after the act, that's because it was ingrained into you to feel guilty from your past. Your parents may have asked you "How would YOU feel if that happened to you?"

And why do we need it? I think it's just a system for people to get along and keep human society relatively intact. No one really wants their things stolen, so we've agreed that people who steal things should be punished if caught. That agreement get taught to us and so we follow it, knowing that we could benefit in part by it. In part, because if the other guy had everything you wanted and all you had was a rotten apple core, you'd want HIS stuff even if you lost your own anyway! But even then, without that agreement, you could easily risk losing the stuff you stole in the first place so what would be the point?