How Each of Us Can Easily Make the World Better

A better world is a more valuable world. How do we make the world more valuable? By adding value to it.

How do we add value? Not by “scoring points” over someone, say by tossing a good zinger their way; that is to say, not by insulting someone, or boasting that you bested them. No, just the opposite: we add value by showing respect, by giving attention or recognition, by performing a service, by smiling. Yes, service with a smile is one way of adding value. Another way is to give someone a sincere compliment. Or, in case they are hungry, offer them some food. Or give some assistance. Boost someone up.

As Demerest & Schoof, who are life coaches, have suggested, we add value by asking ourselves the Central Question of Life, namely, “What choice can I make and action can I take, in this moment, to create the greatest net value?” The word “net” here refers to “all things considered, for all people concerned.” [See their book for more detail and for persuasive argumentation justifying as to why this is the ‘central question of life’. The book is entitled ANSWERING THE CENTRAL QUESTION and was published in 2011.]

Learn to answer the Central Question and you will be adept at adding value -- which is the essential ethical course to take. For Ethics is about cooperation, compassion, empathy, kindness, moral courage, and integrity. It is about caring, and wanting everyone to win. It is about the highest-possible quality-of-life for the maximum number of people. It is, thus, about a richly valuable world. {If interested in further support for these claims, or if you want to read further on this topic, see pages 28-29 in M. C. Katz, A UNIFIED THEORY OF ETHICS, a link to which is here: http://tinyurl.com/27pzhbf

Questions? Comments? Critiques?

-- Updated Thu Feb 09, 2012 6:26 pm to add the following --

As you may have noticed in the Unified Theory document - which is only Part I of a four-part book - Ethics is also about responsibility and authenticity; and when applied in the political sphere it is about decentralizing any concentrations of power ...whether governmental, financial, or by corporations, (Incidentally, both the Tea Party people and the 99%ers -those in the Occupy movement-agree on this principle !)

Ethics is about no one individual thinking that he is better than anyone -- it is about humility. For the most fundamental idea of all, the very definition of the field of Ethics, is this: Every individual is to be regarded as of uncountably-high value. Therefore seeking common ground follows from this ...and hostility, manipulation, exploitation, or indifference are to be avoided. [I'm a treasure of value and so are you, though we are both very vulnerable. We were born naked, and if we accumulated any wealth we can't take it with us when we die.]

Just as bribery, trading on insider information, buying elections, and voter suppression are poison for politics; being a phony, having double standards, being prejudiced, being corrupt and grossly hypocritical, practicing any kind of psychological abuse, or violence, are poison for ethics.

Comments? I'd like to hear your views on these matters.

hahaha. What are you doing. Could you start off with a question? Or even a contention? Something within a single paragraph. Please this is a forum and not a toilet. Could you leave at least some prejudice at the door before you enter?

hahaha. What are you doing. Could you start off with a question? Or even a contention? Something within a single paragraph. Please this is a forum and not a toilet. Could you leave at least some prejudice at the door before you enter?

I'm glad I made you smile, Rasonis. I am analyzing and clarifying concepts ...in other words, I am doing Philosophy. I began with a definition of one of the key terms employed in the title of the thread, namely the word: better. [It is necessary to get a little technical here.] Defining it in terms of the meta-language for Ethics, namely, Axiology (value theory), here is the more-formal definition: When x is a C (falls under that concept named C); and y is a C; x is better than y as a C, if and only if x has more of the C-properties than y has - on the same level of abstraction. Since "value" is carefully-defined as: the matching of property-names with the properties to which they correspond [ abbreviated "the fulfillment of meaning"], then to be more valuable is to have more of a matching between property-names and actual properties perceived by the valuer in what he is valuing (an instance of the Concept C.) For clear details, see hartmaninstitute.org/Portals/0/html-fil ... ience.html

I started with a question, namely, "How do we make the world more valuable?" I am glad that the theme of the thread caught your attention. Do you want to make the world better, Rasonus??

If so, how would you proceed? What would you change?

To your mind, what am I prejudiced against? A "prejudice," as I define it, is the ignoring of many properties and factors in favor of only one which is given all the emphasis. When applied to a human being it is a failure to see the uncountably-many complex qualities which are there, and instead selecting one to highlight - with the effect of reducing the person to that single factor, and thus dis-valuing him/her. It violates the unique dignity of the individual. Prejudice carries a negative connotation, for it is unethical. It is not to be conflated with "bias" - which everyone has. 'Bias' means, that according with one's value-structure, one favors some values over others. I have my biases. You have yours.

What are your biases, Rasonus? To what values do you give priorities?

{I care about people. I want to see them flourish. I want to move them away from dependence to independence, and on to interdependence. The latter is defined as an Intrinsic social relationship. It has Intrinsic Value. I believe in unity there is strength. It is very sweet when folks cooperate to achieve some noble project. The best kind of competition is a contest ...where everybody wins no matter who wins. An example would be an Olympics competition which as a result produces a better quality athlete. Or, another example: a corn-shucking bee: the entire community gains.
I would like to reduce dependence on government hand-outs; this includes corporate subsides. I would like to see the tax-code revised to simplify it. I would like to conserve energy, and natural resources. I'm a Conservationist. I admire the government set up by the Founders here in America, with its built-in checks and balances.

I believe that without proper government the strong simply take from the weak. The power elite will take advantage of the most vulnerable; will exploit the children, the seniors, the simple-minded, the ill-informed, and the ignorant.}

You request: "Something within a single paragraph." I am sorry - and find it regrettable - that five or six paragraphs are too much to read for a philosopher, or for a philosophy student. I hope I am wrong about that, and that readers here will rise to the occasion. As argued at length in the Unified Theory of Ethics manuscript, Ethics is about adding value. For a fuller explanation and to get the background story, see all other posts by me, prof, here at the Forum.

Keep on sending along those constructive comments; as a result the world will definitely get better !

We make the world better by reducing suffering.

Everyone can do this and have a large impact. Examples are:

Donations to cost-efficient charities: http://www.givewell.org/
Becoming a vegan / donating to animal charities like Vegan Outreach
Talk to others about important global issues
Political activism

I think if you want to look after people, you ought to have met them.

-- Updated February 18th, 2012, 4:45 pm to add the following --

I see charity today as paying other peoples bills, who endeavour to prolong other peoples suffering while having them paid. Charity ought to be looking after those you know, or have come across through fate. Far away or next door, there are people who would walk over you in the street in order to get their picture in the paper having given to charity they never knew. People die in far away places or next door, because really people don't give a dam.

I don't quite get what you're saying but it sounds somewhat like what is argued against here: http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/resource ... ut-aid.php

Wowbagger.....page not found.

Wowbagger.....page not found.

Oh. It works on my browser. Try googling "giving what we can myths about aid". Top result shoud be it.

I do not agree with the summery. I see the opposite as the correct approach, and the only truthful one. If we looked after our neighbour first, soon those far off places would become neighbourly-hood, or baron of all suffering.

The god created perfect world. We the humans are destroying it. We can reatin its beuaty by sharing the happiness. Just disttribute some Ugly Doll gifts to poor and needy and feel the change in th world around you.

The god created perfect world.

You call this perfect?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I9Ht3Jb ... r_embedded

Or this?
http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_ ... r_embedded

Or this?
http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_ ... r_embedded

The way that we can make the world better is through cooperation. But it depends on knowing who to cooperate with.

Essentially we all have our own weights to carry and the only fair way for the world to be is if everyone carries their own weight.

But that has nothing to do with team work. It's enough to be able to carry your own weight, because this implies that you have the strength or the resources to carry your own weight. However there are a number of circumstances which make it impossible for many to carry their own weight. So for those countries or those people who are justifiably unable to carry their own weight, the way in which the world is made better is if everyone helps out with the burdens of living.

The first thing a person needs to recognize is who he is carry the weight for. A person carries a certain amount of weight and needs a rest. If that person doesn't get that rest, he will crumble under the weight of his situation and if this continues all over the place, then things go to hell.

So, if we help carry the weight we can give people rest. And if people help us carry the weight, then we get the rest as well.

But it isn't so much a matter of being able to carry the weight. It's a matter of recognizing who has the weight and recognizing your intended reception of that weight.

In many ways we are the 'intended receivers" of other people's burdens. It is our 'duty', our 'predetermined fate' to interact with various people by cooperating towards some goal. If a person does not 'position' his self in a such a way that he is able to cooperate with the person who is carrying the weight which he is 'determined' to lift off that person - then the person drops the weight, crumbles under it, or hands it off to someone else who is "not" the 'intended receiver' of that weight.

After that all you need to do is know and recognize who it is that you will be passing the weight off to once you have handled it long enough. And there is a certain deterministic order to things in which people are constantly adopting the burdens of others, while giving away their own to others. And this is how the world should work. We should all be helping in carrying the burden of living.

But is that the case? Of course not. We don't know what our burdens are. There are people who choose not to carry any burden at all. They make a living out of putting the burdens of life out of their way. Those burdens land on the backs of the weak or the poor - and the whole thing goes to hell in a hand bag.

If we understood our responsibilities, we could cooperate with each other as individuals to individuals in the same way that any team operates in a sport. Consider the ball to be the "objectives of living". That ball gets carried by one team member for a while. Then he passes it to the next intended receiver. And he doesn't pass it to just any one. If you watch sports closely, if you play sports, you will notice that in any game it doesn't matter how weak or strong your players are. The beauty of games, like soccer is that every play involves an almost predetermined passing of the ball to specific players.

The chance the team has to meet the objective is usually dependent on how well they recognize the people who will be passing them the ball, and also who it is directly after that they them selves should be passing the ball to.

And it doesn't matter if you have an extremely weak player on your team. The game somehow dictates that in fair play the best way to approach the game is to always pass to your intended receiver and always be aware of who is going to pass it to you. In other words be ready to take the ball if you are the next one in line to receive.

Because the world has been taking away from others for so long, because there are these classes and entire populations of people who are already weak, and because the nature of cooperation still requires that we pass on our burdens to those already weakened people it is hard to say if we will "win the game of life".

The game must be played well. The handlers of the burden must handle it well and give it to the right people. In the game of chess if you have mistakenly moved the wrong player in the wrong sequence you may be deterministically doomed to fail. Often it is better to save times when one has made one or two wrong moves against a strong opponent by simply giving him the win.

The world is our opponent. It is a strong opponent. Survival is our opponent. The survival of the whole planet is our opponent. It is not clear if we can regain a hold on our position. We should take on a defensive strategy, by pooling all of our resources into the poorest of countries, while the richest take on the position of total poverty.

That will likely not happen, but that is how we can as a society make the world a better place.

The way that we can make the world better is through cooperation. But it depends on knowing who to cooperate with.
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That will likely not happen, but that is how we can as a society make the world a better place.

Well I very, very much agree with that part. The issue is one of how to arrange for it.
So far, all I come up with requires that a small group already exist doing "the right thing", else no cooperation of any significance takes place.

We can make the world better. If James S. Saint is right - and I believe he is - it "requires that a small group already exist doing "the right thing", else no cooperation of any significance takes place."

The good news is that many such small groups already exist and are doing their thing. To be keenly aware of this, get the daily feed from Ode Wire, a service of Ode Magazine. See http://www.odewire.com

Also see Yes Magazine which gives information freebies online at this site: http://www.yesmagazine.org/

At those two sites, and at many more on the internet, if you look for them, you will learn that Ethics is catching on !!

The world actually IS getting better ....all the time.

Further evidence, of a statistical sort, is to be found in these two books :

Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think.

Hey Prof,

Thanks, I've been to other forums and the tone(s) all seem to be the same one-up-manship where feelings get hurt. I've been the receiver and honestly the giver of such tone(s), and want to publicly apologize here to anyone I may have offended. Some just aren't ready for win/win especially when it comes to debate, hopefully this thought of yours will catch like wild-fire throughout this forum...