Ethics

Last time I ended with the bare-word "Ethics".

I want to lump all of ethics, morality and "right-living" into the same basket. There is one group of things - goodness in action.

Good actions are mostly purpose-relative and their fitfulness is determined by whether or not the purpose is fulfilled by them.

But purposes can also be actions - when we choose a purpose, we decide to call it good. Such actions also can be good and bad - good and bad deciding between purposes are the kinds of decisions that are most important for us because they are closest to our own souls.

If we commit to a purpose, we adopt that purpose as our own, as a permanent part of our own being, a stamp, as it were, by which we ask other people to recognize us. The are therefore what we are.

We can therefore choose what we are. We are free.

Freedom in purpose doesn't mean that we have a complete free reign to decide whatever we want. For if we recognize that that freedom of purpose is ours, then we recognize that we are responsible for the purposes we choose - that they define us just as we define them. And these purposes are ours to own, we can not disclaim them.

If we choose to hurt someone, we can not later disclaim that choice, only make excuses for why we made a bad choice.

There are people who say there is no difference between bad and good choices. I believe that such people have not been recently punched in the stomach or in the nose. Nor will they have seen their own children suffer needlessly because of another person's greed.

Morality is reality, it is one's own inner-being.