In Other Words

Ethics: The rules

As you might have noticed I’ve been quite for a while. I’ve been busy, so you’ll have to forgive me. I have had little time to write about my personal life and, to be perfectly honest, I haven’t really felt the urge to share my personal problems and triumphs with those that dwell in virtual space. I am not trying to be insulting, just more careful, I guess. What we write out here isn’t private, however much we think it is. It is read by far more people than we would like and often not by those who we want, but rather by those that shouldn’t. Big brother is watching.

So instead I want to talk about some ethical questions that have recently been spinning through my mind. If everything goes well this topic will span several posts, if not several months. These ethical questions are not answered in my own mind yet, so today I’ll only be posing a whole host of questions and what I think might be possible answers. Everything is still swirling around, so I really have no idea what to think yet.

I was in borders the other day and found a book entitled ‘A Briefer History of Time’ by Steven Hawkins. For those of you that are not aware of the original book, entitled ‘A Brief History of Time’ it was a book that explained some of the most important advances made in the field of Physics.

I sat down for about an hour and read the first quarter of the book or so and ended up with my head spinning. I headed out of the building, instead of upstairs where I was expected. I backtracked and went up the wrong escalators, forgot my bag, had to go back and didn’t even really notice all these things happening because I was so lost in my own little world.

Did I understand what was going on? No, even though I had heard most of what the book had to say before I don’t think I really got it. Physics students study for years to get the stuff that the book talks about, so I don’t think I can quite understand it within an hour. Still, some of the ideas in the book stuck in my head and latched onto other ideas that have dwelled in there for at least a few months now.

The most important idea for me was Einstein’s idea of relativity. The idea that everything in the world can only be measured in relation to something else. Something is only standing still because we are moving at the same speed as it is moving. The moment that relation changes (i.e. one of you starts moving) it becomes impossible to say what is moving. You, or it? Is the bus your sitting in moving, or is it stationary while the rest of the world moves around it?

We assume that we move when we get into the car, but if we’re really honest about it, we know it is the world that moves around us, even while we stay at the center of our own little perceived sphere of reality. Only the truly drug f*cked will ever be able to leave their own sphere of perception (imagine picking up groceries, even while your mental manifestation stays at home, reading a book.)

Relativity. Everything can only ever be perceived in relation to something else. The very act of perceiving alters the thing being perceived. Heisenberg considers this on the atomic level, in his uncertainty principle, but I believe (like many others) that it holds true on every level. Light changes as it is observed and since it is light we use to understand almost everything around us, everything becomes suspect.

Relativity as it exists now only exists on the scale of the smallest (the atomic) and the largest (galaxies). I want to pull it into another field, namely the ethical. I understand that in doing so I leave behind the scientific and enter into the realms of philosophy, psychology and potentially even mystic mumbo jumbo, but I am willing to risk that.

I want to explore Ethical Relativity (probably a term already coined by some other nut job like myself, but please consider out work separate and distinct from theirs) and what such a concept might mean for us.

A very important point that I should state here is that I do not want to break down the barriers of conventional ethics. I do not want to turn the state into an anarchistic monster of blood and slaughter. I just want to understand ethics better and with that I not only mean my personal ethics, but the ethics of others I do not and cannot understand.

For Ethical Relativity to work I understand I have to do away with absolute good and evil. I have no problem with that myself. We have no proof of absolute good and evil. In fact I believe that these two concepts were created to make life more bearable. Yet I understand that others might find that difficult to accept. All I can really say is tough luck.

Don’t worry, I will certainly come back to them to consider them, but I believe to give this the best chance of working I must work only with what we’ve got, not what we wish we have. As long as we cannot prove the existence of Good, Evil or even God I am going to consider them as peripheral to our current ethical construct. Though I will certainly admit their huge influence on our current ethical model, I will not consider them as ‘true’ until somebody can prove their existence.

Furthermore, I accept that logic as a whole is potentially and probably completely flawed. I accept that to use logic is to shut my eyes to a great number of things that cannot be explained by the rigid rules of reason. Unfortunately I have to work with what I’ve got. We have nothing else. If we throw away the only tool we’ve got then we might as well climb back into the trees and give up. (The first question ever asked was probably ‘ook ook?’)

In every step our existence we used our simpler tools to make more complex ones.

Now you have been warned. If you want to participate here please by kind enough to respect what I’ve put forward. That means, use logic, not emotion; use reason, not faith; and use scientific theory, not mystical dogma.

Please call me out on it if I don’t obey my own rules. I want to be corrected, I need to be corrected for the only way to find truth is to first realise what beliefs are false. But know, at this point, that any bible bashing, or saber rattling will simply be ignored.

posted by Symbol @ 15.11.05