Lay It Out

 

 I am going to lay out my ethical system of moderate, rational egoism. I have done so many times, but there are a couple of refinements here that I would like to include, and introduce the reader to.

My first step is to lay out some basic definitions. Martin Luther, most Christians, and today’s secular ethicists would agree that goodness can be defined as unselfishness, self-sacrificing the self in service to others. These altruists would define evil as selfishness and excessive or sickening self-love and self-interest.

 

My view is the opposite. I would define human goodness as mostly self-love and self-interest as the primary but not sole personal interest, for other-interest and generosity are secondary but still important moral priorities. This is a statement of my ethical moderation.

 

I would define human evil as selflessness, groupism, and other-centeredness as one’s primary motive. Some self-interest is evil, but not much. I would define human goodness as lived, enlightened self-interest, self-love, and high self-esteem.

 

My second step is to offer a premise about humans: We can describe basic human nature as morally good, morally neutral, or morally depraved. If human nature is basically good, then it is totally or primarily good. One could say that it is 65% good and naturally 35% bad.

 

If one is a “neutralist” about human nature, one could assert that each person naturally is 50% good and 50% evil. I think we are born 60% depraved in our soul/consciousness/will and 40% basically good. I do not accept that our depravity it total but that it is primary.

 

Martin Luther would think that we are born fallen or depraved, but modern-especially secular humanists likely assume people are born basically good and benevolent, born neutral, and only turn selfish or malevolent after being twisted by pathological upbringings and living patterns in society.

 

Ayn Rand thinks we are born blank slates with no innate ideas or moral predispositions; I will conclude from this that she is neutral about basic human nature, that we have the capacity—but this is not an innate idea?—to be good or evil equally.

 

 

 

 

Third step, let us now look at the concept of psychological egoism, that people always seek their own self-interest, or are selfish all the time.

 

I think that Christians like Martin Luther would agree that people are naturally selfish and need to be brought up right to learn to act well to learn to be unselfish. I assume that implicit in their descriptive take on human nature is that people in part are psychological altruists, because, if we did not all have a little bit of innate selflessness, generosity, other-centeredness, or personal willingness to sacrifice ourselves for the general good, then we would not be able to be trained to be moral, good, or unselfish. The innate capacity for goodness must be there from the beginning.

 

This type of psychological egoist is pessimistic about human nature.

 

Other more optimistic liberals, be they traditional or modern, religious, or secular humanistic, they would offer that human nature was basically good, that the selfless, generous impulse is the sole or predominant predilection in natural humans.

 

I would counter that there must be an innate love of sin and evil, or the young person, so naturally good, could never turn evil—as many do—unless she had an a priori constitutional predisposition to be evil and do evil rather than be good or do good. Even if her natural evil inclinations are weak and recessive, they are there in her and all humans, or social mal-adaptive upbringing could not make the naturally good person evil.

 

I would refer to these optimists about human nature as psychological altruists, that people are naturally wholly or predominantly generous, beneficent, and other-centered.

 

Again, these kinds of psychological altruists and psychological egoists are the majority of humans, religious, agnostic or secular: they all agree in defining goodness as other-centered selflessness and evil as self-centered, self-interest or selfishness.

 

These people would advocate altruism as the moral ideal, and they are what I refer to as altruists-collectivists: the normative standard demanded of each agent to be a good person is for her to be generous, not selfish, and to prioritize group-identity, group-rights, group-living, and group-morality (other-care is how the agent is to live).

 

By contrast, I advocate rational egoism as the moral ideal: and I refer to individuating supercitizens as egoists-individualists: the normative standard expected of each agent is to be a good person, to be self-entered more than selfless (living through and for others), and to prioritize individual-identity (live as an individuators, atomistic) over group-identity (to live as a nonindividuator, a group belonger), to promote individual rights over collective rights, to individual-live, each agent as a self-realizer. I promote individual morality as the ethical ideal for the individual and for the collective good.

 

I would define evil as selflessness. I would define good as selfishness, especially enlightened self-interest.

 

I would also presuppose that humans are basically evil—mostly evil innately (60 to 65%) and yet are part good naturally (35 to 40%).  

 

I also assume people are complicated creatures—living paradoxes: part beast (devil—the larger, more powerful, more aggressive part of their nature) and part angel (the smaller, weaker part of their nature). It requires an agent of strong, disciplined self-controlled good will and keen but reasonable conscience to grow up as a moral person of good will that has overcome the self’s naturally bad will, to wrestle it away from sin and devils and redirect the personal consciousness towards virtue and holy living in line with the Good Spirits.

 

People are born bad but not totally bad, so there is real hope for each agent, if he works very hard and asks God and his guardian angel to assist and bless him so he can escape from bondage to the dark side, to move over the to the light side and stay there.

 

People are mostly depraved, but not entirely. They have to have some innate if flickering, recessive capacity for being good or they will not be able to ever become good. To be part good innately is synonymous with possessing free will. A will is only free, autonomous, and self-regulating if the agent actually knows the difference between working to have a good and free will or staying with heer naturally bad and enslaved-to-sin free will. She knows the difference and has the power, in part, largely or wholly to choose her moral and spiritual destiny in this world and in the next.

 

I presuppose that people are naturally part good (some but less so than being depraved) and are in part born evil (the stronger more vigorous part of one’s natural force, energy and will). People or other beings, an intelligent race (including robots, extraterrestial smart races or other evoling animals like chimpanzees—if they evolve to be smart like humans). Intelligent beings with the power to reason are necessarily creatures of free will. No will is free unless the agent is a natural mixture of good and evil capacities. Otherwise, free will is meaningless concept and does not have ontological validity or reality.

 

In terms of J. R. R. Tolkien’s creatures, elves are so good, they are angelic robots that can only be and do good. Orcs are so wholly or predominantly vicious that they are robots, heteronomous demons. Elves are naturally all good, and orcs are naturally all bad, so neither of them wield the blessing or curse of owning a free will—depending on how you take this fundamental reality for humans—but hobbits, humans, dwarves, Ents and wizards are all smart beings that have free will, precisely because they are born part good and part evil: they can and must choose how to live and whether or not they will be living, popular, nonindividuating joiner/demons (after death to spend thousands of years, perhaps eternity with Evil Spirits in hell), or they will be living, unpopular, individuating loner/individuators and living angels in service to the Good Spirits, getting ready if possible to enjoy heaven for thousands of years, perhaps eternally.

 

I am also an ethical moderate: this is hard to explain but simply stated, in the middle is the way. Truth, goodness and beauty are both-and, multiple choices along a spectrum of behaviors, to select from, from good to evil actions, from reasonable to passionate, from love to hate, from wise to foolish, from pleasing to disgusting, from lovely to ugly.

 

Fanaticism is binary logic applied ruthlessly and uni-dimensionally to the world, circumstances and people. It is either/or, black-and-white thinking and false dilemma positions taken and enforced. It is evil-choosing and evil-existing.

 

Martin Luther would be a psychological egoist (people have bad basic natures), and most Christians today and secular humanists would argue that people are psychological altruists with good basic natures.

 

Please remember that my definitions of the psychological egoist and the psychological altruist is where I invert moral assignation valuationally to each term—in contrast to the way that they would be generally understood.

 

Luther would evaluate the psychological egoist as a naturally evil person, and he describes the psychological altruist (if he had coined such a concept, which he did not) as a person that has chosen to become a good, generous individual, as a person that is unnaturally good through self-discipline, an acquired moral status.

 

All this speculation about Luther, in terms of acquired status of being unnaturally a Christian psychological altruist is a romantic fiction because Luther would insist that psychological altruism does not apply to human existence, natures or their condition.

 

I define all people as mostly but not wholly psychological altruists by nature, and that psychological egoism is but a trace component of human consciousness, that it is an idealized fiction that does not character how people are born. I would evaluate the human state of psychological altruism as the predominant basic nature of people and that being social and selfless herd creatures is why people are evil mostly, innately. If people in fact and actually were by nature more than 50% psychological egoistic, which they are not, then human nature would be basically good. If people were naturally individualistic and maverizers, it would be a very different and easily a better world, which it is not.

 

I am a psychological altruist, a rare position taken, that human nature is collective, groupist and evil.

 

I wish people were more psychological egoist, but they are not, or they would be naturally better than they are.

 

People like running in packs and living in hierarchies and class structure under tyrannical government domination, earning a living within socialist economies of various hues. People like tyranny, either as one of the power-abusing ruling class, or as one of the masses, a member of the ruled receiving abuse from the elite. People like abusing and being abused and this is their moral sickness in operation and on display.

 

The young can be influenced by wicked authority types because the young hate themselves and love sickness and evil and sin, so they are naturally addicted to allowing those over them to compel them to lead wicked, mediocre joiner lives. All have free will but the young are predisposed to choose to be nothing and obey most of the time.

 

A great soul and moral reformer likely will not be heeded or heard by the young. Authorities can compel slavery and self-destruction for the young to accept willingly, for that is a group, complex web of interpersonal, inter-generational behaviors. These chaotic, emotional, passionate, groupist patterns of childhood introduced ruination occurs whenever and wherever the kids already live.

 

To offer kids the choice to go alone, be free, self-sufficient individuals and individuators is what they do not want to hear: they disregard this invitation, preferring instead the opposite cause, free of hope, love, freedom, noncoercive advice and respect for their exercising their free will. Most people most of the time still sin and choose the life of sinning over the life of virtue via maverizing.

 

You can compel the young to be evil, but you cannot compel them to be good—and they will freely choose to be compelled by evil authorities and to defy, reject even attack good authorities because they offer goodness choice and love and happiness.

 

So, the evil children of darkness on earth have it easier in converting the young. By contrast, the great souls, fighting God’s fight here on earth, suffer a huge disadvantage, of being and saying what the young despise.

 

All great souls can do is to be patient, and struggle each day to make things better, to never cease fighting, to never to surrender, no matter how bleak things look.  The great souls must continue to speak the truth, to keep trying nonviolently and without bitterness, and eventually there hope and progress will arrive on the scene and receive a welcoming reception from the majority of anew generation.

 

Future improvement will come for humans here on this earth after the good reformers are dead 40 years from now, but we must accept our limited power—we have no magic wand to wave to make people choose to grow, be smart be happy and good. God likely has that kind of power but the Mother and Father will not force people to choose good because that would violate the sacrosanct individual consciousness of each resisting human, so they must be allowed to choose even if choose they often choose unwisely-but they will be punished by God for continuing to sin.

You, if you are in charge, vicious and brutal: you likely can force the young to wreck their lives for collectivism, forced conversion, forced obedience and violence against other humans are d and force and violence go together.

You cannot force them to goodness for they are free and must come to God, goodness, and growth of their own choice.