This is a very compact system of ethics. It is very simple, brief, and yet powerful based on the following guiding principal from which all the rest can be deduced.
The Guiding Principal
All (human) beings are born equal and remain equal every day of their lives.
The below Principals are only sub-principals for the first one
2) Person is the measure of all accounts.
3) Everyone is free to pursue their own happiness and the results of their pursuit and obliged to respect everyone else’s equal freedom without limiting anyone else’s freedom.
The below is only opening up the above principal(s) and demonstrating a few of the fundamental issues. The deduction can be easily extended to areas such as economics and law.
Freedom
Freedom is the most powerful concept there is. Unfortunately it has not been properly understood and applied to this day.
Everything starts with a personal freedom and also ends to it. This is clearly stated in the first Guiding Principal: ”All (human) beings are born equal and remain equal every day of their lives.”
When we are born we are all purely naked and have nothing except our being (existence). All the rest is either learned, assumed, assimilated, or gained by some means (voluntary or involuntary). And this latter process can happen only together with other people.
It is not possible to alienate a person from his/her freedom. There are only ways to suppress or give up degrees of personal freedom voluntarily either consciously or by ignorance.
The level of power other people can have for a person is in direct proportion to the level the person has surrendered his/her freedom in any given moment. Like suppression the voluntary surrender needs to be exercised continuously over time. In the first case the person can once again exercise freely his/her freedom when the suppression stops and in the latter case one can do it immediately upon personal decision or when becoming aware of it.
Responsibility
Responsibility is the other side of the coin with freedom. All the actions (including non-actions) and their consequences are born by the person carrying them out. The object(s) of the actions are not relevant in respect to the responsibility.
Full responsibility (and full freedom) means that the person does not even have to be aware of all the implications of his/her actions. Ignorance is merely poor perception and lack of understanding from the actor’s perspective (e.g. bad choice).
The Second Principal states that all the responsibilities can be originated to persons. Like freedom the responsibility cannot be alienated from a person. The person can make voluntary agreements but these agreements cannot remove the final responsibility.
The Third Principal underlines a person’s responsibility first of all towards his/herself but more importantly towards everything else.
Cooperation
Interaction between people can happen either voluntarily or involuntarily. Forms of suppression and acts of violence or threats of actions of violence are not discussed here at all. Humanity has enough evidence of its use already available.
Voluntary cooperation is based on the free will of people to interact with each other. This can happen between two or more people for any period of time. The cooperation is based on trust, and the level of trust defines the ways of cooperation and the means to accomplish the desired actions. A low level of trust between individuals focuses a great amount of effort to secure the parties in the cooperation and thus making the interaction less efficient. This consumes time, effort and energy with increasing complexity the longer the time span of the intended cooperation extends to the future.
High level of trust makes the interaction more organised, forward-orientated, and allows more complex relationship and cooperation forms to emerge. High level of specialisation can only happen when people are trustful among each other and can focus on their specific areas of interest and needs. A highly sophisticated society is dependent on trust among its members.
Agreements
Voluntary cooperation is based on trust, which can be reflected either in tacit or tangible forms of agreements. Agreements can incorporate two or more parties for any period of time. Agreements are ways to stipulate the desired actions (and non-actions) among the voluntary parties of the agreements and also a way to record the stated matters.
Agreements are only the means for carrying out the will of the people incorporated for the action. Therefore the agreements are expressions of freedom between the participants, and full responsibilities of the actions (and non-actions) lay among the parties of the agreements as indicated in the third Guiding Principal.
Society Is Persons
The second Guiding Principal states that “Person is the measure of all accounts.” No person, structure or concept can be above any person living. Human based actions and their consequences are always borne by the persons involved, and these responsibilities cannot be alienated. The Guiding Principals clearly describe the nature of voluntary action of any individual in respect to every other being.
A society or any collective entity or cooperation between persons is always only a mutual expression of each and every individual incorporated for the action(s). No collective or structure can be compared to a living person. They can only act on behalf of the people incorporated with the entity, and thus representing expressions of these people.
Self-Defence
Freedom consists of two things: positive and negative freedom. The positive stipulates that the person can engage to something, and the negative that the person can restrain of engaging to something.
The latter case states that the person cannot be involved in something against his/her permission and thus restrain the person’s freedom (under the third Guiding Principal). Shall this be the case the person needs to have a right to protect his/her freedom in order to be capable of exercising his/her expressions freely.
The self-defence does not remove the responsibility of the actions (and non-actions) carried out. Therefore any action in excess of protecting one’s freedom is a direct breach of the (third) Guiding Principal(s).
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