The Forgotten Point of Ethics: Ethics exist to make specific games prepackaged

Geoffrey Hamilton

August 30, 2001

There is a short cut to making preferences in life, it is called ethics. From religion to military college, from professional ethicists to soap box preachers, everyone attempts to convert their target audience with a trump card, by calling a value an ethical imperative.

What needs to be remembered, when tossed into the babel of moral certitude, is ethics helps you in two ways. If you are a leader of people, or a soloist in life, having and skillfully employing an ethic will allow you to eliminate doubts about the methods and goals of your games. You can kill, maim, create, beautify, revolutionize and destroy anything and make it perfectly reasonable according to your ethic.

And here, hypocrisy is not always your friend because other people would like to be able to follow the gist of it easily.

Secondly, if you are a follower of people, an ethic is something you can use to conform to the game already in progress. You can talk sports, pornography, tupperware, and knitting knowing that you have a team that you are a part of which can never attack you seriously as long as you stick by the rules and they do likewise.

Here, hypocrisy is your friend, because once the team members are recognized, the group needs flexibility regarding the rules in order to better win the game you have all agreed to play.

This then is why ethics are needed. They differ from other kinds of rules with which to play games, like gravity or skill levels, by their general behavioral properties which apply to the whole game of life. What this means is ethics exist to make specific games prepackaged in general ways and therefore easier for large groups to enter into with little preparation.

Whether you want to take over the world or you want to keep ruling it then get on your high horse and start whipping.

Gh