Ethics - Part 1

Thought I would tackle another big topic this week.
Ethics. Morals. Right Action.

These things are defined differently by each culture you find in the world.

The Golden Rule. (One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself)

The 10 Commandments.

The Nine Noble Virtues.

What Goes Around Comes Around

The Rule of Rebounding Threes (What you put out into the world comes back to you three times in strength)

If You Harm None Do What You Will

The End Justifies the Means

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People have tried to define into words this concept of Right Action probably since people first began living together in communities. I myself have thought about this topic often and have written down my concept of ethics in the scope of my beliefs.

I recently organized my piles (and piles) of loose research on random topics into a more cohesive reference book. I ran across the paragraph I wrote on my ethics 3 and half years ago when I first joined a religious order and what I wrote this past January when I became a full member and Priestess of that order.

I wouldn't say there was a whole lot of difference between the 2, but I would say that after 3 years, I had honed my definition of morality. The letter from 3 years ago was more generalized and followed a "Harm None" type of ethic. In this perspective, one's definition of HARM is the part that makes this code difficult to define exactly. Your idea of Harm and my idea of Harm may be VASTLY different. A vegetarian may define harm differently than a vegan would, or a hunter would. But we weren't looking for a one size fits all definition, were we? In this case, this particular code of ethics can be adjusted to your beliefs on what constitutes harm.

The down side is of course that you have to decide for yourself what level of harm is or is not acceptable to you. And we may have more unscrupulous people defining harm in as narrow a version as possible (say harm to me only). It also maintains this idea that actions are either good (no harm) or evil (harm) without looking at the intent behind the action.

For me, the Harm None meant basically that I should review the consequences of a potential action, not just from my personal perspective but also from the perspective of anyone that might be affected by that decision. The idea is to balance my wants/needs with the wants/need of others that it might impact negatively. The hard part for me though was how long it would take to review all the possible consequences. It makes making a decision all but impossible and most of the time all the options will cause some form of harm (I eat meat for example).

My 2nd letter felt like a more mature version, an amalgam of the above idea of Harm None and a Warrior's code, whereby some actions might cause harm, but in defence of myself or others only. (I AM a mother after all. I will kick the ever-loving-daylights out of anyone who tries to harm my kids.)

As an aside, I also have a 2nd degree blackbelt in Taekwondo and I was a U.S. Top 10 competitor for Taekwondo at the age of 16. I know how to use a bow and a sword and I am a great paintball sniper. I also own enough weapons (mostly bows and swords) to outfit a small army. Zombie-Apocalypse kiss my tookas.

Back on track, I think it is important to continue to revisit our beliefs in this respect, because it is easy to fall into a rut of doing what is easiest and not realize you are straying from your moral code. This is especially difficult if you are surrounded by people following different moral codes than yourself.

What I had trouble with for a long time was this idea that someone's actions could be separated into only 2 categories: Good and Evil. Black and White. Sins and Virtues. Opposites. Dualities.

An action was only one or the other and that is it. But in the real world, this did not make any sense to me. It was obvious that the INTENT behind an action could completely change whether an action was good or bad.

So it was (and is) my opinion that an action in and of itself cannot be good or evil.

If we are to re-define morality and remove the obstacle of duality the best way to do so is to focus on intent What is your intent behind the action? And no, I do not think the road to Hel is paved with good intentions.
(Fact is that I do not believe in such a place - another topic for another time)

In Part 2 I want to talk about a specific Warrior's Code that I discovered this year, called the Nine Noble Virtues, a way of life derived from the Vikings.