INTRODUCTION Ethics:
In order to escape from the MATRIX it is necessary for that you understand the subject of ethics, which is the means by which one discerns acts which are good from those that are bad, or evil. Most of the explanations of ethics
that are taught in schools, churches, and synagogues are unnecessarily
complicated and/or mystical, and in many instances simply wrong. The
explanation that follows is both simple and scientifically valid, which
puts it well within the reach of your understanding.
An ethic consists of two parts.
1. A value, which is simply a description of what one wants more of in one’s life.
2. A belief, or system of beliefs, that defines how one must act or behave in order to attain more of the resource defined as the value to be maximized.
You are free to adopt any ethic you choose. In this sense the choice of an ethic is arbitrary.
BUT Not all ethics are created equal. Some are valid and some are not.
Some Examples
1. The regime of the Soviet Union was based on an ethic. The value chosen to be maximized was material well-being for everyone. The belief system adopted was that of communism, which decreed government ownership of everything of real value and political suppression of dissent. Ownership of all the major businesses and properties was taken over by the state (government) and “managed for the benefit of all”. Those who voiced any objection were imprisoned in harsh prison camps or executed “for the sake of the people”.
The result was universal poverty and the most brutally tyrannical regime in modern history. Material well-being was only available to a tiny minority of the people who were supposed to benefit from the revolutionary regime. This was the exact opposite of the intentions of the Soviet founders. Their ethic was not valid.
2. The French revolution was based on an ethic. The value to be maximized was equality for all and the belief system that of armed rebellion. The result was a major blood bath that left the people no better off than they were before. The ethic was not valid.
3. The operations of the Catholic Church and its various Christian offshoots was based on an ethic. The values to be maximized were the love of God (the Christian conception of course) and the reward of a heavenly afterlife. The belief system was that the Church was infallible and that unbelievers deserved to burn in hell.
This belief system spawned both the 200-year Crusades and the 400-year Inquisition. These resulted in the torture and slaying of millions of Jews, Muslims, and Christians, the theft of the victims’ assets, the destruction of their culture, and a hatred of Christianity that continues to this day in the hearts of hundreds of millions of people. Instead of increasing the love of (the Christian) God the Christian ethic resulted in the exact opposite of what its proponents had hoped for.
4. The founders of the United States adopted an ethic. The value they chose to maximize was freedom for everyone (but blacks and women). The belief system to which they subscribed was that of republican democracy by means of majority rule. The result is that each year but two we have had less freedom than the year before.[1] Our government becomes more and more tyrannical, taxes us more and more heavily, and increasingly restricts our freedoms for the benefit of special interests. Meanwhile we fought a devastating civil war to maintain our power over the southern states who wanted to withdraw from the Union. They found they were not free to do so. The ethic was not valid.
From the foregoing examples a recognizable pattern emerges. When a group or a society adopts an invalid ethic, the result is the exact opposite of that intended by those who adopted the ethic. This pattern holds true throughout human history. It is the cause of untold suffering. It is the reason every political regime in history has failed, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union. It is the reason all of our institutions are failing today.
One might mistakenly conclude that there is no valid ethic; that the whole study of ethics is futile; and that humanity is doomed to a dog-eat-dog future, ultimately leading to its own extinction. BUT, This conclusion is false. There is, in fact, a valid ethic that leads to its own fulfillment rather than its opposite. In order to understand this important fact, let’s examine the two main ethics between which those of us in the modern western world must choose each day.
Utilitarian Ethic: An act is good if it benefits more people than it harms.
Titanian Ethic: An act is good if it benefits at least one person, including the person acting, and harms no one.
While these two ethics appear similar, they, in fact, result in very different outcomes.
Take note that Utilitarian Ethic is ostensibly the basis of all modern regimes. It is fundamental to both democracy and communism. It justifies majority rule by implying that an act is good if it benefits 51 people and only harms 49. It permits harm to be done to some people if the intention is to benefit a greater number.
There are at least three ways to prove that Utilitarian Ethic is not valid.
1. The Historical Proof is simply the observation that even though society has largely chosen to adopt Ethic 1, we still have war, genocide, race-hatred, terrorism, crimes of violence, drug addiction, and myriad atrocities like those described in the pages preceding. The ethic produces its opposite and vastly more people are harmed than benefited by its adoption. So it is clearly invalid.
2. The Golden Rule Proof states that the application of Ethic 1 violates the Golden Rule, because those being harmed under Ethic 1 are not being treated in accordance with the Golden Rule. Again, this proves the ethic is invalid.
3. The Logical Proof shows that an act permitted under Ethic 1, must also violate Ethic 1. This is true because an act which benefits some people while harming others is the logical equivalent of two acts; one that only benefits (some) people and another that only harms (some other) people. Thus, Ethic 1 contains its own contradiction, and is therefore invalid.
The Titanian Ethic, on the other hand, does not suffer from these three criticisms. Let’s look at it more closely.
Titanian Ethic: An act is good if it benefits at least one person, including the person acting, and harms no one.
We have to name the specific value to be maximized and to define the belief system that must be associated with it for the ethic to be valid under all circumstances. So let’s tighten up our definition. The word “benefit” is simply too general a value, because some perceived benefits lead to unwanted social consequences; thus contradicting the intent of the ethic. Values such as wealth, profit, political power, and even happiness suffer from this weakness.
On the other hand, consider the values of Truth (objective), Awareness (/Personal evolution), Love and Creativity (TALC). These TALC values are particularly interesting because an act that increases any one of them also increases the others; while an act that limits or diminishes any one of them also limits or diminishes all of the others. Thus these values, and perhaps many others, may be said to be logically equivalent to one another. So let’s redefine Ethic 2 as follows:
This ethic, it turns out, is valid, in that its adoption by an individual or a group invariably results in an increase in Creativity and its logical equivalents. For convenience, let’s refer to this ethic from now on as E+ or as the E+ Ethic. It is worth noting at this point that all prosperity and happiness can be causally traced back to someone’s Creativity or one or more of its logical equivalents.
It should be noted that there is a second set of resources (values) that are necessary, but not sufficient, for the maximization of creativity. These include such things as freedom, honesty, empathy, conscience, and the teaching of true information to people who habitually act ethically. These are all Ethical resources or creativity enhancers, but they are not logical equivalents of creativity, so they are not mentioned explicitly in the definition of E+. Surprisingly, when one of these values is made the value to be maximized in the definition of an ethic, the ethic that results is not valid.
Now that we have identified a set of values that can be the basis of a valid ethic, let’s explore the requisite belief system that goes with it. By logic alone we can infer from the definition of E+ the following
1. To act ethically, each person must strive to maximize creativity and its logical equivalents.
2. Ethical actions always increase someone’s creativity without destroying, limiting, or diminishing anyone’s creativity.
3. Unethical means can never achieve ethical ends and always have unethical consequences.
4. Means which are not ethical ends in themselves are never ethical.
5. It is unethical to tolerate unethical, predatory, or parasitic behavior and therefore inaction in the presence of these behaviors is unethical.
6. It is ethical to learn and unethical to be certain; and therefore it is ethical to doubt.
7. The exercise of power over others is never ethical except in the case of self defense against the imminent aggression of others.
8. The taking of another’s property by theft, fraud, deceit, or coercion of any kind is never ethical.
9. No individual can legitimately delegate to another, nor to a group of any kind, authority that the individual does not himself/herself possess.
10. All laws, rules, and regulations are ethical and legitimate only insofar as they forbid and/or intervene in the commission of acts that are unethical, predatory, or parasitic. Government edicts that violate this principle are not truly laws at all.
When you accept the validity of the E+ Ethic you will also agree with these ten principles, because they are simply logical consequences of the definition of the ethic. Conversely, those who disagree with any of these principles you either choose not to accept the ethic or you need more information to understand ethics, more likely the latter.
Ethics are the means by which we decide what actions are permissible and what actions are not. What is less known is the fact that every ethic consists of two parts:
Still less often recognized is the fact that an ethic may be valid or invalid. Valid ethics produce the desired results – an increase in the values sought. Invalid ethics produce the opposite effect – a lessening of that which is sought or desired. As an example, consider the ethic adopted by our country’s founders. The value they wished to maximize was freedom for the country’s people (except possibly slaves and women). The belief system was based on the principles of a democratic republic honoring majority rule. What has been the outcome? Each year but two (1865 and 1920) we have had less freedom than the year before.
Today, through the proliferation of ever more restrictive laws, almost every aspect of our lives is regulated or controlled by our federal, state, county, or municipal governments. Without government permission we cannot own property, drive a car, board a plane, alter our home, open a bank account, operate a business, ingest prescribed medication, carry a firearm, or do any of a thousand other things that our forefathers and foremothers would have considered to be our inalienable rights. In short, the founders of our country chose to adopt an ethic that is invalid – because its adoption produced the opposite effect of that desired.
While we are on the subject of ethics, let’s consider two other specific ethics that are especially relevant to an understanding of the dilemma that humanity currently faces. The first I shall refer to as the Power Ethic. This ethic seeks to maximize power over others in the hands of those who adopt it. The belief system that supports this ethic can be summarized by the statement, “Might makes right”. In other words, those who can afford to buy weaponry and to pay or coerce young men and women to use those arms in battle have the right to exercise power over others for whatever reasons they wish. This is the ethic adopted by those who invented government as-we-know-it in Sumer eight thousand years ago. This ethic is still the creed of those who run the governments of the world today.
At first it might seem that the Power Ethic is valid – because, indeed, those who have adopted it have succeeded in accumulating more and more power over their fellow men and women. But there are secondary consequences. Included among these are wars, terrorism, slavery, hunger, poverty, international strife, drug addiction, interpersonal violence, bureaucracy, oligarchy, environmental degradation, and all manner of crime. If the macroscopic trend continues it is more than likely that the end result will be the total annihilation of all human life on our planet – thus reducing the earth to a radioactive cinder. Like a ubiquitous parasite, those who have adopted the Power Ethic will destroy their host and themselves with it. So in the end the ethic is not valid.
By contrast, consider an ethic that chooses creativity and its logical equivalents as the values to be maximized. Such resources as love, awareness, objective truth, and evolution may be considered as logical equivalents of creativity, because whenever one of these resources is increased they are all increased, and vice versa. John David Garcia, the brilliant author of Creative Transformation, called this ethic the Evolutionary Ethic, so I will do likewise. We might note at this point that all prosperity, and ultimately all happiness, derives from someone’s creativity. The belief system that empowers this ethic begins with the notion that an act is good if it increases creativity or any of its logical equivalents for at least one person without limiting or diminishing creativity for anyone. From this definition a broad range of principles can be derived by simple logic. This ethic, it turns out, is valid. Curiously, the adoption of this ethic generally maximizes prosperity and happiness, even though these are not logical equivalents of creativity. In fact, ethics based on the maximization of prosperity and happiness are not valid – producing poverty and unhappiness instead. From this point on I shall use the terms ethical and unethical in reference to this ethic specifically.
There are several other valid ethics which I choose not to discuss in this article – except to note that each of them proves, upon close examination, to be logical equivalents of the Evolutionary Ethic in that they call for the same behavioral decisions when deciding between alternate courses of action.
From the foregoing we can see that humanity’s BIG PROBLEM is the fact that the world’s governments, without exception, have chosen the Power Ethic as their de facto basis rather than the Evolutionary Ethic or one of its logical equivalents. The BIG QUESTION that humanity faces today is whether this choice is irreversible – and if not, what we must do to avoid the doom that the Power Ethic is leading us toward.
In an ethical society freedom is limited by ethical law. Those who wish to behave in a parasitic or predatory manner are forbidden to do so. The mistake of our founding fathers was to maximize freedom in such a way that the most predatory, parasitic, and generally unethical persons were permitted to dictate the law, thereby making the rules that allowed the ultra-wealthy to dominate the rest of us. We must reverse this trend if humanity is to survive, let alone thrive. To achieve this end we must understand the nature of ethical law and refute the validity of unethical law. To aid in clarifying this distinction, I shall refer to unethical laws as government edicts, or simply as edicts.
In making this distinction let’s ask the question: What is law? Does a person who has the resources to exercise power over others have the right to do so? If so, might makes right, and anyone who can afford to buy weapons and persuade others to use them to enforce their will has a right to so. This is the premise upon which all of today’s governments are founded. This has been the true basis of law throughout the world for at least eight thousand years, since government was invented in Sumer.
If we reject the validity of this definition, and indeed we should, what is the alternative? To answer this question properly, we note first that all law presumes the use of force or power over others. But it takes only a simple exercise of logic to see that the exercise of power over others is only ethical in self defense against someone who has initiated or threatened the use of force for their own purposes. Therefore ethical laws are only those that provide defense against such unethical acts.
Since everyone has the right to defend themselves against the use of violence, it follows that everyone has the right to delegate to others their authority to defend themselves. From this we conclude that all ethical laws embody this principle: All ethical laws, all legitimate laws, represent a contract under which a group of individuals, each having the right of self defense, agrees to enforce a mutual defense pact. Ethical law can exist for this purpose alone.
Furthermore, we note that all existing laws, and edicts, forbid some act or permit the act only when a tax is paid to the government. Thus, laws and edicts fall into two categories delineated by the Latin names of the categories of acts which they forbid:From the foregoing we can logically conclude that the actions required for the enforcement of edicts forbidding mala prohibita are themselves mala in se. From these simple considerations we can now describe how our legal system must change if we are ever to live in an ethical society. The following description is not sufficient for the creation of an ethical society, but it is necessary. Absent these changes, those who believe that might makes right will continue their parasitic depredations, and the other changes that are necessary (and sufficient) for the emergence of an ethical society will never take place.
CHANGE THE LAW
If we are ever to live in a just, ethical society, the law must be
changed. Indeed, the legal system itself must be changed. Stated
briefly, this means that we must stop enforcing laws against mala prohibita
and delete these edicts from the law books. Let’s examine more closely
what such an undertaking entails. We start by reviewing the definition
of an ethical act: An act is ethical if it increases
creativity or any of its logical equivalents for at least one person,
including the person acting, without limiting or diminishing the
creativity of anyone.
The following secondary principles follow logically from the definition above and are specifically relevant to the actions of government or the state.
Based on the preceding principles, we can now begin to sort out the specific categories of laws that are legitimate from the illegitimate edicts. The short list is comprised of those laws that are legitimate:
It is tempting to say that all other laws are bogus, but it is possible that some valid forms of law may be mistakenly omitted from the above list. So to set the record straight, here is a list (probably incomplete) of some types of government edicts that are clearly illegitimate:
HOW NOW?
It should be obvious to the reader that the changes to the law
and to the legal system outlined above will be abhorrent to those who
seek power over others and who profit from the depredations of
government. Those in power today will stop at nothing to
remain in power and to sustain their policies of slavery and
corruption. Their first line of defense will be to persuade the public
that the current system of government and law is necessary for
the public’s well-being. Those whose livelihoods derive from taxes will
tend to agree. Those whose professional turf is protected from the
competition of free enterprise will be happy to believe that government
acts in their best interests.
The first priority for those of us who want to live in a thriving ethical society must be to demonstrate that the current system is not necessary – that, in fact, there is at least one viable alternative. Let’s see how this might be accomplished.
At this point it behooves us to consider the myth of the “social contract”. Many apologists for the status quo assert that we are all born as parties to a contract – and that, as a consequence, we are all subject to liabilities defined by the state or government. In other words, in return for the various benefits, real or imagined, that we receive from the government, we owe the government a portion of whatever resources we derive from our experience of life. We should note that the only people who promote this myth are those who want to spend our money or to exercise power over us through the enforcement of edicts forbidding mala prohibita. They would have us believe that they have a valid claim on the money that we receive in exchange for our creativity and productivity.
Now ask yourself:
Even proponents of this mythological contract only answer “yes” to the last question above. They say I can withdraw from the contract by giving up my citizenship and leaving the country. This is the logical equivalent of saying, “submit to the contract or else…” And what is the “else”? It is the loss of every birth-right that is mine – inviolate and inalienable.
Thus we see that the enforcement of this fictitious contract by edict constitutes mala in se – an evil (unethical) act in and of itself, unsupported even by the government’s own contract laws. I categorically reject the “social contract” and defy anyone to write a cogent, rational, ethical defense of it.
So how can we organize a group of persons in a manner that is ethical and lawful? More specifically, how can we maximize the creativity of the group to be organized within a set of ethical constraints? The requirements of a legitimate contract, as specified above, comprise a good starting point. The mandates of the Titanian Code of Honor can be added because they are compatible with these contractual principles and expand somewhat the scope of the agreement upon which the group is to be organized. If properly enforced, this addition requires that the group will undertake to achieve only ethical outcomes and to use only means which are ethical ends in themselves. For a still broader set of constraints the group may choose to incorporate the Titanian Bill of Ethics into its founding documents or bylaws, as illustrated in the Constitution of Titania.
If we want the group being organized to be as creative as possible,
which is a highly desirable goal, then we have to consider the size of
the group as one of the variables that must be optimized as well. The
twenty years of research on this subject by the late John David Garcia
proves, with a high degree of confidence, that the optimum number of
participants is eight, where, as nearly as possible, the numbers of men
and women in the group are equal. Small variations from this 4×4 formula
are acceptable. So a group of four men and five women works, as does a
group of four men and three women. In either of these cases the number
of one gender does not exceed the number of the opposite gender by more
than one, and the total varies from eight by no more than one. For
convenience I call a group defined in this way, and trained in an
optimized communication process, an Octologue. The
easily learned communication process makes unanimous decision-making
fairly easy and acts as a creativity amplifier. John David Garcia
invented the process and through my own research I have enhanced it – we
call it “autopoesis”.
Although implicit in the above description, it may not be obvious that the decisions of an Octologue are constrained to be unanimous. Majority rule is specifically not acceptable, because it violates the principles of the Evolutionary Ethic. The sole exception to this mandate is that the group may unanimously decide to delegate its authority to an individual or to a committee – such authority to be revocable by any member of the Octologue if the designated member or group fails to act in accordance with the unanimous will of the Octologue as a whole.
If you have been following this discussion closely it should be obvious that there are many valid ethical purposes that call for more than eight or nine participants. How are these to be achieved with only eight or nine people? Well of course they cannot. But the solution to this difficulty is fairly simple. For a project requiring more than eight people multiple independent Octologues can contract to work in concert toward a common ethical goal or purpose. I call such a contractual concatenation of Octologues a Holomatic Matrix – or HoloMat for short. Employing the contractual principles described previously, there is no limit to the number of people that can participate in a HoloMat. For really big projects a HoloMat could consist of millions of people!
IN CONCLUSION
The foregoing subject-matter raises many questions that are beyond the scope of this brief introductory article. Included among them are:
Answers to these questions exist. But the most important question you must answer yourself: How committed are you to living in a truly ethical society – and what will be your contribution to its creation?
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