Does diversity mean everyone is entitled to say what is right and what is wrong? No, that is what freedom means. Everyone is entitled to choose what they will do.
What is right is baked into reality. It is how the world works. It is how we should be, freely choosing what’s right.
What is right is tolerance, helpfulness, and democracy. I’ll define these terms, but briefly, tolerance is strength as well as flexibility. Helpfulness is educating and enabling. And democracy means universal rights and fair governance.
Virtues
The basic problem with Ethics is that it has always been elitist.
It has never been assumed that ethics is truly universal. Ethics is for smart folk who split hairs.
The father of ethics was Aristotle who wrote extensively on the matter. Aristotle believed that virtues made one ethical. Triadic Philosophy believes with Nietzsche that values propel history.
If history is as written, it has not done well according to the Aristotelian model. Aristotle believed there is a golden mean. To be truly virtuous is to walk between extremes and be temperate.
Character
Ethics is not character as Aristotle thought. No character is so simple that good and evil cannot reside in each of us. No character is fixed to the point that it cannot change in a nanosecond.
Books on virtue come out every few years and rehearse Aristotle.
All of his virtues exist in us all but we are never always brave, restrained, generous, satisfied, level-headed and convivial. We are a spectrum of everything under the sun and to be ethical we need to transcend whatever our character is.
Values trump character. Tolerance is required. Helpfulness and democracy are not characteristics, they are necessities.
An action value that is universal moves history because all hold it dear. We are just at the beginning of turning from binary character ethics to an ethic for all people based on universal values.
Conflict resolution
Ethics should be about conflict resolution. Ethics should be based on what is right and what is understood to be wrong.
Wrong is what leads to and results in conflict, harm, and death.
Conflict may be inevitable, but resolving it is possible. Ethics in itself is not able to resolve a conflict. We also require the growth of a world culture based on forgiveness.
This is a big order. Aristotle’s ethics did nothing to stem the massive harm and carnage of war and genocide. Triadic ethics helps us move in that direction.
