I recall writing an essay and attending a lecture on Kant’s Categorical Imperative, an attempt to give a non-religious framework to ethical decision making. I knew at once it was unworkable but I did think that he understood what may be obvious but needs elucidating: that all ethical conversations begin and end inside one’s head….
Tag: ethics
Atheism
The joy of being an atheist is to be wholly free in mind of any discussions that assert divinity. Once free you realise our ethics has to come from us, not diktat, tradition or history. You realise that every vile act that has been done in the name of religion is a human act devoid…
Never Forget
The attempt down the ages to make us ethical thinkers has never worked on a national scale. There are many reasons for this but one of them is the sheer intensity of the work. To think through one’s every action and interaction to ensure it has the highest quality of ethical outcomes for us, is…
Arguing From Within
I was talking to a friend about ethical systems and was brought up on the fact that as ethics are in my brain, and my brain has evolved through natural selection, any system of ethics is flawed because physics, upon which we are all based, would not recognise ethics being largely governed by forces and…
The Great Dilemma
As thinking beings we have always discussed amongst ourselves how we should interact with each other and the world around us. There is an old saying that my freedom ends where another person’s begins and most of our discussion surrounding ethics are all to do with how we should comport ourselves. It is an ideal…
The Battles Of Life
Fantasy has always been about the struggle of good over evil. Great stories of all cultures are about justice fighting injustice, religions are about the right path versus the wrong path for living. This dichotomy reflects the division in the experience of people that there are decisions to be made in our existence and that…
The Weakest Make Us Strong
I have always subscribed to the belief that had I been young in 1916 I would have been a Communist eager to free the serfs and build a just society in Russia and I would have been one of the first to be shot when Lenin destroyed the ideal by creating a dictatorship. I am…
Where Politics Starts
I used to think that everything we do is political because politics starts with every interaction we have with the world outside our bodies. I am now of the opinion that this is naive because in actual fact, that is where ethics starts because we have to interact with the world around us in order…
Ethics and Fantasy
There are two broad aspects to all religions. On the one hand there are the stories and texts that tell the story upon which the religion is based and which form the ‘holy writ’ of the original event or events. On the other are the works, redactions and thoughts, of the theologians and others who…
Life On Life
It is, of course, almost an adage whilst being wholly true, that life feeds upon life. We may argue about its efficacy, its ethics and even the desirability of the facts but none-the-less it stands that to live, one thing must predate another. You can take this a bit far by suggesting that microbes that…