Ethics

Some recommended sources to help introduce you to assorted ethical issues, as these tend to not spoon feed you or program you but get you thinking:

10/7/24 A lot of children's books, teenager books, and classic books were made specifically to address problems of ethics. Reading is super, super important.
Everything ever penned by Big L. He really was and still is the rap MVP and nothing you ever say will convince me otherwise. Better at speaking to an audience than Abraham Lincoln. I am not exaggerating.
Deltron 3030 album
The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday
Stuff written by James Baldwin, and it seems that pretty much all of it is relevant
Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Every Gundam except for G Gundam. It has... no redeeming qualities whatsoever! Unless you think Nether Gundam is pretty great, spinny spin spin
All Miyazaki films, but if you want to try to attempt Grave of the Fireflies do it only once, only if you're over 18, if you are not already acquainted with the horrors of war, if you do not have outstanding mental health issues such as PTSD, and with a lot of moral support. You will cry. I don't care how tough you are, you will cry or you are heartless and possibly also not human.
The whole Mass Effect series
The J.R.R. Tolkien stuff like Lord of the Rings and so on
C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series
All of the children's books written by Roald Dahl. Yes, really
Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy VII
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Back to the Future I, II, and III
Blade Runner. Of course. There are multiple different versions and endings. I do not recommend the pretentious Director's Cut.
Paprika by Satoshi Kon, which introduces you to ethical issues related to the mind, and could actually have been an inspiration for Inception
Study of medicine, in medical school. There are no substitutes.
The Foxfire series, believe it or not. Those old-timers interviewed in these books certainly had a lot of wisdom, and if some are still around, they surely still do. There are a lot of uncomplimentary things in there about anyone who isn't Christian, but it's evident that these guys just didn't know any better or understand other religions (it's certainly evident they didn't understand good Witches like myself even exist or anything about what me and people like me do). Their wisdom and insight into ethics and morality is still valuable.

Books I grew up on, which if you haven't read and haven't been exposed to the ethical issues there, can help:

Holes by Louis Sachar
The Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner
From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsberg
Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger
Actually, everything by Roald Dahl. A bit ironic coming from a (good) Witch, but he certainly shaped my ethical compass. And yes, the man was a racist. It's depressing but read Going Solo to understand the weird way he went about it, it's trippy
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn series by Mark Twain
Everything by Agatha Christie
Everything by Arthur Conan Doyle
1984 by George Orwell
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (seriously, does anyone other than me actually read all the sentences in Ayn Rand's books?!)
So much more I don't really remember it all, but this list What Book Got You Hooked of childhood reads is a surprisingly good one. Here are some more.
10/8/24 If you are one of those folks that's like "oh I don't need any of that when I have my trusty BIBLE," okay. Learn Greek. Learn Hebrew. Go to Greece, or a Greek Orthodox church, and study the New Testament with a priest's help. Go to Israel, or a synagogue, and study the Old Testament with a rabbi's help. While you're at it, learn Arabic, then either go to a country that's friendly to your country of origin and study the Quran there or study in a good mosque where you're at with an Imam. Yes it's relevant, Islam and Judaism are tied together in some way but I'm not quite sure exactly what that is, I just know they are. Also study these things on your own. Tell the rest of us what you find. If you're going to be beating people upside the head with your religious text, I'd suggest you actually read the originals!

Some observations

9/19/22 Here are a few notions that I think are probably true. I think that ethics, virtue, spirituality, wisdom, and love are inextricably connected. I also think that intentions count for precious little when it comes to doing good or doing evil. Much has been done that is unintentionally good. Much has been done that is unintentionally evil. Discernment between the two is the only thing separating us from a truly terrible way of living and bad living conditions overall. How do we get this kind of discernment? Education. Improvement of overall wisdom, intelligence, skills, and education overall. Otherwise I suppose we are the most barbaric species in existence: the one that could have been ethical but chose not to be. The species that deliberately chose not to put in the effort of becoming enlightened and better educated, and chose to linger in a self-imposed Dark Ages. Sure, trying to find more exact definitions of good and evil and more helpful and precise moral, legal, and governmental rules is really hard. Trying to improve ourselves on the inside and the world around us is really hard. But what will future generations think of us if we don't even bother to try?
Many codes of ethics, rules, laws, and religions have been created as codes of conduct that in theory if followed to the letter would make us not as awful as human beings. However, these often have one fatal flaw: reliance on dogma and tradition as opposed to observation of the results of the applied code of conduct. In other words, reliance on belief instead of wisdom derived from experience and uh, thinking for yourself.
It has been my experience that a lot of ethical quandaries are not black and white, cut and dried. The abortion debate is one of these. The right to suicide is another (heck, hospitals have a whole large bunch of paperwork for you to fill if you're ever there to help you help them hash out what happens in various medical situations). The problem with any kind of dogma, tradition, religion, cult, or philosophy is that these things have been constructed to be one-size-fits-all, and to have their adherents insert the dogma and yeet the brain so they carry out their zombie programming no matter how much havoc they wreak because they refuse to think for themselves, and too often common sense and what is right goes right out the window. Just because a solution is simple doesn't mean it actually works. Unless you define "works" as "conforms to this code of social conduct that is good, by fucking everything up in ways no one ever expected let alone wants to live through" in which case I have no idea what you are doing on this website.
It has been my own experience that it is impossible to be a halfway decent human being, let alone one improving at doing what is right, if you do not make a sincere effort to educate yourself regularly and consistently throughout life. If you don't know what a situation actually is, chances are that in trying to change it you'll only make it worse.
In the end it really seems that in order to properly learn ethics and how to apply them, the only way to really do so is to interact with the world and when your conscience goes like "bonjour" listen to it, and proceed accordingly to try to do the right thing, you, yourself. Not someone else. You. Trying is hard but if you do so consistently you eventually form a habit of well, trying to be a decent human being.
You can learn a lot about ethics by paying close attention to what kids believe is right and what is wrong as they are usually right on the money.
Lots of ideologies seduce people by subconsciously pandering to their desires to do wrong and to do what is easy and comfortable. So for instance a code of ethics that overturns another suppressive, morally wrong code of ethics is often something people will leapfrog to without a lot of thought. Anything to avoid the hard labor of thinking - anything to be told what is "right" in order to enjoy yourself to the maximum and pretend you never had a chance to think through the morals on your own, because obedience supposedly = virtue. But just because something makes you happy, comfortable, and makes you have all your needs met does not mean it is right.
8/22/22 Here's a tool. It might help to take a look at the flaws that most bother you when you see them in other people, and use that insight to iron out the flaws in yourself. I don't mean the tiny annoyances, I mean the stuff that royally pisses you off.
This is the sum total of all of the ethics education I have received so far in my life through experience, study, and reflection: if you can wake up every day intending to do the best you can with the cards life has dealt you, with what you know now, and go to sleep each night knowing you truly did your best, I don't think anyone can ask any more of you. A lot can change in a 24-hour day. It is better to accumulate good memories than regrets. Eventually it all catches up with you. I might be wrong, but this is as close as I can get to figuring it out. Good luck to you.

Ways Ethics Can Help You, section added 10/9/24

Life is more fulfilling when you at least try to be ethical. It is a whole lot of personal experience talking.
Less disasters and less drama
Being ethical is likely to save your life a lot. Again, personal experience.
You will know on a level deeper than merely intellectual that you are capable of true happiness. Not just chemical happiness
From a purely cynical perspective, if there is life after death and good Deities run it, it's in your best interest to learn ethics. If there aren't good Deities but there is life after death, and you think it's in your best interest to be non-ethical to suck up to them, your quality of life in said afterlife is at best more chemical happiness but at worst could be the proverbial fate worse than death; and in any case in such an instance you have to wonder if said Deities would actually be trustworthy instead of say, playing favorites so people even more evil than you would get all the good boy points and rewards. Or if they'd be more or less just other humans, running the afterlife. And if there isn't life after death, why would you deny yourself the opportunity to experience the greatest happiness and fulfillment possible? I do not have proof that this really is the greatest happiness and fulfillment possible, just both personal experience and rock solid intuition, but it's all I got.
It's also been my experience that with each improvement in being ethical I worked hard to obtain, my self-esteem rose. I mean, it's cheap therapy.

Home

Big Brain Time