3. The Gravity of Ethics
The Gravity of Ethics
Why do people
feel that one action is "right"
and another action is "wrong"?
Is it instinct?
Is it the result of education?
Or is it a judgment made by reason?
What I want to address here
is not good and evil themselves.
It is the structure within which judgment arises,
that single point.
Suppose, for a moment, that there was only one human being on Earth.
Would "things one must not do" exist in that world?
The answer is, likely, no.
In a world where no one is hurt,
no one is inconvenienced,
and no other person exists to be compared with,
an action is merely an action.
There is no room for "rightness" or "wrongness" to arise there.
They only appear when
It is only when others are present.
When multiple people gather,
relationships are born,
and conflicts or disadvantages arise.
Only then,
do we need a standard for
which actions to permit
and which to restrict.
This standard is,
what I call ethics here.
It is not an emotion.
It is not a command either.
Nor is it an afterthought to explain the results of an action.
Ethics is,
nothing more than a guideline
that became necessary for society to survive.
However, its influence is not light.
Ethics is,
when people make decisions,
something unconsciously referenced in the middle of thought.
It exists as a framework.
In many cases, people
think they are asking themselves, "Is this right?" but
in reality,
"Will this action be accepted in society?"
is what they are calculating in an instant.
That calculation
is almost never conscious.
Yet it certainly
limits the path of thought,
and distorts the direction of judgment.
Ethics is
something like the gravity of judgment
that society has formed over a long period of time.
It does not directly create actions.
However, it constantly continues to influence
the thoughts that lead to actions.
And people feel that
the judgments they make within that gravity
are their own will.
However,
Is that judgment truly your own?
Or,
did the situation determine your thoughts beforehand?