It's impossible to live an ethical life

[citizenschallengev4]

@lausten

@thatoneguy

Sounds like you’re setting the bar very high.

Lausten: Agreed, I am. But then, what does it mean to be ethical?

If it means setting your sites on something larger than yourself, something you can’t achieve in your lifetime, then yes, it’s always been impossible.

But I think the modern world has made it hard to even set your sites on making the world better. It’s harder to rise from commoner to leader, harder to develop a moral story that gets heard, harder to even learn how you impact others by your day-to-day actions.

Just trying to do my part in getting this little choo-choo back on the tracks.

[lausten]

I know what the word means. The question is what do you consider ethical

[citizenschallengev4]

The Golden Rule when we can pull it off.

[thatoneguy]

@lausten

I know what the word means. The question is what do you consider ethical

I’m not really concerned with ethics, but most of the time I probably lean toward the end justifies the means.

[mriana]

@citizenschallengev4

The Golden Rule when we can pull it off.

“Do no harm” is the Golden Rule or at least one version of the same thing. The others are “Do onto others” and alike. It all depends on what philosophy you go by as to how it is said.

[citizenschallengev4]

That takes us right back to the beginning of this thread doesn’t it?

Yes, it’s impossible to live an ethical life, after all we’re embedded in a world of competing interests, both going and coming. You’re interests and expectations of others and via versa

Do right by one person automatically makes it wrong from some one else’s perspective.

It seems to me for most of our lives, it’s a matter of triage, doing the best we can with our limited time and resources, knowing we can’t do everything, appreciating that we don’t want to get gobbled up, but appreciating that helping sharing makes sense and feels good. And so the dance starts . . . . . . .

[citizenschallengev4]

Mriana, I think you might have gotten a kick out of the moment.

After posting the above I went out to move some wood, that required filling my truck which was parked at the pile already and moving my truck a few hundred yards home. After loading I started the truck, radio was on, and in that minute of transport the radio came through once again, like a little ray of sunshine

Indigo Girls - Closer to Fine (Official Video)

Considering I was still chewing on this thread, I thought it was fun, perhaps not a cosmic giggle, but a nice smile for sure.

---

Ever get the feeling that sometimes the radio is better than an I Ching?

[mriana]

@citizenschallengev4

Mriana, I think you might have gotten a kick out of the moment.

I’m not sure what you mean.

I’m not an Indigo Girls fan.

[lausten]

That’s the opposite of ethical. I could quote any religion on that. Or JFK. Here’s Kant

So act that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means. (Kant 1785: 429, italics removed)

[citizenschallengev4]

Mriana, guess it goes to show what they say about assumptions.
Excuse me.
Well, I enjoyed the moment!

[thatoneguy]

@lausten

That’s the opposite of ethical. I could quote any religion on that. Or JFK. Here’s Kant

So act that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means. (Kant 1785: 429, italics removed)

I had to look it up but it is an ethical system.

[anandhaqq]

. No.

. That is what people precisely try to do … the majority of them. Living a so-called ethical Life.

. Why they try to live an ethical Life? Because, otherwise they won’t get respectability in society.

. And if they don’t get respectability by society, they shall never be possessed by any feeling of belonging on any social group.

. So, the majority of people don’t really live Life.

. They live according to what others expect them to be, to do, to have, to behave.
Which is the same, in other words, of living a Life of hypocrisy.

. That’s why your precedents have said that Life is a Drama; a theater show.

. I would like to reformulate the greeks.

. I would rather say that Society is a Drama, a theater show … and a non-aesthetic one.

. A non-aesthetic one, due to one’s one inauthenticity towards others and towards oneself.

. You live under thousands of masks. You have thousands of personalities. That is what the word personality exactly means; it comes from a greek root which means Mask.

. You are different with your employee than you are with your boss. You are arrogant to your employee and a stupid obedient sheep to your boss. You show the side which is most convenient at the moment to one person … and at the next moment you are utterly different from the precedent moment. Your emotional state has totally changed; your so-called personality has been totally transfigured …

. You are not one person. You live thousands of diametrically different Lives.

. You live in a schizophrenia, thanks to your so-called ethical people … who have been conditioning your mind for ages, for millennia …

[lausten]

Nice to see again anand. Not sure where you’re going with this one. I could agree in principle on a couple points, like how people don’t really live Life, capital “L”, and the drama, sure. But it’s easy to say “so-called” ethical then avoid saying what “ethical” means. If there have never been any who guide us toward ethics, then how do you know what they are? I think I know your answer, but I’ll ask it anyway.