h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, for me this discussion and others elsewhere has raised the interesting question about how can you prevent extreme acts of violence.

Within this we could have a focus this type of killing without it just surrounding one particular case.

If it ok I am not sure I have quite finished with this thread. Yesterday I was strict with myself as I had done quite a lot of reading and thinking the day before and as interesting as that was it did not get my steam mopping done!

Also I was waiting to see when you had a little more time and I was being quiet for a little bit as I had posted quite a lot, as well getting my steam mopping done

Hi again Peanut! The issue about preventing extreme acts of violence ... whether of 'mentally ill' or not-mentally-ill people is of course a major subject. I think we can start something about that. I have major personal ideas concerning that. What I see in my own society is that people do not understand ethics well, they don't understand principles, they don't understand philosophy, and I think understanding these things will make a major difference at least in one province, that of 'good people doing bad things'. That is really as far as I can see an important topic.

I am not kidding about philosophy because I see this field as the essence, the core. Philosophy is about thinking and reasoning. What I see around me, is people who don't understand or see that some of their principles clash with other principles. For instance in this country racism should never have been a thing with a population with stated principles according to which there is no justification for racism at all! I still see so much casual racism from people who are supposed to love all humans according to the principles they espouse. And ... I've lived here my entire life and I've been examining and pondering what other people say and do ... people genuinely don't notice the discrepancy! They do not have the habit of introspection and considering things. They really cannot see where there is - to me - a shocking contradiction.

But then they are also indoctrinated with various beliefs from childhood and told not to question any of these. This becomes a life habit of 'not thinking'. Philosophy is the opposite of that: it is a life habit of thinking, of searching for knowledge and truth while questioning and testing everything. Philosophy is to look around yourself, critically, and then to also look *at* yourself, critically. This is what saved *me* from extremism, racism and possible violence.

Ethics is of course part of philosophy. My own ethical system is in fact a very comprehensive system. I would not say it is perfect but I think it is better than what most folks have, and I try to work on it all the time. I do believe ethics should be taught to people. I believe this can be done correctly and that it would make a huge difference. I also believe ethics must be taught *right* which means *not* teaching people a list of do's and don'ts but instead teaching them to think about right and wrong and about the principles involved. My own belief is that the best way to think about ethics is to try and think about it as broadly as possible. I've thought of my system as being 'Universal Ethics' meaning the principles involved apply to humans as well as to everything else - if the principles break down when applied to a species that is very different from humanity then they are not universal enough! This is a bit beyond most people's ability to handle ... but perhaps not completely. I think most people can think this way if they can overcome the weirdness of it. The benefit of thinking as universally as possible is that we might then come up with principles that might still hold even if humanity goes through massive changes ... also we will find principles which we can apply *now* to human communities that have extremely different circumstances. But the fact that we can still apply a single set of principles means that we can still treat all humans equally, to the same standards.

Also I believe compassion can and should be taught.

Enough for now, the night is getting late again!

We teach something called personal development, health and citizenship
and that starts in infants school and carries through to end of seniors. We also teach critical thinking.

While you own personal outlook and philosophy is a good one for you, it is not a realistic one to require of others and not because we can't handle it or that is weird but because it simply not practicable.

We can teach human rights, equality, we can shrine them in law, promote tolerance, but society, culture and attitudes take time to change, we are talking generational change.

Sometime a massive change will happen like apartheid falling other times change is more gradual just because it is not happening quick enough doesn't mean it isn't.

Also if we wish to tackle these issues we have to do from the stand point of understanding not just our sameness, our common ground but our differences.

And that is a fundamental flaw with universality is that not one size fits all and never will.

We can agree some universal priniciples for instance the Human Rights Act, there is going to be no one way of putting them into practise. *In practise* in terms of taking a world view recognising that is absolutely critical otherwise we stray into imposing our set of ideals, way of doing things onto others, which is dangerous, ineffective and a form of ideological imperialism, no matter how well intentioned.

Sometimes Willem it comes across that you think if people were educated differently it would follow through that they would behave differently and be different. I am not saying that education doesn't have a valuable role, it does, and it can and does make the world a better place but one does not necessarily follow the other, human nature just isn't like that.

You can teach ethics, philosophy and teach critical thinking and then you know what, you still get people who are racist just better educated ones or they a great understanding of the content you have taught but nonetheless conclude that their world view is the right one

Hi Peanut! I don't mean that my *own* philosophy should be taught (at least ... I am going to write about my own philosophy and I do think people might learn a thing or two from that) but that I think an education plan should include teaching philosophy, any and all philosophy. The course we had in the first year at university was great and honestly I don't think many people who've been through that could still be closed-mindedly racist or misogynistic afterward. There is a *lot* of excellent philosophy out there. I really personally would like to write books on philosophy that can be used for school or uni courses. I believe there's a lot that can be done to make philosophy more interesting and digestible ... also I am sure most average people can indeed manage to understand the main concepts.

About universality ... what I mean is that all ethic principles should be grounded in a universal ethical framework. If any ethical 'rule' can't be shown to be based on a principle that is universal, it isn't a really valid rule. If there is no universal basic ethical framework at all then simply put, ethics don't really exist! Then they're merely made up for the occasion, and one should ask ... who's making them up, in whose interest?

Take the idea of human rights. I don't think human rights are universal. They can at best only be a subset of principles that are more universal, more basic. For instance: suppose there are aliens out there, say on a star thousands of light years away. They're as intelligent as we are, they have feelings though not quite the same as ours. Do they have rights? What rights would they have and why? Would they have rights that we don't? Do we have rights they should not have? Why - and why not? That's what I mean ... we should try and find concepts that would fit the greatest number of 'beings' including humans, including *different* types of humans, including humans of the future who might be very different from us. In trying to find truly universal principles, we are looking out for different people who live today and also for people who might exist under very different conditions in the future. (In fact we should also think of humans and human ancestors and human-like things and also non-human-like things of the past and what would have applied or not to them.) We should try the firmest possible foundation, else we are letting some of us down. The very idea is to exclude as few as possible.

The idea is not to find one way of putting all rules in practice, there can be an infinity of ways of deriving practical rules for specific situations from general principles. But there have to be general, universal principles.

Consider this ... suppose you say there are no universal ethical truths. But that is a statement about ethics so it has to include itself. Then what you get is there are no universal ethical truths except for this one. Or, even simpler: 'this is the only universal ethical truth'. Suppose you ask WHY is it the only universal ethical truth? You might discover another universal ethical truth simply from trying to find an answer ... which of course would invalidate the statement you tried to explain!

Bottom line: I think there are universal ethical truths resting on a number of foundations, the first of which is mere existence. But if we think in terms of existence there are an awful number of commonalities ... everything in this universe is bound by the same physical laws, and I believe there are laws that pertain to all living things because of what all living things share, there are laws pertaining to all things that have minds, that have feelings and so forth. Humans have a tremendous number of things in common. I live in a country with tremendous diversity of cultures and languages, of belief systems, and still there are things we all share, and they're very basic.