Conscience is the seat of progress because it enables us to know what is good and what is not good. Ethics can be inferred from the response of conscience to our conduct and expression. The values within conscience are universal and exist whether we know it or not. It is as elementary as the awareness that harming and hurting is wrong.
We can know our values by testing our considerations against tolerance, helpfulness, and democracy.
Unpacking ethics as universal conscience
To attribute values to conscience is an inference based on our comprehension of what good and evil are.
Good is what does not harm, but builds and inspires. Evil is what does harm – hurting, causing pain and suffering, and finally, extinguishing freedom and life.
Ethical Culture Needs Ethical Leaders: https://t.co/ql5XowsuVY via @openmindscircle
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) October 16, 2017
When decisions to inflict evil are corporate, the wages of sin are distributed among those responsible. Forgiveness is the only remedy for all forms of wrongdoing.
Reparations
Restitution and reparation are often necessary but are no substitute for genuine repentance. Ethics is the appropriate heading for a consideration of justice, law, and forgiveness. Justice takes precedence in any discussion of wrongdoing and evil.
Justice is not to be implemented by us. It is a mandate we are to follow. Our present justice systems are a travesty. The purposes of justice are not served. Rampant injustice is aided and abetted under the mask of justice.
Ethical values
Ethics has to do with ordinary life. We champion tolerance, helpfulness, and democracy because these action values cover almost all ordinary considerations.
Tolerance is strength and flexibility, endurance and respect for all. Helpfulness is enablement and education, the heart of any effort to make life meaningful and remunerative. Democracy is the only system that combines universal rights with the means of allowing all persons a voice and access to justice. Tolerance, helpfulness, and democracy should be part of a daily consideration by all people on the planet.
Merely adding ethics to a menu of daily considerations would tilt the world toward achieving amazing advances.
Sea change
It is beyond question that if ethics became central as a universal means of touching base with conscience and if the values noted were also central, we would make a giant stride in the direction of well-being for the whole inhabited earth. Bringing on love in the World is dependent on making ethics a normal part of one’s daily considerations.
