The Universal Moral Code

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BlindedWantsToSee
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The Universal Moral Code

Post by BlindedWantsToSee »

Please consider the following ideas regarding morality, if you are so inclined to do.

I claim that, although only an approximation to the actual way life works, the moral code that follows describes, with a high degree of accuracy, true righteousness and justice. This moral code applies to everybody and everything, everywhere, universally, and without exception. The simple Universal Moral Code to be observed has only 4 major premises, as follows:

1. Each living being belongs only to itself; and each has full rights over its own life.

2. All life has equal rights. Each living being is equal in value or importance to every other living being. No living being or group of beings has any rights, including the rights to exploit, or abuse, or force their own will, upon any other living being or group of beings, unless all beings involved are willing participants.

3. Evil is prohibited. Definition of evil:

a. Evil is violating the above rules.
b. Evil also is anything or anybody that causes any type of harm, pain, suffering, damage, impairment, injury, loss, detriment, distress, affliction, or any other disagreeable experience, or does any injustice, to a living being against its will.
c. Evil is the ONLY deviation from moral rectitude there is. It is wrong. Nobody should do it.
d. Evil is unacceptable. Nobody should tolerate it or put up with it. AND

4. The adoption and observance of this Universal Moral Code is strictly voluntary and can be taken up or discontinued at any time. Adhering to this code will require valor and much strength of character, but it is worth it because the Universal Moral Code will afford full protection to all living beings who fully adhere to it. However, every living being who fails to adhere to it is hereby advised:

Most, or all, of the following will apply to you, depending on how lucky you are:

1. You do not belong to yourself and do not have full rights over your own life. Another being or a group of beings will take ownership of your life and will enslave you in any way they can.

2. Other beings will declare their superiority over you. You and your well-being will be less valuable or important than that of those other beings. Those other beings will have the rights they want to have over your life, including the rights to exploit you, and abuse you, and force their will in your life, even if you are not willing to be subjected to such treatment.

3. Evil will be perpetrated against you. Definition of evil:

a. Evil is anything or anybody that causes any type of harm, pain, suffering, damage, impairment, injury, loss, detriment, distress, affliction, or any other disagreeable experience, or does any injustice, to a living being against its will.
b. Evil is permissible to you also and is morally acceptable. However, complicated laws and moral guidelines will be imposed on you, to keep your society WORKING in an orderly fashion. AND
c. Evil is something you must accept as a fact of life, no matter how oppressive it is to you. You must toughen up, must learn to tolerate evil, must learn to ignore evil, and must look only at the pleasant elements in your life, to delude yourself into feeling that everything is OK.

That is all we need to know in order to be able to distinguish right from wrong. I don’t believe this Universal Moral Code can be proven or disproven to be right and just. I think it is our intuition that tells us whether adopting this moral code is right for us or not. In my case, I know that when somebody hurts me, abuses me, robs me, injures me, or imposes his or her will on me; that is an immoral action for them to do against me. It is evil, and I should NOT put up with it. Instead, I should do everything within my power to put a stop to the injustice. I also realize that I’m the same as everybody else. Everybody else is the same as me. They too want to be happy, to feel good, to be respected, and so on. So, if it is wrong for them to do something to me, then it's is just as wrong for me to do that something to them. Then I also realized that not only human lives deserve this respect, but so do animals, plants, every sentient being, and maybe even every individual life form, even if it seems to have no awareness.

The reason for the above statement is that we are all made of the same stuff. Some scientists believe everything, at the quantum level, is made of the same type of very small particles or waves of matter, or strings, that turn out to be made of the same fundamental substance. Some people believe this fundamental substance is energy. Some people believe that consciousness is the fundamental substance that makes up everything. I believe that both, energy and consciousness, or intelligence, are the basic substances, out of which everything is made. But even if all of that turns out not to be true, the common element in all living beings is life. What really matters is that we are all individual living beings, who are made up of the same fundamental life, as every other living being is; therefore, all of us, living beings, have the same rights and value, in a similar way to how every individual gram of pure gold has the same value as all other individual grams of pure gold.

There may be many details relating to the way life works that I am yet to figure out, but what I can say, without fear of being wrong, is that karma is a bitch, baby! What goes around comes around. You reap what you sow. Every cause has an effect. And, for every action, there is an equivalent reaction that comes in the opposite direction (although, not necessarily right away).

May all of us find a way to that which our hearts desire.
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Albert Tatlock
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Re: The Universal Moral Code

Post by Albert Tatlock »

BlindedWantsToSee wrote:However, every living being who fails to adhere to it is hereby advised:

Most, or all, of the following will apply to you, depending on how lucky you are:


3. Evil will be perpetrated against you. Definition of evil:
Who will perpetrate the evil?
BlindedWantsToSee
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Re: The Universal Moral Code

Post by BlindedWantsToSee »

Albert Tatlock wrote:
BlindedWantsToSee wrote:However, every living being who fails to adhere to it is hereby advised:

Most, or all, of the following will apply to you, depending on how lucky you are:


3. Evil will be perpetrated against you. Definition of evil:
Who will perpetrate the evil?
The ones who do not adhere to the Code:)
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Albert Tatlock
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Re: The Universal Moral Code

Post by Albert Tatlock »

BlindedWantsToSee wrote:
Albert Tatlock wrote: (Nested quote removed.)

Who will perpetrate the evil?
The ones who do not adhere to the Code:)
And what's to stop the ones who don't adhere to the code perpetrating evil on the ones who do adhere to it?
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Present awareness
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Re: The Universal Moral Code

Post by Present awareness »

Rule number two would suggest vegetarian way of life, so as not to kill animals and eat them?
Even though you can see me, I might not be here.
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Albert Tatlock
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Re: The Universal Moral Code

Post by Albert Tatlock »

Present awareness wrote:Rule number two would suggest vegetarian way of life, so as not to kill animals and eat them?
Rule 2 states that all life has rights so you would have to wait for a plant to die before you could eat any part of it.
BlindedWantsToSee
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Re: The Universal Moral Code

Post by BlindedWantsToSee »

Albert Tatlock wrote:
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: (Nested quote removed.)


The ones who do not adhere to the Code:)
And what's to stop the ones who don't adhere to the code perpetrating evil on the ones who do adhere to it?
Actually, the living beings who are being wronged, but choose to adhere to this moral code, are the ones that must make that wrong stop. The code states that nobody should do evil or put up with evil, so if somebody is observing the code, they must find a way to make that evil or injustice that is being committed against them stop, without (of course) violating the other parts of moral code (e.i. breaking rules #2 or #3...inflicting pain, suffering, etc...on any other beings, including the perpetrators, against their will).

Obviously, this is not easy to do, especially because nobody has ever fully explained righteousness to us. I don't know all of the answers, but I'm sure this is the way to the good life, unless life cannot be truly good, or it is not possible for living beings to be righteous.
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Albert Tatlock
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Re: The Universal Moral Code

Post by Albert Tatlock »

BlindedWantsToSee wrote: so if somebody is observing the code, they must find a way to make that evil or injustice that is being committed against them stop,
Just the same as it already is then.
BlindedWantsToSee
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Re: The Universal Moral Code

Post by BlindedWantsToSee »

Albert Tatlock wrote:
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: so if somebody is observing the code, they must find a way to make that evil or injustice that is being committed against them stop,
Just the same as it already is then.
Well, I don't think any of us is complying fully with the requirements of righteousness. I don't believe it is possible to do it, at least not by anybody who has a physical body. We all enslave and eat other living beings (animals, plants). However, karma will make us pay for that transgression to the code. This is really unfair and not righteous, but that's the way karma works. Whether we like it or not, for every action we take there is an equivalent reaction that will be done to us at some point in time.
Steve3007
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Re: The Universal Moral Code

Post by Steve3007 »

BlindedWantsToSee:
We all enslave and eat other living beings (animals, plants). However, karma will make us pay for that transgression to the code. This is really unfair and not righteous, but that's the way karma works. Whether we like it or not, for every action we take there is an equivalent reaction that will be done to us at some point in time.
When I eat a plant, I presume the equivalent reaction to that will be when plants eat me after I die. Do we really have to see that as some kind of revenge for the terrible "transgression" I have committed by existing? Why not just see it as an example of the cycle of life and the fact that we are all part of the natural world?

-- Updated Thu Oct 26, 2017 8:09 am to add the following --
1. Each living being belongs only to itself; and each has full rights over its own life.
Are you literally applying this to all living things? Plants? The bacteria in my gut?
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Albert Tatlock
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Re: The Universal Moral Code

Post by Albert Tatlock »

BlindedWantsToSee wrote:I don't think any of us is complying fully with the requirements of righteousness.
Has righteousness published a comprehensive list of its requirements? It would be useful to be in possession of all the rules if we are to keep karma at bay.
BlindedWantsToSee
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Re: The Universal Moral Code

Post by BlindedWantsToSee »

Albert Tatlock wrote:
BlindedWantsToSee wrote:I don't think any of us is complying fully with the requirements of righteousness.
Has righteousness published a comprehensive list of its requirements? It would be useful to be in possession of all the rules if we are to keep karma at bay.
That's exactly my point. Life is not fair (everybody knows that). I go further and say life is right-down evil and psychotic. I don't want things to be this way, but I have noticed, that this is what's going on; this is the way life works! And it is wrong. Humanity is forced to play a game, the rules of which we ignore. This ignorance causes us much suffering. Furthermore, we are all playing a game that cannot be won (except temporarily), where everyone or almost everyone will be a loser in the long run, which causes more suffering.

I am convinced of the equality of all living beings. and it is obvious that living beings cannot survive without killing and/or enslaving other living beings. We are almost at war with other species and with ourselves too. Our survival depends on our ability to destroy some of them (harmful bacteria, destructive or poisonous insects, etc). I view this fact as life hurting itself (psychosis). I say hurting, and not helping, each other because we do not consent (and it is actually harmful), for example, for bacteria to invade our bodies and consume them so that they can live. By the way the karma I'm talking about is actually physics, the law of Causality (which really does not care if we know about it or not).

We have the tendency of becoming nearsighted by looking only at ourselves and immediate surroundings, and we pay almost no attention to what is going on elsewhere. We are about 300 million people living in the U.S. Here there is a lot of human suffering, but the amount of human suffering we have in the U.S. is tiny compared to the amount of human suffering experienced by the other 6.95 billion humans living elsewhere. I write about these subjects because I hope that, somehow, this information will make its way to those who are suffering the most in the U.S. and around the world.
BlindedWantsToSee
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Re: The Universal Moral Code

Post by BlindedWantsToSee »

Steve3007 wrote:BlindedWantsToSee:
....
When I eat a plant, I presume the equivalent reaction to that will be when plants eat me after I die. Do we really have to see that as some kind of revenge for the terrible "transgression" I have committed by existing? Why not just see it as an example of the cycle of life and the fact that we are all part of the natural world?

-- Updated Thu Oct 26, 2017 8:09 am to add the following --
1. Each living being belongs only to itself; and each has full rights over its own life.
Are you literally applying this to all living things? Plants? The bacteria in my gut?
I believe that all living beings (human, animal, plant, bacteria, etc.) are equal in value and have the same rights as every other living beings, yes.

The revenge comes mechanically, not by somebody executing it with the intention of getting you back. The law of Causality tells us that any and all actions become causes which have effects. Those effects also have effects, in a chain reaction. The intricacies of how this works are very complex, with many elements to them. The whole universe is like a very complex row of dominoes. Eventually, what we do to others comes back to us. This is something I have realized happens. This is not my choosing or something I would impose on anybody.

The problem is that our nature (and that of other life forms) forces us to feed on/destroy other life forms in order to sustain or protect our own lives. This tells me there is something inherently wrong or malignant with the very nature of life. The cycles of life are hurtful, violent, and unpleasant for most.

Peace (absolute, for all living beings) is not possible, ever! We must eat to stay alive, or must be eaten for others to stay alive (while we are still alive, by cancer or bacteria, etc). This produces suffering for living beings, for all living beings, eventually. We have no way to avoid this. People seem to think this is OK, but I just can't agree with that. I don't want to hurt, and I don't want anybody else or anything else to hurt. What's wrong with that? I don't think anything is, so I'm doing everything in my power to make the violence, the suffering, and the injustices stop.
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Albert Tatlock
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Re: The Universal Moral Code

Post by Albert Tatlock »

BlindedWantsToSee wrote:Life is not fair (everybody knows that). I go further and say life is right-down evil and psychotic.
Life is neither fair nor unfair, it's just all circumstances and conditions. Life, non-life, everything is all subject to the same laws of nature or physics or whatever you want to call it. Words like "evil" and "psychotic" don't mean a thing outside of the mind that's conceptualising them.
I am convinced of the equality of all living beings.
What do you mean by "living beings"? Do you include everything that could be described as alive? And what do you mean by equality, and what convinced you of it?
and it is obvious that living beings cannot survive without killing and/or enslaving other living beings. We are almost at war with other species and with ourselves too. Our survival depends on our ability to destroy some of them (harmful bacteria, destructive or poisonous insects, etc). I view this fact as life hurting itself (psychosis). I say hurting, and not helping, each other because we do not consent (and it is actually harmful), for example, for bacteria to invade our bodies and consume them so that they can live.
I don't know what you're saying here. Are you saying that bacteria are wrong for harming us or that we are wrong for killing bacteria?
We have the tendency of becoming nearsighted by looking only at ourselves and immediate surroundings, and we pay almost no attention to what is going on elsewhere.
It's hardly unreasonable that human beings should view the World from the perspective of human beings. Besides, many people do care about what's going on "elsewhere", from individuals to environmental organisations to governments.
BlindedWantsToSee
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Re: The Universal Moral Code

Post by BlindedWantsToSee »

Albert Tatlock wrote:
BlindedWantsToSee wrote:Life is not fair (everybody knows that). I go further and say life is right-down evil and psychotic.
Life is neither fair nor unfair, it's just all circumstances and conditions. Life, non-life, everything is all subject to the same laws of nature or physics or whatever you want to call it. Words like "evil" and "psychotic" don't mean a thing outside of the mind that's conceptualising them.
I think you are right about this. I'm mainly referring to (talking about) the causes of human suffering and the suffering of all living beings, as they perceive it or conceptualize it when they are experiencing it.
I am convinced of the equality of all living beings.

What do you mean by "living beings"? Do you include everything that could be described as alive? And what do you mean by equality, and what convinced you of it?.
Yes, I believe all forms of life, without exception, have an influence (however weak or faint) in the well-being of every other living being (sometimes directly and most times indirectly). Equality, to me, just means equal value or importance; equal rights to a happy life as every other living being.

I believe the study of quantum physics has had a major role in making me realize the above. Quantum theory tells us that everything, all things which apparently are very different from each other, are actually made up of the same, basic, fundamental, raw material. Lao Tsu (ancient Chinese Sage) said something similar in the Tao Te Ching, chapter 42, talking about Tao (Dao, the Way of the Universe); paraphrasing: The Tao gives rise to the one; the one gives rise to two; two give rise to three; three give rise to the 10,000 things or everything. I see a parallel: one fundamental substance (or source) gives rise to energy and consciousness; those two give rise to protons, electrons, life; those three give rise/make up everything there is. I personally believe that the fact that we are sentient, that we have consciousness, is telling us we are all of the same value and importance by virtue of that consciousness. Call it a personal belief but it occurred to me that all suffering in the world (human and non-human) is due to not honoring this principle.
and it is obvious that living beings cannot survive without killing and/or enslaving other living beings. We are almost at war with other species and with ourselves too. Our survival depends on our ability to destroy some of them (harmful bacteria, destructive or poisonous insects, etc). I view this fact as life hurting itself (psychosis). I say hurting, and not helping, each other because we do not consent (and it is actually harmful), for example, for bacteria to invade our bodies and consume them so that they can live.
I don't know what you're saying here. Are you saying that bacteria are wrong for harming us or that we are wrong for killing bacteria?.
Both, wrong for either to harm the other.
We have the tendency of becoming nearsighted by looking only at ourselves and immediate surroundings, and we pay almost no attention to what is going on elsewhere.
It's hardly unreasonable that human beings should view the World from the perspective of human beings. Besides, many people do care about what's going on "elsewhere", from individuals to environmental organisations to governments.
You are right, it is not unreasonable. But, a wider perspective is good too. Sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees. I guess I have felt lost at times, not being able to find the answers I sought. In those times it helped to go back to the drawing board, scratch my current assumptions, and see if I previously missed something important.
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